Top stories developing across the region at the noon hour:
Governor Jim Douglas comments on the tax relief and health care proposals in his State of the State speech; Montreal hospital emergency rooms are overcrowded; the Legislature will not take up a bill on doctor-assisted suicide; extreme cold last night, and probably again tonight, has prompted Green Mountain Power and other utilities to ask for electricity conservation during the cold snap; a petition is circulating in Brattleboro to instruct the t own to plan for job growth when the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant is decommissioned eight years from now.
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