News for Thursday, May 31
SEND LINKS AND SUGGESTIONS
Sign up for daily morning e-mail.
Stevens expects strong opponent. He has no opponent so far, but Sen. Ted Stevens told supporters at a Fairbanks campaign kickoff he expects to face one by the time next year’s election rolls around, the Fairbanks News-Miner reports. “We don’t know who’s going to run against me, but, very clearly, they’ve told me there will be someone running against me,” the state’s senior senator said at a campaign rally covered by the newspaper. Stevens recalled spending about $38,000 on his first campaign some 40 years ago, and predicted the upcoming race could cost $5 million, the News-Miner says.
***
The ticket line starts here. The Honolulu Star Bulletin and the Seattle PI say Alaska Airlines will begin flying direct between Anchorage and Honolulu on Dec. 9 and continue through the winter until April 13.
***
Moose, calf run-in with sled dog ends badly. A North Pole musher shot and killed a moose this week after one of his sled dogs pulled loose from a stake and went after the cow and a newborn calf, the Fairbanks News-Miner reports. Wildlife trooper Dennis Roe told the newspaper that the moose ended up charging musher Jonah Lilley. That’s when he shot it in the head with a .22-caliber rifle, the paper says. The cow and calf, probably less than a week old, wandered past the musher’s dog lot and “riled the dogs up,” Roe told the News-Miner. One of the huskies got loose and the ruckus began. The calf was badly hurt by the loose dog and had to be shot, too.
***
Bad ice stops explorer short of the pole. Deteriorating ice conditions that made it too dangerous for airplanes to continue to land and re-supply her forced a 47-year-old British explorer to abandon her solo trip to the North Pole only 89 miles short of the destination, according to several organizations including Times Online and the BBC. Rosie Stancer, who has a 5-year-old son, covered 326 miles, traveling about 15 miles a day and pulling a sled with supplies across shifting ice. She was six months into her attempt. The trip, Stancer told the Times, was “very much tougher than I envisaged.”
***
IWC: Annual meeting nears end with tough issues unresolved. The International Whaling Commission met into the night Wednesday, APRN’s Alaska News Nightly reported, with a bunch of controversial issues still before them, including Japan’s request to allow four coastal communities to hunt minke whales. APRN and the AP report that Japan’s alternate IWC commissioner, Joji Morishita, offered to deduct the community whales from the more than 1,000 minkes Japan kills and sells under a scientific program. Japan has also drawn some fire with its announced plan to take 50 humpback whales in the Antarctic, those agencies, according to APRN, AP and KTUU. Alaska News Nightly has a long piece with voices from both sides of the debate between Japan and its allies and opponents.
***
Whaling crews help scientists gauge bowhead lifespan. Alaska subsistence whaling crews are helping scientists gauge the lifespan of bowhead whales, KTUU reports, and it looks like the whales can live more than 100 years. Crews butchering whales have found old stone and ivory harpoon tips – equipment not used for decades – buried deep in their blubber, the station says. And this spring, a whaling crew found what looks like part of an explosive casing that may have been used by commercial whaling captains in the late 1800s. Scientists say studies of the whales' eyes seems to back up the idea that whales can live more than a century, KTUU’s report says.
***
Unexploded bombs can be a issue, all right. Rainy weather has given firefighters a hand with several Interior wildlfires. But there’s another kind of problem with trying to suppress the Little Delta fire, which is moving toward some cabins, Alaska News Nightly reports. “We received a report from the military that this whole area had been used from the '40s on up until the early '70s as a bombing range,” the state Division of Forestry’s Marc Lee told APRN, “so there’s potential for unexploded ordnance out there and of course that eliminates the possibility of us putting our firefighters on the ground.”
Grizzlies appear to have high-tailed it. After a week in which two aggressive grizzlies were shot and another one chased a mountain biker, reports of bear-people encounters in and around Fairbanks dropped off the table, state Fish and Game biologist Don Young told the News-Miner. Young told the paper the only reports he got this week – including one about a sow and two cubs behind the Howling Dog Saloon in Fox – were of old sightings. “I hope they all head to the hills and stay out of the Fairbanks vicinity,” the biologist said.
***
Gas line visions have been around for years. With Gov. Sarah Palin a week away from signing the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act, KTUU takes a look back at some prior gas proposals over the decades, and a look ahead at the prospects for actually getting one built this time.
***
Century-old shop may be too far gone. The old shack near the Last Chance Mining Museum is nearly 100 years old and looks every day of it. The Juneau Empire reports that the Alaska Association for Historic Preservation has had the one-time locomotive repair shop on its list of the state’s most endangered historic buildings for years. The 18-foot tall, 75-foot long wooden structure was built for the old Alaska-Juneau gold mine in 1916 and housed equipment to repair the mine’s electric locomotives, the paper says. Gary Gillette, the director the mining museum, would like to see it saved but is uncertain if it can be. “A number of years ago, we tried to stabilize it a bit,” Gillette told the Empire. “It was too dangerous for volunteers to take on.”
***
MORE ALASKA HEADLINES
UAF scientist: Climate change driving wildfire surge. (Fairbanks News-Miner)
Damaged Empress heads south for repairs. (AP)
Dig into Kodiak and what do you find? Volcanic ash. Kodiak Daily Mirror
Rogue cabs steal cannery fares (Kodiak Daily Mirror)
45.6-pound king wins Petersburg derby (Petersburg Pilot)
ADN editors find the news from all over Alaska every morning so you don't have to. Updated weekdays by 9 a.m. AST. (Some links may require registration)
