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What we're reading
— Aroostook County remains a national hotspot for COVID-19 during the wide decline of the omicron variant, according to newly released wastewater data analyzed by the Bangor Daily News. The most recent readings from Presque Isle showed concentrations of the virus that were higher than 96 percent of U.S. wastewater utilities tested in the past six weeks. Maine is still mirroring national trends with big apparent declines in transmission in the last month or so.
— The 160-year-old Bangor jail is "falling apart," Penobscot County Sheriff Troy Morton said. A leak has shut down part of the kitchen, forcing the jail to buy in meals at a hefty costs. The jail's lone elevator and a control panel operating cell doors and an intercom have broken down in the past two weeks. The county is proposing a 100-bed addition to the overcrowded jail after an earlier eight-story jail proposal faced heavy criticism in Bangor.
— Maine utilities and their biggest critics came out to oppose Mills' accountability bill on Tuesday. Utility opponents including Rep. Seth Berry, D-Bowdoinham, used a hearing before the energy committee to probe the governor's energy adviser on how much further Mills would be willing to go in strengthening her bill, while Central Maine Power Co. and Versant Power argued regulators have all the tools they need to hold them accountable.
— Maine's biggest airport wants to put the international back in Portland International Jetport. No big airline has offered international flights there on a regular basis for nearly a decade. New flights to Florida and Nashville, Tennessee, have been added this year during a pandemic travel bump and officials see the addition of international flights to Mexico and the Caribbean region as the next frontier. |
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Follow along today
10 a.m. The House and Senate are scheduled for their third and final set of floor sessions in February. Among the bills up for potential votes are a Republican-led bill prohibiting state COVID-19 vaccine mandates that is a sure bet to go down in the Democratic-led House. The Senate will vote on an equal-rights amendment to the Maine Constitution that was shot down by House Republicans last week and is on track to die without two-thirds support in both chambers. Listen to the House here and the Senate here.
Progressive advocates of paid family and medical leave, led by the Maine Women's Lobby, will hold a news conference and drop petitions off at Mills' office lobbying for a new program. A state commission is studying the idea now after the governor and fellow Democrats inked a compromise with Republicans and the business lobby on paid leave in 2019.
1:45 p.m. The conservative Maine Policy Institute will host Scott Yenor, a political science professor at Boise State University in Idaho, for an event at the Portland Country Club in Falmouth. The group is teasing a Yenor-authored report on social-justice initiatives in the University of Maine System. Yenor prompted protests on his campus last year by arguing that efforts to recruit more women into the fields of engineering, medicine and law should be deemphasized. His upcoming report on Maine's university system comes after he co-authored similar ones across the country, including in Idaho, where the flagship university pushed back on his findings. |
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| 📷 Lead photo: A child walks by a photographic memorial for those killed in the confrontation between Ukraine's military and the pro-Russia separatist forces in Sievierodonetsk in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine on Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2022. (AP Photo by Vadim Ghirda) |
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