Cumberland County | featured news

Unions representing Consolidated Communications workers in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont authorized a strike if negotiators fail to reach an agreement before their contract expires in less than two weeks, officials announced Wednesday.
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and Communications Workers of America are engaged in their first contact negotiations since a 2015 agreement was preceded by a 131-day strike against FairPoint Communications, which was purchased last year by Illinois-based Consolidated.

ALFRED — A former Kennebunk High School teacher took the stand Wednesday to defend herself against charges she sexually assaulted a former student, testifying in York County Superior Court that the 17-year-old boy was troubled and that she “was concerned for his safety.”
Jill Lamontagne said she had been tutoring the student so he could graduate and was worried about him when she called him several times on May 31, 2017.

WASHINGTON – Tropical lizards have a stick-to-itiveness in high wind that puts TV weather reporters to shame. Now we know why, thanks in part to a high-powered leaf blower.
Hurricanes Irma and Maria put a group of little lizards to the test, and scientists were perfectly positioned to see which anoles survived and why. Then, Harvard researchers cranked up the leaf blower to observe just how 47 of the Caribbean critters held onto a pole.

CHARLESTON, S.C. – South Carolina’s governor is being joined by governors in Maine, Tennessee and Mississippi in asking federal officials to overturn a union vote at a Boeing plant.
Flight-line employees at Boeing Co.’s North Charleston plant decided in May to join the International Association of Machinists.
But Boeing is asking the National Labor Relations Board to toss out that vote because flight-line workers aren’t a distinct group from the rest of the plant.

Maine Medical Center is buying the building that houses Pizza Villa, a neighborhood institution in Portland’s West End for more than 50 years, as part of its $512 million expansion. The hospital said it has no immediate plans to change the property and will work with longtime owners Tony and Phil Regios, who are planning to retire, to find a new operator.
Hospital officials said they entered into a purchase agreement with the Regios brothers to acquire the restaurant and its three-story building for an undisclosed sum. The closing is scheduled for March 2019.

WASHINGTON — State lawmakers and advocates nationwide who are pushing to legalize marijuana this year aren’t just touting legalization as a way to raise tax revenue and regulate an underground pot market. They’re also talking about fixing a broken criminal justice system and reinvesting in poor and minority communities that have been battered by decades of the government’s war on drugs.

WASHINGTON — The White House said Wednesday that President Donald Trump’s proposed Washington meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin had been delayed until 2019, citing the ongoing probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Putin had already sent signals that the White House meeting wasn’t going to happen.

A Massachusetts man pleaded guilty in Maine on Wednesday to sex trafficking charges, admitting that he employed drugs and threats to force two women to engage in prostitution.
Rashad Sabree, 37, of Boston, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to two counts of sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion, federal officials said.
According to court documents, Sabree coerced two young women to engage in sex acts for pay in Maine for two months, beginning in December 2015.

ImmuCell Corp. of Portland has sold some of its technology to a British firm for $700,000, the company said Wednesday.
The sale includes intellectual property related to a diagnostic test ImmuCell developed in the 1990s to detect the presence of the microscopic parasite Cryptosporidium in drinking water, the company said in a news release. The buyer is TCS Biosciences Ltd of Buckingham, United Kingdom.

ORONO — University of Maine football coaches said Wednesday that they were unaware of any medical condition that might have contributed to the death of freshman player Darius Minor.
Minor, an 18-year-old from Locust Grove, Virginia, collapsed and died during a supervised light workout at Alfond Stadium on Tuesday afternoon. He is the first player in the 126-year history of the UMaine football program to die during a workout on campus.