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QUOTE OF THE DAY

“Pavers from a shipwreck are generally more intriguing than pavers from Home Depot.”

— Benjamin Ford, a lawyer representing JJM in a bid for legal salvage rights to a sunken ship off Bar Harbor. The Southwest Harbor company says the ship went down in 1890 with a cargo of granite paving stones and little else.

TODAY’S TOP STORIES

The Trump administration gave Maine 10 days to change its transgender athlete rules. The proposal, and a finding that a southern Maine high school and the state’s governing body for school sports violated Title IX, the 1972 law barring sex-based discrimination in schools, escalates a standoff between the Trump administration and Maine over the state’s policy allowing transgender girls to compete in girls’ sports. 

A former Maine lawmaker found a bone marrow donor after her leukemia diagnosis. Maggie O’Neil, who learned she has the rare cancer known as AML in December, does not know the person who agreed to donate.

More bodies are being abandoned with the Maine medical examiner. In recent years, an average of 10 bodies a year go unclaimed by next of kin, compared with two or three in 2015.

The local solar debate has become heated in Maine. Community solar farms have multiplied across Maine since 2019, and with support from the state government, they particularly flourished in 2024, but they aren’t always a welcome development. 

Maine asked a judge to let it name a sunken ship off Bar Harbor. The unusual move is in response to a Southwest Harbor business trying to establish salvage rights to the ship and its contents.

NEWS FROM AROUND THE STATE

MAINE IN PICTURES

The Northern Maine Ice Busters created the world’s first-ever international ice carousel between the United States and Canada on Saturday. The carousel is propelled by boat motors, pictured here, under the ice. Credit: Christopher Bouchard / BDN

FROM THE OPINION PAGES

An attendee at the school board meeting for Regional School Unit 40 in Union on June 6, 2024, holds trans flags to show support for retaining the district’s transgender students policy. Credit: Jules Walkup / BDN

“We don’t believe it is ‘anti-trans’ to demand fairness and safety for women and girls.”

Opinion: We’re lifelong feminists and we oppose Maine’s transgender student athlete policy

LIFE IN MAINE

This new ice carousel in northern Maine may have shattered five world records. If the disc is verified to have been created on a river, it could be classified as the world’s largest by the World Ice Carousel Association — a real organization.

A legislative committee voted against a bill to shorten coyote season. The bill sponsored by Rep. Nina Milliken, D-Blue Hill, would have established a six-month hunting season from Oct. 1 through March 31.