Today's announcement that Bangor Hydro Electric's parent company has agreed to purchase the parent company of Maine Public Service has company officials assuring that there will be no changes to service, rates or employment. But at least one energy expert questions those statements.

A federal program designed to improve long-term care for some of the nation's most severely disabled veterans is having the opposite effect, according to veterans, their families and many state veterans' homes that want to provide that care. Maine Congressman Mike Michaud has introduced a bill to try to resolve the problem. But in the meantime, veterans homes are being forced to turn some qualified veterans away or risk losing millions of dollars.

You know the tunes of Rodgers and Hammerstein, and Steven Sondheim. Now imagine them in the same musical. Jonathan Mastro, a visiting artist in the theater department of Colby College, did. He took numbers from both popular and obscure musicals and quilted them together into a cabaret. The songs, surprisingly, fit together, and recast through Mastro's eyes, deliver social messages about racism and feminism. Mastro, who directed the Colby students in performances tonight and Sunday, explains the multiple meanings of his cabaret's title.

A campaign to make Portland one of the first cities in the country to allow non-citizens to vote suffered a setback last night when the city's charter commission narrowly rejected the idea. But immigrants who converged on City Hall vowed to get the issue on the November ballot.

Maine's Indian tribes told members of a legislative policy committee that their gambling requests must be included in any statewide vote on a proposed casino in Oxford County. The tribes want their own gaming facility in Washington County rather than four percent of the revenues promised under the Oxford proposal. Some critics of the tribes' request fear the alternative could amount to a de facto defeat of the Oxford plan at the polls.

For runners, the spring racing season is right around the corner. And for sports medicine physician James Glazer, that means being mindful of heatstroke. Glazer, who practices in Freeport and is an assistant clinical professor at Tufts University, edits the national heatstroke recommendations for groups such as the American College of Physicians, and has been studying how to best to prevent and treat the condition.

The medical marijuana dispensary law passed by Maine voters last November was officially presented to the Legislature's Health and Human Services Committee this afternoon. Lawmakers must now figure out how to create a regulated system for distributing marijuana to qualified medical patients. While the bill is being supported by the Baldacci Administration, along with marijuana patients, growers and some physicians, there are concerns that the bill contains gaps and will create problems for cities and towns -- and even patients themselves.

Today lawmakers and wind power advocates and opponents spoke out at a hearing on an ambitious piece of offshore wind legislation proposed by Gov. John Baldacci. The emergency measure includes a goal of installing enough offshore wind turbines to power nearly 100,000 homes by 2020.

When it comes to the 2010 Census, Maine has a lot at stake. It's ranked eighth for the amount of federal money it gets per person, based on its Census numbers. That's according to a new report from the Brookings Institution, a policy research group.

A Midcoast theater group is about to begin a three-week tour of performances to celebrate the work of poet and playwright Edna St. Vincent Millay. Millay, the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, was born in Rockland in 1892, and later moved to Camden, where she wrote some of her first important poems. And that's where the Everyman Repertory Theater will hold the first of a series of staged readings of Millay's play "Conversation at Midnight" this Friday.

One week after legislative Democrats unveiled their $99 million jobs bond package, Gov. John Baldacci advanced his own bond package that he says is $20 million dollars leaner, but will be equally effective at putting thousands of Mainers back to work. About $60 million in the governor's plan is directed toward highway, port and rail projects -- including $17 million to preserve 240-miles of rail lines in northern Maine's Aroostook County.

If you've ever written a letter or emailed an elected official to share a personal opinion or anecdote about an issue, you may not realize that correspondance is public record. Virtually anyone can obtain a copy under Maine's Freedom of Access laws. Democratic Representative Dawn Hill of York has introduced a bill to exempt constituents' personal information from Freedom of Access Laws because she says she and other lawmakers want to protect constituents -- and themselves -- when emails contain very private information.

A big ripple moved through the pool of candidates in Maine's Democratic race for governor today when former President Bill Clinton announced his support for Maine Senate President Elizabeth Mitchell. Mitchell, a long-time supporter of the Clintons, says she appreciates the boost and a pitch from the president to help her campaign reach the number of qualifying contributions for Clean Elections funding. The e-mail blast from Clinton to Maine Democrats arrived 22 days before Mitchell must submit 3,250, $5 qualifying contributions to the state.

Maine lawmakers are considering a bill that would amend a 21-year-old state law that prohibits the expansion of commercial landfills. In this case, it's the Crossroads Landfill in Norridgewock that wants an option to expand. The landfill's owner says without that ability, Crossroads may be forced to halt operations. But the company faces opposition from the Maine State Planning Office and the Department of Environmental Protection, as well as from local residents and its competitors.

Since its founding in the early 1990s, the AmeriCorps program has attracted people fresh out of school, interested in giving back to the community by working at non-profits for a modest stipend -- about $900 a month in Maine. But in the past year, AmeriCorps has been seeing a larger and more diverse pool of applicants than usual, largely because of the tough job climate. Thanks to federal stimulus funds, AmeriCorps has been able to increase membership by 43 percent in Maine.

The late Julia Child is credited with changing the way Americans think about food. But Judith Jones is credited with discovering Julia Child. Jones, who speaks tonight in Portland, was the young editor at Alfred A. Knopf who helped bring Child's classic cookbook "Mastering The Art of French Cooking" into millions of American kitchens.

Lawmakers in Augusta are considering a proposal that would make Maine the first state in the country to have some form of mandatory sick leave for full and part-time workers. Sponsors say that in addition to providing workers with more paid sick leave, the bill is designed to control the spread of pandemic disease. But the Legislature's Labor Committee continues to wrestle with the legislation, which has pitted labor groups against the state's business community.

State and local officials in Maine are lining up to support a proposal in the federal jobs bill that boosts Medicaid. The program, funded by both the state and federal government, provides health insurance to the income-eligible. The groups say that more federal dollars for Medicaid will help shore up the state budget and protect other areas, such as education, from further cuts.

It's the time of year when a lot of people in the Northeast are hankering for fresh grown vegetables. Now, even in the coldest area, farmers are devising ways to satisfy that craving. As part of a collaboration with Northeast stations, Susan Keese of Vermont Public Radio reports.

The mystery novel, in recent years, has been targeted to readers with very specific interests. There are mysteries set in the world of antique dealers, there are plot lines weaved around needlework and sewing, and there are even who-dunnits cooked up in so-called "culinary mysteries." One other established genre is the home renovation, or "DIY" mystery. Maine is a popular setting for such titles as "Fatal Fixer-upper" and Spackled and Spooked."

Maine schools will feel the full impact of this recession later this year with state aid likely to fall by tens of millions of dollars. But Richard Sims, chief economist of the National Education Association, the big teacher's union, says cuts in school aid will slow the U.S. economy in the long run. Sims was in Portland last week. He spoke with MPBN's Irwin Gratz, who asked him how, in economic hard times, you rank the needs of schools against other government services.

A top federal fishing regulator who was visiting Maine today says the government is taking steps to restore confidence in its oversight of the industry in the Northeast. The visit of National Marine Fisheries Service Adminstrator Eric Schwaab comes as beleaguered ground fishermen prepare to launch a controversial new system of rules aimed at conserving stocks, and just a day after new allegations surface, aimed at a top enforcement official in Washington.

A legislative panel has issued three reports on a bill that was supposed to clarify the notification process for Mainers living near areas where aerial or air carrier spraying takes place. And in some instances, the majority report of the Legislature's Agricultural, Conservation and Forestry Committee actually reduces the buffer area in which notification from landowners will be required. State Rep. Andrew O'Brien, a Lincolnville Democrat, says his efforts to simplify the process became complicated after his spraying bill somehow turned into an agriculture bill.

Even as a Legislative committee signaled this week that it does not support limits on the use of solitary confinement for prisoners, including those who are mentally ill, the state's own mental health hospitals have all but done away with the practice. They isolate patients for a matter of hours, not days, and with intense supervision. A group of Maine psychiatrists is urging the rest of the Legislature to consider mental health treatment standards when they take a final vote on LD 1611.

Little Vigils is the the soon-to-be released album from Mark Erelli. The Boston-based musician has longstanding ties to Maine and, indeed, chose to record his new CD, his eighth solo effort, at a farmhouse-cum-recording studio in the White Mountains near the New Hampshire border. Erelli is playing at One Longfellow Square in Portland tonight as part of a national tour. He dropped by our studios on his way to the soundcheck.