A court hearing was held this week in the case against a white woman charged with a hate crime for spitting on a Black woman during a Jan. 6 protest at the state Capitol. Now Hartford State’s Attorney Sharmese Walcott is taking on the case.

At first, Rebecca Carroll’s childhood in rural New Hampshire seemed idyllic. But as a Black child raised by adoptive white parents, her life became much more complicated. “It essentially was the white gaze,” Carroll told NEXT . “It was the world my parents created, the way they wanted it to look, without any indication of race beyond me.” Carroll’s memoir is titled “Surviving the White Gaze.” In the book, she describes her childhood with her adoptive family, navigating a difficult relationship

It's peony season! The herbaceous peonies are blooming and they're a delight with their large white, pink and red, sometimes fragrant, flowers. But there is another group of peonies that gets less attention. The tree peonies are like their herbaceous peony cousins as far as plant and flower size. But the main difference is tree peonies are shrubs. They have a woody structure that doesn't get cut back in fall. If you're looking for a 3- to 5-foot tall shrub that flowers for weeks in spring and is

Once again, the world is witnessing lethal, brutal violence between Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East. The director of Middle East Studies at the University of Connecticut is Jeremy Pressman. He joined Connecticut Public Radio’s All Things Considered to talk about his take on this latest conflict. He also talked about what it’s like to discuss this emotional situation with a class full of students. Pressman is the author of The Sword Is Not Enough: Arabs, Israelis and the Limits of

Sean Walters wants to be a doctor someday. His great grandfather, Freddie Lee Tyson, was subjected to the infamous United States Public Health Service Syphilis Study in Tuskegee. For Walters, the legacy alone doesn’t create a pressure on him. “Pressure?” he said, sitting on a park bench in Stamford’s Harbor Point. “I feel like there would still be pressure to at least address some of the issues that are going on in medicine.” Walters and his family have been talking a lot more about the legacy

A lot of people were surprised to hear the news that University of Connecticut President Tom Katsouleas was stepping down after only two years on the job. Chris Keating is the journalist who broke the story for the Hartford Courant, and he joined Connecticut Public Radio’s All Things Considered to talk about why this happened and what comes next for UConn.

It took just a couple of seconds for a nurse to administer the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine into Sadie Sindland’s arm. Getting vaccinated has been a hot topic lately with 14-year-old Sindland and her friends.

After shutting down his manufacturing plant and sending 2 million unsold face shields to sit in a warehouse, Bing Carbone found himself wondering what was next for his plastics company. His business had “an outstanding 2020,” pivoting from making high-grade plastic parts for the defense and medical industries to producing more than 30 million of those now ubiquitous transparent face shields worn by doctors and dentists. But then, Carbone said, buyers stopped calling him back. And the reason was

Spring is a great time to plant a tree. Shade, fruit and flowering trees not only increase the value of your yard, they are great as wildlife habitat.

A health care workers union is delaying strike plans at seven nursing homes while it continues to negotiate for more state funding for the long-term care industry and its workforce. Thousands of members of New England Health Care Employees Union District 1199, SEIU are still threatening to walk off the job Friday if their demands for better wages and benefits are not met -- union leaders say there’s been some progress with state leaders, but not enough to meet their goals.