Jvpk Appeals court orders judge to probe claims of juror bias in Boston Marathon bomber s case
GARDNERS, Pa. AP 鈥?Sam Cooper had just trekked 7 miles 11 kilometers through a rain-sodden stretch of the Appalachian Trail when he sat down outside a little country store in Pennsylvania to take on its ice cream challenge.Nearly 40 minutes and 2,500 calories later, the dairy farmer from Chapel Hill, Tennessee, was polishing off the final titanium sporkful of chocolate chip cookie dough on Tuesday and adding his name to the list of thru-hikers who have celebrated the trail halfway point by downing a half-gallon of ice cream.By the end Cooper, 32, whose trail name is Pie Top, was calling the experience pure misery. I don ;t think anybody <a href=https://www.stanleyus.us>stanley usa should be doing this, Cooper said cheerfully. This is not healthy at all. The ice cream challenge is thought to have begun more than four decades ago at the Pine Grove Furnace General Stor stanley quencher e in Gardners, a few miles north of th stanley mug e current true halfway point on the 2,197-mile 3,536-kilometer trail. Thru-hikers, as they ;re known, are the fraction of the trail 3 million annual visitors who attempt to walk its entire length in a single, continuous trip.As they slog their way north through Virginia and Maryland, the ice cream challenge is a regular topic of conversation among thru-hikers at shelters and campfires, said Stephan Berens, 49, a psychiatric nurse from Nuremberg, Germany.Berens, whose trail name is Speedy, polished off his black cherry and vanilla in about 25 minutes after completing 17 miles 27 kilom Ngsx Record number of NATO allies expected to hit defense spending target amid war in Ukraine
MILLINOCKET, Maine 鈥?Property taxes will decline slightly under a mill rate the Town Council voted 7-0 to accept on Thursday.The new mill rate, $29.60 per $1,000 of property valuation, represents a slight decline from last years mill rate of $29.95, assessor Mike Noble told councilors. It occurred despite a $30 million drop in valuation at the Katahdin Avenue industrial park, home of the No. 11 paper machine and other papermaking equipment.The lower rate is a lot better than the $37 mill rate that we were looking at when we began, Councilor John Raymond said Thursday.Under the $29.60 mill rate, a home worth $50,000 will be taxed $1,480 for the 2014-15 fiscal year, which ends June 30. The rate is easily the highest in northern Penobscot County, officials said. The states listing for municipal property tax rates goes only to 2012, but Medway and Millinocket had the highest rates that year in Penobscot County. Medways was $26.49 for that year; Millinockets was $26.40, officials said.The approved rate wasnt entirely welcome. Resident J <a href=https://www.cups-stanley-cups.co.uk>stanley cup ohn Dice stanley quencher ntes questioned why the rate didnt drop more than by 0.25 of a mill, saying that town leaders had expressed hope last year that the high rate would be lowered almost immediately once the town had built up a sufficiently high r stanley uk eserve fund balance.Councilor Michael Madore explained that town leaders had no way of knowing at the time that a $30 million drop in valuation would occur and that all things considered, any drop in tax rates would b