Just as baby boomers cruise into retirement, their plans of buying a motor home or travel trailer have run into speed bumps such as higher interest rates and unstable fuel prices. Nationally, motor home sales have been down every month since February 2005, according to Statistical Surveys Inc., a Grand Rapids, Mich., firm that tracks […]

Gleaming in the sun on a street of this coastal town is the Holy Grail of many a young man in the 1960s and ’70s. It’s a muscle car. A Plymouth Road Runner, to be precise. Vintage: 1969. Engine displacement: 383 cubic inches. Horsepower: 330. Color: scorch red. It belongs to baby boomer David Keith, […]

We’ll be back.Schools around Oxford, Franklin and Androscoggin counties should consider this a promise, not a threat.In other words, we will return to local schools to check security because we believe it an imperative part of today’s educational system. The era of unlocked doors and friendly smiles ended with rifle cracks from Colorado in 1999, […]

Here’s the good news. The government says the lowest premium for a prescription drug plan is $13, down from $19 last year. More plans – 32 now, versus 24 – with zero-deductibles are available. More drugs are covered, and more assistance plans for the “coverage gap” and low-income assistance exist.The bad news? It’s all part […]

In Maine’s county correctional system, Big Brother is your friend, not your enemy.In the mid-1990s, corrections officials Maine first dallied with videoconferencing technology to address an evergreen sore spot: transportation costs. Grainy video and abysmal Internet connection speeds doomed the first experiments and slowed its adoption.Now, some Maine counties are using videoconferencing as a high-tech […]

“The [British economist Nicholas Stern report on the economic impact of global warming] flies in the face of the academic literature on the subject.”– Jerry Taylor, of the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C,; who also said industrialized economies can benefit from global warming. “[When] Bar Harbor is underwater, then we can do global warming stories. […]

Looks like Tom Connolly decided to start his trick-or-treating early.On Tuesday, the “marvelously eccentric” Portland attorney ditched his trademark long-billed fishing cap for white pajamas, plastic – as in Rubbermaid – explosives and a faux AK-47 for an impromptu Halloween homage to terrorist Osama bin Laden.The barrister, who lives in Scarborough, donned a bin Laden […]

Of all the Halloween horror stories, Kenneth Daigle Jr. could have the most frightening. The affable 29-year-old Lewiston bar manager was severely burned during a Halloween party last year when his homemade glue-and-cotton-ball sheep costume was set alight by a cigarette.While constructing his costume, Daigle failed to realize his choice of glue was highly flammable. […]

Health insurance executives are sometimes painted as corporate fat cats getting rich on the pain of consumers. Profits are clenched in one fist, with the other hand extended for yet another payout.The stereotypes are being reinforced with Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield’s request for an eye-opening 20 percent premium hike on its individual insurance […]

WASHINGTON – A conversation with Sen. Barack Obama, whose book, “The Audacity of Hope” (Crown Publishers, $25), has just been released.Q. Why did you decide to write this book? What is your writing routine?A. I decided to write it partly on the heels of my (2004 Democratic National Convention) speech, which had gotten a good […]