Things You Need to Know: Sun Glare Cause of School Bus/Truck Crash
Here are the things you need to know today......
One person died after a car rear ended a tractor trailer yesterday in Auburn. According to the Sun Journal the car passenger was injured and the truck driver was ok.
Claude Caron, the former owner of Gerard's Pizza in Gardiner, has bought it back. According to centralmaine.com he sold it to Jeff McCormick years ago but passed away this year. Caron hopes to have Gerard's open again in November.
Sun glare caused a truck to rear end a bus in Waterville yesterday. Centralmaine.com reports some of the kids did say they were sore, but there were not sever injuries.
Augusta City Council voting tomorrow on helping the Augusta Housing Authority building a new 34 unit affordable housing project on the old Statler site. Centralmaine.com reports some neighbors do have concerns.
Officials in Whitefield are still looking at safety issues in regards to members of the Amish community and vehicles. Centralmaine.com reports there has been two accidents recently involving horse-drawn buggies and the goal is to make the roads safe for all.
From the Associated Press:
A Republican state lawmaker says he has unenrolled from the GOP to focus on solutions over party. State Rep. Norman Higgins says he will serve the rest of his second term as an independent. Higgins was among the only House Republicans who voted in favor of a budget before the three-day government shutdown. He described the Legislature as a "partisan area where outcomes are measured in wins and losses." The House has seen several members change their party affiliations in the past year.
A 27-year-old Maine man says his brother was one of the more than 300 people killed in a truck bomb in Mogadishu, Somalia. Iman Osman says the explosion was so powerful that debris killed his brother, who was 1,000 feet away from the truck bomb. He says his brother had fled to Kenya, but returned to Somalia last year hoping things would be better.
Lawyers for a Portland, Maine, landlord convicted of code violations following the city's deadliest fire in decades have dropped out of the case. Landlord Gregory Nisbet was acquitted of six counts of manslaughter but was convicted of lesser charges and sought a new trial. The Portland Press Herald reports Nisbet's attorneys asked to be removed from the appeal because they weren't being paid and the judge granted their request, giving Nisbet or a new attorney until Nov. 10 to file a brief.
Maine's largest city is moving forward with a tech project that will upgrade the city's streetlights with Wi-Fi and better lighting. The Portland Press Herald reports the City Council voted unanimously Monday to approve the $8.5 million project. Portland will purchase lampposts from Central Maine Power Co. and outfit them with energy efficient LED lights and Wi-Fi technology.
President Donald Trump is backing away from his positive response to a bipartisan Senate proposal to stabilize health insurance markets unsettled by his order to end "Obamacare" low-income subsidies. Speaking in the Rose Garden, Trump had called the deal reached by Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington "a short term solution." But hours later the White House said Trump opposes the Alexander-Murray plan.
A U.S. judge has blocked the third version of a travel ban issued by President Donald Trump this year. The ruling in Hawaii on Tuesday says the policy has the same problems as previous versions and would separate families. The White House has called the ruling "dangerously flawed" and said it "undercuts the president's efforts to keep the American people safe." The Justice Department says it will appeal.
Over several nights in September, some 10,000 men, women and children fled areas under Islamic State control, hurrying through fields in northern Syria and risking fire from government troops to reach a province held by al-Qaida-linked militants. For battle-hardened jihadis fleeing with the civilians, the escape to Idlib province presented the opportunity to continue fighting alongside an extremist group that shares much of the Islamic State's ideology _ and has benefited from its downfall.
President Donald Trump has pulled bereaved military families into a painful political fight of his own making, going so far as to cite the death of his chief of staff's son in Afghanistan to question whether other presidents did enough to honor the military dead. He's boasted that "I think I've called every family of someone who's died," though The Associated Press has found some cases in which he did not.
President Xi Jinping says China "has the resolve, the confidence and the ability" to defeat any Taiwanese bid for formal independence. He said Beijing would continue to pursue peaceful means to bring under control the self-governing island but that China would never allow the permanent separation of "any part" of China. Xi spoke at the opening of the Communist Party's national congress.