WISCASSET In a mock election held Nov. 1, teachers and students on Wiscasset High School’s student council split on whether the town should consider leaving Regional School Unit 12. On that question, 80 percent of the 55-member student council voted that the town should move ahead with consideration of withdrawal from the regional school district […]

BATH As voters prepare to decide on Tuesday whether to repeal a law eliminating same-day registration, another new change in Maine’s voting law has some municipal clerks particularly frustrated this year. Municipal clerks are required to conduct absentee balloting, prior to the election, at specific types of licensed assisted living facilities, nursing homes and residential […]

BRUNSWICK During its meeting tonight, the Brunswick Town Council is scheduled to review a proposal that would ban the sale and use of fireworks in town. The ban comes in response to a new state law that would make legal the sale and use of fireworks as of Jan. 1, 2012. That law allows municipalities […]

BRUNSWICK A group of approximately 60 people demonstrated solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement by rallying in downtown Brunswick on Saturday morning. Unlike in Portland, Boston, New York and other cities nationwide where Occupy Wall Street sympathizers have set up encampments indefinitely, signs and chants rather than tents marked the first organized “Occupy Brunswick” […]

LYNWOOD, Calif. (AP) — Lindsay Lohan has been released from a Los Angeles County jail, just hours after arriving to serve a 30-day sentence for violating probation. Deputy Tony Moore says Lohan was released from the Century Regional Detention facility in Lynwood early today, less than five hours after she reported to the jail south […]

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — America’s most famous preacher is 93 years old. The Rev. Billy Graham of North Carolina is marking his birthday Monday amid a new flurry of activity. Within the last month, his 30th book, “ Nearing Home,” was published, and nearly 1,700 audio files from his public ministry have been posted online. […]

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Veterans groups have bought 1,200 American flags for a major Ohio school district that now requires the Pledge of Allegiance but didn’t have enough flags to pledge to. Columbus teachers had improvised with flags printed on pieces of paper or projected onto classroom walls when the new policy was implemented at […]

WASHINGTON ( AP) — New census estimates show the number of Americans living in poverty is higher than previously known — reaching a new level of 49.1 million, or 16 percent. The numbers released today are a new supplemental poverty measure aimed at providing a fuller picture of poverty of America. They are higher than […]

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Republican presidential candidates sound much alike in their zeal to shrink government, cut taxes and replace President Barack Obama’s big health care law with, well, something entirely different. It takes some digging to see the distinctions. That’s when Mitt Romney, for example, emerges a few steps removed from the deeply conservative […]