Bangor Daily News

Icy Course Tries Skiers' Skills Biathletes Say Conditions Make Trails Extremely Fast

FORT KENT - For the better part of the week, this supposed winter wonderland has been cursed (unless you're a spectator) with mild temperatures, melting snow, and Maine's most unmistakable sign of spring: Mud. The access road into the Maine Winter Sports Center? Mud.

Parents Meet Up with Biathlete Son

FORT KENT - The last time Bill and Carol Beste saw their son Jacob was in September when the 25-year-old biathlete dropped off his cat before hitting the World Cup circuit. On Thursday morning, the Bestes were in the stands at the 10th Mountain Division Ski Center to watch Jacob compete as part of the U.S. biathlon team in the 2004 Biathlon World Cup in Fort Kent, taking place March 3-6.

Correcting the Record

Umpi Students Offer Massages to Athletes

FORT KENT - It does not get more hands-on than this. Students in the University of Maine at Presque Isle's athletic training education program are in Fort Kent all week offering free therapeutic massages to competitors in the 2004 Biathlon World Cup. The UMPI students and faculty set up shop in the third-floor reception area in the athlete's housing on the University of Maine at Fort Kent campus. In all, 16 students in the UMPI program will alternate this week, offering sports massages to bia...

World Cup Notebook

FORT KENT - For all those with the slightest drop of Swedish blood in their veins, the place to be tonight is New Sweden. The tiny northern Maine town will welcome the nine members of the Swedish biathlon team here competing this week in the 2004 Biathlon World Cup. Also in town is Maggi Mickelson, governor of the Swedish state of Jemptland.

Fort Kent Lights Set Town Aglow

FORT KENT - The installation of thousands of lights - an idea designed to create a destination community - has transformed the town's business district into a festive center for the Biathlon World Cup week. Each day more lights are added to the estimated 400,000 lights installed in Fort Kent during the last three weeks. Such an illumination was done in Park City, Utah, during the 2002 Olympics.

Biathlon Brings Many Languages to County

FORT KENT - Bilingualism is a way of life in the St. John Valley, where French and English are spoken. But few if any residents were ready for the 14 different languages, and an unknown number of dialects, being heard around the Biathlon World Cup venue and on the street this week. The International Biathlon Union itself has three official languages, English, German and Russian. Each team in the competition is expected to carry someone fluent in at least one of those languages.

U.S. Consul General Ties the Knot Under Biathlon Tent

FORT KENT - The U.S. consul general in Quebec City was married Thursday with a tent full of Biathlon World Cup spectators as witnesses. Susan Keogh, 60, of Quebec City was married to Robert J. Delaney, 50, a Canadian also from Quebec City, by Maine state Sen. John L. Martin, D-Eagle Lake, at about 2:30 p.m. in a large tent erected for visitors to Fort Kent for the biathlon competitions. Martin is a notary public.

Presque Isle Pupils' Hats to Show Biathlon Spirit

PRESQUE ISLE - The Biathlon World Cup's Voyageur mascot won't be the only one sporting a bright red cap during activities today in Fort Kent. Some 100 seventh-graders, teachers and parents from Skyway Middle School in Presque Isle are donning the tasseled hats to show their biathlon spirit and to celebrate the history of the event.

Bia Reports Traffic's Up by Nearly 20% This Year

BANGOR - Officials from Bangor International Airport announced Thursday that the airport posted a nearly 20 percent increase in passenger traffic over the last year. The number of seats flown in and out of the Bangor airport in January of this year was 17.6 percent higher than that total for January 2003, according to a statement issued by BIA Director Rebecca Hupp and Assistant Director Tony Caruso.

Maine Businesses Adopt Wellness Models Bangor Chamber Hails Health Plans

March in Maine is a mucky, murky, muddy time - if the land's not still locked in a wintry deep freeze. But midmorning on Tuesday, a gabby group of co-workers from Northeastern Log Homes in Kenduskeag were enjoying a brisk, head- clearing trek up the Ames Road, a paved, dead-end street that runs nearby and offers one of the few solid footholds in the area.

Getting Care Sooner

The most startling figure in the Maine Children's Alliance annual survey called Kids Count is that the number of childhood hospitalizations for mental health or substance abuse rose by approximately 40 percent between 1999 and 2002, the last year for which data is available. Nearly 2,500 hospitalizations a year for this range of illnesses is not only a failure of less dramatic treatment but a hugely expensive means for delivering care. The Maine Kids Count arrives at an excellent time - just ...

Biathlon Boon

Although many Mainers may still not know what a biathlon is, the northern part of the state has been in the biathlon spotlight this week and, by all accounts, it has shone. On the first day of racing in Fort Kent, the crowd gathered to watch the women's 7.5 kilometer sprint was "the largest biathlon crowd ever in the United States," other than for Olympic events, according to a spokesman for U.S. Biathlon.

Narcotics Local, Global

We have been hearing a lot about narcotics lately. The Bangor Daily News ran weekend stories on methadone's successes and failures in Maine, National Pubic Radio is running a "Heroin in America" series on the exploding problem of heroin use among our nation's youth, Sen. Susan Collins has even weighed in on the issue, pleading for a new approach to managing the state's addiction to narcotics. I was shocked to learn that a bag of 90 percent pure heroin costs children in South Boston $4 a bag, ...

Better Transportation

The Maine Department of Transportation has spent about $2 million on a study of alternate transportation possibilities from Bangor to Trenton. The object is to relieve traffic congestion between Bangor and Mount Desert, Acadia National Park. A national park visitors center with intermodal connections is planned for Trenton. The transportation possibilities studied over the past two years have been narrowed to include: 1) light rail from Bangor International Airport through Bangor, across the ...

Truck-Driver Alertness

Forgetting about the human factor, and boastfully writing a letter praising the new hours of service rule, Robert Johnson, assistant to the secretary of the Department of Transportation in Washington, D.C. (BDN letter, Feb. 10), is innocuously unaware of the real world of transporting goods across the country. The new rules are being sold to us as a lifesaving cure-all for fatigue- related crashes. It is hard for us who have experienced the pain of losing loved ones in a truck crash to see bu...

Can You See the Link?

With all forms of immorality being glorified through movies, the Internet, adult entertainment establishments and simulated sex acts while dancing on TV music channels, is there any link with the alarming increase in women being beaten, raped, murdered and young girls and boys being sexually molested? Think about it.

Gun Issue Scares Dems

This is the "gun show loophole." I collect antique military rifles that were built by private companies, and a private owner in Fort Kent has one I want. We arrange to meet at the Bangor Gun Show and complete the sale. What part of the Constitution gives the federal government, rather than the state, the right to control the transfer of private property between two citizens of a state, within the borders of that state?

Baldacci Powerball Decision Draws Fire Casino Backers Accuse Governor of Hypocrisy

AUGUSTA - If Maine becomes the 25th state to join the multimillion-dollar Powerball lottery, players here face 120 million- to-1 odds of winning the jackpot. Before his decision Wednesday, odds that Gov. John E. Baldacci would do an about-face and oppose Powerball were thought to nearly equal the likelihood of winning the game's grand prize.