LITTLETON, New Hampshire (Reuters) – The American Civil Liberties Union is threatening legal action against as many as a dozen school districts from Maine to Mississippi unless they stop programs the group says illegally segregate boys and girls into single-sex classes and promote stereotypes.

The group also was demanding that Florida’s Department of Education launch an investigation into widespread single-sex teaching in that state, where 32 schools in 16 districts offer single-gender classes. A spokeswoman for the department said they had not yet received the demand, which is posted on the ACLU’s website.

Single-sex education has expanded into as many as 300 public schools in recent years — helped in part by a 2006 decision by the U.S. Department of Education that relaxed restrictions on the practice.

That decision, under President George W. Bush, allowed schools to offer voluntary single-sex classes so long as programs did not violate Title IX, a federal law that outlawed gender discrimination in education.

“Many of the programs rely on faulty theories about the supposed developmental differences between boys’ and girls’ brains that amount to nothing more than sex stereotypes,” Galen Sherwin, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s women’s rights project in New York, told Reuters.

“We believe that is legally problematic and not supported by sound educational research,” Sherwin said.

Proponents of single-sex education, including author and psychologist Leonard Sax say segregating boys and girls can benefit both groups because of subtle differences in the way they learn.

LITTLETON, New Hampshire (Reuters) – A Republican New Hampshire legislator has apologized for calling a former state GOP official who endorsed his political rival a “stripper” and a “pole dancer,” party members said on Tuesday.

The outburst at a GOP picnic over the weekend in Goffstown, New Hampshire, targeted Pam Manney, 55, a grandmother of four and former vice chairwoman of the state Republican Party.

State Representative John Hikel berated her in front of about 20 people at a hotdog tent promoting Representative Phil Greazzo, his rival in the upcoming GOP primary for state senate, said Mike Ball, chairman of the Manchester Republican Committee, part of the state GOP.

Manney, who supported Greazzo over Hikel, said Hikel repeatedly and falsely accused her of being a former exotic dancer, after hearing that misinformation from another state Republican representative.

“He goes, ‘Stripper. Are you a stripper? You were once a stripper,’” Manney told Reuters. “I said, ‘I want to let everyone know it’s not true.’ I’ve never been a pole dancer. I looked at John and said, ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself.’”

Manney said Hikel left a message on her home answering machine on Monday night in which he apologized and said the incident had been “eating at him all day.”

Hikel did not return phone calls to his home or business or emails to his personal, legislative or campaign accounts.

LITTLETON, New Hampshire (Reuters) – A one-page 1837 letter from the writer Edgar Allan Poe to the editor of a popular women’s magazine has been sold for $164,000 at auction.

Poe wrote to Sarah Josepha Hale, herself a well-known literary figure and author of the children’s poem “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” to decline an invitation to publish an article in a magazine she edited at the time.

“You usually don’t see a lengthy handwritten letter like this by Poe,” said Bobby Livingston, vice president of RR Auctions, a New Hampshire-based firm which handled the transaction Wednesday.

“To have him writing to the author of ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ is pretty amazing.”

Written eight years before he published his most famous poem, “The Raven,” Poe, then a literary critic for a magazine in Richmond, Virginia, tells Hale he is too busy with other work after a recent illness.

“To send you a crude or hastily written article would be injurious to me, and an insult to yourself – and I fear that I could, at present, do little more,” Poe wrote.

Godey’s Lady’s Book, the magazine Hale edited, was among the most popular of the period and published writers including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Washington Irving. Hale is also known for her role advocating the creation of a Thanksgiving holiday in the United States.

PORTLAND, Maine, May 16 (Reuters) – George Forni will spend most of next week holed up in his home in Sullivan, Maine, guarded by a new surveillance system and armed with a stun gun and pepper spray as he buys live baby eels from neighbors for thousands of dollars.

May 31 marks the end of what has become a gold rush for a small group of Maine fisherman – the 10-week season for catching juvenile eels, known as elvers, whose price has increased nearly a hundredfold over the past decade.

Dealers in Maine are paying $2,300 a pound for the thread-like creatures – more than double last year’s price – and Forni is so awash in cash from catching elvers and buying them from other fisherman on behalf of a dealer that he has ramped up his home security.

“This year for two and a half months is better than any three years I’ve ever worked in my life,” said Forni, 53. He said he paid off all his debts and bought a new $51,000 pickup truck with a portion of this season’s windfall.

“All of a sudden it’s a gold mine. China wants them that bad, and we’re the only place that can get them,” said Forni, who spends the rest of the year cutting sod and plowing snow.

High prices are fueling a boom in poaching and raising concerns that the American eel population, already at its lowest level since the 1950s, will dwindle further. Driving prices has been an eel harvesting ban in Europe amid concerns about overfishing, disruption to supplies caused by last year’s tsunami in the Pacific and strict catch limits on elvers in the U.S.

Maine, which this year issued 407 licenses – down from 2,207 in 1996 – and South Carolina, which issued 10, are the only two states that allow baby eels to be harvested. Last week, Maine’s Passamaquoddy Indian tribe, which has the authority to issue fishing licenses to tribal members, announced that it would begin granting licenses for elver fishing, with 236 to be available.

LITTLETON, New Hampshire (Reuters) – Bad news for waffle lovers.

Historic warmth in March slashed this year’s U.S. maple syrup output as much as 40 percent as sugar maple trees, which need freezing temperatures at night to sustain sap production, dried up early or largely produced bad-tasting syrup.

In the Northeast, where nearly all U.S. maple syrup is produced, sugarmakers traditionally gather sap from maple trees during a six-week season from late February to early April before buds appear on the trees.

The 2012 season was cut short by the warmest March on record.

“You take 80 degrees (27 degrees Celsius) in March by golly it don’t help nothing,” said Alfred Carrier, a sugarmaker in Glover, Vermont. “We had quite a lot of off-flavored syrup. I don’t think you’d want to put it on a pancake.”

Syrup unsuitable for the breakfast table is typically sold for industrial purposes such as flavoring chewing tobacco or salad dressing.

Maple syrup production has been increasing in the U.S. over the past decade as a result of new technology and a rising number of trees in production. Vermont, New York and Maine are the largest maple-producing states in the U.S.

LITTLETON, New Hampshire (Reuters) – A New Hampshire legislator apologized repeatedly on Tuesday for saying “Sieg Heil” during a heated floor exchange with House Speaker Bill O’Brien, a fellow Republican who critics have called a bully.

O’Brien was trying to cut off debate on a controversial voter identification bill and dismiss State Representative Steve Vaillancourt from the speaker’s podium when Vaillancourt uttered the phrase associated with loyalty to Adolph Hitler.

“Sieg Heil” is German for “hail victory,” and was often shouted at Nazi rallies in the 1930s and 1940s.

“Are you willing to treat everybody fairly or not?” said Vaillancourt, a Republican from Manchester, as he walked away from the podium.

O’Brien responded: “Representative Vaillancourt, another outburst like that and you will be removed from the hall.”

O’Brien then directed the legislature’s sergeant-at-arms to remove Vaillancourt from the chamber.

At that Vaillancourt returned to the podium. “Sieg Heil,” he said into the microphone, drawing murmurs from the other legislators.

By Jason McLure

(Reuters) – An aging accused Mafia boss was sentenced on Friday to 5-1/2 years in prison for terrorizing and extorting protection payments from strip clubs around Providence, Rhode Island.

Luigi “Louie” Manocchio, 84, also known as “The Old Man,” “The Professor” and “Baby Shacks,” pleaded guilty in federal court earlier this year to one count of racketeering conspiracy, according to a statement from the U.S. Justice Department.

Federal prosecutors say Manocchio, as godfather of the New England mob, intimidated the owners of the Satin Doll, Cadillac Lounge and other adult bookstores and topless clubs into making cash payments for more than a decade.

Manocchio was sentenced on Friday to 5-1/2 years in prison, followed by three years of supervised release.

A second defendant, Raymond “Scarface” Jenkins, 47, was sentenced to 37 months in jail for participating in a conspiracy to extort $25,000 from a Rhode Island couple.

They are among eight reputed members of the New England La Cosa Nostra indicted in September 2011.

May 8 (Reuters) – Vermont will be the first state to outlaw a controversial oil and gas drilling method known as fracking when Governor Peter Shumlin signs a bill banning the practice, a largely symbolic move given the state’s apparent lack of energy reserves.

Hydraulic fracturing has helped companies tap potentially decades of gas supply and huge amounts of oil from previously inaccessible shale formations dotted across the United States in recent years.

Environmentalists say the practice, which involves injecting millions of gallons of chemical-laced water into underground wells, may contaminate groundwater and trigger earthquakes.

“Governor Shumlin does support the fracking ban,” said Sue Allen, a spokeswoman for Vermont’s Democratic governor. “He will sign the legislation when it reaches his desk.”

Vermont’s House and Senate approved the measure last week and the bill is undergoing a final review by legislative staffers before being sent to the governor, Allen said.

It is a largely token gesture, given that Vermont does not have any natural gas reserves to speak of, sitting just outside the boundaries of the vast Marcellus shale formation.

The Marcellus formation has been aggressively drilled in other states such as Pennsylvania. Vermont did not produce a drop of oil or natural gas between 1960 and 2009, and consumes the smallest amount of energy of all U.S. states, according to the Energy Information Administration.

By Jason McLure

(Reuters) – An 83-year-old artist known for his block letter “LOVE” design that became a symbol of the anti-war movement in the 1960s is being sued by a Monaco-based art dealer for renouncing the authenticity of sculptures once valued as high as $1 million.

Beginning in 2008, art buyer Joao Tovar paid $481,625 for 10 sculptures of the word PREM, a Sanskrit term meaning “love,” from a one-time business partner of renowned pop artist Robert Indiana, Tovar said in the lawsuit filed in superior court in Rockland, Maine.

Tovar says he bought the sculptures from longtime Indiana associate John Gilbert because he believed Indiana had officially licensed their production.

Indiana, who lives on an island off the Maine coast, renounced the sculptures in a 2009 letter to New York dealer Simon Salama-Caro, saying they had been conceived by Gilbert in India and made without his permission. The move led auction house Christie’s to remove them from an upcoming sale.

Best known for his 1964 block letter creation featuring an L-O arranged on top of a V-E, Indiana’s works are part of the permanent collection of major museums including the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian Institution and the Whitney Museum of Modern Art. The LOVE design, on which the PREM sculptures were based, was featured on an 8-cent U.S. postage stamp issued on Valentine’s Day in 1973.

Indiana’s denial of his approval “rendered the sculptures worth little more than the materials from which they were made,” says the suit, which was filed April 30. Further complicating the matter, Tovar’s suit says some of the works he bought have been sold multiple times, most recently for a total of $1.1 million.

LITTLETON, New Hampshire (Reuters) – The parents of a New Hampshire teenager who was assaulted and forcibly tattooed on the buttocks by four older students during school hours have filed suit against the school district.

Michael and Tammy Austin are seeking unspecified damages from the district in Concord, New Hampshire, which they say failed to provide a safe environment for their son and to protect him from bullying in the May 2010 incident.

A group of older students lured the boy, who was 14 at the time, to a house near Concord High School, where they tattooed a picture of a penis and the words ‘Poop Dick’ on his buttocks, according to the lawsuit filed in Merrimack County Superior Court.

“We believe they had a duty to protect, and they failed in that task,” Stephen Duggan, an attorney for the parents, said in an interview this week.

“The end result is he was physically assaulted with this horrendous tattoo. While modern medicine will allow it to be removed to some degree, the emotional scars will live on.”

The victim, who had been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, suffered further emotional distress after other students took pictures of the tattoo and circulated them on cell phones. He was also subject to bullying on Facebook after the incident, the complaint said.

The school exacerbated the situation by calling an assembly on bullying on the victim’s first day back at school after the incident, it said. Following the assembly, he was further harassed and bullied, the complaint said.