Activists in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont are asking police to enforce existing laws against loud motorcycles. “Motorcycles come out of the factory quiet,” Ted Rueter told the Valley Post. “People illegally modify them so they make more noise.” Rueter works for Noise Free America, a group with chapters in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont and a web site at www.NoiseFree.org.

Dana Pinney has lived in southwest New Hampshire for all of his 63 years. “I'm blue collar,” he said. He is fighting a proposed fracked gas pipeline that would pass near Greenfield, Brattleboro, and Keene. “We should be investing in energy efficiency and solar, not gas,” Pinney said.

The pipeline would be built and owned by Kinder Morgan Corporation of Texas. It would carry gas that is mined using a process called “fracking,” which poisons drinking water.

New Hampshire on June 3 became the sixth state to legalize gay marriage. Governor John Lynch, who once opposed gay marriage, said he had heard “compelling arguments that a separate system is not an equal system.”

The law takes effect Jan. 1.

The New York Times reported that Lynch ordered that the bill protect members of religious groups from having to provide same-sex couples with religious counseling, housing designated for married people and other services relating to “the promotion of marriage.”