Central Maine News: Sept 28, 2015

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

Authorities say a New Gloucester woman left her young son sleeping in her car and then reported it stolen. 34-year-old Samantha Lovering was charged Saturday with endangering the welfare of a child. The Cumberland County Sheriff's office says she was intoxicated when she flagged down a deputy on Main Street in Gray late Sunday night and reported that her car had been stolen.

The car was later found, with Lovering's seven-year-old son asleep in the back. Authorities say the car was not stolen, and that Lovering left the child alone for several hours. (AP)

A Lisbon man has died after the all-terrain vehicle he was driving slid down an embankment and rolled over him. The crash happened Saturday afternoon in Corinna. Police say the 61-year-old man was pronounced dead at the scene. His wife was also riding on the ATV and was taken to a hospital. She's expected to recover from her injuries. Police say there was no shoulder where the couple was riding and the ATV apparently slid down a hill toward a boggy area. Both the man and the woman were wearing helmets. (AP)

Gov. Paul LePage isn't showing interest in sponsoring a bill by the Lewiston mayor to create an online registry of residents receiving welfare benefits. Peter Steele, LePage's communication director, tells the Sun Journal there's no plan for the governor to submit such a bill. Mayor Robert Macdonald said in a column in the Twin City Times that he plans to submit the bill. He told the Sun Journal the idea wasn't to publicly embarrass welfare recipients, but to make the information available to the public to fight welfare fraud and abuse. Macdonald says he submitted the proposal to local lawmakers, who had until Friday to submit proposed bill titles for legislation to be considered in January. (AP)

Auburn is Maine's first municipality to sign onto the "Hire-A-Vet" program. The campaign endorsed by Maine Gov. Paul LePage aims to have 100 employers commit to recruiting veterans with a goal of hiring 100 of them over the next 100 days. Auburn Mayor Jonathan LaBonte says the city manager and assistant city manager, both of whom are veterans, wasted little time in establishing the city as the first municipality to endorse the program. He says Auburn looks forward "to bringing more veterans to our team." The program, which kicked off on Labor Day, provides support for employers including a network of state and federal agencies, resources and nonprofits; education on military language and culture; and assistance with recruiting, hiring, and retention. (AP)

Temple family has something new on Maine’s syrup market, birch syrup. It all started from a simple curiosity into what the family could be producing on their 35 acres of forested land without cutting. It evolved from there and had has turned into the first commercially available production of birch syrup in Maine. Last spring the Temple Tappers took home first prize in taste for first-run birch syrup at the International Birch Syrup and Sap Conference sponsored by Cornell University Extension Service at Paul Smith’s College in New York. (centralmaine.com)

A new study suggests that many women with early-stage breast cancer can skip chemotherapy without hurting their odds of beating the disease. The study used a gene-activity test to gauge each patient's risk. In the study, led by a doctor at Montefiore Medical Center in New York, women who skipped chemo based on the test had less than a 1 percent chance of cancer recurring far away, such as the liver or lungs, within the next five years. Study results are in Monday's New England Journal of Medicine. (AP)

Seventeen Syrians have drowned after their boat sank off the Turkish coast on its way to the Greek island of Leros. An official says the Turkish Coast Guard rescued 20 other Syrian refugees early Sunday. (AP)

Resolving the Syrian conflict is one of the big issues some 160 world leaders will be discussing at the U.N General Assembly, which opens Monday. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who'll be attending the three-day summit says, although Moscow has no plans "right now" to put combat troops on the ground in Syria, it'll continue backing the Syrian government. Iran's president says Syrian leader Bashar Assad must remain in power to fight the Islamic State group. (AP)

Police in northern Thailand say a man stormed into a neighbor's home, hacked five children to death and inflicted multiple stab wounds on a pregnant woman who was watching them. Police say the 24-year-old man, who had a history of mental illness and received regular treatment for depression, became agitated by the noise coming from his neighbor's home in a village outside the city of Chiang Mai. Police say the man grabbed a 19-inch kitchen knife and went after the children first. (AP)

Royal Dutch Shell says it's ending exploration in Arctic waters off Alaska's coast following disappointing results from an exploratory well backed by billions in investment and years of work. The announcement is a huge blow to Shell, which was counting on offshore drilling in Alaska to help it drive future revenue. Environmentalists had tried repeatedly to block the project. (AP)