DOVER, New Hampshire (Reuters) – Far from the glamorous receptions he once hosted as an ambassador, Jon Huntsman is braving hungry goats and hard-bitten voters in New Hampshire in a risky go-for-broke strategy that will decide the fate of his bid for the White House.

Huntsman has pinned almost all his hopes for the Republican presidential nomination on finishing first or second in the state’s January 10 primary.

The former U.S. envoy to China, who is last in many national polls among major candidates, is gambling that he can pull off an upset like John McCain’s in the 2008 election when the Arizona senator came back from the dead.

Huntsman is crisscrossing New Hampshire in a black rented Chevy SUV, trying to drum up support at town hall meetings attended sometimes by as few as 30 people.

“I’ve heard that in your state you have to shake someone’s hand 15 times before they will consider voting for you,” he joked at a meeting in Laconia. “Some of you are getting up to handshake No. 10.”

Outside an event in Dover, the candidate had to contend with Izak, an 18-month-old white goat that chewed his campaign sign and then nibbled at the knee of the laughing Huntsman.

As a moderate Republican who served President Barack Obama’s administration as a diplomat, Huntsman seems out of step with his party’s shift to the right in recent years.

BOSTON (Reuters) – The Federal Reserve should continue to act “aggressively” to try to bring down the stubbornly high U.S. jobless rate and boost lagging economic growth, a top Fed official said on Monday.

Eric Rosengren, President of the Boston Federal Reserve Bank, said weak labor conditions would help keep inflation below 2 percent over the next several years.

“Given the very weak labor market conditions and the low expected inflation rate, the Federal Reserve should in my view continue to take action to aggressively try to reduce the stubbornly high U.S. unemployment rate,” Rosengren said.

Rosengren touched on policy issues only briefly in prepared remarks to the New England Board of Higher Education conference on higher education and the workforce.

He said that economic growth had been lethargic despite the Fed’s policy actions, and that at 9 percent in October, the jobless rate remains “unacceptably high.”

Job growth has been too slow to make inroads into the unemployment rate, and the United States also faces economic headwinds lingering from the financial crisis of 2008 and from worries about possible future financial shocks, he said.

“In my view the Federal Reserve should continue to use the tools at its disposal to boost demand in the economy,” Rosengren said.

BOSTON (Reuters) – A vast majority of Massachusetts residents want action to lower health care costs, and many see the state government as best positioned to do it, according to a new survey released on Friday.

The poll, conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health for the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation, showed 53 percent of residents see the high cost of health care as a major problem. Another 25 percent regard the issue as a crisis.

“Healthcare costs are chewing up more and more of people’s incomes,” Amy Whitcomb Slemmer, executive director of the group Health Care for All, said at a panel to discuss the findings of the survey.

Almost nine in 10 said the state government should take unspecified “major action” to address rising costs.

“There is clear, overwhelming and bipartisan support to control health care costs in Massachusetts,” said Nancy Turnbull, associate dean of the Harvard School of Public Health.

Still, only about half of the respondents (48 percent) said they were confident the state government could take measures that would reduce future healthcare costs, with Democrats more confident than Republicans on that score.

“People … support government taking big action, but are skeptical that it’s going to work,” said Robert Blendon, professor of social policy at HSPS, the report’s lead author.

BOSTON (Reuters) – The chief executive of Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc, Matthew Emmens, said on Thursday that adoption of its recently-launched hepatitis C drug, Incivek, has been “very very fast.”

The first full quarter of U.S. sales of Incivek will emerge when the biotechnology company reports its quarterly earnings later this month.

“We’ll be very proud at what we show you,” said Emmens, speaking at a Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce breakfast.”

The Incivek launch, he said, “will be a historic launch in terms of acceptance.”

Shares of Vertex have lurched in recent weeks after IMS Health, which provides prescription data and other services to the pharmaceutical industry, revised its estimates of the number of prescriptions written in late September.

Initially investors had thought demand was flattening. It then emerged that IMS had failed to include certain data, which sent the prescription number up again.

Emmens declined to comment on the snafu, or speculate on whether IMS now has its figures correct.

BOSTON (Reuters) – A concert DVD featuring Neil Young and a generation of music icons will launch this month with live screenings across the United States.

The movie and related CD collection showcases rare live, acoustic performances by many of music’s biggest names, all of whom have played over the past 25 years at the annual Bridge School benefit concerts organized by Young and wife Pegi.

The more than two dozen artists range from Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Paul McCartney to David Bowie, Patti Smith and Metallica.

The film will screen for one night only, Oct 24, in 22 cities, coinciding with the CD and DVD release by Warner Bros. Records.

The charity concert is held annually at the outdoor Shoreline Ampitheater in Mountain View, California.

It supports The Bridge School, a facility for children with severe speech and physical impairments that specializes in alternative communication methods.

The Bridge School was founded in part by the Youngs, when they were unable to find a suitable learning environment for their son Ben, who has cerebral palsy, and by Jim Forderer, another parent of a special needs child.

BOSTON (Reuters) – After almost five years of researching, developing and testing recipes food writer Amy Traverso knows her apples. Thousands of apples peeled, cored, chopped, baked.

The result is “The Apple Lover’s Cookbook,” a 300-page near-encyclopedia about the fruit that surely holds a special place in the American psyche.

“It was hard to let go of the book. There was so much to discover,” said Traverso, who is based in Brookline, Massachusetts — within striking distance of many of New England’s best apple orchards.

Geared to the home cook, the book contains 100 recipes, from appetizers and sandwiches through meat dishes to familiar pies and cobblers.

“I found that apples were well suited to so many types of dishes, more than I imagined,” Traverso said. “Apples are the most accessible food for many people, and there are so many varieties that are unique to a particular place.”

The book delves into the history of apples in the United States, from the seeds and cuttings brought by the Jamestown, Virginia, settlers to the New World in the early 1600s. Adaptability and versatility meant apples became a staple for Pilgrims in New England and settlers as they moved west and south.

“They performed so many roles in early American cooking and were spread by the government,” Traverso explained. “When people took land, they promised to stay until the apple trees grew,” helping to build a stable society.

BOSTON (Reuters) – Anger at high tuition bills and a lack of jobs propelled U.S. college students into streets and quadrangles on Thursday in the latest offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street protest movement.

The “National Student Solidarity Protest” was organized by Los Angeles-based Occupy Colleges, which estimated it held events at about 140 campuses in at least 25 states.

A smaller-scale action from one week ago gained momentum with the aid of social media, some old-fashioned shoe leather and dorm-room word-of-mouth, organizers said.

“Our goals are in direct solidarity with Occupy Wall Street,” said Natalia Abrams, facilitator for Occupy Colleges, adding that the protest was not “anti-school.”

Students across the country staged coordinated sit-ins, banner hangings, marches and walkouts.

“We’re angry about the amount of debt we must attain to go to college and the drastic lack of employment opportunities,” said Sally Morgan, a graduate student at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg.

Protesters were worried about what they see as a lack of social mobility in the United States.

By John Whitesides and Ros Krasny

HANOVER, N.H. (Reuters) – Republican front-runner Mitt Romney largely ignored his presidential rivals at a debate on Tuesday, casting himself as the candidate most suited to rescue the economy and lead the party back to the White House.

At an economic debate that featured harsh criticism of the federal government from his rivals, the former Massachusetts governor touted his real-world experience, defended corporate bailouts and rarely broke a sweat.

“I spent my entire career working in the private sector, starting businesses, helping turn around businesses,” he said in the debate at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. “I know how to make tough decisions.”

The debate came hours after Romney, who leads the race in opinion polls, won the endorsement of popular New Jersey Governor Chris Christie in a sign the party’s establishment was falling in line behind his candidacy.

Romney was one of eight candidates in the debate on economic issues. But he rarely engaged with rivals like Texas Governor Rick Perry, and he reminded independents in moderate New Hampshire of his own success at working with Democrats.

Pressed about his past support for Wall Street bailouts, Romney presented them as a necessary but unfortunate task.

, Oct 11 (Reuters) – Ben Bernanke, if a Republican wins the White House in 2012: you’re fired.

The Federal Reserve Chairman, architect of unconventional policies to shore up the shaky U.S. economy, came under attack at the Bloomberg/The Washington Post Republican Presidential Debate at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire on Tuesday night.

And unlike the eight candidates, who had the chance for a rebuttal any time their name was mentioned, the criticisms of Bernanke were left to stand.

Newt Gingrich led the charge. Asked if the nationwide Occupy Wall Street movement had a valid grievance about income inequality and the out-sized influence of big banks, the former House speaker pivoted:

“If they want to really change things, the first person to fire is Bernanke, who is a disastrous chairman of the Federal Reserve,” said Gingrich.

“Bernanke has in secret spent hundreds of billions of dollars bailing out one group and not bailing out another group. I think it is corrupt and it is wrong for one man to have that kind of secret power.”

Bernanke, a former Princeton professor, was appointed to lead the Fed by Republican President George W. Bush — he also served as chairman of Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers for a time — and was reappointed by Democrat Barack Obama in 2009. His term as chairman ends in January 2014.

HANOVER, New Hampshire (Reuters) – Republican presidential contenders blamed the federal government on Tuesday for the struggling economy and harshly criticized Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke during the early stages of a 2012 debate.

Several of the Republicans seeking the nomination to unseat President Barack Obama in 2012 said government policies had led to the economic slowdown and refused to place blame on Wall Street or corporations.

“I think if you look at the problem with the economic meltdown, you can trace it right back to the federal government,” Representative Michele Bachmann said in a debate at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.

“It was the federal government that demanded that banks and mortgage companies lower platinum level lending standards to new lows,” she said. “It was the federal government that pushed the subprime loans.”

Former U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich said politicians were to blame for the economy and pointed the finger at Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.

“The first person to fire is Bernanke, who is a disastrous chairman of the Federal Reserve. The second person to fire is Geithner,” he said.

“The fact is, in both the Bush and the Obama administrations, the fix has been in and I think it’s perfectly reasonable for people to be angry,” he said. “But let’s be clear who put the fix in: The fix was put in by the federal government.”