Merrimack County News

Holly Wheatley, 36, pleaded not guilty yesterday to charges that she stole nearly $25,000 from the state while working for the Department of Resources and Economic Development.

Though nearly all of the city's councilors ran unopposed, the two who faced challengers held on to their seats with convincing victories in yesterday's elections.

A man who photographed his former fiancee's 10-year-old daughter more than 100 times - several times provocatively - was sentenced yesterday to 31 2 to 7 years in prison on child endangerment charges.

Republican Lynne Ferrari Blankenbeker appears to have narrowly edged out longtime legislator Jim MacKay to win a House seat in the Concord special election.

A Concord police report obtained by the Monitor describes several security problems within the Local Government Center, including employees overriding door locks and a lack of checks and balances to protect the company's sensitive data.

A former Pembroke resident who pleaded guilty to scalding his 7-month-old son's foot in a pot of hot soup will serve between two and seven years in prison, a judge decided yesterday.

A Strafford County Superior Court judge recommended the state Supreme Court rule on the legality of a proposed tax cap in the Hilltop City, a move that could affect caps currently in place in Dover and Rochester.

Local police chiefs said they will have no other option but to cancel mutual aid agreements with Webster if the town's last remaining officer is laid off or takes another job.

The Local Government Center is already in the hot seat with the Professional Firefighters of New Hampshire for not disclosing financial information the organization believes is public under the state's Right to Know Law.

A former nursing assistant has pleaded guilty to stealing checks from a 90-year-old resident of a New Hampshire assisted-living facility.

A convicted sex offender whose February trial on a child rape charge was derailed by a juror's online snooping agreed to plead guilty yesterday to avoid a new trial.

Last week, Carroll County's nursing home residents came one step closer to having a newly built facility to replace the aging Mountain View Nursing Home.

The union representing most of New Hampshire's state workers is suing to regain the right for senior laid-off workers to "bump" junior colleagues out of their jobs.

The state Supreme Court has sided with the city in a tax dispute with the Steeplegate Mall, meaning the city won't have to refund the mall nearly $200,000 on a 2004 tax bill.

A Concord landowner recently sued by the state on charges he polluted the city's water supply has again been charged with committing environmental crimes.

Without warning, the state Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday closed its residential treatment program that state law requires the most serious drunken drivers to complete to satisfy their court sentences and regain their licenses.

The secretary of state's office has issued a subpoena ordering the Local Government Center to hand over financial and administrative records as part of an investigation into the center's finances.

Though the state hasn't yet decriminalized small amounts of marijuana, courts in the state might already be coming close.

Online Comment of the Day HEADLINE: Lawyer denies shop makes cigarettes SUMMARY: The state says a Brookline business that sells loose tobacco to customers who roll their own cigarettes on machines inside the shop is a cigarette manufacturer and is obligated to pay into a tobacco settlement fund.

A lawsuit charging that the Department of Transportation manipulated a bidding process to benefit Boston Express Bus Inc.