Burlington Free Press
Love and lyrics
Caitlin Canty was giving her son a bath at her home in East Nashville when she started singing a song she was writing in her head. It had been eight years since she moved from Vermont, but the lyrics were very much rooted in the Green Mountains. She...
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Iranian Americans split over U.S. attacks
Military strikes in Iran have highlighted deep chasms between Iranian Americans seeking to overthrow the country’s government and others who wanted a peaceful resolution through negotiations. The United States and Israel launched military strikes and...
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Iran air strikes mark Trump’s biggest gamble
WASHINGTON – With his largescale attack on Iran, President Donald Trump has seized a legacy-defining moment to demonstrate his readiness to exercise raw U.S. military power. But in doing so, he is also taking the biggest foreign policy gamble of his...
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MARCH ARTS EVENTS
The first couple of months of the new year represent the leanest time for arts-and-entertainment events. Following the hectic holidays, the list of things to go to whittles down to maybe one a week or so that might really pique your interest. That...
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WINTER FUN
Looking for ways to enjoy the rest of the cold New England winter? While staying indoors often seems better than facing the cold, the region has lots of outdoor activities that brighten the winter season, including skiing, snow tubing and, of course,...
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‘We are a place for everybody’
Jitters Café is a trailblazer of sorts. When the restaurant and bar opened Dec. 23, it was one of the first businesses in the long-in-the-works Burlington Square development on Bank Street, joining the AC Hotel Burlington by Marriott. The start of...
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City Council unsure whether to accept statue
Burlington city councilors have pressed pause on accepting a statue donation from the Abenaki Nation of Missisquoi after hearing concerns about the authenticity of Vermont’s four staterecognized tribes. City Council was set to vote on accepting the...
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Ex-ICE lawyer testifies to Congress
ICE supervisors are teaching “new cadets to violate the Constitution” amid President Donald Trump’s promise of mass deportations, a former agency lawyer testified to members of Congress. “The ICE academy is deficient, defective, and broken,” former...
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Poll: 60% of Americans disapprove of Trump
Ahead of President Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address of his second term, a new poll shows a majority of Americans disapprove of the president’s job performance, especially on inflation, tariffs and foreign policy. In a Washington...
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SAVING JERICHO
JERICHO — Residents here face a dilemma straight of a Hallmark movie: Their quaint, 200-year-old library needs hundreds of thousands of dollars in structural repairs within the next few years to stay open. The Jericho Town Library — a white and cozy...
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Chef went from a food truck to James Beard nod
Paul Trombly doesn’t cook to win awards. He cooks to share food with the neighborhood — specifically, the Old North End where his restaurant, Fancy’s, stands. Still, Trombly was floored to hear he’s a semifinalist for the best chef in the Northeast...
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Alleged trade leaks led to Andrew’s arrest
WASHINGTON – It wasn’t Jeffrey Epstein’s illicit past that led to the stunning arrest of Andrew MountbattenWindsor on Feb. 19. It was the alleged leak of confidential information from the former prince to the convicted sex offender while Andrew acted...
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STUDY: PLANET IS IN WATER BANKRUPTCY
The world is now using so much fresh water amid the consequences of climate change that it has entered an era of water bankruptcy, with many regions no longer able to bounce back from frequent water shortages. h About 4 billion people – nearly half...
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Students left class to protest ICE
Scores of South Burlington High School students walked out of their classes last Friday to protest U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s ramped-up national operations, including in Vermont. Hundreds of teens took part in the Feb. 13 walkout in...
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Cozy family fun
Looking for a way to entertain the kids over February vacation? While most children look forward to the annual week-long break from school, finding things for them to do at home while the harsh New England winter rages on outside can be difficult....
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For most of the country, bitter cold likely ending
Folks in the central and eastern United States who’ve endured weeks of bitter cold and snow are wondering: Is winter over? Will the polar vortex come back? Are we safe from the worst of winter’s wrath? Experts have some good news. “The most intense...
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‘Vermont Firsts’ begins year of 250th fanfare
The Vermont Historical Society is kicking off a year of events celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States with an exhibit called “The Vermont Firsts Collection.” The display picks up where the last major American birthday bash, the...
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Eatery aims ‘to make lots of families happy’
WILLISTON — Spaghet, the new Italian-American eatery opened by Vermont restaurant mogul Jed Davis, was inspired in part by family lore. As the story goes, Davis’ parents spent one of their first dates in the late 1950s or early 1960s at a restaurant...
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Report: U.S. inflation ticked down in January
Inflation cooled a bit more than forecasters expected in January, with prices rising 2.4% from a year earlier, the Labor Department said Feb. 13. The report, which was delayed two days because of a brief government shutdown, revealed that inflation...
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Homan says Minnesota ICE operation will end
The Trump administration said it is ending the controversial immigration operation in Minnesota that sparked nationwide protests after federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens in January. White House border czar Tom Homan on Feb. 12 said he...
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Student informants spur academic freedom debate
Texas A&M University told philosophy professor Martin Peterson in early January that he could not teach some of Greek philosopher Plato’s writings that touch on “race and gender ideology.” The university’s local chapter of the American Association of...
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Fall in love with these arts events for Valentine’s Day
Romantic dinners out on the town for Valentine’s Day can be wonderful, of course, but they’re not the only option for appreciating your sweetie on the holiday of love. Why not indulge in another love, like, say, your love of the arts? Some of these...
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Education Dept. receives more funds
WASHINGTON – Over the past year, congressional Republicans have cheered on President Donald Trump’s quest to dismantle the Education Department. Yet those same lawmakers just reached a deal with Democrats to give what’s left of the agency more money –...
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Defying the curtain call
A Vermont theater company is bucking trends and expanding. Northern Stage has acquired a former Veterans of Foreign Wars post in White River Junction and plans to turn it into a facility for theater education and extra performances beyond its main...
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Restaurant perseveres through major setbacks
MILTON — Andrew Gonyon was in church when he looked down at his phone, opened a text from one of his employees and saw the photo: A black SUV had smashed through the front window of his Humble Revelry restaurant. That was back in December. Humble...
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MAGA vs. Bad Bunny splits Super Bowl
Sen. Tommy Tuberville was thrilled to attend the Super Bowl in 2025 when he hitched a ride on Air Force One, joining President Donald Trump and several other Republican lawmakers for the big game. “Happy Super Bowl Sunday,” the Republican senator for...
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Pedestrian deaths by trains persisting
In 2018, high-speed passenger trains branded as Brightline started running along the formerly freight-only Florida East Coast Railway. Initial service from Miami to West Palm Beach was extended to Orlando in 2023. h Unfortunately, the southern end of...
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Second Groundhog Fest has challenges
It’s a cruel twist of fate that mere hours after the final note sounded on Burlington’s second-annual Groundhog Fest, the nation’s most famous burrowing rodent, Punxsutawney Phil, saw his shadow, which for whatever reason portends six more weeks of...
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Meet the Vermont athletes competing in 2026 Olympics
As the 2026 Winter Olympics grow closer, athletes from all over New England are getting ready to compete in Milano-Cortina. Team USA recently announced the official 2026 U.S. Olympic Team, and 26 of the 232 chosen athletes are from New England, four...
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In primitive state
SOUTH BURLINGTON — Half the city’s fire prevention team struggles to stay warm during office hours. Three people of the six-member team operate out of a small temporary trailer that sits parallel to the comparably vast fire station on Dorset Street....
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‘It’s so meaningful’
Dan Chiasson came of age in 1980s Burlington, just as Bernie Sanders’ political career began dominating the Vermont landscape. As a result, Chiasson became something of a messenger from a foreign land when he left for undergraduate studies at Amherst...
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February art picks
This winter has been a bit of a stinker so far. h It’s been good to skiers — a foot or more of fresh powder is heaven for downhillers and cross-country skiers alike — but the cold temperatures and constant brushing off of the car get tedious after a...
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Shutdown still possible despite DHS deal
Lawmakers appeared to be closing in on a deal endorsed by President Donald Trump to avoid an extended government shutdown, but a key player said a brief government closure may be inevitable as there still was work to be done Jan. 30 as funding was set...
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Robber Robber to play at City Hall on Jan. 31
The new album by Burlington indierockers Robber Robber was born from chaos. The group’s founders, Nina Cates and Zack James, were living above Radio Bean in May 2024 when fire broke out in the building. Almost every apartment was gutted. Theirs...
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Consumer-driven future seen for GLP-1 drugs
LONDON – Ask executives in the health care industry about the future market for weight-loss drugs and the analogies are telling: monthly GLP-1 medicine subscriptions like a streaming video membership; dose decisions managed on a smartphone app; access...
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GOP ready to move on from Greenland
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump says a lot of things that make life harder for congressional Republicans. For many of them, his recent fixation with acquiring Greenland was in a class of its own. The unease on Capitol Hill was palpable after the...
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Scientists racing to save climate data
RICHMOND, VA – President Donald Trump has gone beyond policy overhauls to fundamentally alter the way the government talks about climate change and the environment, limiting or outright deleting countervailing language and evidence during the first...
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‘Difficult decision’
A longtime bar in downtown Burlington has had its last call. “We have made the difficult decision to close Drink Bar effective immediately,” the St. Paul Street bar’s owners wrote in a Jan. 22 Instagram post. “Thank you to all our former and current...
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U.S. faces ‘human rights emergency,’ group says
One year into the second Trump administration, the United States has quickly eroded human rights safeguards, according to Amnesty International. The nonprofit released a report Jan. 20, the anniversary of President Donald Trump retaking office, saying...
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Minnesotans start strike to protest surge by ICE
MINNEAPOLIS – Scores of businesses across Minnesota were closing up for the day on Jan. 23 in what religious leaders and labor unions described as a general strike to protest President Donald Trump’s deployment of thousands of immigration enforcement...
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VT eateries nominated for James Beard Awards
A Burlington restaurant owner is in the running for the top prize in the James Beard Awards, the nation’s most prominent food-and-drink honors. Vermont received six nominations overall in the awards announcement made Wednesday morning by the...
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Future of Radio Bean venue up in the air
Lee Anderson is looking to move on from running the iconic Burlington music venue Radio Bean. Anderson hosted a Q&A and brainstorming session at the club Wednesday night to discuss his announcement that he’s seeking a buyer or cooperative ownership,...
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‘Any time there’s a bird and glass, there’s a threat’
SHELBURNE — Just outside the window in front of Bruce and Marcia Fowle’s dining table recently, birds took their turns at a green feeder hanging off the side of the house. A grid of small square stickers on the window gave the couple confidence that...
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Cramped and dingy facility
The Winooski Police Department building has hardly been renovated in over 50 years — and it shows. Inside the cramped and dingy facility, chunks of the floor are missing. Large holes and cracks mark the ceilings. Air from the front bathroom vents...
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‘ This is an amazing space’
Christy Mitchell ran into some snags while trying to schedule the South End Art Hop’s annual STRUT! fashion show last summer. The executive director of the South End Arts and Business Association, or SEABA, considered holding the show along the...
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‘UNIQUE OFFERING’
The past year was an eventful one for Summer Cao. h Last St. Patrick’s Day, she moved her Korean takeout eatery Donwoori from South Burlington to Winooski and expanded it to a sit-down restaurant with 44 seats. Two months later, Cao’s father died in...
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Machado gains little in White House visit
WASHINGTON – Venezuelan opposition leader Marina Corina Machado got her courtesy luncheon with President Donald Trump on Jan. 15 but gained little else politically after the White House secured a $500 million deal for Venezuelan oil through ongoing...
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Report: U.S. likely saw negative net migration
For the first time in decades, net migration for the United States was likely negative in 2025, and the trend could continue amid President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement actions, according to a new think tank report. A...
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Trump confronts stark divisions in GOP
WASHINGTON – In the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term in office, he got pretty much everything he wanted out of the Republican-led Congress. He passed a giant tax-and-spending law with sweeping changes to domestic policy. Most of his...
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Trans athlete debate reaches high court
WASHINGTON − Becky Pepper-Jackson was in elementary school, already sure she was a girl despite being designated male at birth, when the nation took notice of two transgender athletes. The debate over whether the high school runners in Connecticut had...
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Furor continues over ICE shootings
Tensions remained high Jan. 9 after shootings involving immigration agents in Minneapolis and in Portland, Oregon, drew protesters to the streets and deepened fractures between federal and state officials. In Portland, a U.S. Border Patrol officer...
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‘ They’re not going anywhere’
The Vermont College of Fine Arts campus in Montpelier, perched on a hill overlooking the capital city, once welcomed students a few weeks of the year to augment their largely remote studies with on-campus work. But in 2022, the school shut down the...
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Shows to look forward to
We’re heading into the heart of winter, when thoughts of warmer seasons can bring some solace as we shiver in darkness. You might even — hard as it is to imagine right now — start dreaming of concerts held in balmy air under cloudless skies. Of...
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MADURO’S GRIP ON POWER ENDS
Nicolas Maduro ruled Venezuela with a heavy hand for more than 12 years, presiding over deep economic and social crises and resisting pressure from domestic opponents and foreign governments for political change. His rule abruptly ended on Jan. 3,...
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Jericho woman’s fight with housing crisis shows an option HOMESHARING
JERICHO — Marjorie Minot wanted to do something about Vermont’s housing crisis. She found herself living alone in her fourbed, four-bath house in a town with some of the lowest housing availability in the state. “From an ethical point of view, I don’t...
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Social justice the aim of car repair workshops
MILTON — Allison Rowley loves cars. She’s a hobby mechanic, and she spent a year working at a South Burlington auto repair shop. There, she noticed many customers didn’t know the basics of automotive maintenance — they had never had the opportunity to...
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Milton funeral home offers water cremation
MILTON — When it comes to choosing a funeral option, many factors need to be considered, like process, price and location. So when customers started asking Jonathan Duponte, a funeral home owner in Milton, about environmentally friendly options, he...
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January arts schedule full of music, comedy, visual art
It’s so tempting once the holiday season is over to hang up your coat and say, “That’s it, I’m staying in all winter and doing nothing but reading books and binge-watching cringe-worthy streaming shows.” Ah, yes, the apple in the Garden of Eden was...
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Taste of Burlington
We at the Burlington Free Press spend a fair bit of time and energy writing about new restaurants coming on the scene in Chittenden County. h Those restaurants aren’t always new new, if you know what we’re saying. Sometimes they’re familiar restaurants...
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‘Something that will last’
Few people can say that there is a plant is named after them. Hilda White — a 95-year-old, long-time volunteer at the University of Vermont’s Pringle Herbarium — is one of the lucky individuals who can. White’s namesake is the Polystichum hildae, a...
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Vermonters rally behind GoFundMe fundraisers
Vermont was the second most generous state in 2025, according to GoFundMe. Fundraisers across Vermont raised nearly $9 million in 2025 on the platform, it said. The most generous day for giving was Oct. 30, according to GoFundMe. Notable fundraisers...
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U.S. hits Islamic State in northern Nigeria
President Donald Trump said on Dec. 25 that the U.S. military had attacked Islamic State targets in Nigeria, claiming the group had been targeting Christians. In a post on Truth Social, the president said he directed the military to launch a...
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‘Help’s farther away’
In the 1960s, doctors believed heart muscle died instantly during a heart attack, like throwing a light switch, according to the American Heart Association. Dr. Eugene Braunwald’s research proposed a heart attack was more like a dimmer – the damage...
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Authorities capture 3 Georgia jail escapees
Authorities captured three men Dec. 23, including one charged with murder, who escaped from a county jail east of Atlanta. The three men fled Dec. 22 from the DeKalb County Jail, about 10 miles from downtown Atlanta, where they had been detained,...
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GIVING GUESTS AN EXPERIENCE
You might see a horse-drawn carriage trundling through one of Winooski’s parks after a recent ordinance change. The Dec. 8 decision loosened Winooski’s ban on horseback riding in the city by allowing people to obtain a “special written permit” for the...
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Turning Point USA gains ground on campuses
Apair of students stood in the Indiana University Indianapolis student center asking a simple legal question: “Is ‘hate speech’ protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution?” Students slowed to read the white board, and many shuffled toward...
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NEW YEAR’S EVE FUN
Who goes out on a Wednesday night in winter? There doesn’t tend to be a whole lot going on, for one thing. And if there is, it’s smack in the middle of the week, which makes stumbling into the office the next day after a late night an unpleasant...
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Brown shooting suspect found dead
PROVIDENCE, RI – Though the suspect connected to the deadly Brown University attack and the fatal shooting of an MIT professor was found dead in New Hampshire, the questions and fallout have only begun. Providence Police Chief Col. Oscar Perez...
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Top-ranked Hallmark holiday movies set in Vermont
With the holidays rapidly approaching, The Hallmark Channel’s “Countdown to Christmas” is underway, perfect for those looking to celebrate the cold season from the comfort of their couch. Whether an old holiday favorite or a brand new premiere, many...
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Penzo Pizza returns home to Essex Junction
ESSEX JUNCTION — Penzo Pizza has returned home in more ways than one. The business began in 2021 with a portable food trailer that frequented Essex and Essex Junction. Owner Dave Penzo realized a dream a couple of years later when Penzo Pizza moved...
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Cancer trial for dogs could benefit humans
GRAFTON, MA – Haley was a little nervous during her doctor’s appointment. She shivered and cowered, but her mood quickly improved. Haley had a leg amputated nearly a year ago after a diagnosis of an aggressive bone cancer called osteosarcoma and she...
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‘That was heartening’
Brett Yates felt confident that the first few days at the new movie theater Partizanfilm would be busy ones. They were. Yates, the president of the nonprofit “micro-cinema” in Burlington, was less sure what would come next. Would anyone show up a few...
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Ice cream stand expands into Mr. Creemee shop
It was 2020 when Henry Mizrahi saw the spot for rent, a small space with a window near the downtown City Market where Union Scoops used to serve frozen treats. He thought he could help open another ice cream stand there. h He lived nearby with a...
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Trump unveils new sanctions on Venezuela
President Donald Trump is continuing to ratchet up pressure on Venezuela, after United States military forces seized an oil tanker off the South American country’s coast and unveiled new sanctions on it. The Dec. 10 seizure is the latest escalation in...
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Private firms snap up mobile home parks
One of America’s most affordable paths to homeownership is slipping away. At manufactured home parks – sometimes called trailer parks or mobile home parks – rents are rapidly rising due to large-scale buyouts by private equity firms. Although private...
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Lighting up the season
As December begins, Christmas lights are popping up all across Vermont to welcome the holiday season, bringing joy and brightness to the dark, cold days of winter. Luckily, if you’re a fan of Christmas lights, you don’t have to go far to see them....
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