PORTLAND — Billy Johnson leaned back in his chair, held up his iPad and chided his classmate in a joking tone. “Ahmed’s just jealous because I write Arabic better than he does,” he said. Johnson – a blond-haired, football jersey-wearing junior at Deering High School – was one of nine students in the Arabic language […]

PORTLAND — State drug agents and city police raided a downtown apartment and arrested four people Monday afternoon on drug trafficking charges. The arrests capped a six-month investigation into the local distribution of heroin and crack cocaine. Cmdr. Scott Pelletier of the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency said Tuesday that police arrested Denise Parham, 54, who […]

PORTLAND — While the city has debated the future of open spaces such as Congress Square Plaza, improvements have quietly been made to a lesser-known space in the Oakdale neighborhood. The city is working to upgrade Longfellow Park, a third-of-an-acre triangular patch of grass, trees and walks bounded by Longfellow, Noyes and Oakdale streets. “It’s […]

PORTLAND — The sign at 15 Exchange St. was a gastronomic gauntlet. “Real food will be here in six days,” the wording in the window of b.good announced in late September. A few days later, the Boston burger company declared: “real food will be here today,” and the downtown lunch crowd was ready. Burgers made […]

PORTLAND — The City Council on Monday relaxed some food truck regulations that were adopted last year, but “misinterpreted” the intent of the task force that drafted them. In July, City Manager Mark Rees wrote a letter to food truck operators, soliciting feedback on the rules. Some complained that the rules banned food trucks from […]

PORTLAND — Twenty-five years ago this Friday, Maine’s most infamous drug smuggler received a headline-making criminal sentence that many considered a slap on the wrist. While several members of his marijuana-importing business were sentenced to years in prison, Harvey Prager lived in his Portland home, with his wife and children, and took care of dying AIDS […]

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PORTLAND — The School Department is seeking donations of musical instruments. The instruments will be collected from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday, Oct. 26, at Lincoln Middle School, 522 Stevens Ave. Donations can include stringed, brass, woodwind and percussion instruments, particularly saxophones, and smaller-sized string instruments for children.