Anchorage Daily News

Booze becomes issue at Alaska Ranger hearing. A Seattle Times story today reports from the hearing in Unalaska looking into the sinking of the Alaska Ranger that a crew member testified he smelled alcohol on a chief engineer at the time of the episode. The story quotes Julio Morales, a first-year crewman, as saying he was face to face in the water with chief engineer Donald Cook, who was one of five men who died in the sinking, and there was a “heavy alcohol” scent on his breath.

But another engineer, James Madruga, directly contradicted the alcohol claim, saying he was on deck and in the water with Cook and never detected alcohol. Cook was on medication, Madruga said.

Morales also testified about other alcohol use aboard the vessel, at one point saying there “had been a lot of drinking on the boat,” according to the story. The hearing into the Alaska Ranger, which went down after taking on water through a major leak near the rudder, is expected to continue in Unalaska through the middle of the week.

The Times also had story over the weekend on the owner of the Alaska Ranger, Karena Adler of The Fishing Company of Alaska. The story characterizes her as “one of the most powerful women in Alaska’s male-dominated fishing world, with a fleet of seven boats and precious Alaska fishing rights valued at many millions of dollars.”

At the same time, “she has remained an enigmatic character, a stranger whom some competitors call ‘the Howard Hughes of fishing,’ ” the story says.

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“The quiet tragedy.” A Juneau Empire story over the weekend looks at teen suicide in Alaska’s capital city, reporting that eight young adults have killed themselves in the past year and a half. And the numbers the story came up with may not be the total picture: “Records don’t provide a complete picture of the number of deaths by suicide because police aren't always involved, or an overdose or accident might not be confirmed as a suicide. Police data, however, indicates suicide deaths have increased in Juneau in the past year.”

A second story details the December suicide of an “accomplished, vibrant” 20-year-old woman who stunned her parents with the act. A number of events, some of which the parents knew nothing about, apparently stirred Elizabeth Haas to take her life, according to the story. “The shock was not just that she did it, but that it could happen,” said her father, David Haas. “All you work for is so your kids could have a chance to be happy.”

The Empire also has two stories today, one dealing with school officials’ efforts to reach out to kids, the other dealing with teenagers and their fears and feelings.

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Bishop returns to pulpit. Bishop Nikolai Soraich, who had been asked to step down from his position as head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Alaska, returned to the pulpit on Sunday, a KTUU Channel 2 story reports. The bishop has been the target of allegations of verbal and emotional abuse and insensitivity to Native culture.

Soraich told the station his difficulties were similar to Jesus Christ’s. “Christ was crucified on the cross. They thought that was the end of him. It wasn’t,” he said. “I felt very much like Christ, going to the cross and being abandoned and pushed aside and no one there for him.”

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State makes another movie appearance. An Anchorage Press story looks at another in the string of movies in recent months that are set in Alaska. This one, still struggling on the festival circuit, is called “Chronic Town” and takes place in Fairbanks — and, unlike many films about Alaska, was actually shot here, for the most part.

“Chronic Town” was shown at the Sundance Film Festival in January. The director and writer both have Fairbanks links and are holding out hope the movie will end up with a distribution deal, which would make it available to the public.

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Fish farm licenses on hold. British Columbia has ceased issuing new licenses for fish farms on the central coast while the government looks at new ways to manage the industry, according to a Canadian Press story. The ban on licenses includes those for salmon farms, which have been blamed for the destruction of wild salmon stocks, according to the story.

“Agriculture Minister Pat Bell said the new approach will be developed in collaboration with First Nations to protect the health of wild salmon,” the story says.

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Heating up in the West. The western part of America is heating up faster than any other region of the country and even more than the rest of the planet as a whole, the Los Angeles Times reports in a story that cites temperatures from a new study by the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization. From 2003 through 2007, the global climate averaged 1 degree warmer, while the 11 western states average 1.7 degrees warmer.

And in Alaska, the average mean air temperature has risen 4 to 5 degrees over the last three decades, according to the story. “The report reveals ‘the growing consensus among scientists who study the West that climate change is no longer an abstraction,’ said Bradley H. Udall of the University of Colorado, whose work was cited in the study. ‘The signs are everywhere.’ ”

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Help sought for Valdez parks. A Valdez Star story airs complaints from an advisory panel about the “embarrassing” condition of state parks in the Valdez area. Harold Blehm, chairman of the Valdez Area Parks Citizens Advisory Board, told the newspaper that some of the parks — with Worthington Glacier and Mineral Creek among those at the top of the list — are being neglected and need attention from the state.

“They keep putting off repairs” to everything, Blehm said. “… It’s like inviting somebody to your house and them giving them dirty sheets to sleep on.”

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McKinley ordeal yields book. A British climber who was stranded on Mount McKinley for 18 hours in 1999 has written a book on his ordeal, according to a story in the Evening Telegraph of Derbyshire. Nigel Vardy lost his toes and the ends of his fingers on the mountain.

The book, “Once Bitten,” is a “tough tale of survival in extreme conditions,” according to the story. Vardy and two companions unsuccessfully tried to reach the McKinley summit but were thwarted by cold and had to be lifted off the mountain.

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We like our ferries. The results of a statewide poll, reported on SitNews Web site, show overwhelming support for the state’s ferry system. The poll, conducted by the Hays Research Group, showed that 85 percent of respondents “said the state should continue funding the Alaska Marine Highway System, which currently serves 30 communities in Southeast, Southcentral and Southwest Alaska.”

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A ride on the “vomit comet.” An APRN story reports that a group of University of Alaska Fairbanks students will get a shot at the ultimate carnival ride in April: NASA’s special jet that can simulate the zero gravity conditions of space. Called the “vomit comet,” the aircraft will host a UAF microgravity team, which will conduct experiments, and 39 other groups from across the nation.

One of the UAF group’s advisers said: “Students float around or they hang on or whatever and a little bit before they finish freefall they’re told to sort of settle down and basically hug the floor and try not to throw up because then you go into a significant number of G’s as it pulls out of free-fall and climbs for the next drop.”

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A good crop of House candidates. A Real Clear Politics story looks at the candidates for the U.S. House it considers impressive and includes Democrat Ethan Berkowitz, who is going for Rep. Don Young’s job. The GOP in Alaska “has plenty of headaches” — including investigations under way into the affairs of Young and Sen. Ted Stevens — and that could give Berkowitz a boost, the piece contends.

“Young now faces a serious primary challenge from Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell (R). The chaos could help Berkowitz, who must be hoping that a bloodied Young survives to the general election,” the writer says.

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City council holds chair empty. The Cordova City Council convened for its regular meeting recently, but this one was different — Vice Mayor Mike O’Leary wasn’t there. And a story from The Cordova Times on the meeting says council members kept O’Leary’s chair empty in his honor. A snow safety expert and community activist, O’Leary was killed in an avalanche earlier this month.

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Global warming has ups, downs. A new report detailed in an Alaska Journal of Commerce story says climate change will bring with it good and bad consequences. The good: expansion of commercial shipping in the high Arctic, increased tourism and increased research activities. The bad: threats to shoreline communities, damage to commercial, sport and subsistence fisheries as well as sport and subsistence hunting, changes in the way the insurance industry deals with Alaska.

The Alaska Climate Impact Assessment Committee, according to the story, concluded that while “climatic changes have been a part of human adaptation in Alaska going back more than 10,000 years, the pace of warming has been more dramatic in recent years.” The commission said “that the task of implementing a plan to deal with these changes now falls to Gov. Sarah Palin's new sub-cabinet for climate change.”

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