Bangor Daily News

Maine’s first Juneteenth celebration since President Joe Biden declared the day as a federal holiday on June 17 was held Friday at Chamberlain Freedom Park in Brewer.

Maine’s summer tourism season has a new attraction this year with the first year of legal recreational marijuana sales expected to bring more people to the state, following trends in Colorado and California.

The owner of a popular local retail chain that abruptly fired staff in May at a New Hampshire store apologized Friday and said the company has offered everyone their jobs back.

A California company will bring a $300 million data center to a Millinocket site that once held the world’s largest paper mill, in the culmination of years of effort by leaders from across the Katahdin region.

Rising sea levels caused by overall warming temperatures and stronger and wetter storms are making coastal areas around the world more vulnerable to floods. Affordable housing sites that are projected to become more prone to such flooding can be found in six counties in Maine — Cumberland, Knox, Penobscot, Sagadahoc, Washington and York, according to an analysis by Climate Central, a not-for-profit science and journalism organization.

Elevated sales of both cookout foods and grills are expected to continue this Memorial Day, with both rising quickly last year because more people were cooking at home during the pandemic. Memorial Day weekend is one of the biggest weekends of the year for consumer purchases and many will be putting appliances they purchased earlier in the pandemic to use.

Thanks largely to an influx of approximately $20 million in federal loans that hundreds of Maine religious organizations received, and because of reduced operating costs from shutting down buildings and offices, most of Maine’s houses of worship have survived.

The department said the positive jobs trend in April reflects a more open economy and changes workers made during the pandemic, including a massive government intervention that led to trillions in stimulus. Billions of that filtered down to Maine.

A Hawaii-based defense contractor that also operates in Maine made illegal campaign contributions to support U.S. Sen. Susan Collins’ reelection effort last year, the FBI alleges in a recently unsealed search warrant.

Exact numbers are hard to come by, but state and local officials estimate Maine lost more than $30 million in docking fees and on-shore tourist spending in 2020 when the coronavirus pandemic canceled the entire season.