Insufficient brake fluid cited in Bangor parade fatality

3:36 PM

Man arrested in Waterville Little Caesar?s pizza shop robbery

Waterville police this morning arrested MItchell McQuarrei of Central Avenue and charged him with class B robbery in connection with the July 28 of Little Caesars pizza on Main Street.

5:56 PM

Palmyra teen charged with tearing up Hartland school's athletic fields

A 16-year-old Palmyra boy was charged Wednesday with aggravated criminal mischief connected to extensive damage to a Hartland school's field hockey and softball fields.

5:54 PM

North Pond Hermit indicted on Smithfield home burglary, theft charges

A Somerset County grand jury Thursday indicted Christopher T. Knight, commonly known as the North Pond Hermit, on one count each of burglary and theft Thursday, for allegedly pilfering food and alcohol from a Smithfield home.

5:50 PM

BIW seeks city tax break to expand

The shipbuilder wants to construct a second outfitting hall and upgrade other buildings in order to stay competitive.

5:24 PM

Augusta's Route 3 connector closed by 3-car crash; serious injuries reported

A three-car crash on the Route 3 connector, between Riverside Drive and old North Belfast Avenue, has caused multiple injuries, some serious, and at least one call for extraction of a trapped passenger.

4:35 PM

Augusta man charged with Waterville motel car burglaries

Keith Arvanitis, 40, of Augusta, was arrested on felony and misdemeanor charges Thursday, after allegedly burglarizing vehicles at a Waterville motel.

4:46 PM

Praise Jesus and put the hammer down

When it comes to learning how to drive in southern California, the watchword is "vamonos."

3:39 PM

Farmington man arrested after walking around downtown with handgun

John Cushman, 20, was arrested on a charge of terrorizing after he was seen Thursday night walking around downtown with a handgun.

Source: http://www.onlinesentinel.com/r?19=961&43=565492&44=217952951&32=10362&7=622162&40=http://www.onlinesentinel.com/news/Antique-fire-truck-in-Bangor-fatal-crash-had-insufficient-brake-fluid.html

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Zimbabwe goes to the polls to elect president

National presidential and parliamentary elections open today

Written by Jermaine Haughton/> 31/07/2013 11:50 AM

Image Text:

VOTERS: Two women make their decision at the polls this morning (PA)

ZIMBABWEANS ARE voting today in the country?s presidential and parliamentary elections.

Election observers have already accused organisers of misconduct, irregularities, and fraud.

The presidential elections will pit incumbent Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai against each other.

If Mugabe and his Zanu-PF are defeated, the 89-year-old has vowed to step down after 33 years in power.

SELF VOTE: Morgan Tsvangirai at the polls (PA)

However, Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change has alleged that Zanu-PF has doctored the electoral roll, a charge it has denied.

There has been an uneasy coalition government between Zanu-PF and the MDC since 2009, after a deal was made to end the deadly violence which resulted from a disputed presidential poll result in the previous year.

Posted on: 31/07/2013 11:50 AM

Source: http://voice-online.co.uk/article/zimbabwe-goes-polls-elect-president

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Oil pushes toward $106 as US growth improves

LONDON (AP) ? Economic growth in the U.S. and tightening crude supplies helped push up oil prices Thursday.

Benchmark oil for September delivery was up $1.74 to $106.77 a barrel by midday trading in Europe in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract gained $1.95, or 1.9 percent, to close at $105.03 on Wednesday.

Oil stockpiles in the U.S. fell by 740,000 barrels to 369.9 million barrels for the week ending July 26, according to the American Petroleum Institute. The U.S. Energy Department reported that supplies rose by 400,000 barrels last week, although supplies at the crucial Cushing, Oklahoma, hub for benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude declined by 1.9 million barrels.

The oil price was also boosted by better-than-expected U.S. economic growth for the second quarter of 2013. The Commerce Department said Wednesday that the economy grew at a 1.7 percent annual rate in the April-June quarter, better than a revised 1.1 percent rate for the first quarter. Adding to the buoyant mood in the markets, Chinese manufacturing PMI figures Thursday came in on the positive side as well.

On Friday, attention will be focused on the release of hiring figures for July, which will be examined for hints about future energy demand in the world's No. 1 economy.

Brent crude, traded on the ICE Futures exchange in London, rose $1.22 to $108.92 per barrel.

In other energy futures trading on Nymex:

? Heating oil was up 3 cents to $3.08 a gallon.

? Natural gas fell 1 cent to $3.44 per 1,000 cubic feet.

? Wholesale gasoline was little changed at $2.997 a gallon.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/oil-pushes-toward-106-us-growth-improves-053642733.html

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GOP: IRS played favorites - Wed, 31 Jul 2013 PST

WASHINGTON ? Conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status were more closely scrutinized by the Internal Revenue Service than their progressive counterparts, according to a report Tuesday by House Republican?investigators.

Tea party and other conservative groups were, on average, asked three times as many questions as progressive groups, said the report by Republicans on the House Ways and Means?Committee.

Conservative groups were less likely to be approved for tax-exempt status and more likely to have their applications delayed, the report?said.

The IRS has been under siege since May when agency officials acknowledged that agents working in a Cincinnati office had??

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WASHINGTON ? Conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status were more closely scrutinized by the Internal Revenue Service than their progressive counterparts, according to a report Tuesday by House Republican?investigators.

Tea party and other conservative groups were, on average, asked three times as many questions as progressive groups, said the report by Republicans on the House Ways and Means?Committee.

Conservative groups were less likely to be approved for tax-exempt status and more likely to have their applications delayed, the report?said.

The IRS has been under siege since May when agency officials acknowledged that agents working in a Cincinnati office had improperly targeted tea party groups for extra scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status. The IRS has since released documents suggesting that progressive groups may have been targeted,?too.

Democrats in Congress have highlighted the possibility that liberal groups were also abused to counter charges by some Republicans that that the targeting was politically?motivated.

Congressional investigations have so far shown that IRS supervisors in Washington ? including lawyers in the chief counsel?s office ? oversaw the processing of tea party applications. But there has been no evidence that anyone outside the IRS directed the targeting or that agents were politically?motivated.

?The facts are very clear ? not only were conservative groups targeted by the IRS, but they received much higher scrutiny than progressives,? said Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., chairman of the Ways and Means?Committee.

?However, this is just the tip of the iceberg,? Camp said. ?We have received less than 3 percent of the documents responsive to the investigation. So, Congress will continue to investigate how the targeting began, why it was allowed to continue for so long and what the IRS is doing to resolve this. Americans deserve to know the full?truth.?

The IRS said in a statement that 70 agency lawyers are working full time to review documents for congressional?inquiries.

?The IRS is aggressively responding to the numerous data requests we?ve received from Congress,? IRS spokeswoman Michelle Eldridge said. ?We are doing everything we can to fully cooperate with the committees, and we strongly disagree with any suggestions to the?contrary.?

A report by the IRS inspector general said the agency gave extra scrutiny to 298 groups when they applied for tax exempt status from the spring of 2010 to the spring of?2012.

A total of 104 applications included the labels ?conservative,? ??tea party,? ??patriot? or ?9-12? in their names, according to the Ways and Means report, which is consistent with the inspector general?s report. Seven included the words ?progressive? or??progress.?

While processing the applications, IRS agents asked the progressive groups an average of 4.7 questions and eventually approved all seven applications, according to the analysis by Ways and Means Republicans. Some progressive groups, however, complained about lengthy?delays.

The conservative groups were asked an average of 14.9 questions and, as of May 31, only 48 applications had been approved. The other 56 applications were either pending or withdrawn. None was?denied.

Rep. Sander Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, said the analysis omits other liberal or progressive groups that don?t have the word ?progressive? in their?names.

?This is a recurring problem in this investigation ? the release of incomplete information,? Levin said. ?Indeed, that is exactly what led to fundamental flaws in the (inspector general?s)?report.?

During the 2010 and 2012 elections, IRS agents singled out groups that had ?tea party,? ??patriots,? and ?9-12? in their applications, according to a May report by IRS inspector general J. Russell George. George?s report determined that these groups received extra, sometimes burdensome scrutiny that delayed their applications for more than a?year.

George?s report did not mention progressive groups. He told a congressional committee this month that, despite a yearlong inquiry, the IRS just recently provided him documents suggesting that progressive groups may have been?targeted.

The IRS was screening the groups? applications because agents were trying to determine their level of political activity. IRS regulations say tax-exempt social welfare organizations may engage in some political activity, but the activity may not be their primary mission. It is up to the IRS to make that?determination.

? Copyright 2013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Source: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2013/jul/31/gop-irs-played-favorites/

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Hawaii braces as tropical storm crosses islands

HONOLULU (AP) ? Forecasters monitoring a tropical storm crossing Hawaii were still warning residents and tourists on Monday to brace for possible flooding, wind gusts, mudslides and big waves, even as the storm weakened on its journey.

Earlier, local television stations extended morning news, pre-empting syndicated daytime shows to cover the storm's approach.

But Tropical Storm Flossie faded through the morning, thanks to winds that broke layers of the storm apart, said Tom Evans, acting director of the Central Pacific Hurricane Center.

Warnings about the storm didn't stop some tourists from heading to popular beaches, despite urgings from state officials to cancel all beach trips until further notice. In Waikiki, beaches were unusually sparse as those outside contended with overcast skies and rain ahead of Flossie's arrival.

Kelly Tarkington, a college student from Savannah, Ga., got a sunburn from spending eight hours on the beach Sunday but had to take refuge from the rain under a beach umbrella Monday along with her aunt.

"We just came to enjoy the beach ? attempt to at least ? and now it's pouring rain so we're under our umbrella. It's awful," said Tarkington, 21.

But she said the weather was mild compared with back home, so her experience won't stop her from returning to Hawaii.

If it keeps raining, she said, she'll do more shopping.

As of midday, the storm was centered about 65 miles north-northeast of Hilo on the Big Island, and 200 miles east-southeast of Honolulu.

Michael Cantin, warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Honolulu, said the storm would likely be downgraded to a tropical depression within 12 hours.

He said it could be downgraded before hitting Maui if it keeps deteriorating at the same rate as much of Monday.

"The weakening happened quite rapidly," Cantin said.

Residents and government officials spent the weekend preparing for the storm's arrival. College campuses and courts were closed Monday on the Big Island, and the Red Cross was gathering volunteers to staff 24 shelters statewide.

The U.S. Coast Guard closed three ports ? two on the Big Island where the storm was expected first, and a third port on Maui. Airports statewide were open Monday but many flights were being canceled.

Even in its weakened state, Cantin said Monday afternoon that Flossie's winds could potentially knock down power lines because of their unusual direction.

Trails and campgrounds also were closed on the Big Island, where state officials warned people to avoid forest areas until Flossie clears.

Officials warned people to finish necessary storm preparations early and leave their homes if asked.

"I woke up to blue skies. It was just a beautiful day out," Ian Shortridge, 22, of Kealakekua, on the west side of the Big Island, said Monday. "It hasn't rained all morning. We are waiting for the rain."

Shortridge said he saw McDonald's employees boarding up windows Sunday. Store shelves were running low of essentials like bottled water and toilet paper, he said.

Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie signed an emergency proclamation that allows the state to use its disaster fund to pay for staff overtime, supplies and other resources. The proclamation also gave state officials the option to call Hawaii National Guard members to duty.

Forecasters said the storm would likely bring rain of up to 6 inches on parts of the Big Island and up to 2 inches on other islands. The storm's 40 mph winds will continue to weaken, Evans said.

Evans said tropical storm warnings will remain in effect for all of Hawaii's islands until Flossie is classified as a depression rather than a storm.

The warnings mean the storm represents a threat to life and property.

Melanie and Ian Jenkins of Portsmouth, England, tried to catch some sun lying on Waikiki Beach but were close to giving up as raindrops fell on the sand.

"The showers are getting colder and colder each time, and I might give up in the next half hour," Melanie Jenkins said.

"It's still warmer than England," her husband said.

___

Oskar Garcia can be reached at http://twitter.com/oskargarcia . Associated Press writers Jennifer Sinco Kelleher and Audrey McAvoy in Honolulu, and Christopher Weber in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/hawaii-braces-tropical-storm-crosses-islands-012435487.html

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Woman sues Equifax: Are credit report mistakes worth $18 million?

Woman sues Equifax: After spending two years trying to get Equifax to fix mistakes on her credit report, an Oregon woman sued. On Monday, a jury awarded her $18.6 million.

By Associated Press / July 29, 2013

A federal jury in Oregon awarded $18.6 million to a woman who spent two years unsuccessfully trying to get?Equifax?Information Services to fix major mistakes on her credit report.

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Julie Miller of Marion County was awarded $18.4 million in punitive damages and $180,000 in compensatory damages, though Friday's award against one of the nation's major credit bureaus is likely to be appealed, The Oregonian reported.

The jury was told she contacted?Equifax?eight times between 2009 and 2011 in an effort to correct inaccuracies, including erroneous accounts and collection attempts, as well as a wrong Social Security number and birthday. Her lawsuit alleged the Atlanta-based company failed to correct the mistakes.

"There was damage to her reputation, a breach of her privacy, and the lost opportunity to seek credit," said Justin Baxter, a Portland attorney who worked on the case with his father and law partner, Michael Baxter. "She has a brother who is disabled and who can't get credit on his own, and she wasn't able to help him."

Tim Klein, an?Equifax?spokesman, declined to comment on specifics of the case, saying he didn't have any details about the decision from the Oregon Federal District Court.

Miller discovered the problem when she was denied credit by a bank in early December 2009. She alerted Equifax?and filled out multiple forms faxed by the credit agency seeking updated information. She had found similar mistakes in her reports with other credit bureaus, Baxter said, but those companies corrected their errors.

A Federal Trade Commission study earlier this year of 1,001 consumers who reviewed 2,968 of their credit reports found 21 percent contained errors. The survey found that 5 percent of the errors represented issues that would lead consumers to be denied credit.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/C_8a9sJXXmw/Woman-sues-Equifax-Are-credit-report-mistakes-worth-18-million

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Classified ad site Backpage in crosshairs over child sex ads?

sex-crimes

Suzanne Choney NBC News

58 minutes ago

Getty Images

Backpage.com has become the Craigslist of prostitution ads in recent years since that free site stopped running the ads in 2010.

Search for "Backpage.com" on the FBI's main website and up pops eight whole pages of press releases and public announcements naming the classified advertising site as a tool for sex criminals, particularly those selling children, sex and prostitution. And in fact, Backpage was named as one of the sources law enforcement used to help gather evidence needed to coordinate a 70-city raid last weekend that resulted in the rescue of 105 teenagers and the arrest of 159 pimps.

"The fact that they were able to rescue that many children and arrest that many pimps is fantastic," Liz McDougall, counsel for Backpage told NBC News Monday. "We are glad to be a partner with and support law enforcement to make these arrests, and make them in time to rescue these children."

A partner with law enforcement? While Backpage may be the current Craigslist for prostitution ads in the United States, McDougall says the site gladly cooperates with police when they want information about those who place the ads, including the IP, or Internet protocol, address from where the ads originated.

But a new effort by the National Association of Attorneys General wants to change federal law so that Internet service providers and websites like Backpage could be prosecuted by state and local governments for promoting prostitution and child sex trafficking, simply by running such ads.

It's a double-edged sword, some might say: Shutting down online ad venues for criminals and sexual traffickers seems like a good "nowhere to run" idea, but law enforcement looks to such sites to find information about the criminals they're chasing. And some argue that if you shut down one such "offending" site, another pops up anyway. Besides, there's a bigger issue at the heart of this: The same laws that protect the unsavory ads online also protect most Internet providers from liabilities of all kinds.

Backpage is specifically named in a letter from the attorneys' general group, sent last week to members of Congress, seeking an amendment to the Communications Decency Act of 1996:

Every day, children in the United States are sold for sex. In instance after instance, State and local authorities discover that the vehicles for advertising the victims of the child sex trade to the world are online classified ad services, such as Backpage.com. The involvement of these advertising companies is not incidental ? these companies have constructed their business models around income gained from participants in the sex trade.

Federal enforcement by itself has "proven insufficient to stem the growth of Internet-facilitated child trafficking," says the group, with the letter signed by 49 state and territorial attorneys general. "Those on the front lines of the battle against the sexual exploitation of children ? state and local law enforcement ? must be granted the authority to investigate and prosecute those who facilitate these horrible crimes."

It's an effort applauded by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, which works with law enforcement on sex trafficking cases.

"Classified-ad websites have made child sex trafficking an easy and profitable business enterprise for pimps," said John Ryan, the center's CEO, in a recent statement. "NCMEC urges all policymakers to explore every avenue available to bring to justice those who profit from the sexual exploitation of children."

Perhaps you're wondering why so many name Backpage and not Craigslist. In 2010, Craigslist, under pressure from more than a dozen individual states' attorney generals, voluntarily banned ads for adult services from the site. When that happened, much of the business moved to Backpage.com. (Village Voice Media, which owns the Village Voice, among other publications, also owned Backpage.com until last fall, when it became a separate company.)

Whether or not Backpage follows suit and ditches adult services, experts argue that the law itself should not be changed in order to make this happen.

Mark Rasch, former head of the Department of Justice's Computer Crimes Unit, and now an independent consultant, told NBC News he is against the proposed change, which would restrict free speech, now a key protection under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. He also says it's the "wrong way" to go after those in the child sex trade.

"Sex traffickers use the Internet to sell their wares, use the telephone lines to communicate with customers, use the banking and credit card system to obtain payment for sex services, use highways and local roads to transport minors for sex, use cars and other vehicles for the same purpose," he wrote in a recent blog post. "They use the same infrastructure established to sell toothpaste to sell illicit sex with minors. They need to be arrested and prosecuted for these crimes."

But third parties that might be accused of making those crimes possible ? whether it's ISPs or gas stations ? shouldn't be held criminally liable "for their own participation," he argues. An amendment to the law like this one means that "EBay could be held liable if someone purchased a knife online and then used that knife to kill someone, if a state passed a law making the advertisement of knives that are used for such purposes a crime."

Matthew Zimmerman, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital civil liberties organization, told NBC News that with the "proliferation of user-generated speech online over the past decade," the proposed amendment would be "extraordinarily harmful."

The EFF successfully defended both Backpage and the non-profit Internet Archive in a suit against the state of Washington, which in 2012 passed a law that essentially made it a crime to "knowingly" publish or display any ad for a commercial sex act, including the depiction of a minor. The EFF said that the new state law considered both sites publishers, contrary to the provisions of the Communications Decency Act. A federal court agreed, and blocked the law.

Zimmerman says it's not only "lawful speech" that would be hurt by letting states prosecute service providers and websites. "This could also lead to the loss of critical tools that law enforcement could use to investigate these and other crimes," he told NBC News.

McDougall of Backpage agrees. The arrests over the weekend are "something that wouldn't be possible if you didn't have a domestic, cooperative website involved," she said. "That's why it's important to not drive this content to offshore websites, which won't cooperate and don't have to cooperate with U.S. law enforcement. It would make law enforcement's job exponentially more difficult."

Still, there are many who'd argue that giving child traffickers one less avenue would be a win for the good guys. It's not known yet what, if any, action Congress will take on changing the Communications Decency Act. The issue is sure to be debated in the months to come.

Check out Technology and TODAY Tech on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Suzanne Choney.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/663301/s/2f50eec7/sc/23/l/0L0Snbcnews0N0Ctechnology0Cclassified0Ead0Esite0Ebackpage0Ecrosshairs0Eover0Echild0Esex0Eads0E6C10A789250A/story01.htm

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