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PORT CLYDE, Me. — For generations fishermen have trawled for flounder, haddock and lobster in the waters off this picturesque port, unloading their catch on the docks that line the harbor.

But the fishermen here, like most others who operate on the state’s rapidly shrinking working waterfront, do not own the docks they work on. Throughout Maine, fishermen, ferry operators, boat builders and parts suppliers worry that these waterfront workplaces could be sold to the highest bidder in a real estate market with a hot demand for waterfront property.

To help stem the tide, fishermen, towns and residents are buying up Maine’s working waterfront with public grants and private money.

“We’re running out of working waterfront, and they aren’t making any more,” said Jim Barstow, who operates a ferry service from a wharf in this fishing village on the tip of a peninsula 15 miles southwest of Rockland. Mr. Barstow is part of a group considering buying the wharves here out of concern that their sale would forever change the community.

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By LARRY McSHANE
Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — The circumstances surrounding Harry Houdini’s sudden death were as murky as the rivers where he often performed death-defying stunts. Despite a medical explanation, rumors that the escape artist was murdered have persisted for decades.

Eighty-one years after Houdini died on Halloween 1926, his great-nephew wants to exhume the magician’s body to determine if enemies poisoned him for debunking their bogus claims of contact with the dead.

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Molly Malone (mon)

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Irish Jig

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Forget March Madness. Phoenix and Dallas played a game that belonged in late May. Steve Nash played like an MVP down the stretch and Amare Stoudemire had 41 points and 10 rebounds, carrying the Suns to a 129-127 double-overtime victory over the Mavericks on Wednesday night in a tense, thrilling game between the NBA’s top teams.

“That was a playoff atmosphere,” Stoudemire said. “Both teams played with high intensity. Both teams were in it until the end.”

And when it was over, it was obvious the Western Conference and MVP races were still too close to call.

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LAS VEGAS, March 13 — With a deafening rumble and a cloud of debris that has become all but customary in this city of short-lived icons, the venerable Stardust Hotel-Casino was demolished early this morning.

The spectacular demolition ended a yearlong farewell to a classic 48-year-old resort that was, in its heyday, considered the ultimate in luxury and style.

It was a frequent haunt of Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack, the original Las Vegas Strip home of the illusionist duo Siegfried and Roy, and the scene of reputed organized crime activity that inspired the book and film “Casino.”

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By ANA BEATRIZ CHOLO
Associated Press Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Richard Jeni, a standup comedian who played to sold-out crowds, was a regular on the “Tonight Show” and appeared in movies, died of a gunshot wound in an apparent suicide, police said Sunday.

Police found the 49-year-old comedian alive but gravely injured in a West Hollywood home when they responded to a call Saturday morning from Jeni’s girlfriend, Los Angeles Police Officer Norma Eisenman said.

Eisenman said the caller told police: “My boyfriend shot himself in the face.”

Jeni died at a nearby hospital.

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ASPEN, Colo. (AP) — The Aspen Ski Patrol had to lead actors Rob Morrow, Chad Lowe and Fisher Stevens to safety after they and other skiers got lost in snow and fog and ended up out of bounds.

“We’re all good skiers,” said Morrow, star of CBS’ “Numb3rs.”

However, he admitted Saturday, they didn’t know the mountain. “We were going every which way.”

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Oil services giant Halliburton Co. will soon shift its corporate headquarters from Houston to the Mideast financial powerhouse of Dubai, chief executive Dave Lesar announced Sunday.

“Halliburton is opening its corporate headquarters in Dubai while maintaining a corporate office in Houston,” spokeswoman Cathy Mann said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. “The chairman, president and CEO will office from and be based in Dubai to run the company from the UAE.”

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By DENNIS WASZAK Jr.
AP Sports Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — John Thompson III heard his father yelling something at him from behind Georgetown’s bench. He couldn’t make out what he was saying, and it really didn’t matter. The Hoyas were about to become Big East champions. “Oh boy,” Thompson said with a smile. “That’s another thing off my to-do list I can scratch off.”

Roy Hibbert scored 14 of his 18 points in the ninth-ranked Hoyas’ big first half and Georgetown cruised past No. 13 Pittsburgh 65-42 Saturday night to win the Big East tournament for a record seventh time.

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Like its predecessor, the Sundance hype-magnet “Hustle & Flow,” Craig Brewer’s new film, “Black Snake Moan,” comes cloaked in lurid, pulpy atmospherics. His characters — pimps, prostitutes, nymphomaniacs — seem to have crawled off the drugstore paperback racks of the 1950s or the grind house lobby posters of a slightly later era. His stories are slick with the grease of old-style exploitation, promising the sleazy, easy pleasures of lust, wrath and other deadly sins.

Don’t be fooled though. Underneath the surface of racial and sexual button pushing, behind the brandished guns and bared breasts, is a heart of pure, buttery cornpone. Like “Hustle & Flow,” “Black Snake Moan” joins a dubious stereotype of black manhood to an uplifting, sentimental fable. In the earlier movie the hero was a soulful pimp with dreams of hip-hop glory.

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WASHINGTON, March 9 — Bipartisan outrage erupted on Friday on Capitol Hill as Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, conceded that the bureau had improperly used the USA Patriot Act to obtain information about people and businesses.

Mr. Mueller embraced responsibility for the lapses, detailed in a report by the inspector general of the Justice Department, and promised to do everything he could to avoid repeating them. But his apologies failed to defuse the anger of lawmakers in both parties.

“How could this happen?” Mr. Mueller asked rhetorically in a briefing at the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. “Who is to be held accountable? And the answer to that is I am to be held accountable.”

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The two-year contract. It is the bane of a cellphone owner’s existence, especially one who must have the latest hot phone at a discounted price.

Two years is a long time, and few other marketers can get away with demanding it, much less adding to it. Every time you walk back into the cellphone store or call the customer service operators, it seems, the contract is extended. Lose the phone or ask for a replacement, and the contract is extended. Sign up for a family plan, same thing.

But try getting out of a contract early? You can do it, but you will have to pay an early termination fee of as much as $240.

Liza Tremblay got out of her contract, but it took persistence. “I think I got across the idea that I meant business,” she said.

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Among the many serious violations cited in the U.S. Department of State’s newly released Global Report on Human Rights Practices in Kazakhstan, one stands out as well, a little “wawaweewa.” As if to coincide with his DVD release, on Tuesday, Borat, the bumbling bane of all things lame, was alluded to in that weighty report as a victim of Kazakh suppression. It’s right there, below prison torture and politically motivated assignations, the creator’s name: Sasha Baron Cohen, a Jewish comedian from England whose joke has gone so far I can’t tell if I’m laughing or crying anymore… most likely both.

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