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 Preshow Return to index of stories... |
Next on New Hampshire Outlook. food for thought - the pros and cons of genetically engineered food. Plus.What the insect world tells us about the health of our neighborhoods. |
| Headlines Return to index of stories... |
Welcome to New Hampshire Outlook. I'm Laura Knoy sitting in for Allison McNair. |
| Intro Just food Return to index of stories... |
Your morning cereal, the chips you had at lunch, the baby food your kids might eat - There's a very good chance many of these contained GMOs -- that's genetically modified organisms. But few consumers really undertand what "genetically modfied" means - and what's at stake. To address that, the University of New Hampshire recently hosted a conference called "Just food" - Phil Vaughn reports. |
| Just food Return to index of stories... |
Sound of panel discussion at the conference. Narr - Genetically engineered foods -- it may not be an everyday topic of discussion around the dinner table, but it is likely to play a role in the food you eat. That's why the University of New Hampshire's Office of Sustainability Programs and Cooperative Extension brought together, this group. On one side of the room were thirteen New Hampshire citizens. They spent five months preparing questions about genetically engineered foods. On the other side were experts ready to share their knowledge. Sound of discussion Stefan - "The mission of Extension is to enhance the ability of citizens to make decisions and that was the mission of Just Food, to make decisions and recommendations on the issue." Narr - Stefan Seiter helped organize Just Food. He works for Cooperative Extension and is an Assistant Professor of Plant Biology at UNH. Stefan - "The focus on genetically engineered foods was that it's a very contentious issue and it affects a lot of people by the fact that we do eat it. It's in 70-80% of all processed foods." Diane - "I was surprised by what I didn't know and no-one knows." Narr - Diane Givetz was on the citizen's panel. She's a mother of four young boys and loves gardening. Diane "Why I got involved was because I have a concern about what I feed my kids and how it effects them and I want to make sure I am doing the best I can." Shots of tractor cutting corn Narr - In the United States, the bulk of genetically engineered foods is comprised of corn and soybeans. The plants' genetic makeup is changed to make them more resistant to herbicides and pesticides. The hope is that weeds and insects can be more easily controlled without damaging the plants. Some of the modified crops end up being fed to livestock, but they're likely to end up on your table, as well. Dr Hanson 49:30 "Soybeans and corn are in about 70% of all processed foods. That means theoretically engineered ingredients might be in 70% of processed foods, but there really hasn't been adequate testing. But that's the assumption - these foods are going into the human food chain rather than being segregated out into the animal food chain." sound from conference Narr - For the panelists, human health seemed to be the issue of choice. That included topics like the lack of federal standards on food product labeling. Dr. Hanson 50:15 "People have a right to know that information. Survey after survey has shown that 80-95% of the people want that information, so there is no way to tell right now. The best bet, well, the best bet is if you don't eat anything that contains corn or soy in it, you can be sure. For corn or soy products you don't know. The best you could do in that aspect is to try and buy certified organic but there is still a possibility that there could be gene flow or contamination in those products." Kathleen clip "It all comes down to what the consumers want. I believe that the market place could be very powerful and I would like to see the federal government have a role in making sure that product labels claims are true and not misleading." sound of conference Stefan - "The interest level is high because it concerns food. And for a lot of people, food is on a higher level than let's say a coffee maker." Diane - "I am happy that I went. Now I feel as though know more and can talk about it. And, when I go into the grocery store, I'll go right to the organic and whole foods section. I'll stay away from processed foods." Sound of panelist's question Stefan - "I was pleased with the quality of the panelists questions. I thought they were of very high quality and the experts commented on that. They were surprised by the high quality of the questions and how prepared they became over the five months." STUDIO FOLLOW UP More about the science of GMOs Benefits/problems for farmers Regulations and testing of GMOs What the panelists learned/conclusions What they plan to do with the information Value of bringing citizens and experts together |
| intro food talk Return to index of stories... |
Earlier, I talked with Stefan Seiter , a Cooperative Extension Specialist and Assistant Professor of Agroecology at UNH. He helped organize the Just Food forum. Janet Ward from Contoocook, Janet was part of the citizen panel at Just Food.and Estelle Hrabak an Assistant Professor at the Department of Plant Biology at UNH. Stephan said it's important for regular citizens to be well-informed about complicated and controverisal issues.and that's the goal of Just Foods. |
| Business Outlook Return to index of stories... |
The economy may indeed be coming out of its slump. The government reports today the economy grew one-point-four percent in the last quarter of last year. It says consumer spending on big-ticket items.like refrigerators or cars.was at a 15-year high. |
| Wall Street Stocks Return to index of stories... |
Stocks initially had a healthy, widespread advance but the Dow ended the day down 21 having risen more than 100 points earlier in the day. The Nasdaq sank 20 points. And the S and P 500 dropped three points. Dow Jones\10106.13\-21.45\NYSE\578.60\-0.60\AMEX\865.58\+0.94\Nasdaq\1731.49\-20.39\S&P 500\1106.73\-3.16\Wall Street\ |
| NH Stocks Return to index of stories... |
Here's a look at stocks of interest to New Hampshire investors. Shares of Banknorth gained eighty-two cents. Fisher Scientific was up eighty-five cents. Oxford Health lost a dollar twenty-five cents, while Standex rose thirty three cents. And Texas Instruments dropped a dollar - one cent. Banknorth\24.99\+0.82\Fisher Scientific\29.00\+0.85\Oxford Health\36.35\-1.25\Standex\21.83\+0.33\Texas Instruments\29.35\-1.01\NH Stocks\yahoo.com |
| Enterasys Return to index of stories... |
In the wake of the Enron scandal, more companies are looking sharply at their accounting practices. Now, Portsmouth-based En-TARE-ah-sys has fired three senior employees, for discrepancies in its accounting. The company's been under federal investigation for some time. |
| Red Sox Return to index of stories... |
Within 24 hours of officially taking over the Boston Red Sox, the new owners have fired controversial general manager Dan Duquette. During his eight years with the franchise, Duquette was often seen as having a cold management style. He will be replaced by Assistant GM Mike Port on a temporary basis. Duquette will continue to get paid through January of 2004, when his contract runs out. |
| Intro Mt. Washington Return to index of stories... |
It was a chilly day across the state Thursday. High winds made it feel even colder. We checked in earlier with Nicole Plette at the Mount Washington Observatory to see what we can expect overnight. |
| Mt. Washington Return to index of stories... |
Mt. Washington Observatory\Thursday on the Summit\Foggy with lots of blowing snow\Visibility: 1/16 of a mile\High: 5 \Peak Gust: 118 mph Overnight\North\Chance of flurries\Partly cloudy \Lows: from 5 to 10 \Winds: light Overnight\South\Partly cloudy \Lows: from 5 to 10 \Winds: light\ Friday\Statewide\Partly sunny\Highs: in the low 30s\Winds: S 10 to 15 mph\ |
| Intro Bug Night Return to index of stories... |
You may not be thrilled to bump up against a bunch of bugs, when you go swimming this summer. But bugs tell us alot about the health of New Hampshire's rivers. That's what hundreds of volunteers have learned.working with conservationists at the Upper Merrimack Monitoring Program. Producer Chelsea Deh-weece takes us to Concord and their community lab. |
| Bug Night Return to index of stories... |
This is bug nights! This is bug nights 2002! Cut away to shots of Tremblay with volunteers. Chelsea - Michele Tremblay is program advisor for the Upper Merrimack Advisory Committee. She volunteers with DES specialist Steven Landry in the Committee's volunteer Upper Merrimack Monitoring Program, or UMMP. UMMP volunteers take a non-traditional approach to diagnosing the health of the Upper Merrimack Watershed, called biomonitoring. Michele - Instead of just taking chemical samples of the river where you might look at how much oxygen is in the water or what the ph is, we like to complement that with biomonitoring. And what biomonitoring is is taking samples of organisms in the river and that means in our case macroinvertibrates, these are cratures that don't have back bones but are big enough to see with the naked eye…Specifically biomonitoring is using these creatures to determine what the long term health of the river is. …The macroinvertibrates that we collect they all have different what we call pollution tolerance ratings. They all fit differently on a scale how much they can tolerate for pollution … We have pollution intolerant meaning they need very clean water. And example of that is the stonefly. … Those are the first to go when there's any kind of impact on the water. …. And then at the other end of the scale are the ones that we consider to be tolerant of pollution…The best example of that has been the rat tailed maggot. And it's not really the tail that we're talking about, it's the siphon. So these are kind of the snorkelers of the insect worl and they don't bother with breathing oxy gen through the water they just stick their snorkel or their rat tail above the water level and if you find that organism there's probably something very very wrotng. … We have never found a rat-tailed maggot. Chelsea - But where do these biomonitoring samples come from? Before Bug Nights can take place, during the summer months, volunteers head out to 11 sites on the Upper Merrimack, Winnepesauki, Pemigewasset and Contoocut Rivers. The volunteers take samples of the river water to chemically analyze, but they also leave behind a little something for the macroinvertibrates, or bugs, living there: a cylindrical rock basket custom-made for the program by a retired lobsterman. Michele- They see those and they colonize them. To them they're like apartments with lots of vacancies and they move right in. In about six or seven weeks we use the buckets to pick them up to make sure that we don't lose anyone and we take them out of the river and then we're able to preserve those samples. …And that's what they're all doing here tonight is going through the samples and sorting them and doing the identification so that we can qualify and quantify what we found over the summer. Steve - We basically take the contents of the jars, which represent that rock basket. Spread it out evenly, and you can see they're evenly distributed on this gridded tray with twelve. squares, and volunteers randomly select numbers, three numbers to begin with which represents three grids on the tray….and basically we're considering those three grids, and the organisms from those three grids, to be representative of the entire community… Once those aquatic aquatic insects and macroinvertibrates are plucked from that tray, they are now separate from the debris, the grass the sand and other detritus. And they're placed in a clean vile and preserved in alcohol again. Mother-Daughter team nat sound - I found another one. We do this and then after we get this all cleaned out and then we can start identifying them to the family degree. Steve -… What we've done as a volunteer program is boil them down into this one user friendly key basically, which is macroinvertibrates of the Upper Merrimack. And basically it's built upon the family level taxonomy work that volunteers have done here at bug nights over the past seven years….They basically do what we call a look alike table of contents. If the body shape looks like this they go to a tab and are able to do their identifications… Young boy - nat sound - He's got three tails so he's going to be in the mayfly family and he's got hairy things. Writes on data sheet. Steve - where does the data go from bug nights? Basically the data is entered into a river quality assessment which has resulted in a three year report that we generated as a product of bug nights … We came up with what we call our five star dragonfly rating, which basically uses analogy would be five star dining, if a site gets a rating of five dragonflies it's considered to be almost pristine … For instance we're looking at the Pemigewasset river here that ranked a four and a half ranking … And from year to year we can see how their site ranked or changes and we can start to discern trends in the dragonfly ratings. Chelsea - Michele and Steve take many measures to keep bug night fun and interesting, like bug bingo, where the volunteer who finds the most of a chosen 'bug of the night win prizes' Nat - applause - and Brant - you won the cockroach for the night And goofy newsletters like 'The Insect Enquirer' and the 'Rolling Stonefly' Shots of individual articles Steve - People see that and they're like, who are these people? I think they just come to see who wee are. And see what it's all about. And so there's a quirky appeal to it and I think people like being part of this community of volunteers here. Michele - They get dating partners, they make lots of friends, they get to sniff open containers of alcohol, they learn a lot about bugs in the river and I think it makes them feel real connected to it. |
| tag bug Return to index of stories... |
Bug nights will continue at St. Paul's School in Concord on the first and third Wednesdays of the month through April 17. For more information about Bug Nights or other conservation efforts, visit the Upper Merrimack River Local Advisory Committee at www dot merrimackriver dot org |
| Intro Calendar Return to index of stories... |
From Mardi gras celebrations to Irish Music and jazz there is a wide selection of events going on around the Granite State this weekend. Here's just a cross-section of offerings in this week's Arts Calendar. |
| Arts calendar Return to index of stories... |
KIDS MUSIC\Lyle Lyle Crocodile \Lebanon\March 1\603-448-0400 MUSIC\Irish Cabaret\Berlin\March 1\603-752-2880 CELEBRATION\Mardi Gras\Bretton Woods\March 1- 3\603-278-1000 MUSIC\Traditional Jazz\Durham\March 4\603-862-2404 EXHIBIT\Faculty Art\Keene\through March 3\603-358-2720 EXHIBIT\Art Association\Manchester\Through March 4\603-669-6144 EXHIBIT\Woven in Time \Manchester\All year\603-622-7531 |
| Tomorrow Return to index of stories... |
On the next New Hampshire Outlook - Journalists from around the state look at the week's top stories. |
| Goodnight Return to index of stories... |
That's it for this edition of our program. For all of us here at New Hampshire Public Television, I'm Laura Knoy. We'll see you next time on New Hampshire Outlook. |
| founders Return to index of stories... |
Thanks to our founding sponsors who have provided major funding for the production of New Hampshire Outlook: New Hampshire Charitable Foundadtion Public Service of New Hampshire Alice J. Reen Charitable Trust Putnam Foundation Stratford Foundation |
| Tonight 10:00 Return to index of stories... |
Tonight on New Hampshire Outlook. What the insect world tells us about the health of our neighborhoods. It's bug night. Tonight at 10. Only on New Hampshire Outlook. |
| Friday day Return to index of stories... |
Tonight on New Hampshire Outlook.journalists from around the state put the week's headlines into perspective. our weekly roundtable tonight at 10 only on New Hampshire Outlook. |
| WEB PROMO Return to index of stories... |
Tonight on New Hampshire Outlook.journalists from around the state put the week's headlines into perspective. our weekly roundtable tonight at 10 only on New Hampshire Outlook. |
| weekend web Return to index of stories... |
Monday on New Hampshire Outlook we'll look at the lexicon of the new milennium from dot-com to spam and beyond.an overview of the information highway. During our March Membership Drive, stay connected with NH Outlook Monday at 10 right here on the web. |
| Pumatech Return to index of stories... |
More than sixty workers at Pumatech in Nashua will lose their jobs. Pumatech is based in California, and says it needs to consolidate its facilities. It'll keep just a fifteen-member staff in Nashua. The computer software company has been in Nashua for nearly 6 years. |
| ATT Rebate Return to index of stories... |
P-NH--AT&T Rebates laaman AT&T cable customers overcharged; may get rebates -- Some New Hampshire A-T-and-T Broadband cable customers soon may be entitled to a rebate. Those customers will be notified this week of a proposed settlement of a class action lawsuit. It claims some customers in New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts paid more for a basic package that included the same channels available on a cheaper one. The suit alleges that prior system owners misrepresented cable packages sold during the late 1990s. The original lawsuit was filed in 1999. It involved A-T-and-T's predecessors MediaOne and Continental Cablevision. A-T-and-T took over MediaOne in 2000. Customers paying for what was called Basic Three or Total Basic, which cost about 28 dollars a month, could have received the same channels in some communities for Basic Two, a package that costs about 12 dollars. A-T-and-T denies any wrongdoing. Those eligible for rebates will see a 10-dollar check or credit, or a coupon for a new service. AP- |
| key: environment Return to index of stories... |
NEW HAMPSHIRE OUTLOOK Air Date/Time:3/14/02 / 2200 HOST: Allison McNair Length: 3:10 min In addition to a summary of the day's top New Hampshire stories, this edition of New Hampshire Outlook, NHPTV's nightly news magazine, included a report on a volunteer program that has volunteers study bugs to determine the health of state rivers and lakes. PRODUCER/REPORTER: Chelsea DeWeese NAME OF PARTICIPANTS: Michele Tremblay\Program Director, UMMP Stephen Landry\Sampling Supervisor, UMMP Judy Reid\Volunteer |
| website Return to index of stories... |
For information on our program, and links to our guests and interviews, visit our web site at nhptv.org. You can also see and hear streaming video of our broadcasts. If you've got a story idea or comment on our program you can call us at 800-639-2721. |
| Church Abuse Return to index of stories... |
New Hampshire authorities may get involved in the Massachussetts Priest sex abuse scandal. The Granite state may prosecute Massachussets priests who brought their victims to New Hampshire and abused them here. New Hampshire officials told the Boston Herald that altho some of the alleged abuses happened thirty years ago - normal time limitations don't apply when the perpetrator leaves the state and lives somewhere else. -- New Hampshire is considering prosecuting Massachusetts priests who say they brought young victims to the state and sexually abused them as far back as the 1970s. New Hampshire officials told the Boston Herald the normal time limit on prosecution does not apply because the priests lived in Massachusetts. Under New Hampshire law, molestation crimes committed in the 1970s and early 1980s would be too old to prosecute. But like most states, including Massachusetts, New Hampshire's statute of limitations is void if the perpetrator leaves the state and lives continuously elsewhere. In another development, the newspaper reported that several lawyers said they have all settled suits against current or former priests who committed abuse in New Hampshire. One lawyer alleged that a Barnstead camp run by the Diocese of Manchester was used for sex with boys by at least half a dozen clergymen. AP-NY-02-28-02 0942EST |
| property Tax break Return to index of stories... |
P-NH--Tax Break Deadline laacon Tax break deadline tomorrow New Hampshire homeowners who qualify for a propoerty tax break have until Friday to apply for one. Under state law, towns have to offer breaks to the poor, the elderly, disabled people and veterans. People who apply for tax releif this week will find out by July if their request's been accepted. -- New Hampshire homeowners struggling to pay their bills have until tomorrow to apply for a property tax break. By law, all communities must offer relief to veterans and their spouses, the disabled, the elderly and poor people who meet eligibility standards. The standards vary among towns. Relief may come in several different ways. Exemptions reduce the amount of taxable assessed property value. Abatements give homeowners a partial or complete rebate on the actual tax bill. And tax deferrals allow people to delay paying their tax bills indefinitely. Applications are available at town and city halls. Officials must act on the requests by July first. A |
| Pledge of Allegiance Return to index of stories... |
-NH--School Pledge laahoap Pledge of Allegiance a popular issue in statehouses this year About two-dozen states require students recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Now New Hampshire may join them. A bill in the legislature tells schools to set aside time for The Pledge each day -- although students would not be forced to say it. But critics say even though not mandatory - students who didn't want to recite the pledge could be ostracized. -- Lawmakers in New Hampshire and other states want to put the Pledge of Allegiance into more public schools. About half the states now require the pledge as part of the school day, and half a dozen more recommend it. This year, bills to make the oath mandatory have been brought up in Connecticut, Illinois, Missouri, Minnesota, Colorado, Mississippi and Indiana. The New Hampshire bill would require school districts to authorize a period of time during the day to recite the pledge. All pupils would have to stand during the oath, but reciting would be voluntary. Supporters say reciting the pledge lays the foundation for a lifetime of patriotism. Many are responding to a post-September Eleventh burst of national pride. But critics argue it's inconsistent to force children to honor freedom. The New Hampshire House will take up the matter next month. AP-NY-02-28-02 1215EST |