New Hampshire
Who is this man? Police say child sex assault suspect was living under false identity
Police in Manchester, New Hampshire, are seeking the public’s help in determining the identity of a man charged with sexually assaulting a child in the city last year.
Manchester police say the man, who had claimed to be 60-year-old Angel Rivera Laureano, was brought to the attention of their Juvenile Unit in January of 2024 after someone alleged that he had sexually abused a child under the age of 13. He was ultimately arrested and charged with one count of aggravated felonious sexual assault.
During the investigation, police said they learned that the suspect might not be who he said he was. As a result of their investigation, police were able to determine that the man had been living under a false identity for years, and under that name was convicted of numerous crimes in New Hampshire dating back over a decade.
The real Angel Rivera Laureano was positively identified and located living in Puerto Rico, police said.
The suspect in the sexual assault case, who police are now referring to as “John Doe,” now faces an additional charge of identity fraud. At the time of his arrest he was already being held at the Hillsborough County House of Corrections, and he remains there.
Police said the man’s identity is still unknown, and are asking anyone with information about him to call Detective Guy Kozowyk at 603-792-5560 or email him at gkozowyk@manchesternh.gov.
New Hampshire
Outside/Inbox: Do trees age?
Every other Friday, the Outside/In team here at NHPR answers listener questions about the natural world. Today’s question comes from Will Heap, calling from Coulterville, California, just outside of Yosemite National Park.”
“Driving past a beautiful forest yesterday, I had the realization that I don’t understand how trees age… So my first question is: How does aging work? Is it a breakdown of cells or in the efficacy of cells? And then my second question is: Do non-animal species such as plants, trees in particular, age the same as human cells?… What limits the age of a tree?
Producer Justine Paradis counted tree rings to see what she could find.
Transcript
Justine Paradis: For many of us, aging is a matter of great concern. But it turns out it’s weirdly tough to define what aging actually is, even in humans.
Deborah Roach: Aging itself is the accumulation of damage and the decline of function with increasing age.
Justine Paradis: This is Deborah Roach, a biologist and professor emeritus at the University of Virginia. In her career, Deborah has studied the evolution of aging in plants. And it’s a topic that defies easy answers.
Deborah Roach: Disappointingly, I think trees are a difficult species to begin to look at the questions of aging.
Justine Paradis: Deborah studied a small leafy plant called Plantago lanceolata. She compared the performance of 1-year-old seedlings to 3-year-olds, and she found some differences based on age.
Deborah Roach: Seed size is smaller… germination is smaller. In other words, their offspring are lower quality.
Justine Paradis: But Plantago is a weedy, short-lived plant. It’s more challenging to study trees.
Deborah Roach: You want to be able to follow individuals from the time of birth all the way through the time of death… and the trouble is that trees often live to, you know, 80 years, several hundred years, or even other species like the bristlecone pine trees, they live thousands of years.
Justine Paradis: One measure of aging is a change in ability to reproduce. And in some tree species, scientists do observe a peak and then decline in reproduction as trees increase in size. But other tree species just keep on making babies. There’s a bristlecone pine known as Methusaleh which, at nearly 5000 years old, is the oldest known tree on earth. In the ‘70s, when a US Forest Service employee collected a pine cone from Methuselah, he found that its seeds had a 100 percent germination rate. They all grew into viable and healthy seedlings.
Deborah Roach: It’s not just that they can grow, not just that they can survive… these pine trees… can still make high quality offspring too.
Justine Paradis: Another measure of aging happens on a cellular level. As human cells replicate, the DNA in our cells is copied, over and over. But over time, all that copying starts to degrade the DNA. When that happens in our stem cells, it’s a big deal. Stem cells are important to regenerate our tissues, blood, and neurons. And when they age, we notice. Our hair gets grey and our skin loses its elasticity.
In plants, the equivalent to a stem cell is called a meristem. Meristems make new leaves and new branches. But unlike human stem cells, it looks like plant meristems may not age, in at least some species. So, “theoretically, trees can be immortal organisms.” That’s a direct quote from a scientific review by a couple dendrologists published in 2020, titled “On tree longevity.”
The authors lay out evidence that trees don’t die because of genetically-destined cell decline. Instead, they’re killed by some external event, like a wildfire, insect attack, or the swinging of an ax.
When it comes to super long-lived trees like Methuselah, they tend to grow very slowly in pretty harsh environments, where not much else can live.
In short, the reason that some trees can live for millennia is simple: they’re really good at surviving.
If you’d like to submit a question to the Outside/In team, you can record it as a voice memo on your smartphone and send it to outsidein@nhpr.org. You can also leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER.
Outside/In is a podcast! Subscribe wherever you get yours.
New Hampshire
Portsmouth Naval Shipyard is in Maine. NH lawmakers want to change that.
A New Hampshire legislator has fired the latest round in an on-again, off-again border dispute between Maine and New Hampshire over the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.
Republican Rep. Joseph Barton, a freshman lawmaker, is the prime sponsor of a resolution that urges Congress to find that the Piscataqua River and Portsmouth Harbor are within New Hampshire and asks President Donald Trump to designate the duty stations of Portsmouth Naval Shipyard personnel as part of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Congress would have to redraw the boundaries, but Trump can reassign the duty stations, Barton said.
The tax status of shipyard employees is a big reason for the resolution, he said. New Hampshire does not have a state income tax, and residents of the Granite State who work at the shipyard pay Maine taxes. Shifting the borders to bring the shipyard into New Hampshire would shield New Hampshire residents from Maine income taxes.
“We won’t get more tax revenue,” Barton, who worked as an engineer at the shipyard, said in an interview Thursday. “The citizens will get more tax relief.”
Some Maine income tax revenue would disappear if the more than 3,100 New Hampshire residents who work at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard no longer have state taxes withheld. It wasn’t immediately clear how much revenue Maine would lose. A spokeswoman for the state Department of Administrative and Financial Services said taxpayer confidentiality bars disclosure of information.
Kittery Town Manager Kendra Amaral said New Hampshire would inherit traffic problems if it takes possession of the Naval Station, which has two land-based access points, both of which run through Kittery.
If New Hampshire wants the shipyard it will need to build bridges from Portsmouth to the Naval Station island, “so they can assume all of the traffic congestion and infrastructure impacts Kittery, Maine, shoulders as the host of the (shipyard),” Amaral said.
The issue of who has jurisdiction is not new. The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled on a border dispute in Maine’s favor in 2001, dismissing New Hampshire’s claim to the shipyard. The court denied a New Hampshire request to reconsider, ruling that the boundary between the states is the middle of the Piscataqua River.
More than half of the shipyard’s nearly 8,000 employees are Mainers, according to the Seacoast Shipyard Association, an advocacy organization. And 56% of the Portsmouth shipyard’s $716.2 million payroll is for Mainers and 36% is paid to New Hampshire residents. The remainder of the shipyard workers live in Massachusetts and other states.
Its total economic impact in 2023, including purchased goods and services, maintenance and military construction, was more than $1.5 billion.
Barton’s resolution says jurisdiction and control over the Piscataqua River “is and always has been entirely” within New Hampshire’s Rockingham County and “complete dominion and ownership of the tidal waters and submerged lands” of the river, including Portsmouth Harbor, are part of the state.
“This is the boundary. This is where it is,” he said.
The resolution has been the subject of a public hearing and must be voted on by the House and Senate and signed by Gov. Kelly Ayotte. Her office did not respond to an email Thursday asking if she supports the measure.
New Hampshire
Who is Karoline Leavitt? Trump’s press secretary is from New Hampshire, lives on Seacoast
Who is Karoline Leavitt the new White House press secretary?
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt is the youngest to ever hold the position at 27.
Before making history as the youngest ever White House press secretary, New Hampshire native Karoline Leavitt got her start in politics here in the Granite State.
Leavitt made her debut in the press briefing room Tuesday, marking her first White House news conference as the public face of President Donald Trump’s administration.
“I can assure you that you’ll be hearing from both him and me as much as possible,” the 27-year-old said during the briefing.
Trump tapped Leavitt for the post soon after his reelection in November 2024, saying in a press release at the time that she is “smart, tough, and has proven to be a highly effective communicator.”
Where is Karoline Leavitt from? Her NH ties
Karoline Leavitt grew up in Atkinson, New Hampshire, she told Seacoastonline in November.
Leavitt went to Central Catholic High School in Lawrence, Massachusetts, before attending Saint Anselm College in Manchester. While at Saint Anselm, she grew interested in politics and gained experience in the news media industry.
“I just took advantage of every opportunity I could and started the St. Anselm College Broadcasting Club, I worked part-time at WMUR-TV, and I volunteered on a couple of campaigns, and then realized that this is, you know, what I wanted to do with the rest of my career,” she told Seacoastonline in November.
After college, Leavitt moved to Hampton. She still lives on the Seacoast with her husband and son.
Karoline Leavitt’s career history
Karoline Leavitt graduated from Saint Anselm College with a degree in communications and politics in 2019. After that, she worked as a presidential writer and assistant press secretary under Kayleigh McEnany during Trump’s first presidential term.
After her first stint at the White House, Leavitt worked as a spokesperson for Rep. Elise Stefanik, a close Trump ally.
In 2022, Leavitt ran for Congress in New Hampshire’s First Congressional District. She won the primary but lost to incumbent Democrat Rep. Chris Pappas.
Leavitt returned to work for Trump in 2024, serving as national press secretary for his presidential campaign.
What does the White House press secretary do?
The White House press secretary serves as the spokesperson and public face of the presidential administration. Historically, they hold daily briefings for the press corps.
Karoline Leavitt became the youngest person to hold the role at age 27 when she was sworn-in earlier this month.
Before that, the youngest ever press secretary was Ronald Ziegler, who took the position at the age of 29 in 1969 under Richard Nixon’s administration.
Leavitt held her first press briefing Tuesday, during which she said that she plans to hold briefings frequently. She also said that the Trump administration would be available to all media outlets as well as “new media voices who produce related content” such as “independent journalists, podcasters, social media influencers and content creators.”
Contributing: Saman Shafiq and Margie Cullen, USA TODAY Network
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