Anchorage Daily News

WIDE-AWAKE GRIZZLIES KEEP BETTLES ON EDGE (Fairbanks Daily News-Miner): Last year, it was wolves that tormented residents of the small Brooks Range village. This year, it's grizzly bears. The shooting of one big grizzly and the sighting of another have many of the town’s roughly 50 residents stirred up.

RESCUED BROOKS RANGE HIKER CRITICIZED (Fairbanks Daily News-Miner): Even though she was paid $210, the idea of renting a room and feeding a meal to Dave Roberts didn't sit well with Jamie Klaes, manager of the Bettles Lodge. "It felt like he was being rewarded for stupidity," Klaes said three days after Roberts, unprepared for wilderness survival, was rescued by the Alaska Air National Guard. "He got a free hotel room with a Jacuzzi tub, free meals, a free rescue. Then he had the audacity to complain that we didn't have the Internet here," she said.

JUNEAU PARENTS UPSET ABOUT STUDENT HAZING (Juneau Empire): Some Juneau students came back from a high school wrestling meet in Petersburg a few weeks ago with injuries not common to their sport, including frostbite.

FAIRBANKS ORNITHOLOGY LAB OWES MUCH TO ANCHORAGE MAN (Fairbanks Daily News-Miner): Henry Springer, a longtime donor of bird specimens, presented a display with a passenger pigeon, a Socorro dove and two mourning doves during a ceremony Tuesday dedicating an ornithology lab in his honor.

GAME BOARD GETS SUBSISTENCE PERSPECTIVE (Alaska Newspapers Inc.): Alaska's newest Board of Game member will also be its youngest, but Stanley "Stosh" Hoffman has lived enough years to see the boom-and-bust cycle of predator and prey around the Kuskokwim River village where he grew up.

HUNTING BUFFALO IN ALASKA (NPR's "All Things Considered"): Steven Rinella, author of "American Buffalo," talks about his experience hunting buffalo in Alaska. Read a review of his book here. Rinella is also the author of the 2006 killing-and-eating memoir "The Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine" and an Outside magazine correspondent focusing on exotic eating.

BIKE RACING ON ICE? DON'T BE A GEAR SNOB (Bicycles and Icicles blog): "Check out the photo -- my friend Rob's rockin' his work gloves, his Merrell mocs and some blue jeans with one leg rolled up to keep his pants out of the drivetrain. And he seems to have forgotten his race number."

BEAR NAKED: POLAR PUZZLE (Slate's Explainer): Handlers at Kushiro Municipal Zoo in northern Japan tried, and failed, to mate two polar bears before realizing that both are female. Why is it so difficult to distinguish boy polar bears from girl polar bears?

CHAMBLISS CREDITS PALIN FOR BIG VICTORY (The Politico, Fox News): Fresh off his runoff victory Tuesday night, Georgia Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss credited Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin with firing up his base. "I can't overstate the impact she had down here," Chambliss said during an interview this morning on Fox News.

‘TEAM SARAH' OUT FOR BLOOD (Alaska Dispatch): At TeamSarah.org, thousands of Palinistas defend their girl, but what they really want to talk about is Obama. Some think he's the anti-Christ, a terrorist, or maybe the next Hitler.

HOW SALMON FIND THEIR WAY HOME (Seattle Post-Intelligencer): Researchers say the brains of salmon and sea turtles focus on an "address" based on Earth's magnetic field. Because the magnetic field changes slightly over time, it probably only guides the turtles and salmon back to the general neighborhood in which they were born; then they use some other sense -- smell? -- to get to the exact right spot.

Return to Alaska Newsreader through the day for new links.

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HIGHLIGHTS FROM RECENT NEWSREADERS:

Murkowski to Palin: Leave my seat alone (The Politico)

Photo: Eagle dogfight over Homer Spit (National Geographic)

Near-future bleak for Southeast halibut fleet (Juneau Empire)

Trooper trainer promotes "art of shooting" (PoliceOne)

Alaska Natives explore 50 years of statehood (KYUK Bethel)

‘Spirit' bears subject of animated film (Vancouver Courier)

Navy SEAL candidates learn to fight the freeze (Kodiak Daily Mirror)

Papa Pilgrim's Alaska: The darkest place (Outside)

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