ALEXANDRIA, N.H. (AP) – A Massachusetts mother and her two children are safe after getting lost on New Hampshire’s Mount Cardigan.

Fish and Game Lt. Todd Bogardus says 43-year-old Olga Box of Groton, Mass., her 13-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son were not harmed.

They were hiking toward a mountain cabin with her husband and another son when they went ahead, took a wrong turn and got lost Tuesday evening.

Bogardus says the mother and kids found an abandoned shelter. Searchers found them around 1:45 a.m. Wednesday.

Fleming show sets Merrill record

PORTLAND (AP) – The Portland Symphony Orchestra says a concert featuring opera star Renee Fleming was the highest grossing show in the history of Merrill Auditorium and will contribute more than $50,000 to the orchestra’s battered endowment fund.

In the orchestra’s first such benefit in its 85-year history, Fleming charmed audiences with performances from both the classical and popular repertoire. The Tuesday night concert follows a report that Maine’s largest orchestra is cutting jobs, salaries, educational programs and its concert schedule as it faces a $220,000 budget shortfall linked to the economic downturn.

4 more Maine TV stations go digital

PORTLAND (AP) – Four more Maine television stations have joined hundreds of others around the country in shutting off their analog signals and completing the transition to digital broadcasting.

Portland stations WGME and WPFO and Bangor’s WVII and WFVX made the switch shortly before midnight and said that only a handful of problems were reported to them by around noon Wednesday.

The Federal Communications Commission had originally set Tuesday as the conversion deadline but recently extended it to June 12.

Portland’s WCSH and WMTW and Bangor’s WLBZ and WABI are continuing to air an analog signal until June 12. The Maine Public Broadcasting Network went all-digital in January and Portland stations WPXT and WPME did so last fall.

Dog alerts owners to a pre-dawn fire

SOUTHBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) – A neighbor says a 10-month-old dog is dead after barking frantically to wake up its owners as a pre-dawn fire consumed their multifamily home in Southbridge.

Tiffany Utakis says the dog named Chaos woke up an 18-year-old boy, who went to check on his mother whose room was on fire at about 3 a.m. on Wednesday Utakis says no tenants or firefighters were injured in the fire that destroyed the building, but Chaos and two cats perished.

A police officer reported the fire and helped evacuate other families.

The state fire marshal’s office is investigating.

AP-ES-02-18-09 1644EST