Story Archives of 'National'

Adrian Nicole LeBlanc broke ground when her award-winning book Random Family: Love, Drugs,Trouble and Coming of Age in the Bronx was published in 2003. She spent more than a decade closely observing three generations of a Puerto Rican family to create an intimate portrait of street life that was anything but pretty.

Random Family was a New York Times bestseller and was recently named one of The 50 Books for Our Times by Newsweek magazine. Tomorrow afternoon, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc and two of the subjects of Random Family will travel to ConVal High School in Peterborough, NH for a day-long workshop with New Hampshire students. It’s part of the MacDowell Colony’s Community Outreach Program in the schools, and we’re catching up with Adrian Nicole LeBlanc before the workshop. We also spoke with Jill Lawler, an English teacher at ConVal, about what her students are learning from random family.

Adrian Nicole LeBlanc Q&A: Journalism for the long haul

It just got a lot harder to go on the lam in North Carolina. The FBI has teamed-up with the Department of Motor Vehicles there to help them track down suspects. They’re using new facial-recognition software that compares drivers license photos in the DMV database to pictures of alleged criminals.

So even if a suspect changes his name and gets a new drivers license, the feds can find him and track him down based on his facial structure. If successful, the program could prove to be a huge boon for law enforcement, but it’s also a big concern for privacy advocates.

Steve Morris is Deputy Assistant Director in the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division. We’re also joined by Jared Kaprove, a Domestic Surveillance Fellow with the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

The Associated Press: FBI delves into DMV photos in search for fugitives

(Photo by buhny via Flickr/Creative Commons)

37 states, including New Hampshire, are reporting that H1N1, or swine flu, is now widespread in their area.

And there have been several reports of the lack of vaccine for seasonal flu as well as that for the swine flu.

We thought we'd get an update on the situation from New Hampshire's Director of Public Health, Dr. Jose Montero.

He says the state had been expecting more than 180 thousand doses of the swine flu vaccine by the end of the month, but only 50 thousand have arrived.

And he says even though the state has not been testing everyone with flu like symptoms, there have been outbreaks of the flu across the state.

From the water problem to water as metaphor. Our story begins in a former woolen mill on the banks of the Sugar River in Newport, NH. To get there, I drove past The Dollar Store and strip malls, the spray-painted signs advertising cord wood and coal, and onto South Main Street, where space for rent signs fade in store front windows.

Newport is one of the American towns where Sturm, Ruger and Co. has been manufacturing guns since 1949. Firearms magnate William Ruger, Jr., meticulously restored the old mill to house his extensive collection of antique cars. Bill Ruger then turned over an entire floor - 20,000 square feet – of the mill bulding to H20: Film on Water. It’s a collection of films, video, photographs and contemporary installations linked to the Connecticut River waterways.

The Newport Mill is the main exhibition space. I visited the grand brick building on a sparkling fall afternoon. The windows were blackened. Muffled sounds of buoy bells, sparse lighting, and the movement of projected films created a sense of dark immersion.

Cynthia Reeves runs the contemporary art gallery Cynthia Reeves in New York City, and Spheris Gallery in Hanover. A decade ago, she started Great River Arts based in Bellows Falls, Vt. To mark its ten-year anniversary, Cynthia opened up a juried competition centered on water. Her team pared more than 200 submissions down to 75 works of video, photography and site-specific works to create H20: Film on Water.

There’s a great variety of work. One film evokes Hurricane Katrina, another, the effect of oil on water. Some are direct, others more subtle. On Saturday, the top three juried H20: Film on Water videos will be awarded at the mill in Newport. The exhibition, and Saturday’s awards event are free and open to the public.

Boston Globe: Shimmering downriver: Exhibition’s four venues celebrate sight, sound of water

Keene State College's Thorne-Sagendorph Art Gallery is also hosting an exhibition on water titled Downstream: Current Works on Water By Six Artists.