By Jason McLure

(Reuters) – Rhode Island’s governor is expected to sign into law the first “Homeless Bill of Rights” in the United States as early as next week, formally banning discrimination against homeless people and affirming their equal access to jobs, housing and services.

The legislation, which won final approval by the state Senate on Wednesday, bucks a national trend among municipalities toward outlawing behaviors associated with homelessness such as eating, sleeping and panhandling in public spaces.

By Jason McLure

(Reuters) – Lobbing F-bombs and other curses across the leafy streets of Middleborough, Massachusetts is now an offense punishable by a $20 ticket.

The ordinance outlawing public swearing, approved by town residents on Monday night, was the brainchild of Mimi DuPhily, a member of the town’s beautification committee.

By Jason McLure

(Reuters) – When Whitney Calk sought a personalized license plate from a Tennessee state agency to tout her vegetarian ideals, she was annoyed when she was told no. Turns out the letters ILVTOFU can be construed to mean more than enjoying bean curd.

“When I see T-O-F-U, I see tofu,” says Calk, who requested the so-called vanity plate from the Tennessee Department of Revenue last September.

By Jason McLure

(Reuters) – Boston’s Logan International Airport will become the first major airport in the United States to offer free transportation to downtown in an effort to cut car travel and alleviate a parking shortage at the fourth-busiest passenger hub in the Northeast.

The three-month pilot program beginning Wednesday will waive the $2 fare on the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s Silver Line buses that take passengers from the airport, the 19th busiest in the U.S., to South Station in central Boston.

By Jason McLure

(Reuters) – Boston’s Logan International Airport will become the first major airport in the United States to offer free transportation to and from downtown in an effort to cut car travel and alleviate a parking shortage at the fourth-busiest passenger hub in the Northeast.

The three-month pilot program beginning Wednesday will waive the $2 fare on the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s Silver Line buses that take passengers from the airport, the 19th busiest in the U.S., to South Station in central Boston.

By Jason McLure

(Reuters) – When Whitney Calk sought a personalized license plate from a Tennessee state agency to tout her vegetarian ideals, she was annoyed when she was told no. Turns out the letters ILVTOFU can be construed to mean more than enjoying bean curd.

“When I see T-O-F-U, I see tofu,” says Calk, who requested the so-called vanity plate from the Tennessee Department of Revenue last September.

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.

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.

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.

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.