Alaska Newsreader

“It was Tuesday that they told me, ‘Don't come in because no one would be here,’ ” a waitress, Kelsey Carr, told the station. She said she tried to deposit her latest check “into my account and my bank bounced it and I have been holding it waiting for the funds to be available.”

A co-owner in a phone interview blamed the closure on “slumping sales,” according to the story. He said he hoped to pay employees by the end of the week.

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Pot smuggling ring busted. Millions of dollars worth of pot came into Alaska in inflatable boats, snowmobiles and travel trailers in a pot smuggling scheme operated by five men accused in the case, according to a story today in The Province newspaper of Vancouver. Four Alaskans and a Vancouver man brought regular shipments into Alaska from January 2004 and late 2007, according to the story.

The indictment in the case, which was returned in Anchorage, seeks the sale of a Wasilla home. None of the individuals accused are yet in custody, the story says.

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Young to Miller: Herd Alaska wolves to California. A “Heard on the Hill” item in Roll Call (subscription required) details Alaska Rep. Don Young’s reaction to California Rep. George Miller’s legislation that would outlaw shooting wolves from aircraft — a proposal that is getting support from the group Defenders of Wildlife.

According to the story: “Young proposed a solution that he thinks should satisfy everyone: Instead of passing legislation, just use the money the Defenders of Wildlife raised to herd Alaska’s wolves and transport them to Miller’s district. ‘This proposal is a win-win for everyone, and I would suggest my colleagues present it to Defenders of Wildlife representatives roaming the Capitol this week,’ Young wrote.”

Young has nicknamed Miller’s measure the “Wolves Are Cute Act.”

Meanwhile, a classy new video — lots of good shots of Alaska wildlife, including wolves — posted on the Internet aims to make a case against aerial hunting of wolves.

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Legislators ponder smarter crime fighting. In one of its first steps in getting down to business in this year’s regular session, legislators talked about how the state can go about better fighting crime, according to stories from APRN and KTUU Channel 2. The Senate Judiciary Committee opened two days of hearings that brought together many of the chief crime-fighting figures in the state.

“I think the thing that really triggered this for me was the recidivism study that came out last year that showed that two-thirds of those who are released from prison are rearrested and reincarcerated within five years,” said Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage. “That’s a startling statistic for me. We’ve got a revolving door. Our current system is not working. Our current system of criminal justice is broke in the state.”

A comprehensive public safety package that covers both urban and rural areas is part of the Senate’s priorities for the session, according to the APRN story.

A Fairbanks Daily News-Miner story details the testimony of Fairbanks Police Chief Dan Hoffman before the committee. Hoffman urged that lawmakers consider Fairbanks’ position as a hub community when allocating law enforcement resources.

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Ocean Beauty puts up cash for eagle rehab. A Kodiak Daily Mirror story says Ocean Beauty Seafoods is putting its money where its mouth is in the wake of the deaths of many of the eagles that dived into the back of a dump truck loaded with fish guts. A company spokesman said donations will be made to help with the cost of rescuing the birds that survived. Donations will also be made to each of the three raptor centers in Alaska.

“We’ll do whatever is in the best interest of the eagles,” Tom Sunderland of Ocean Beauty told the newspaper. “In other words, we’re trying to leave ourselves open to what the biologists tell us to do.”

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Ferry system officials buckle down. “We are working very rapidly on a schedule right now,” Capt. John Falvey, director of the state’s ferry system, told the Juneau Empire in response to some of the criticism surrounding the delay in the preparation of a schedule for this summer. Officials are working hard to have a schedule available by the end of January, a bit earlier than the mid-February deadline announced previously.

Still, system critics remain unhappy. “I'm very frustrated with the way things have been handled in the last few years,” said Rep. Peggy Wilson, R-Wrangell.

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Newspaper’s “wanted” listing brings in offenders. A Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman story reports that a recent 16-page list of open warrants in the newspaper brought in more than a dozen people who wanted to clean up their legal messes. Three other tips from readers yielded one that panned out, according to the story.

The results have inspired Alaska State Troopers to run the list again, according to the story. Trooper Rick Pyles told the newspaper that of the suspects he’s contacted, “I would say probably 10 percent of them say, ‘Well, I had the case, I didn’t hear anything on it, I thought it was taken care of.’” But the fact is, Pyles said, “for the most part, things just don’t go away.”

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Mariner honored for Bering Sea rescue. A posting on the military.com web site details the acts of a fishing boat captain who rescued three men from a disabled vessel in the Bering Sea in October. The Coast Guard Meritorious Public Service Award, the highest search-and-rescue award the agency has, was given to Marc Lashua. Lashua and his crew got the crewman off the disabled vessel and took them to Dutch Harbor.

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When afloat, sail clear of the Net. A travel story in The Salt Lake Tribune on Alaska cruises has some of the usual material about arranging and preparing for a voyage to the state. But something that took us by surprise — given that online matters have become dear to our heart — was the story’s advice on connecting to the Internet while afloat:

“Don't log on to the Web. I did that in the ship's Internet Cafe to check my fantasy baseball team results, and it cost me $21.75 for 28 minutes. During one shore excursion, I found a cafe with computers that took quarters and paid $4 for 30 minutes online.”

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Four decades later, Vietnam vet gets medal. Andrew Wescott was awarded the Silver Star this week at Fort Wainwright for his actions on an October afternoon in 1968, according to a Fairbanks Daily News-Miner story. Wescott was wounded in the course of recovering a comrade’s body during a battle that day.

According to the story: “It was only two months ago when he asked for a copy of his medical records from the Army that Wescott discovered the Silver Star citation. It’s unclear exactly how it went undiscovered for so long, but the most likely explanation is that the paperwork for the award went through after he was already discharged and it was just filed away with the rest of his records.”

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To the moon and back. “The lowest-frequency radar echo from the moon ever detected on the home planet,” is how the Far North Science web site describes a recent test involving the sometimes-controversial HAARP research station outside Gakona. The test involved bouncing a signal from HAARP off the moon, then picking it up on receivers in New Mexico.

“Analysis of the echo gives information on the properties of the lunar subsurface topography, because the low-frequency radar waves propagate to varying depths below the visible surface of the moon,” according to a technical explanation of the procedure on the Far North web site.