Things You Need to Know: Housing Project on Augusta’s East Side Approved By Planning Board
Here are the things you need to know today......
A 16 year old student at Camden Hills Regional High School recently wrote Gov. LePage over concerns about possible rules from the FCC on net neutrality. According to the Village Soup she felt the message might be more powerful coming from him. What she received in response was a printout of her email and a hand written message that said...'Pick up a book and read.'
Waterville city councilor voted to hold a special municipal election March 13 for voters have their say on doing away with AOS 92 for the Waterville, Winslow and Vassalboro schools. Centralmaine.com reports the AOS board has approved it and sent it to state for its approval.
Augusta Planning Board approved the Augusta Housing Authority plan for affordable housing at Kennebec Lockes on the east side. Centralmaine.com reports the has been opposed by many in the neighborhood.
From the Associated Press:
More than a week of extreme cold is going to give way briefly in northern New England, but it's going to be replaced by a howling snowstorm. The National Weather Service says the snow will arrive Thursday, with 3 to 6 inches on the Maine-New Hampshire border and 5 to 10 inches in eastern Maine.
Maine is auctioning off 10 of its coveted moose permits for next fall's hunting season. The Maine Department of Inland Fisheries And Wildlife says it will give the permits to applicants who submit the highest bids. The moose hunt happens in the fall every year and is limited to hunters who win a special lottery.
Lawmakers are set to consider a Maine bill that would make signature gathering at polling places a crime. Secretary of State Matt Dunlap says his department's bill is not meant to kill the citizen initiative process as critics have contended. The legislation includes a provision to prohibit exit polling, signature gathering, electioneering and charitable activities within 50 feet of the entrance to polling places. The bill is set for a Wednesday hearing.
Maine fishing regulators are shutting down a pair of scallop fishing areas to protect the health of the population. Scallops are one of the most valuable marine resources in Maine on a per-pound basis. The Maine Department of Marine Resources says it's closing Hussey Sound in Casco Bay and Rogue Island Harbor as of Jan. 1.
South Korea says it has begun preliminary contacts with North Korea on a reopened cross-border communication system. The South's Unification Ministry says the two Koreas were communicating via the channel at the border village of Panmunjom. North Korea says leader Kim Jong Un reopened the channel after South Korea offered talks on how to cooperate with the North during next month's Winter Olympics in the South.
President Donald Trump is boasting that he has a bigger and more powerful "nuclear button" than North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The president's tweet comes in response to Kim's New Year's address, in which he said he has a "nuclear button" on his office desk. Trump is mocking that assertion, writing, "Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!"
In 2009, millions around Iran turned out in protests demanding change after the allegedly rigged re-election of a hard-line president. It was an earthquake at the time, the first major challenge to the country's cleric-led rule since it was installed in 1979. Now a new wave of protests is blazing around Iran, this one with smaller crowds, but more widespread, angry over a failed economy and more willing to demand the whole system be brought down.
In the wake of his announcement late last year that the U.S. would consider Jerusalem the capital of Israel, President Donald Trump is threatening to cut off U.S. aid money to the Palestinian Authority. In a pair of tweets, Trump said Tuesday that the U.S. pays "the Palestinians HUNDRED OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect." He is asking why the U.S. should make "any of these massive future payments" when the Palestinians are "no longer willing to talk peace."
The U.S. Homeland Security secretary said the Trump administration would consider immigration legislation that includes a pathway to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of young people who were brought into the country illegally as children. But emphasized no decision has been made and a border wall remains a top priority. Kirstjen Nielsen says Congress is considering at least three options, including citizenship or permanent legal status for those people.
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