Anchorage inmate hospitalized after suicide attempt: A 24-year-old man incarcerated at Anchorage Correctional Complex remains hospitalized in critical condition after he tried to hang himself in his cell on Sunday morning, according to a news release from the state Department of Corrections. The man, whose name was not provided "to protect the family's privacy," was found unresponsive by nursing personnel around 6:40 a.m., corrections officials say. He had tied bed sheets into a noose. Jail staff intervened and performed CPR until medics arrived, officials say. The man was taken to a hospital. He had been in custody since April 2 after being jailed on a probation violation from a 2009 second-degree assault charge.
One dead, one injured in Knik River rollover: A man from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson is dead following a rollover accident in the Knik River near Jim Creek early Saturday morning, according to Alaska State Troopers. Troopers said emergency responders in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough received a call at about 3 a.m. about a pickup truck rollover accident in the riverbed of the Knik River. Troopers responded and performed CPR on the victim, the passenger, before pronouncing him dead at the scene. Troopers identified the victim as 23-year-old Shawn Bounds, of Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. The truck's driver was identified by troopers as 22-year-old David Villaricencio, of Anchorage. Villaricencio was transported from the scene with non-life-threatening injuries. Troopers said an initial investigation showed the truck rolled after it accelerated while turning. Bounds was partially ejected during the accident, and the vehicle rolled over him, troopers say. Investigation into the accident is ongoing.
As a moderate, Murkowski becomes central to the Senate: Nevada Senator and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid may rule the day-to-day workings of the Senate with "an iron fist," but he relies on the two moderate Republican women to get much of the legislative body's work accomplished, according to a piece in the National Journal. One of those women is Maine's Susan Collins. The other? Alaska's Lisa Murkowski. As the National Journal points out, one of the reasons Murkowski takes a more pragmatic, moderate stance than many of her colleagues is the circumstances surrounding her reelection in 2010. That was the year Murkowski lost the Republican primary to tea party favorite Joe Miller (who's currently making another run for a Senate seat). When Murkowski lost that race, she launched a write-in campaign that ultimately proved successful. "I am very cognizant of how I was returned to the Senate. It was not my party that returned me," she told the National Journal. "It was voters across the spectrum that returned me to represent them here in Washington, D.C. It was Democrats, it was independents, it was Greens, it was some tea party—not too many—it was Republicans, it was Alaskans from all areas that came together and proactively voted for me." Instead of pulling her further to the right, that experience made her more independent, the piece said. Murkowski told the magazine she wears a bracelet modeled after the ones the write-in campaign handed out to remind her of that election: "Am I working for my party or am I working for my state? And at the end of the day, that's not something I need to wrestle with for very long."
East Coast vs. West Coast in federal fisheries update: As the Magnuson-Stevens Act heads for reauthorization, important points of debate are dividing the nation into two camps -- Pacific versus Atlantic -- says a report from the Seattle Times' Wasington Bureau. At issue are the conservation standards that the act contains. Alaska, along with other Pacific coast states in the Lower 48, is mostly okay with the current policy: "Bering Sea crabbers and West Coast commercial groundfish harvesters, for instance, want the law's conservation measures left largely intact," the Times writes. "But some of their counterparts in New England and the Gulf of Mexico are demanding key changes. The collapse or overexploitation of such iconic stocks as cod and red snapper have battered their livelihoods and curtailed sport fishing, and the fishermen want more elastic mandates on overfishing and on rebuilding depleted fish populations."