Good morning. Temperatures will be in the mid-50s to mid-60s from north to south with rain throughout the state.

Here's what we're talking about in Maine today.

• If Central Maine Power can salvage its planned hydropower corridor through western Maine, it may have a new partner to thank: Yale University.
  
  Yale’s part in the $1 billion corridor project is relatively small, but one of its companies granted the Maine utility with an easement that would allow the route to bypass Beattie Pond. Central Maine Power officials have said the deal would increase the project’s cost by $950,000, though parts of it are opaque, as Yale’s operations here have always been. Here’s what we know.

• U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, joined two other GOP senators in criticizing the president last week after he publicly asked the Chinese government to investigate a political opponent while talking to reporters outside the White House last week.

  “I thought the president made a big mistake by asking China to get involved in investigating a political opponent,” Collins said. “It’s completely inappropriate.”

A major Hollywood studio has bought this Bangor native’s screenplay

• Movie studios are buying fewer scripts these days from independent screenwriters -- which makes Universal Studios' purchase of a script from Bangor native Patrick Pittis earlier this year that much more significant. There's no guarantee Pittis' script will be made into a movie, but the studio's purchase of it represents a major boost early in his screenwriting career.

• The story of how Zakaria Allaf made his way from Aleppo, Syria, to Bangor is the kind of hip hop origin story you hear on rap tracks — one that spans the globe, and is packed with more twists and turns than the verbose, staccato raps that Allaf writes, records and performs.
  
  From being the lone hip hop fan in his neighborhood, to rapping on the streets of cities as far flung as Beirut, Kathmandu and Kuala Lumpur, to fleeing war and persecution, to finally ending up on Bangor’s East Side with his Mainer wife, Allaf — who raps under the name Assasi — brings with him two decades of hip hop devotion, wherever he goes.
  
  “Since I was a kid, it’s been hip hop,” he said. “That’s been my goal and my dream.”