FALMOUTH

Town, Time Warner iron out 10-year contract proposal

Town officials have negotiated a new, 10-year contract with Time Warner Cable that will provide $87,000 for new broadcast equipment for community-access television Channel 2.

The town will receive $57,000 this year, $15,000 in 2014 and $15,000 in 2017, the town’s attorney, Jeffrey Piampiano of Drummond Woodsum, told the Town Council on Monday.

The town received an additional $85,000 last year to cover past-due capital grants from the cable company, Piampiano said.

The council is expected to vote on the contract proposal on July 25.

LEWISTON

State’s medical examiner IDs woman who was found dead

A woman whose decomposing body was found in an apartment building in Lewiston has been identified as Danita Brown, 38, of New Gloucester.

The Maine Medical Examiner’s Office made positive identification and did an autopsy Wednesday. Officials declined to say whether any cause of death was determined.

Police described the woman’s death as suspicious.

State police said one of the building’s tenants, Robert Ryder, 20, was taken into custody Tuesday and held in the Androscoggin County jail on a probation violation.

The probation violation is unrelated to the body’s discovery, said Steve McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety. Police, who were alerted late Monday, said the woman had been dead for weeks.

BRUNSWICK

Amtrak’s planned facility will be discussed again tonight

A second public forum on a proposed layover and maintenance facility for Downeaster trains will be held at 7 tonight in the Town Council chamber at Brunswick Station.

The meeting will be hosted by state Sen. Stan Gerzofsky, D-Brunswick, and will include representatives of the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority and the Maine Department of Transportation. The two agencies are preparing to extend Amtrak service north of Portland, with stops in Freeport and Brunswick, in late 2012.

Neighbors opposed the site selected initially for the layover facility, on a narrow strip of land amid neighborhoods off Route 1 in West Brunswick. Now, other sites are being considered, including one on Farley Road in East Brunswick.

ELLSWORTH

In resentencing, sex offender given 27 years in prison

A former music teacher who was convicted of molesting students and had his sentence overturned has been resentenced.

In place of the 29-year sentence that was vacated by the Maine Supreme Judicial Court last month, Theodore Stanislaw, 52, of Blue Hill was sentenced to 27 years in prison.

Stanislaw was convicted and sentenced in January 2010 for a variety of charges that he molested girls from the ages of 10 to 14 from 2002 to 2008.

Last month, the supreme court ruled that Superior Court Justice Kevin Cuddy misapplied sentencing guidelines for Stanislaw.

The Bangor Daily News said that earlier this month, Cuddy sentenced Stanislaw again, this time to 27 years in prison.

PORTLAND

Ahoy there! Cruise ships will bring thousands this week

Four cruise ships carrying a total of nearly 2,500 passengers are visiting Portland this week.

The Grand Caribe was in port Wednesday with plans to depart today. The small luxury cruise ship, operated by American Canadian Caribbean Line, is carrying 100 passengers.

On Friday, two American Cruise Line ships will arrive. The American Glory and the Independence, carrying about 150 passengers each, are using Portland as the starting point for eight-day cruises along the Maine coast.

The Enchantment of the Seas will come to port Saturday morning carrying about 2,250 passengers and 870 crew members. The Royal Caribbean International ship will leave Saturday evening, bound for Bar Harbor.

AUGUSTA

More appointments made to economic development

The LePage administration announced two new appointees to the Department of Economic and Community Development on Wednesday.

Deb Neuman, a radio show host and former director of the Target Technology Incubator at the University of Maine, will be deputy commissioner in the department, according to a press release. Neuman will lead a unit that aims to connect businesses with state resources and help them with problems they encounter.

Denise Garland has been appointed director of the Office of Business and Community Development. Garland served previously in the Department of Administrative and Financial Services and the Secretary of State’s Office. Garland will be responsible for consolidating licensing and permitting for businesses and heading the department’s red tape hotline.

George Gervais, who joined the Department of Economic and Community Development in 2008, was recently appointed and confirmed as commissioner of the department.

BANGOR

Vandals wreck garden space on senior center’s rooftop

Officials at a senior citizens center say a rooftop garden was destroyed by vandals.

Monday night or early Tuesday, the vandals destroyed tomato plants, part of a carrot bed and a new irrigation system at the Hammond Street Senior Center’s “Still Growing” rooftop garden.

The center’s Deanna Partridge said the vandals also threw several bags of organic compost, tomato plant cages and a wooden trellis from the roof of the center, in Bangor’s historic Merrill Bank building.

The Bangor Daily News said the rooftop garden was honored last year by Ashoka’s Changemakers of Washington for mobilizing citizens to build a better community. The award came with a $5,000 grant, which was used to help install the irrigation system.

GILSUM, N.H.

Amber alert ends as police take ex-convict into custody

An ex-convict wanted for questioning in a New York house fire that killed his mother and two others was taken into custody Wednesday in New Hampshire and his girlfriend and their infant son were found safe, authorities said.

Officers had been searching for Matthew Slocum since the fire early Wednesday in White Creek, N.Y., along with his girlfriend and son, whom they said he may have been holding against their will. He was found in Gilsum, N.H., where his abandoned car had been discovered hours earlier,  Massachusetts State Police said.

Slocum is the son of Lisa Harrington, who died in the fire along with her husband, Dan, and his son Josh. Amber alerts had been issued in New York and New England for his girlfriend, 25-year-old Loretta Colegrove, and their infant son, Raymond.

He was taken into custody in a home in Gilsum and the alerts were canceled, said David Procopio, a Massachusetts State Police spokesman.

WCVB-TV in Boston reported that investigators tracked down Slocum in Gilsum and, after several hours of negotiations with police, he freed the woman and the infant he had been holding.
A short time later, Slocum surrendered.

— From staff and news services