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Maine State Police Briefs From Troop F – July 18 – 24

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Maine State Police Briefs From Troop F – July 18 – 24


Listed here are a number of of the incidents investigated by Troop F of the Maine State Police this previous week. Summaries could also be minimally edited.

Aggressive Driving Incident in Presque Isle

On July twentieth, Sgt. Clark was responding to Caribou to help them with a name when he noticed a pickup passing a automobile on Route 1 after which swerve again into the southbound lane. Sgt. Clark locked the automobile’s pace at 90 mph in a posted 55 mph zone. The automobile that the truck had handed was inside 5 ft of the truck’s rear bumper.  Sgt. Clark rotated to cease the autos. Each autos stopped. Sgt. Clark discovered that the truck got here up on the automobile at a excessive charge of pace after which handed it. The driving force of the automobile was catching as much as the truck to jot down down the plate quantity. Sgt. Clark issued summonses to each drivers.

 

Driver Arrested in Cyr Plantation on 4 Excellent Warrants

On July twenty second, Trooper Desrosier was conducting site visitors enforcement in Cyr Plantation when he noticed a automobile with a faulty exhaust system. Trooper Desrosier stopped the automobile and after an investigation decided the driving force had a suspended driver’s license and had 4 energetic arrest warrants. Trooper Desrosier arrested the driving force with out incident and transported him to Caribou PD for holding. He was additionally summonsed for OAS.

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Man Arrested After Trooper Recovers Stolen Dust Bike

On July sixth, Trooper Rider investigated the theft of a dust bike in Mars Hill.  A person was going to commerce his grime bike for a four-wheeler and met one other man in Mars Hill.  Once they met, the opposite man took the grime bike for a trip and by no means got here again. Trooper Rider investigated, positioned the grime bike in Limestone, and issued the person a prison summons for theft.

 

Officers Lead Session in Presque Isle on Home Violence Reporting

On July twentieth, Sgt. Clark of the Maine State Police and Sgt. Cummings of the Aroostook Sheriff’s Workplace performed a home violence report writing class in collaboration with the Home Violence Activity Power.

 

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Driver Arrested in Caribou for Working Underneath the Affect of Medication

On July twenty first, Trooper Levesque was driving on Route 1 in Caribou, when he got here throughout a automobile that was half within the roadway and half within the ditch. Trooper Levesque made contact with the male who seemed to be beneath the affect of one thing. By Trooper Levesque’s investigation he was capable of decide that the male was not match to be driving. The male was taken to Caribou PD and was charged with working beneath the affect of medicine.

 

Motorcyclist Throws Gadgets from his Pockets Throughout Police Pursuit in Caribou

On July twentieth, Trooper Levesque and K9 Rocco had been referred to as out to help Caribou PD with an article search. Whereas an officer was making an attempt to cease a motorbike, the operator started throwing gadgets out of his pockets.  The driving force was arrested for drug costs and Caribou PD thought that the driving force could have thrown extra medication or a firearm. Rocco didn’t find any medication or a firearm.

 

Intoxicated Man Faraway from Island Falls Campground

On July 18th, Cpl. Kilcollins and Sgt. Fuller responded to Birch Level Campground in Island Falls for a disturbance. A male was upsetting a number of individuals on the camp website due to his weird conduct. The male was on pre-trial and was not alleged to be consuming. The male seemed to be intoxicated and presumably beneath the affect of medicine. The male was such an issue that the proprietor of the campground needed him eliminated. The male was trespassed from the property and the data was handed alongside to his pre-trial case supervisor.

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Mars Hill Man Charged with Assault in Highway Rage Incident

On July 18th, The Houlton Regional Communications Middle took a report of a bodily altercation on the intersection of Route 1 and Route 1A in Mars Hill involving two motorists. Trooper Roy investigated the grievance and decided that the assault stemmed from a highway rage incident during which a male social gathering was tailgating a feminine social gathering and her husband. The feminine social gathering and her husband pulled over to let the male cross, however he allegedly exited his automobile and punched the facet mirror on their automobile. The male then allegedly grabbed the feminine social gathering by the neck as she tried to confront him. Because of his investigation, Trooper Roy charged the 44-year-old Mars Hill man with Assault. He was additionally charged with Working after Suspension, as his driver’s license was suspended on the time of this incident. He is because of seem in Presque Isle District Courtroom in October.

 

Washburn Man Charged With Prison Trespass

On July 18th, Trooper Roy took a Trespass grievance at a residence in Blaine. A neighbor referred to as to report a suspicious male on the property subsequent door. The neighbor suggested the RCC that it appeared the male was taking issues as properly. Trooper Roy and Trooper Curtin responded to the residence and positioned the male. After talking with the home-owner, Trooper Roy discovered the male had been evicted from the property and was not allowed to be there. Trooper Roy charged the 39-year-old Washburn man with Prison Trespass and Violating Situation of Launch. He is because of seem in Presque Isle District Courtroom in October.

 

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Emissions Machine Stolen from Automotive Yard in Westfield

On July twentieth, Trooper Roy started investigating the theft of a catalytic convertor in Westfield. An area automotive store referred to as to report that the catalytic convertor was stolen from one of many autos of their yard. The investigation is energetic and ongoing.

 

Maine Man Denied Entry into Canada at Border Crossing in Houlton

On July twenty fourth, Trooper Cotton responded to the Houlton Port of Entry for a person who had tried to enter Canada with a suspended driver’s license. The male operator had been denied entry to Canada and despatched again to US Customs. Trooper Cotton charged the 23-year-old Poland man with Working after Suspension and supplied him a Houlton District Courtroom date in October. He was additionally cited for an insurance coverage violation.

 

Caribou Girl Charged with Prison Threatening at Gathering at Scopan Lake

On July twenty fourth, Trooper Roy charged a 20-year-old Caribou girl with Prison Threatening after she allegedly threatened to bodily hurt one other girl whereas at a bonfire over the weekend. Trooper Roy spoke with witnesses on the bonfire and confirmed the sufferer’s account of what occurred. The girl is because of seem in Presque Isle District Courtroom in September.

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Troop F is liable for Maine State Police protection for all of Aroostook County and the northern elements of Penobscot, Piscataquis and Somerset Counties. The Commanding Officer is Lt. Brian L. Harris.

VIEW OTHER RECENT REPORTS FROM TROOP F HERE

This is the Full Record of Lacking Individuals Circumstances in Maine

There are 34 individuals at the moment listed as lacking right here in Maine by the state police as of July 2022. When you acknowledge or have any data on the individuals listed right here, please contact the police.

UNFINISHED The Funniest Methods Outsiders Can Inform You Grew Up in Maine





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Opinion: With updated plan, Maine seizes opportunity to continue climate progress

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Opinion: With updated plan, Maine seizes opportunity to continue climate progress


The BDN Opinion section operates independently and does not set news policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or on bangordailynews.com

Jack Shapiro is the climate and clean energy director at the Natural Resources Council of Maine. Jeff Marks is the executive director of ClimateWork Maine.

On Thursday, Maine released its updated Climate Action Plan, “Maine Won’t Wait.” It provides an ambitious and achievable pathway for meeting the state’s climate goals while encouraging new economic opportunities, creating good-paying jobs, saving money on energy costs, and making our communities and businesses more resilient for all Maine people.

A bipartisan climate law passed in 2019 set the stage for the creation of the first Climate Action Plan published in 2020 and required it be updated quadrennially. In those last four years, we’ve seen enormous progress made across the state. But scientists and our own experiences have made clear that the impacts of climate change have become more pronounced, causing damage to critical infrastructure, harm to local communities and businesses, and interruptions to Maine’s way of life.

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The new plan provides a framework for addressing these impacts and creates a promising vision for moving forward through a number of strategies, all linked to the health of our economy and the health of our communities.

First is a focus on the two largest sectors for carbon emissions: transportation and buildings. The plan outlines how we can modernize our transportation system to better connect residents to local businesses, critical services like health care, and to provide more mobility choices. Zero-emission cars, trucks and buses are part of the solution, as is expanding public transit and encouraging safer walking and biking.

Making our buildings more efficient, resilient, and healthy is next. Greener buildings will help save families and businesses money while also reducing indoor air pollution and making spaces more comfortable.

Building reliable, home-grown clean energy sources is key. Diversifying our energy sources by adopting proven renewable energy technologies is a practical path forward that will benefit Maine people, our economy, our communities, and our abundant natural resources. 

Most of the technologies we need to help reduce climate change already exist and will cost Mainers less than continuing our dependence on expensive and polluting sources of energy. Investing in new clean energy technologies creates jobs, attracts talent to Maine, and helps local businesses grow.

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Maine’s natural and working lands are part of the plan, with a goal to expand conserved land to 30 percent of the state by 2030 while supporting heritage industries like forestry and farming. The plan prioritizes conservation in areas with rich biodiversity, carbon storage potential, lands with cultural and economic importance, and lands that improve public access.

Other key elements of the plan are building an equitable clean energy economy — which already employs 15,000 Mainers — and empowering healthy and resilient communities. We will also want to make sure workers employed in the fossil fuel industries have the training to transition to this new clean energy workforce in order to keep Maine competitive.

For the first time, “Maine Won’t Wait” addresses the impact that waste has on our climate and health. Reducing waste won’t just save taxpayers money, it will encourage businesses to work with entrepreneurs and others to creatively curb plastic pollution, reduce food waste, and lower the burden on our landfills.

Even if climate change wasn’t a crisis bringing increased flooding and storm damage to our doorsteps, these strategies would be common sense. That’s why Maine people from Kittery to Caribou have grabbed on to solutions like heat pumps — that reduce pollution and heating costs all at once — making Maine a national leader in heat pump adoption.

More transportation options and less air pollution, more efficiency and less waste, more job opportunities, and less money spent on out-of-state fossil fuels – these are things we can all agree on.

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In face of expected attempts to roll back federal climate action, Maine Won’t Wait presents an exciting opportunity for us to set an example for the rest of the nation. By working together to implement the recommendations in the plan we can improve the lives of all people throughout our rural state, not just a few.



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Planned Parenthood says requests for birth control spiked in Maine after Trump election

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Planned Parenthood says requests for birth control spiked in Maine after Trump election


Volunteers Marian Starkey, right, and Sheera LaBelle let people into the building that houses the Planned Parenthood clinic in Portland in September 2022. Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer

Planned Parenthood of Northern New England says requests for long-acting reversible contraceptives have nearly doubled at its clinics since the Nov. 5 election that resulted in Republicans gaining control of U.S. Congress and the White House.

In the week after the election, Planned Parenthood of Northern New England received 215 appointment requests for long-acting contraceptives, including birth control implants and intrauterine devices, at its clinics in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, almost twice as much as its normal weekly bookings of 111. In Maine, bookings went from an average of 26 weekly appointments to 48 in the week after the election.

While President-elect Donald Trump has said he would not support a national abortion plan, reproductive rights advocates have doubted that he would refuse to sign such a bill.

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Advocates have also raised concerns that the Trump administration will restrict access to reproductive health services and could try to use a 19th century law – the Comstock Act – to forbid shipping mifepristone, the abortion pill, across state lines – a claim Trump denied during the campaign.

Abortion rights advocates also warned that a Trump administration could also make it more difficult to access contraceptives.

Almost all Republican politicians are anti-abortion, and starting in January Republicans will control all levers of the federal government, with the presidency, both houses of Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority.

Nicole Clegg, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, said in a statement that “our patients are worried.”

“They are concerned that they may not be able to access the care they need or make the best choices for their health,” Clegg said. “Election outcomes shouldn’t have this type of impact on people’s lives. People shouldn’t wake up one morning and find that getting the method of birth control they want or need is now out of their hands. These are personal decisions and shouldn’t be subject to political whims.”

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The Supreme Court in 2022 reversed Roe v. Wade, leaving decisions about whether abortion is legal up to the states. While Maine passed laws increasing access to abortion, 21 states either banned abortion outright or placed strict restrictions on abortion care.

The first Trump administration, which ran from 2017-2020, instituted a gag order on what abortion clinics could say about abortion care to their patients, resulting in a cut in federal funding to Planned Parenthood.

In addition to the interest in long-acting contraceptives, the number of vasectomy consultations, 26 in the first two weeks of November, had already surpassed Planned Parenthood of Northern New England’s monthly average of 23.

Also, Planned Parenthood has experienced an increase in patients reaching out about the potential for reduced access to gender-affirming care during the Trump administration, although there was no data released about an increase in these concerns.

This story will be updated.

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Key takeaways from Maine’s new climate action plan

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Key takeaways from Maine’s new climate action plan


Wind Farm Maine

Wind turbines line a ridge on Stetson Mountain in 2009, in Washington County. Robert F. Bukaty/Associated Press, file

The Maine Climate Council is scheduled to release the state’s new climate action plan on Thursday, delivering an ambitious blueprint for how policymakers can accelerate the state’s transition to a clean energy economy and prepare for the impacts of climate change.

The plan, approved by the council at its October meeting, builds on the state’s original 2020 plan, Maine Won’t Wait. But the updated version focuses more than its predecessor on adaptations to the changing climate, building and industrial energy efficiency, and ensuring that all Mainers benefit from the climate actions outlined in the plan.

The plan doesn’t include many specific cost estimates, but notes that the cost of doing nothing would be much higher. It cites the $90 million in public infrastructure damage caused by last winter’s back-to-back storms, the kind of extreme weather events projected to become more frequent and ferocious due to climate change.

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The report identifies potential sources of funding to implement its recommendations, including the state budget, federal grants from the Inflation Reduction Act, private investment in clean energy projects, green bonds to finance climate-related projects and even implementation of a carbon pricing mechanism.

The plan now heads to Gov. Janet Mills, who appointed the first Maine Climate Council and will be on hand Thursday for the report’s release, and the Legislature, which is likely to consider some of these proposals in the upcoming legislative session.

Here are the major takeaways of Maine Won’t Wait 2.0.

• Maine’s ambitious emission reduction goals are reaffirmed.

The updated plan lays out how the state can help prevent the Earth from overheating by sticking to its original greenhouse gas goals: cut carbon emissions by 45% from 1990 levels by 2030 and by 80% by 2050, and achieve carbon neutrality by 2045.

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The plan prioritizes the rapid expansion of renewable energy sources, such as solar, wind, and hydropower, with an aim to reduce the state’s reliance on burning fossil fuels that create heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

It also maintains the state’s previous goal to generate 80% electricity from renewable sources by 2030. Maine is at 55% now.

• Maine will continue to promote the widespread adoption of electric vehicles, including cars, trucks and buses, to reduce transportation-related emissions. But the shift to electrified transportation would occur at a slower pace than laid out in the first climate action plan.

The state’s new goal calls for 150,000 light-duty EVs and 3,000 heavy-duty EVs on the roads by 2030. The 2020 plan called for 219,000 light-duty and 5,000 heavy-duty EVs, but the state has fallen short of those goals. Maine currently has 17,492 electric vehicles.

To reduce “range anxiety” – the concern that there is not enough charging capacity to support longe trips – the plan calls for creating 700 publicly funded fast-charging EV ports by 2028. Maine now has 273.

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The new plan emphasizes efficiency measures in buildings and industries to cut energy consumption. It encourages clean heating and cooling methods, such as a heat pump system, and adoption of new building codes and efficiency standards.

New goals include reducing commercial building energy demand by 10% by 2030, improving industrial process efficiency by 1% a year by 2030 and weatherizing 35,000 homes by 2030. Maine has weatherized 11,472 to date.

While calling for measures to slow climate change, the plan also emphasizes the need to prepare for the inevitable impacts, including sea-level rise, extreme weather events, and coastal erosion, and the need to protect critical infrastructure, natural resources and communities.

It includes strategies to protect Maine’s coastal communities and the working waterfront from sea-level rise and storm surges, such as elevating infrastructure, restoring coastal ecosystems, the use of incentives and fast-track permits, and new flood control measures.

The plan promotes carbon sequestration as part of the solution by recognizing the key role of Maine forests, wetlands and eel grass beds in trapping carbon and keeping the greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere. It  promotes the purchase, protection and restoration of such carbon sinks.

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Equity and social justice will be factored into the state’s responses to climate change. The plan emphasizes the importance of ensuring that the benefits of climate action are shared across all communities in Maine and addresses the disproportionate impact of climate change on marginalized communities.

The plan includes a number of goals to achieve by 2030, including 40,000 heat pumps installed in low-income households, 10,000 low- to middle-income homes weatherized and the creation of 1,500 energy-efficient affordable housing units. It also calls for EV rebates, rooftop solar installations or community solar projects and resilience grants to be directed to less affluent households and communities.

The plan identifies opportunities to create green jobs to spark economic growth through investments in clean energy, energy efficiency and climate resilience.

It sets a new goal to create 30,000 clean energy jobs by 2030. Maine has 15,557 now.

More forests, wetlands and working farms would be protected from development to offset the state’s carbon emissions, provide wildlife habitat and clean water, and help the tourism and natural resource industries. Maine has struggled to fund land acquisition at the rate sought by the council.

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The plan maintains the 2020 goal to conserve 30% of Maine lands by 2030. A little more than 22.2% of lands in Maine are protected now. Maine now conserves about 50,000 acres a year, but would need to protect 250,000 more acres a year if it hopes to hit that goal.



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