BLOGS ABOUND
A4 Friday, January 8, 2016, Bangor Daily News
Time Warner Cable warns of data breach Customer email passwords may have been stolen reuters
courtesy oF maine maritime academy
Students aboard the Maine Maritime Academy training vessel State of Maine fold an American flag (left) during a ceremony Thursday near where the cargo ship El Faro sank last fall in a hurricane east of the Bahamas. A wreath (right) sits on the deck of State of Maine before it was lowered into the Atlantic as part of the ceremony. Five MMA graduates, four of whom lived in Maine, were among the 33 El Faro crew members when the ship went down on Oct. 1.
El Faro
Continued from Page A1 was listing after encountering the Category 4 storm north of San Salvador Island in the Bahamas, Davidson said in his request for help. The National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the accident, has said the vessel was found on the ocean floor at a depth of about 15,000 feet near its last known position, just off Crooked Island in the southern Bahamas. The ship’s two-story bridge deck, which was sheared from the rest of the ship, was located on the ocean floor a half-mile away.
Images from the wreck of the vessel on the ocean floor were publicly released ahead of a 60 Minutes segment on the disaster that was broadcast on Sunday. According to a post on the State of Maine training cruise blog, the weather Thursday morning to the east of Cat Island in the Bahamas was the best so far on the training cruise. Everyone who was not on watch gathered on the deck to lower a wreath into the ocean in honor of their fellow mariners. “Captain [Leslie] Eadie read from John Masefield’s Sea Fever,” the unidentified author wrote in the post. “After the poem, the order to ‘present arms’ was given and all hands ren-
dered honors as the wreath was eased over the rail and lowered to the water by the cadet masters and cadet chief engineers.” Students and crew stayed where they were as the wreath floated away into the Atlantic Ocean. “The mate on watch gave a long blast of the ship’s whistle to signal our farewell and the ceremony concluded. Afterward, many students remained at the rail to watch as the wreath passed from sight in what was a beautiful but somber morning.” MMA President William Brennan, who is on the cruise, is quoted in the blog post as saying that the ceremony was “cathartic, well done, and appropriate,” in-
Biomass Continued from Page A1 waste-to-energy plants across the country, he said. “The energy market, the warm weather” have contributed to the closure, said Osgood, who estimates energy prices are “30 percent below normal” for this time of year. “All energy prices are down,” Osgood said. “December was the warmest I can ever remember. That really doesn’t help, especially since the energy price is predicted [this year] to be lower than last year.” Control room operator Chris St. Peter, who has worked at the West Enfield plant for 10 years, said he was pretty upset, “just like everyone else,” when he heard the news. “It kind of took us off guard,” St. Peter said while sitting in the control room Thursday. “Most jobs in this area are hard to come by.” He said with all the “ mills closing everywhere” it is going to be difficult to find a new job “without possibly traveling a long ways.” Paper and pulp mills in Bucksport, Lincoln and Old Town have closed in the past 13 months. “Covanta is working with us with job relocation offers,” St. Peter said. The company knows the local employees are hard workers, Osgood said. “They definitely are all good employees and make this plant go,” the plant manager said. The ripple effect will be felt in the logging, trucking and other industries that
Gabor deGre | bdn
Bryan Osgood is the manager of Covanta Energy’s West Enfield facility. Covanta decided to shut down the West Enfield and Jonesboro locations due to low energy prices. supply the plants with resources, Osgood said. “We pay a dollar out and it probably goes through six or eight hands,” the plant manager said. “We pay the wood suppliers, and the wood drivers, and the wood driver stops and pays for coffee,” Osgood said, giving an example of how people outside of Covanta will be affected by the closures. The Professional Logging Contractors of Maine issued a statement Thursday urging Gov. Paul LePage and legislative leaders “to take action to sustain Maine biomass electricity production” in the wake of the Covanta closings announcement. The logging group says the closure will affect “more than 2,500 jobs in the state’s logging industry.” “This announcement should serve as a wake-up call to both the LePage administration and Maine legislators about the dangers of inaction when it comes to formulating energy policies that will benefit our state’s economy, environment, and future,” said Dana Doran, executive di-
rector for the Professional Logging Contractors of Maine. “This is a perfect example of an area where common sense needs to be applied to policy to consider the true cost of our energy, not just the price per kilowatt hour.” Biomass is responsible for 25 percent of Maine’s overall power supply and represents 60 percent of the state’s renewable energy, according to Biomass Magazine. “State policies that encourage greater use of biomass in Maine and neighboring states will support local jobs, ensure greater energy security, and reduce fossil fuel emissions,” the logging group’s statement says. “The economic value of a strong Maine biomass industry and the direct and indirect jobs, payroll, and tax revenue it generates will more than offset the current higher cost per kilowatt hour of such energy, while preserving the industry for the day when fossil fuel prices inevitably rise again.” Osgood echoed the loggers’ concern.
this year petitioned state utilities regulators to have its 40-year-old recovery boiler classified as a new Continued from Page A1 renewable resource under about 865 people last year, the state’s purchasing rewith 300 layoffs that began quirements for renewable last year and will continue power. That requirement through the first quarter sets out separate goals for purchasing from existing of 2016. Verso said it would con- renewable sources and tinue to own and operate new renewables. The company argued to its cogeneration facilities that consist of two recov- the Maine Public Utilities ery boilers, a biomass boil- Commission that its $8.15 er, three steam turbines million investment in the and three gas turbines and remains connected to the grid as a customer of Central Maine Power Co. The company earlier
boiler qualifies it as a new resource and that the biomass-derived “black liquor” fuel qualifies as a renewable source. The company is still seeking that classification for its boilers. Verso said the sale would not cause any interruption to production at the Jay mill. It said both parties entered into a purchase agreement and closed the sale at the same time.
Verso
BLOGS ABOUND Peruse our blogs.
bangordailynews.com/maine-blogs
Time Warner Cable Inc. said Wednesday that as many as 320,000 customers’ email passwords may have been stolen. The company said email and password details were likely gathered either through malware downloaded during phishing attacks or indirectly through data breaches of other companies that stored Time Warner Cable’s customer information, including email addresses. The company said it has not yet determined how the information was obtained, but there were no indications Time Warner Cable’s systems were breached. The Augusta Police Department warned of the breach on its Facebook page Thursday, urging customers to reset passwords, especially for Roadrunner email ac- Bangor Daily News writer Darren Fishell contributed counts ending “@rr.com.” “These customers will be to this report.
spiring everyone on board the vessel and bringing them together. “I was moved before it began, when I went out on deck at about 0700 and saw the American flag flying at half-mast and signal flags flying to represent the last names of the MMA El Faro crew: D-R-K-H-M,” Brennan said. “We wish peace to all.” The two-week training cruise is geared toward helping MMA students meet their at-sea requirements for their U.S. Coast Guard certifications. The ship left Castine on Jan. 2 and is expected to arrive at St. Croix on Friday, Jan. 8. It is scheduled to depart the island on Jan. 11 and to arrive back in Castine on Jan. 16. Continued from Page A1
LePage
“We were one of the last ones to take a large volume of [wood] product,” the plant manager said, adding the nearest other plant that takes biofuels is in Aroostook County. There are between 15 and 20 trucking companies that deliver wood products to the plant in West Enfield, St. Peter said. Fiberight announced in December that Covanta would be a major equity investor in its plan to build a $69 million facility in Hampden that would turn trash into biofuel and recycle other materials. Craig Stuart-Paul, chief executive of Fiberight, said by phone Thursday that nothing has changed. “Covanta is partnering with Fiberight on the project and Covanta is a major investor,” Stuart-Paul said. Fiberight has negotiated a 15-year deal with Covanta, which would construct and operate the Hampden plant. “It will not impact that project in any way,” Regan said.
contacted by the company with information about resetting their passwords,” the department wrote, adding users also should reset passwords for other online accounts if they were the same as the email password. A Time Warner Cable spokesman said it recently was notified by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that some customers’ email addresses including account passwords “may have been compromised.” The company said it is sending emails and direct mail correspondence to encourage customers to update their email passwords as a precaution. A company spokeswoman declined to disclose Thursday how many of the possibly compromised email accounts belonged to Maine residents.
sad thing because then we have another issue we’ve got to deal with down the road,” said LePage. LePage’s comments began as a riff on the street names of alleged drug dealers arrested in Maine. In September, Dionhaywood “Smooth” Blackwell, 31, of New Haven, Connecticut, was one of five people arrested on felony drug charges after a Bangor heroin bust. Peter Steele, a LePage spokesman, issued a statement saying the comment wasn’t about race, which he called “irrelevant.” “What is relevant is the cost to state taxpayers for welfare and the emotional costs for these kids who are born as a result of involvement with drug traffickers,” Steele said. “His heart goes out to these kids because he had a difficult childhood, too. We need to stop the drug traffickers from coming into our state.” Dutson, however, said the implications of the comment are clear, in part because LePage’s statement must be factually wrong. “So the question is: Why
is he making it up?” Dutson said. “The logical conclusion is that he’s trying to incite that dark kind of fear.” LePage has a history of controversial comments, some of which have involved race. Attendees of a 2013 event in Belgrade reported that he said President Barack Obama “hates white people,” and after criticism from the NAACP in 2011, he told the organization to “kiss my butt.” LePage also responded to the NAACP criticism by noting that he has a black family member. It hasn’t hurt him at the ballot box, though: He won re-election in 2014 behind a campaign that embraced his blunt style. The Maine Republican Party issued only a one-sentence statement on Thursday, with Jason Savage, its executive director, saying, “We do not respond to attacks from disgruntled former staffers,” a reference to Dutson. The comments gained national attention on Thursday evening, with ABC News, Vox, The Daily Beast and the Huffington Post picking up stories on them. “The Governor of Maine, Paul LePage, is racist,” tweeted DeRay Mckesson, a civil rights activist and alumnus of Bowdoin College in Brunswick.
Time Warner Cable warns of data breach Customer email passwords may have been stolen reuters
courtesy oF maine maritime academy
Students aboard the Maine Maritime Academy training vessel State of Maine fold an American flag (left) during a ceremony Thursday near where the cargo ship El Faro sank last fall in a hurricane east of the Bahamas. A wreath (right) sits on the deck of State of Maine before it was lowered into the Atlantic as part of the ceremony. Five MMA graduates, four of whom lived in Maine, were among the 33 El Faro crew members when the ship went down on Oct. 1.
El Faro
Continued from Page A1 was listing after encountering the Category 4 storm north of San Salvador Island in the Bahamas, Davidson said in his request for help. The National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the accident, has said the vessel was found on the ocean floor at a depth of about 15,000 feet near its last known position, just off Crooked Island in the southern Bahamas. The ship’s two-story bridge deck, which was sheared from the rest of the ship, was located on the ocean floor a half-mile away.
Images from the wreck of the vessel on the ocean floor were publicly released ahead of a 60 Minutes segment on the disaster that was broadcast on Sunday. According to a post on the State of Maine training cruise blog, the weather Thursday morning to the east of Cat Island in the Bahamas was the best so far on the training cruise. Everyone who was not on watch gathered on the deck to lower a wreath into the ocean in honor of their fellow mariners. “Captain [Leslie] Eadie read from John Masefield’s Sea Fever,” the unidentified author wrote in the post. “After the poem, the order to ‘present arms’ was given and all hands ren-
dered honors as the wreath was eased over the rail and lowered to the water by the cadet masters and cadet chief engineers.” Students and crew stayed where they were as the wreath floated away into the Atlantic Ocean. “The mate on watch gave a long blast of the ship’s whistle to signal our farewell and the ceremony concluded. Afterward, many students remained at the rail to watch as the wreath passed from sight in what was a beautiful but somber morning.” MMA President William Brennan, who is on the cruise, is quoted in the blog post as saying that the ceremony was “cathartic, well done, and appropriate,” in-
Biomass Continued from Page A1 waste-to-energy plants across the country, he said. “The energy market, the warm weather” have contributed to the closure, said Osgood, who estimates energy prices are “30 percent below normal” for this time of year. “All energy prices are down,” Osgood said. “December was the warmest I can ever remember. That really doesn’t help, especially since the energy price is predicted [this year] to be lower than last year.” Control room operator Chris St. Peter, who has worked at the West Enfield plant for 10 years, said he was pretty upset, “just like everyone else,” when he heard the news. “It kind of took us off guard,” St. Peter said while sitting in the control room Thursday. “Most jobs in this area are hard to come by.” He said with all the “ mills closing everywhere” it is going to be difficult to find a new job “without possibly traveling a long ways.” Paper and pulp mills in Bucksport, Lincoln and Old Town have closed in the past 13 months. “Covanta is working with us with job relocation offers,” St. Peter said. The company knows the local employees are hard workers, Osgood said. “They definitely are all good employees and make this plant go,” the plant manager said. The ripple effect will be felt in the logging, trucking and other industries that
Gabor deGre | bdn
Bryan Osgood is the manager of Covanta Energy’s West Enfield facility. Covanta decided to shut down the West Enfield and Jonesboro locations due to low energy prices. supply the plants with resources, Osgood said. “We pay a dollar out and it probably goes through six or eight hands,” the plant manager said. “We pay the wood suppliers, and the wood drivers, and the wood driver stops and pays for coffee,” Osgood said, giving an example of how people outside of Covanta will be affected by the closures. The Professional Logging Contractors of Maine issued a statement Thursday urging Gov. Paul LePage and legislative leaders “to take action to sustain Maine biomass electricity production” in the wake of the Covanta closings announcement. The logging group says the closure will affect “more than 2,500 jobs in the state’s logging industry.” “This announcement should serve as a wake-up call to both the LePage administration and Maine legislators about the dangers of inaction when it comes to formulating energy policies that will benefit our state’s economy, environment, and future,” said Dana Doran, executive di-
rector for the Professional Logging Contractors of Maine. “This is a perfect example of an area where common sense needs to be applied to policy to consider the true cost of our energy, not just the price per kilowatt hour.” Biomass is responsible for 25 percent of Maine’s overall power supply and represents 60 percent of the state’s renewable energy, according to Biomass Magazine. “State policies that encourage greater use of biomass in Maine and neighboring states will support local jobs, ensure greater energy security, and reduce fossil fuel emissions,” the logging group’s statement says. “The economic value of a strong Maine biomass industry and the direct and indirect jobs, payroll, and tax revenue it generates will more than offset the current higher cost per kilowatt hour of such energy, while preserving the industry for the day when fossil fuel prices inevitably rise again.” Osgood echoed the loggers’ concern.
this year petitioned state utilities regulators to have its 40-year-old recovery boiler classified as a new Continued from Page A1 renewable resource under about 865 people last year, the state’s purchasing rewith 300 layoffs that began quirements for renewable last year and will continue power. That requirement through the first quarter sets out separate goals for purchasing from existing of 2016. Verso said it would con- renewable sources and tinue to own and operate new renewables. The company argued to its cogeneration facilities that consist of two recov- the Maine Public Utilities ery boilers, a biomass boil- Commission that its $8.15 er, three steam turbines million investment in the and three gas turbines and remains connected to the grid as a customer of Central Maine Power Co. The company earlier
boiler qualifies it as a new resource and that the biomass-derived “black liquor” fuel qualifies as a renewable source. The company is still seeking that classification for its boilers. Verso said the sale would not cause any interruption to production at the Jay mill. It said both parties entered into a purchase agreement and closed the sale at the same time.
Verso
BLOGS ABOUND Peruse our blogs.
bangordailynews.com/maine-blogs
Time Warner Cable Inc. said Wednesday that as many as 320,000 customers’ email passwords may have been stolen. The company said email and password details were likely gathered either through malware downloaded during phishing attacks or indirectly through data breaches of other companies that stored Time Warner Cable’s customer information, including email addresses. The company said it has not yet determined how the information was obtained, but there were no indications Time Warner Cable’s systems were breached. The Augusta Police Department warned of the breach on its Facebook page Thursday, urging customers to reset passwords, especially for Roadrunner email ac- Bangor Daily News writer Darren Fishell contributed counts ending “@rr.com.” “These customers will be to this report.
spiring everyone on board the vessel and bringing them together. “I was moved before it began, when I went out on deck at about 0700 and saw the American flag flying at half-mast and signal flags flying to represent the last names of the MMA El Faro crew: D-R-K-H-M,” Brennan said. “We wish peace to all.” The two-week training cruise is geared toward helping MMA students meet their at-sea requirements for their U.S. Coast Guard certifications. The ship left Castine on Jan. 2 and is expected to arrive at St. Croix on Friday, Jan. 8. It is scheduled to depart the island on Jan. 11 and to arrive back in Castine on Jan. 16. Continued from Page A1
LePage
“We were one of the last ones to take a large volume of [wood] product,” the plant manager said, adding the nearest other plant that takes biofuels is in Aroostook County. There are between 15 and 20 trucking companies that deliver wood products to the plant in West Enfield, St. Peter said. Fiberight announced in December that Covanta would be a major equity investor in its plan to build a $69 million facility in Hampden that would turn trash into biofuel and recycle other materials. Craig Stuart-Paul, chief executive of Fiberight, said by phone Thursday that nothing has changed. “Covanta is partnering with Fiberight on the project and Covanta is a major investor,” Stuart-Paul said. Fiberight has negotiated a 15-year deal with Covanta, which would construct and operate the Hampden plant. “It will not impact that project in any way,” Regan said.
contacted by the company with information about resetting their passwords,” the department wrote, adding users also should reset passwords for other online accounts if they were the same as the email password. A Time Warner Cable spokesman said it recently was notified by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that some customers’ email addresses including account passwords “may have been compromised.” The company said it is sending emails and direct mail correspondence to encourage customers to update their email passwords as a precaution. A company spokeswoman declined to disclose Thursday how many of the possibly compromised email accounts belonged to Maine residents.
sad thing because then we have another issue we’ve got to deal with down the road,” said LePage. LePage’s comments began as a riff on the street names of alleged drug dealers arrested in Maine. In September, Dionhaywood “Smooth” Blackwell, 31, of New Haven, Connecticut, was one of five people arrested on felony drug charges after a Bangor heroin bust. Peter Steele, a LePage spokesman, issued a statement saying the comment wasn’t about race, which he called “irrelevant.” “What is relevant is the cost to state taxpayers for welfare and the emotional costs for these kids who are born as a result of involvement with drug traffickers,” Steele said. “His heart goes out to these kids because he had a difficult childhood, too. We need to stop the drug traffickers from coming into our state.” Dutson, however, said the implications of the comment are clear, in part because LePage’s statement must be factually wrong. “So the question is: Why
is he making it up?” Dutson said. “The logical conclusion is that he’s trying to incite that dark kind of fear.” LePage has a history of controversial comments, some of which have involved race. Attendees of a 2013 event in Belgrade reported that he said President Barack Obama “hates white people,” and after criticism from the NAACP in 2011, he told the organization to “kiss my butt.” LePage also responded to the NAACP criticism by noting that he has a black family member. It hasn’t hurt him at the ballot box, though: He won re-election in 2014 behind a campaign that embraced his blunt style. The Maine Republican Party issued only a one-sentence statement on Thursday, with Jason Savage, its executive director, saying, “We do not respond to attacks from disgruntled former staffers,” a reference to Dutson. The comments gained national attention on Thursday evening, with ABC News, Vox, The Daily Beast and the Huffington Post picking up stories on them. “The Governor of Maine, Paul LePage, is racist,” tweeted DeRay Mckesson, a civil rights activist and alumnus of Bowdoin College in Brunswick.
