Anchorage Daily News

Poker playing pays for teacher. A physical education teacher at Palmer High School beat 507 other players and walked away with more than $70,000 at a World Series of Poker tournament in Las Vegas, according to a Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman story. Brandon Blake, whose best previous finish was 22nd place in a 2006 tournament, told the newspaper the win was “an incredible feeling.” He scored a diamond ring for his victory.

“Blake is a longtime poker player who said he hones his game in charity poker events run by the Alaska Poker Association and by making a couple trips to Vegas each year. Although he said he was confident heading into the weekend, beating such a large field is no easy matter,” according to the story. Blake told the newspaper: “It’s not a World Series bracelet event, but it’s still a World Series event.”

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Wolves wander park, trailing trapping gear. “Tourists in Denali National Park and Preserve could be in for a gruesome sight this summer if two particular wolves are still hanging out in the park,” a Fairbanks Daily News-Miner story today notes. The animals, the story says, were caught in snares outside the park weeks ago but managed to escape — yet they continue to sport the snares around their necks.

Park Service biologists responded to the latest sighting of one of the wolves this week and set out to tranquilize it so the snare could be removed. But the wolf was gone when they got there. The wound on the wolf’s neck is “pretty ugly,” biologist Tom Meier told the paper. And if the animal shows up around campgrounds and a visitors’ center and is spotted by tourists and others, “it’s going to be a huge stink for the Park Service and trappers and everyone else.”

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Crabbers apologize for whale’s woes. The Alaska Crab Coalition has issued a press release expressing regret that a gray whale apparently migrating through the Bering Sea picked up some crab gear and carried it south, according to Eureka Times-Standard story from California. A ship spotted the whale this month off the Calfornia coast near the Eel River wrapped in buoys and line, and crew members managed to cut it loose.

The gear was identified by its markings as coming from a crabber. “While entanglements like this are rare, any such occurrence is unfortunate, and we appreciate the efforts of the Humboldt State University crew for disentangling the animal,” said ACC executive director Arni Thomson. “We hope their action gives this whale a fighting chance.”

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Impersonating Sitka. They’ve put up two totem poles in Rockport, Mass. — and now they’re calling the place Sitka, according to a Gatehouse News Service story in The MetroWest Daily News in Massachusetts. The impersonation is a Disney thing for purposes of the Sandra Bullock movie “The Proposal,” which takes place in Sitka.

But the Southeast community was deemed unfit to play itself, to the chagrin of Sitka residents. “It’s always neat to have your hometown featured in a movie,” said Sitka Mayor Marko Dapcevich. “If a film is going to somewhat showcase your community, you would really like it to be your community being showcased rather than another community that is impostering your town.”

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Views on Coconut Road. With the Senate asking the Justice Department to investigate Rep. Don Young’s $10 million earmark for study of a Florida highway interchange (ADN story here), South Florida officials are airing their views on the issue in a Naples Daily News story. Ben Nelson, Naples’ mayor-elect and once chairman of the Lee County road-planning agency, says of the road study: “It’s as if the only reason for doing the study was to benefit a developer. And that is not true. … It wasn’t focused only on this developer. This was something that a lot of us thought needed to be done for this entire reason. That is what is lost in this whole thing. There has never been a road built in Florida — never — that has not benefited a developer somewhere.”

And John Spear, a Bonita Springs councilman, said the interchange idea is dead and watching the issue get national attention is “getting old.” Still, he’d like to know the truth about who changed the earmark after Congress approved it. “It’s sort of maddening that no one will stand up and say, yeah, I did it, and I’ve done it 100 times, that’s how things are done in Washington. If that’s the truth, I’d like to know that. … I’d like to see that person explain.”

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Struggling with power. Air pollutants are climbing in Juneau, where diesel generators have had to take up the slack since an avalanche took out a key power line, according to a Juneau Empire story. The story is one of three with the latest news of how Alaska’s capital city has been dealing with its energy problems.

Another story today notes that state officials took no action after a meeting Wednesday during which they considered declaring the situation a “disaster,” which could open some funding channels. Gen. Craig Campbell, commissioner of the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs for the state, said the city’s power company is moving to reconnect power lines and a disaster declaration won’t speed that up.

And a third story today looks at some of the ways the city is trying to cut power costs. “City Manager Rod Swope said he estimates energy savings measures now in place and on the way will reduce the expected $2.5 million increase in fees for three months of power by $250,000,” according to the story.

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Soldiers under investigation in prostitution case. A police investigation into a massage parlor that authorities say was a front for prostitution near Fort Wainwright has come to involve post soldiers, according to a Fairbanks Daily News-Miner story. An Army official confirmed the investigation, which is being run by the Army and the FBI, but would not say how many soldiers could be involved, the story says.

Lee’s Oriental Massage Parlor boasted in its advertising of its proximity to the post, according to the story. The business’s owners have each been charged with promoting prostitution.

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Police chief suspended. Stories in the Homer News and the Seldovia Gazette report that Seldovia’s police chief, who is also the lone member of the community’s police force, has been placed on paid administrative leave. Neither report gave a reason for the move, though both quoted from a statement from Mayor Dick Wyland saying the city could not comment until an investigation is complete.

Residents of Seldovia, which is across Kachemak Bay from Homer, can continue to call 911 in an emergency, according to the News story, and troopers from the Anchor Point post will respond.

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Radio controversy still cooking. A KTVA Channel 11 story reports that the controversy over remarks about Native women from two radio talk jocks on the “Woody and Wilcox” program is showing no signs of letting up. (Click here to read ADN’s story on protesters taking to the streets over the weekend.) The station involved, KBFX 100.5-FM, has posted a new apology on its web site, an “open letter to the community” from marketing manager Gary Donovan, and a recorded version of the statement is running every hour on the radio station.

The station is also losing advertisers, the Anchorage Museum among them, according to the story. “Not only are these remarks counter to the core mission and values of the Anchorage Museum, but my mother is Native and this strikes a very strong nerve within me,” said museum director Jim Pepper Henry.

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Wrong turn. An Associated Press story appearing in USA Today, Sporting News and elsewhere about black granite tire sculptures intended for display at Darlington Raceway notes that the monuments took an unexpected detour to Anchorage on the way from the manufacturer in China to the South Carolina racetrack. The monuments arrived in California all right but somehow got put on a “train heading not for the Deep South but the frozen North, according to the story, and ultimately ended up in Alaska.

The four tire monuments — which cost $28,000 each — got turned around and all is expected to come out OK in the end, with the track getting its order and getting them on display in time for a Mother’s Day weekend race in May.

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Other headlines:

Day of Silence causing big uproar (KTVA Channel 11

Homer harbor master retires after 21 years (Homer Tribune)

Charter halibut process moves forward (Ketchikan Daily News)

Property taxes may see further cuts, officials say (Peninsula Clarion)

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