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MIDDLEBURY — French inventor François Isaac de Rivaz created one of the first internal combustion engines at the beginning of the 19th century. It ran on hydrogen gas. Around that same time, a nascent Middlebury College hired its first mathematics professor, expanding its offerings into the sciences. Now, more than 200 years after the onset of these seemingly unrelated events, their historic ripples have collided.

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BRIDPORT — Monday’s season-opening legislative breakfast in Bridport offered a preview of two emotional debates on personal freedom that could play out on a grander scale this spring in the Statehouse.

At issue: Should families be given broader rights to have their children opt-out of vaccines designed to protect them from deadly diseases, and should terminally ill people be allowed to opt-in to a proposal that would allow them to take their own lives under medical supervision.

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MIDDLEBURY — For “A.B.,” the artist behind one of the dioramas on display at the Vermont Folklife Center, the family with blank faces near the back of the box represents her own experience as an undocumented migrant worker in Vermont.

“The majority of people here don’t see us. You see our work, but not our faces,” she said, gesturing to the cow barns made of brightly colored paper and the backdrop of cows in a field within the diorama.

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BRISTOL — The Addison Northeast Supervisory Union board expects to select a new superintendent in the next month, and a search committee has whittled down a pool of 18 applicants to three finalists: Catrina DiNapoli, David Adams and Douglas Harris.

As part of the superintendent selection process, the public is invited to meet the candidates next Monday, Feb. 13, at 7 p.m. at a forum at Mount Abraham Union High School — and learn more about the candidates’ visions for the school district.

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MIDDLEBURY — Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author and playwright David Moats is hoping to convince area drama enthusiasts to spend an afternoon in France with the “Branch family” next week.

And those who accept his invitation needn’t board a plane or pack their bags. “An Afternoon in France” promises to be a fast-moving, 75-minute journey into a family’s deepest secrets that Moats will deliver four times on stage at Middlebury’s Town Hall Theater from Feb. 16 to 19.

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MIDDLEBURY — Addison County Transit Resources officials this spring will roll out a public campaign to raise up to $700,000 to round out the financing of a new $4.2 million transportation headquarters in Middlebury that could be built by early 2013.

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BRISTOL — Vermont State Police on Monday evening cited Vergennes Union High School Co-Principal Edwin Webbley for driving under the influence of alcohol, an action taken after VSP received a call from his wife at their Bristol home and were told Webbley’s car had struck the back of their garage.

According to a VSP press release, Webbley’s wife told VSP at about 6:50 p.m. on Monday that Webbley was “intoxicated and that he was a danger to himself and others.”

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ADDISON — As town budget crafting season has wrapped up, the Addison selectboard has proposed to spend more in the 2012-2013 fiscal year than its members had budgeted in the current fiscal year — but this year the town has managed to save almost $75,000 that the board is planning to use to lower the town’s tax rate next year.

Meanwhile, in Panton, the selectboard’s proposed budget is lower on its face value, but if residents back four proposed capital funds, net spending could rise slightly in the upcoming fiscal year.

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