Web site calls for Snowzilla lawsuit (Snowzilla.org): The anonymous creators of a new Web site say they are collecting donations and encouraging Snowzilla mastermind Billy Powers to sue the city of Anchorage over its order preventing him from building the giant snowman again this winter. See also:

Snowzilla rises from the dead (ADN)

City code officer slays Snowzilla (ADN)

Letters to the editor on Snowzilla (ADN)

Code commissars melt giant snowman (Alaska Pride blog)

The Grinch who stole Snowzilla (Alaska Dispatch)

Public enemy No. 1: Snowzilla (Dan Fagan, Alaska Standard blog)

Frosty reception: All-hours visitors grate on Snowzilla neighbors (ADN, 1/5/07)

Snowzilla II: Even bigger (ADN, 12/25/06)

Alaska wilderness race not quite a reality show (Chilkat Valley News): Reality TV got a dose of real Alaska winter weather in Haines last week that forced the show into some unreal situations during one of the four days of filming.

Santa is ours, Canada says (Canwest News Service): Less than three weeks after the Canadian government proposed legislation to expand the country's sovereignty over Arctic waters, its citizenship minister is shoring up Canada's claim to the Far North by declaring Santa Claus, a longtime resident of the North Pole, to be a Canadian citizen.

Some drivers who use Fairbanks ice road find themselves on thin ice (Fairbanks Daily News-Miner): As he waited for workers from Precision Cranes Inc. to pull a pickup truck out of the Chena River, tow truck driver Alan Hughes could only shake his head. "People will see this and keep driving on the ice," he said. With photos.

Conservative snobs are wrong about Sarah Palin (Wall Street Journal): Though regularly pronounced sick, dying, dead, cremated and scattered at sea, Sarah Palin is still amazingly around. She has survived more media assassination attempts than Fidel Castro has survived real ones. In her case, one particular method of assassination is especially popular -- namely, the desperate assertion that, in addition to her other handicaps, she is "no Margaret Thatcher."

Tina Fey: Entertainer of the year (The Associated Press): Tina Fey, whose indelible impression of Gov. Sarah Palin on "Saturday Night Live" drew the show its best ratings in years, was voted Entertainer of the Year by newspaper editors and broadcast producers across the country.

Sport meets survival: An Iditarod without dogs (The New York Times): It is promoted as the longest, most remote winter ultrarace in the world, a slog across century-old marshland trails from the outpost of Knik over the Farewell Hills, up the Yukon River, through the ghost towns of the Kuskokwim Mountains and on to the Bering Sea. To train aspiring competitors, Bill Merchant has set up a camp on the Susitna Flats. At a cost of $750, he promises five days of survival training designed to toughen the qualified and to break the rest. With photos and video. See also:

Suffering on the trail (ADN, 3/9/08)

Grandmother home for Christmas after running across the world (This is South Wales): She survived being hit by a bus, suffering pneumonia, frostbite in Alaska and a breast cancer scare. Rosie Swale Pope, a grandmother who ran 20,000 miles across the planet, is about to spend her first Christmas at home in six years.

Fairbanks opens innovative new detox facility (KUAC, Fairbanks): The Fairbanks Native Association's Gateway Recovery Center has resulted from a several-year community effort by a broad spectrum of local organizations in hopes of taking pressure off the hospital and jail.

From naughty to nice: Bothersome beavers behaving, at least for now (Stories in the News): Maybe they heard about Santa, or maybe they just got tired of volunteers undoing their work, but it appears the beavers in the Dredge Lakes area of Juneau have ceased plugging culverts, felling trees and repairing dams.

Fishing frenzy: Kenai forms salmon task force (Peninsula Clarion): Fear of potential fisheries legislation influenced by politicians and anglers in Mat-Su has spurred the city of Kenai to form a salmon task force.

University of Alaska Fairbanks scientist creates program to map craters (Fairbanks Daily News-Miner): Some people are star gazers, but UAF researcher John Chappelow is looking at craters. He has created a computer program to study images of crater shadows on the Earth and moon.

More racism from Team Sarah (The Huffington Post): There is something very ugly happening out there in the hinterlands these days -- a brewing cauldron of racist anger being directed at President-elect Barack Obama. Nowhere have these tendencies been more out-front and prominent than at TeamSarah.org.

Return to Alaska Newsreader through the day for new links.

----------------------

HIGHLIGHTS FROM RECENT NEWSREADERS:

Village's two shores will finally meet over bridge (The Bristol Bay Times)

With Stevens' fall, a lobbyist pipeline shuts off (The New York Times)

Sarah Palin: Conservative of the year (Ann Coulter, Human Events)

Arctic ‘greening' linked to retreating sea ice (Science Daily)

Remains of Alaskan who died at Pearl Harbor finally ID'd (Stories in the News, Ketchikan)

Willie Hensley: 50 years and 50 miles (Anchorage Press)

State fund managers avoided Madoff (Juneau Empire)

Old Alaska license plate is America's most valuable (Forbes)