All Things Considered on WAMC

The man in charge of Vermont's prison system says there's been an increase in violence behind bars in the state, and that much of it appears tied to gang activity.

Andrew Pallito told lawmakers on Thursday that many of those engaged in violent gang activity are people who come from out of state and get misdemeanor drug convictions while in Vermont.

He says many such people had been housed under contract with the Franklin County Jail and House of Detention in Massachusetts, but that contract recently expired.

Members of a Vermont legislative committee are blasting the state's parole system for paroling a convicted murderer to serve a separate federal sentence, and then using a fabricated arrest warrant to get him back into state custody when the federal sentence was done.

Douglas Mason was serving a 15-to-30-year sentence for second-degree murder when state parole officials paroled him for purposes of serving a three-year federal prison term for threatening the judge who presided over his murder trial.

Vermont's federal prosecutor says officials are planning to update the public about the search for a missing Essex couple.

Bill and Lorraine Currier were last seen when they left their Burlington jobs on June 8, 2011.

Investigators later determined that their home had been entered forcibly, and there was evidence of a possible struggle. Their car was stolen and recovered two days later at an apartment complex about three-quarters of a mile away.

Police now believe 50-year-old Bill Currier and his 55-year-old wife Lorraine were victims of foul play.

As he shadowed President Obama's bus tour in Pennsylvania early this month, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty gave a pretty good impression of a man auditioning for a job.

There was Pawlenty as attack dog, one of the traditional roles of a running mate.

Transcript

JACKIE NORTHAM, BYLINE: I'm Jackie Northam in Washington. Today at the U.N., Russia and China vetoed a Western-backed draft resolution that warned of sanctions against the Syrian regime unless it complies with a peace plan.

This is the third time those two countries have used their veto power to block a resolution on Syria. Britain's U.N. ambassador, Mark Lyall Grant, called the decision by Russia and China appalling, and said it would lead to further bloodshed in Syria.

When Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps steps onto a starting block a few days from now, a Stanford scientist named Krishna Shenoy will be asking himself a question: "What's going on in Michael Phelps' brain?"

Specifically, Shenoy would like to know what's happening in an area called the premotor cortex. This area doesn't directly tell muscles what to do. But it's the place where the brain gears up for something the body is about to do, like swimming.