Lawmakers approved bills dictating how the manufacture, sale, distribution, dispensing and testing of retail products may occur; setting a limit on driving while under the influence; and sending an initiative to the ballot this fall that would set an excise tax of up to 15 percent on wholesale sales and a 10 percent sales tax on retail purchases. Total state and local levies could approach 36 percent.

“We need to make sure that the implementation of Amendment 64 does not take away from K-12 education,” said state Senator Cheri Jahn, a Democrat from Wheat Ridge, referring to the constitutional amendment voters approved in November legalizing retail pot sales. “This has to be a self-sustaining program. We don’t want too much tax, but we want just enough.”

LePage’s energy director, Patrick Woodcock, made recommendations Thursday to rewrite the state’s 2008 Wind Energy Act, shifting focus from growing wind energy capacity to lowering electricity costs and making sure Maine sees an economic return on its wind energy investments.

“The intention of our wind energy act was not only to increase wind energy, but to lower electricity costs,” Woodcock said. Rather than setting energy capacity goals, he said, “I believe we should have longer-term goals for electricity prices and for employment in the industry.”

LePage has long been critical of state laws he sees as favoring wind energy development and he has blamed wind energy for inflating Maine’s energy prices. However, LePage hopes to use the Maine Wind Energy Act as a model for a plan to fast-track the expansion of natural gas infrastructure in the state.

The IRS has said the commissioner was not aware of the targeting at the time, but it has not explained why the testimony was never corrected. Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt organizations, told reporters Friday that the agency had targeted conservative groups, but she struggled with questions about when she learned of the effort.

A report from the Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration, which is expected to be released this week, concluded Lerner had known about the effort, which she acknowledged Friday was « absolutely inappropriate, » for almost two years. Throughout this period, conservative groups complained they were being harassed by the IRS and asked to fill out lengthy, intrusive questionnaires that sought information about donors and about members’ political activities.

In 2008, CNN named Shi “China’s Sunshine Boy.” In 2009, Fortune anointed him “China’s new king of solar.” That year, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman also cited Shi and Suntech as models of China’s green leap forward — which he called “the Sputnik of our day” and a spur for U.S. clean energy policy.

Now, however, the Chinese Sputnik has crashed to Earth, and the Sun King has been toppled. Buffeted by fierce global competition, faced with a worldwide manufacturing glut and hobbled by heavy debt, Suntech’s directors ousted Shi on March 4 and defaulted on $541 million worth of convertible bonds 10 days later. The following week, a Chinese court declared the company bankrupt after a petition from eight Chinese banks. On Wednesday, the company announced that its 2012 revenue had plunged 48 percent from the previous year.

Although Pacquiao (54-5-2, 38 knockouts) and Rios (31-1-1, 23 KOs) are coming off losses in their most recent fights, veteran promoter Bob Arum said the desire to match the two free swingers against each other was impossible to resist and should produce a strong audience.

“We felt with Rios, based on his past of being an [active] competitor would make this a great fight against Manny,” Arum said. “It’s a fight people want to see. Most boxing fans want to see guys mix it up.

Dick Harpootlian, a longtime Democratic leader, reportedly told a group of Democrats at a dinner that the Democratic challenger would send “Nikki Haley back to wherever the hell she came from,” Yahoo News’ Chris Moody tweeted Friday night.

Mrs. Haley was born in South Carolina to two Indian parents.

If the company defaults, Toronto is on the hook for an outstanding loan of $3.9 million.

To protect the city’s interests, staff recommended council allow them to negotiate “an orderly transfer of ownership of the Bixi Toronto program for the purposes of continuing the program.” If a deal cannot be reached, staff asked council to “exercise the city’s rights in the event of insolvency or to assume ownership” should the company default.

Bernard Charlès, chief executive of Dassault Systèmes, was sharply critical of the high tax policies of Mr Hollande’s Socialist government, telling Le Monde newspaper in an interview: “Residing in France has become a big handicap. Very largely, our hiring of top managers will have to be done elsewhere than in France.”

The government is looking to industry to help relaunch the economy. But Mr Charlès said the tax regime had put “all the digital sector in danger”. He criticised increases in taxes on capital, stock options and share awards, saying that in a €28m disposal of shares he made in December he had to sell “more shares than I had acquired” to pay a tax bill on some maturing stock.

At a luncheon Tuesday with 500 guests that included the city’s top leaders from the arts, business and non-profit sectors, The Calgary Foundation announced its record-breaking gift from Seaman. The iconic entrepreneur was well known during his lifetime for his support of wide and varied charitable causes.

Now, he will go down in the record books with this gift that is the largest ever given to a Canadian community foundation, the second largest charitable gift in Canadian history given to any organization. Prior to this, the $100 million donation by the Moffat family to the Winnipeg Foundation was the highest.

The French socialists’ criticisms, in a draft paper on party policy on Europe ahead of a conference in June. The French socialists’ draft paper contends that Europe is being run by a rightwing Anglo-German cabal dominated by liberal free trade interests with the rest of the world and austerity within the EU.

The new EPA data is “kind of an earthquake” in the debate over drilling, said Michael Shellenberger, the president of the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental group based in Oakland, Calif. “This is great news for anybody concerned about the climate and strong proof that existing technologies can be deployed to reduce methane leaks.”

The scope of the EPA’s revision was vast. In a mid-April report on greenhouse emissions, the agency now says that tighter pollution controls instituted by the industry resulted in an average annual decrease of 41.6 million metric tons of methane emissions from 1990 through 2010, or more than 850 million metric tons overall. That’s about a 20 percent reduction from previous estimates.

Following weeks of tough negotiations with its lenders the Greek government started laying off public-sector workers in an effort to implement the austerity that the troika has demanded. The first two civil servants were let go on Wednesday under a new law that speeds up the process – one, a policeman, for stealing debit cards, and the other for 110 days of unexcused absence.

The mass layoffs were announced last week in a televised address by the Greek prime minister himself, Antonis Samaras. Despite the massive unemployment in Greece, the goal of the government has become the laying off of 180,000 civil servants by 2015. “This is not a human sacrifice, » said Prime Minister Samaras. “It’s an upgrading of the public sector and it’s one demand of Greek society.”

Many of the animals at the facility are genetic models for psychiatric disorders such as autism and schizophrenia.

Five activists entered laboratories in the university’s pharmacology department on Saturday morning. The lack of signs of a break-in suggests that the activists may have used an illegally acquired electronic card, says pharmacologist Francesca Guidobono-Cavalchini, who works there.