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Heard a fawn crying in our woods yesterday and went to investigate. About 150 yds from our house I saw a tiny fawn - couldn't have been more than a few weeks old - with a small fisher on its back, trying to bite the fawn's neck. Fired a shot over the fisher and it took off, along with another, much larger, fisher I hadn't seen. Appears as though mother fisher was teaching the youngster how to hunt. Fawn was exhausted, but recovered in a few minutes and took off. Never thought a fisher would attack a fawn, but perhaps...

To anybody interested, the link to the US Navy's investigation into the the events in USS Theodore Roosevelt's CV-19 outbreak that led to the firing of Captain Brent Crozier is included.

An Orange County sheriff’s deputy has been accused of firing two shots into a fleeing vehicle that he had tailgated and tried to block while off duty Monday. William Pine, 49, of Brookfield now faces two counts of attempted aggravated assault. He serves as a deputy for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, according to the Vermont State Police. He has been placed on administrative leave, according to the department. State police said the incident occurred in Williamstown at about 7:45 p.m. Monday. Two men — 41-year-old Kevin Goodale of Brookfield and 37-year-old Nathan Lyonnais of Barton — told troopers they...

Attorney General TJ Donovan will launch a new “Bias Incident Reporting System” on Monday during a press conference announcing the results of his investigation into criminal complaints made by former state representative Kiah Morris. Morris, who had been the only black woman in Vermont’s Legislature, decided not to run for reelection partly because of racism and hate speech directed at her over the past few years. She claims that police and prosecutors in Bennington county failed to properly investigate her complaints or protect her family. Donovan decided in September to take over the investigation, citing a “breakdown in Bennington” during...

Police say they thwarted a plot involving two 14-year-old Middlebury Union Middle School students to carry out a shooting this week on the school’s campus. Dennis Wygmans, the Addison County state’s attorney, said Tuesday evening that the investigation is ongoing and if any charges are filed, they “most likely” would be brought in juvenile court. “We believe there is no longer a threat, but folks should remain vigilant,” the prosecutor added. “If they do learn of anything, they should contact Middlebury Police.” Because the case involves juveniles, authorities say they are not releasing the names of the students involved. The...

At first, Rutland Area NAACP president Tabitha Pohl-Moore was excited about the prospect of last week’s Sanders Institute Gathering, which its publicity said would bring 250 “leading progressive minds” to Burlington “to envision — and to actualize — a better future for our country and the world.” “A progressive agenda that promised to raise an intersectional approach to ending injustice and oppression … in our backyard?” Pohl-Moore recalls thinking. “We would finally be heard and seen here in Vermont.” Then the Wallingford counselor, wife and mother read the guest list for the Burlington-based nonprofit think tank’s $350-suggested-donation gathering: U.S. Sen....

Vermont is widely known to be among the safest states in the union, but when it comes to gun violence new research shows that the Green Mountain state is safer than previously thought. I conducted independent research using news articles and obituaries to dig deeper into the Vermont Public Radio “Gunshots” series. The research demonstrates the inaccuracy of common interpretations of the VPR gun homicide figures. It also calls into question some of the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting statistics, which form the basis of a vast body of policy studies and statistical analyses. The cumulative effect of these findings is...

Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign will pay $14,500 as part of an agreement with the Federal Election Commission over allegations that the campaign wrongfully accepted in-kind donations from an Australian political party. The complaint centered on a group of seven Australians who volunteered for the Vermont independent’s 2016 presidential bid. The Australian Labor Party paid a total of $24,422 for the volunteers’ flights and stipends, according to the FEC document, provided by the Sanders campaign. The Sanders campaign did not believe at the time that the money the individuals received from the Australian party would disqualify them from volunteering, according...

A man shot a gun into a crowd outside a bar in the early morning hours of Monday, seriously injuring a woman. Police on bar patrol heard the gunshots as bars were letting out around 2 a.m. Witnesses saw the man, who police later identified as Rashad Nashid, 37, fire two shots into a crowd in front of Nectar’s, according to a news release from the Burlington Police Department. The 26-year-old victim is expected to survive, police said. A single bullet passed through her body and lodged in her clothing. Police say she has no known ties to Nashid. A...

A former South Burlington high school student who admitted making threats against fellow students and teachers apologized Tuesday, telling a judge recent news reports of the school shooting in Florida that killed 17 people nearly brought him to tears. “It almost made me cry,” Josiah Leach, 19, said during his sentencing hearing in federal court in Rutland. “I just can’t believe that 17 people died.” Judge Geoffrey Crawford sentenced Leach on Monday to five years of probation, a sentence jointly recommended by prosecutors and Leach’s attorney. Leach said that seeing the recent news reports helped him realize why others are...

Police arrested a Vermont teenager on Thursday after they say he threatened to cause “mass casualties” at Fair Haven Union High School. Jack Sawyer, 18, of Poultney, is currently held without bail and set to be arraigned Friday afternoon in Rutland Superior criminal court, police said. He faces charges of attempted aggravated murder, attempted first-degree murder and attempted aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, according to police. Starting Wednesday and continuing into Thursday, members of the Fair Haven Police Department and Vermont State Police detectives have been investigation a threat of a school shooting at Fair Haven Union High School,...

Immigration and Customs and Enforcement raided a Days Inn hotel in Colchester last Thursday in the first sweep of migrant workers in Vermont. ICE detained 14 construction workers, according to Will Lambek of Migrant Justice, a group that supports undocumented workers. The raid was conducted at 5 a.m. on Jan. 18. Lambek said other construction workers who were not included in the sweep notified Migrant Justice. The migrants were working for a contracting firm in the area. Lambek did not release information about the company for fear of jeopardizing other workers. Lambek said the raid “was out of scale” for...

Just weeks ago we told the story of Germany's puzzling Baden-Wurttemberg class Type 125 (F125) frigate program. Not only did we discuss the ship's odd mission and design features, but we also highlighted some of the troubling post-delivery issues with the lead ship in the class. These problems include a persistent list to starboard and the fact that the ship is dramatically overweight, which would limit its performance, increase its cost of operation, and most importantly, negatively impact the Deutsche Marine's ability to add future upgrades to the somewhat sparsely outfitted vessel. Now the German Navy has officially declined to...

The federal probe into a 2010 land deal orchestrated by former Burlington College president Jane Sanders, wife of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has deepened. VTDigger has confirmed that a grand jury has been empaneled and has taken sworn testimony in the case. Former Burlington College board member Robin Lloyd says she testified for about an hour on Oct. 26 before a grand jury at the federal courthouse in Burlington. Lloyd’s appearance is the first public confirmation that the federal government has empaneled a grand jury, whose principal function is to decide whether to issue a criminal indictment.

Alistair Urquhart was a Gordon Highlander, who aged 22 was captured by the Japanese in Singapore without firing a shot. What followed was a story of almost unimaginable suffering, stoicism, mental fortitude and endurance; he survived the ruthless regime that the Japanese Imperial Army imposed upon Allied PoWs working on the Burma-Siam Railway, the so-called Death Railway, survived being torpedoed while aboard the brutal Japanese “hellships” and the Nagasaki atomic bomb detonation. He was one of the forgotten army, the men who endured years of suffering in Japanese PoW camps and after more than 60 years he broke his silence...

Cmdr. Sarah DeGroot told the head of Amphibious Squadron 3, Capt. Homer Denius, on Monday that she was resigning as the Rushmore's CO. Three sources were unable to immediately specify why she'd taken this highly unusual and likely career-ending move.

The Navy's honoree was Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class Sara Freeman, assigned to the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69). "HM3 Freeman has a little over five years in the Navy," said Deputy Chief of Naval Operations, Integration of Capabilities and Recourses, Vice Adm. Joseph Malloy. "In this time she has done almost as much as the average senior chief. Her efforts as command pregnancy coordinator pushed women's health readiness to 89 percent. She also administered 1,556 health assessments, nearly 4,000 immunizations, qualified 12 CPR instructors and 54 basic life support students, helping Ike net a 99 percent...

To the human scum who discarded your scared, emaciated, beautiful female dog on a back road in the middle of winter: I discovered her this afternoon and carried her into our house, placing her on a blanket near our wood stove. She drank some water and ate a bit of food, thumped her huge bushy tail on the floor a few times while I stroked her head, curled up and fell asleep. Her huge sad eyes told me she'd probably never heard a kind word in her short life. Two hours later she was gone. We would have gladly adopted...