Vermont's two largest electric utilities and mega-power producer Hydro-Quebec signed an agreement Thursday that is expected to lead to a 26-year contract for the annual purchase of 225 megawatts of electricity.

A Vermont court has ruled that tobacco giant R.J. Reynolds engaged in deceptive and misleading advertising in promoting its Eclipse cigarettes as less risky than conventional smokes.

The answer is no. Vermont regulators told the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday they will not allow 33,000 tons of dioxin-laced soil from a Massachusetts Superfund site to be dumped at a Moretown landfill.

A Sen­ate panel voted 3-2 Thurs­day to support a bill that would allow the establish­ment of five medical-mari­juana dispensaries to serve the needs of the 169 Ver­monters who have regis­tered with the state so they can use marijuana to cope with debilitating medical conditions.

Both political parties are taking tea party activists seriously and are wary of offending them – if they are not already actively wooing them for state races this fall. Just look at the governor’s election in Ohio. Republican gubernatorial candidate John Kasich openly touts his tea party credentials in his bid to defeat incumbent Democrat Ted Strickland. “I think I was in the tea party before there was a tea party,” Kasich famously told a Columbus crowd earlier this year. “This is a real movement with a real message about people’s frustrations by broken promises that leaders on both sides of the aisle would be foolish to ignore,” he went on to write in a blog posting.