Maine

The obituary in the York Weekly was heartbreaking. Just 17, Bethany Fritz was a high school senior hoping to study art at the University of Maine. She lived in an affluent coastal community of tidal pools, winding roads and thick stands of maple and oak. She loved her family and friends, her two cats and her dog, Farleigh. Unmentioned was her cause of death: an overdose of heroin.

Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul has a couple of things going for him at this weekend's Republican caucuses: a band of highly motivated supporters and a natural appeal to Maine's like-minded independents. His stop in the state earlier this week also made him the only presidential contender from either party to visit before the caucuses. "I think that [because] he's paid attention to Maine, he'll be rewarded," R. Kenneth Lindell, Paul's campaign coordinator in Maine, said Thursday.

Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins, facing a tough reelection fight, urged GOP presidential contender John McCain on Friday to stop making automated calls into her state linking Democratic nominee Barack Obama to a 1960s radical. "These kind of tactics have no place in Maine politics," said Collins' spokesman, Kevin Kelley. "Sen. Collins urges the McCain campaign to stop these calls immediately."

Maine on Thursday became the first state to officially decline to comply with the Real ID Act of 2005, the federal law that critics say lays the foundation for creation of a national identity card. Both houses of the state Legislature -- voting unanimously in the Senate and 137 to 4 in the House -- approved a resolution rejecting compliance with the act, which requires states to replace their driver's licenses by May 2008 with forgery-proof scannable cards embedded with private information.

Two fishermen were presumed dead after the Coast Guard suspended its search for their vessel off the coast. Wood debris and a distress beacon spotted off the shoals of Cape Elizabeth were believed to be from the Lady Luck, a 52-foot fishing boat based in Newburyport that has been missing since Thursday.

When Maine's first Whole Foods Market opens next week, it will have something no other Whole Foods store has: live lobsters. The Austin, Texas-based natural foods grocery chain announced in June that it would stop selling live lobsters and crabs in the name of crustacean compassion. But it's making an exception in Maine, a state synonymous with lobster. Whole Foods Market Inc.

With a succession of four curved rooflines arching toward the southern sky before ending abruptly with walls of glass, the architecture is striking. But inside the new home of Maine's Holocaust and Human Rights Center, visitors may find what they see and hear even more moving. Survivors of the Nazi horrors and their liberators will appear on four screens to tell stories of what they experienced during those dark days.

Colby College in Waterville, Maine, is to receive a private art collection valued at $100 million that includes works by such greats as Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper and Georgia O'Keeffe. The 500 paintings, prints and sculptures from Colby supporters Peter H. and Paula Crane Lunder represents one of the most important collections of American art ever to be donated to a liberal arts college, said Colby President William D. Adams.

Two brothers died in separate highway crashes hours apart in a coastal town. Adrian Basford, 52, died Saturday afternoon in Prospect when his motorcycle went out of control and struck an embankment. State police said Basford was traveling too fast while rounding a curve. His brother, Wallace, 48, died just before midnight when his van hit a wall as he was coming off a bridge. Police said when he was notified of his brother's death, he said their father had recently died too.

kennebunkport, maine -- President Bush, who prides himself on building personal ties to foreign leaders, launched a bit of hamburger diplomacy Saturday as he welcomed the newly elected president of France to an informal lunch and private chat at the Bush family compound here.