Vermont

Oct. 22 (UPI) — Police in Vermont are continuing to search for a missing college student who hasn’t been seen in five days.

On Sunday afternoon, Lia Smith, 21, a senior at Middlebury College, was reported missing to the Middlebury Police Department..

Smith, who is a California native, was last seen around 9 p.m. Friday in a building on campus, police said.

A drone is being used to “identify potential search area,” police said Monday.

Vermont State Police on Wednesday activated a Search and Rescue Team to be Thursday in full force.

Middlebury Fire Department, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, FBI and New York State Police are assisting in the search.

“We will do everything we can to find Lia,” three Middlebury administrators said Monday in a statement. “She is a beloved member of our Middlebury family and there is nothing more important than the health, safety, and well-being of our students and of our entire community.”

She is 5-foot-11, approximately 160 pounds, with brown hair and blue eyes.

Smith, a double computer science and statistics major, competed on the college’s women’s swimming team and was a member of the chess club.

“If anybody knows anything, even if it’s a friend that’s just afraid that maybe the information they may have might not be useful, please share it with the police because anything is worth us looking into and trying to decipher whether it benefits the investigation,” police Sgt. Nathan Hayes said Monday.

“If there’s any concern, or if Lia thought she was in trouble for anything, she’s not. Nnobody’s in trouble for this. We just truly want to find out where she is and make sure she’s safe.”

Middlebury College, a private liberal arts college founded in 1800, has about 2,800 undergraduate students and about 700 graduate students in International Studies in Addison County in the state’s Champlain Valley.

Middlebury is among the schools considered as Little Ivies.

A Vermont state senator who took part in a Young Republicans group chat on Telegram in which members made racist comments and joked about rape and gas chambers has resigned.

State Sen. Sam Douglass was revealed last week to have participated in the chat, which was first reported on by Politico. The exchanges on the messaging app spanned more than seven months and involved leaders and lower ranking members of the Young Republican National Federation and some of its affiliates in New York, Kansas, Arizona and Vermont. Douglass was the only elected official involved.

Vermont’s top Republican leaders, including Gov. Phil Scott, quickly called for Douglass to resign. A joint statement from the GOP lawmakers described the comments “unacceptable and deeply disturbing.”

Douglass, who was in his first year of representing a conservative district near the Canadian border, said in a statement Friday that he and his wife had received multiple hateful messages and “nasty items” in the mail since news of the group chat broke.

“I know that this decision will upset many, and delight others, but in this political climate I must keep my family safe,” Douglass said in explaining his decision to resign. “And if my Governor asks me to do something, I will act, because I believe in what he’s trying to do for the state of Vermont.”

Douglass also said he had served in a “moderate fashion,” and touted his efforts to improve Vermont’s welfare system,

“Since the story broke, I have reached out to the majority of my Jewish and BIPOC friends and colleagues to ensure that they can be honest and upfront with me, and I know that as a young person I have a duty to set a good example for others,” Douglas wrote, referencing the acronym Black, Indigenous and people of color.

Other participants in the group chat have faced repercussions, including a New York Young Republicans organization that was suspended Friday.

Kruesi writes for the Associated Press.

A federal judge in Vermont on Wednesday released a Russian-born scientist and Harvard University researcher from immigration custody as she deals with a criminal charge of smuggling frog embryos into the United States.

Colleagues and academics testified on Kseniia Petrova’s behalf, saying she is doing valuable research to advance cures for cancer.

“It is excellent science,” Michael West, a scientist and entrepreneur in the biotech industry, testified on Petrova’s research papers. He said he does not know Petrova, but has become acquainted with her published work, citing one in which she explains that “mapping embryonic development [can produce] novel ways of intervening in the biology of regeneration and aging.”

West said that Petrova’s medical research skills are highly sought after and that he himself would hire her “in a heartbeat.”

Petrova, 30, is currently in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service in Louisiana. She is expected to be brought to Massachusetts as early as Friday in preparation for a bail hearing next week on the smuggling charge, lawyers said in court.

“We are gratified that today’s hearing gave us the opportunity to present clear and convincing evidence that Kseniia Petrova was not carrying anything dangerous or unlawful, and that customs officers at Logan International Airport had no legal authority to revoke her visa or detain her,” Petrova’s lawyer, Gregory Romanovsky, said in a statement. “At today’s hearing, we demonstrated that Kseniia is neither a danger to the community nor a flight risk, and does not belong in immigration detention.”

Petrova had been vacationing in France, where she stopped at a lab specializing in splicing superfine sections of frog embryos and obtained a package of samples to be used for research.

As she passed through a U.S. Customs and Border Protection checkpoint in Boston Logan International Airport in February, Petrova was questioned about the samples. She told the Associated Press in an interview last month that she did not realize the items needed to be declared and was not trying to sneak anything into the country. After an interrogation, Petrova was told her visa was being canceled.

After being detained by immigration officials, she filed a petition in Vermont seeking her release. She was briefly detained in Vermont before she was brought to Louisiana.

Petrova was charged with smuggling earlier this month as U.S. District Judge Christina Reiss in Burlington, Vt., set the hearing date on her petition. Reiss ruled Wednesday that the immigration officers’ actions were unlawful, that Petrova didn’t present a danger, and that the embryos were non-living, non-hazardous and “posed a threat to no one.”

Romanovsky had asked Reiss to issue an order to stop the possibility of ICE re-detaining Petrova if she is also released from detention in Massachusetts.

Reiss said she was reluctant “to enjoin an executive agency from undertaking future actions which are uncertain” and would rely on U.S. Department of Justice attorney Jeffrey Hartman’s comments that the government has no intention at this time to rearrest Petrova.

Romanovsky had said Customs and Border Protection officials had no legal basis for canceling Petrova’s visa and detaining her.

The Department of Homeland Security had said in a statement on the social media platform X that Petrova was detained after “lying to federal officers about carrying substances into the country.” They allege that messages on her phone “revealed she planned to smuggle the materials through customs without declaring them.”

Harvard had said in a statement that the university “continues to monitor the situation.”

McCormack writes for the Associated Press.