PORTLAND (AP) — Riders who use a state-run van service are asking the Maine Department of Transportation for a yearlong extension of the service. Transportation officials plan to end the GoMaine program on May 1 because there’s no money to replace its aging passenger vans. About 225 people use the service, which provides rides between […]

WASHINGTON ( AP) — Slightly more people applied for unemployment benefits last week. But the overall level stayed low enough to suggest the job market is strengthening. The Labor Department said today that weekly applications increased by 8,000 to a seasonally adjusted 362,000, the highest level since January. The four- week average, which smooths week-to-week […]

CAIRO ( AP) — A Cairo court today delayed once again the case of 16 Americans and 27 other employees of nonprofit groups accused of fomenting unrest in Egypt. The case has plunged U.S.- Egyptian relations to their lowest point in 30 years and has led to American threats to cut off $1.5 billion in […]

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistan has charged Osama bin Laden’s three widows with illegally entering and living in the country, the interior minister said today. The three women have been in Pakistani detention since May last year, when U.S. commandos raided the house where they, bin Laden and several of their children were staying. The […]

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — A Texas man condemned for fatally shooting his estranged wife and the neighbor who became her boyfriend denied killing them Wednesday, moments before he was put to death by lethal injection. Strapped to the gurney inside the death chamber, Keith Thurmond declared, “I didn’t kill my wife. … I swear to […]

STANLEY, Falkland Islands ( AP) — Falkland Islanders are still bristling over the invasion by Argentina 30 years ago, but they’re not complaining about its aftermath. The April 2, 1982, invasion led by Argentina’s dictators and the subsequent war with Britain launched a process that transformed the archipelago from a sleepy backwater of sheep farms […]

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greece’s race to slice (euro) 107 billion ($140 billion) off its national debt entered the final stretch today, with markets confident enough investors will accept to write down more than half of the value of their Greek bond holdings. If too few investors agree and the swap fails, the crisis-hit country […]

ROCKPORT ( AP) — The founder of the Maine-based Institute for Global Ethics has died in Florida. He was 67. The institute said Rushworth Kidder died Monday in Naples, Fla., where he moved late last year. His assistant described Kidder’s death as sudden, but details weren’t available. Kidder was a columnist at the Christian Science […]

UNITED NATIONS The economic cost of disasters in 2011 was the highest in history — with a pricetag of at least $380 billion, mainly due to earthquakes in Japan and New Zealand, a U. N. envoy said Monday. Margareta Wahlstrom, the secretary-general’s special representative for disaster risk reduction, said the figure was two-thirds higher than […]

BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) — Ralph McQuarrie, the artist who developed the look of the first “Star Wars” trilogy’s signature characters, sets and spaceships, has died. He was 82. McQuarrie’s death Saturday at his Berkeley home was announced on his official website and Facebook page. John Scoleri, co-author of a book on McQuarrie’s art, told the […]