PORTLAND — The organizers of what’s billed as New England’s largest mustache pageant are now launching the world’s first known mustache film festival.

No Umbrella Media says its International Mustache Film Festival will be held immediately before the fifth annual mustache pageant, known as the Stache Pag, on March 30 in Portland.

The festival is taking film submissions in categories such as best foreign mustache film, best fake mustache movie and best collection of mustaches in one film. The finalists will have their 8-minute or shorter films shown and judged at the festival.

For the mustache pageant, contestants show off their whiskers on stage for a panel of judges.

Proceeds benefit the nonprofit arts group MENSK, Northeast Historic Film and Mustache Fights Cancer.

Heart disorder high in Franco-Americans

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LEWISTON — A genetic disorder that causes extremely high cholesterol levels at a young age strikes at 10 times the national rate in Maine’s Lewiston-Auburn area.

The Sun Journal of Lewiston says Sunday that familial hypercholesterolemia, or FH, is found most often in people of Native American or French Canadian descent. Experts say about 1 in every 300 to 500 people has the disorder.

Cardiologist Dervilla McCann, who’s been studying FH for two decades, believes the Lewiston-Auburn area, with its large French Canadian population, has about 10 times the national rate.

Buxton man OK after NH mountains rescue

PORTLAND — A Buxton, Maine, climber is OK after being rescued in New Hampshire’s mountains. But 24-year-old Evan Embrey says he’s done with the White Mountains for now.

The Maine Sunday Telegram says Embrey was rescued Friday by New Hampshire guides near the summit of Mount Lafayette, where Embrey had broken a snowshoe and high winds forced him off a trail into chest-high snow.

Embrey set out late Friday morning from a Franconia parking lot. He had plenty of gear and the weather at first was good. But by early afternoon, after he crossed the 5,249-foot summit, the wind picked up, gusting to about 60 mph.

Compiled from wire reports


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