These are some of the stories central Maine is talking about today.

Schools will have to hold lockdown drills under a new Maine law. The bill went into law last week. It directs the Maine Department of Education to rewrite it rules to require schools to hold lockdown drills in addition to fire and other emergency evacuation drills. The department supported the bill, telling lawmakers that many school administrative units already conduct lockdown drills. The number of drills that schools are required to hold each year won't change. The Maine Fire Chiefs' Association said it supported lockdown drills but expressed concern about schools potentially reducing the number of fire drills they conduct. (AP)

U.S. ski resorts are being warned to check more than 100 chairlifts after engineers identified a design flaw believed to have contributed to an accident that injured seven people at Sugarloaf. Partek Ski Lifts issued the warning operators using certain lifts to check safety components and to pay attention to a particular electrical switch. Engineers believe the wrong switch was used on a lift, causing the mechanical failure last weekend. Seven skiers were hurt. The National Ski Areas Association believes about 170 lifts could be affected by the design issue. There are about 3,500 lifts in the U.S. (AP)

A third effort is growing to get marijuana legalization on Maine's ballot. Democratic state Rep. Mark Dion of Portland says he is talking to other lawmakers about co-sponsoring his bill. The bill proposes to ask residents about creation, regulation and taxation of a structure for recreational use of marijuana. It includes a proposed 10 % tax rate for recreational marijuana. There are also two groups who are organizing petition drives to get legalization on the ballot. A Marijuana Policy Project campaign and a push by Legalize Maine both seek to get the question on the 2016 ballot. (AP)

Officials say Maine's unemployment rate ticked down to 5 percent last month. The Maine Department of Labor said that the state's jobless rate declined slightly from 5.2 percent in January and 5.9 percent a year ago. The number of residents who were unemployed was down by more than 7,000 over the year to 34,400 last month. The national unemployment rate was 5.5 percent in February, down from 5.7 percent in January. Maine's unemployment rate last month was higher than those in New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts. But Maine's was lower than Connecticut and Rhode Island, with those two states reporting rates of more than 6 percent. (AP)

Tuesday is the deadline for a preliminary nuclear agreement between Iran, the U.S. and other Western nations involved in negotiations in Switzerland. Western officials say Iran is considering further cuts to its uranium enrichment program but is pushing back on how long it must limit technology it could use to make nuclear arms. There still are substantial differences between the sides. (AP)

A growing number of nations and airlines are changing cockpit protocols after the recent crash of a passenger plane in the French Alps. Australia is the latest to mandate that at least two people remain in cockpits at all times during a flight. Prosecutors blame a 27-year-old Germanwings co-pilot for crashing the Airbus into a mountain last week, killing 150 people. (AP)

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