Good Luck... But the Wrong Weekend! Wade Jardine and his 52 pound King Salmon Front Page Photograph by Nikki Jardine

Ketchikan: Good Luck... But the Wrong Weekend! By M.C. KAUFFMAN - With the 59th Annual Ketchikan CHARR King Salmon Derby starting Saturday, Wade Jardine said he had good luck, but on the wrong weekend!

Jardine and his wife Nikki were fishing this past Sunday just off Survey Point. "It was slow going for the first few hours, so I changed my gear and put it out for another go around and all hell broke loose," said Jardine. "I was sure I had a halibut on by the way it took off for bottom."

When Jardine looked over to his wife's down rigger, it was banging up and down. He said, "I thought WOW a double hook up! I worked it up and saw my wife's flasher and bait rapped around my down rigger and my heart sank. I thought there was no way I would get this fish in the boat." Jardine said, "But God was watching over my shoulder cause some how I got all the gear free and my wife scooped him up in the net." - More...
Tuesday - May 23, 2006

Alaska: Bill seeks to open ANWR to drilling By LIZ RUSKIN - The chairman of the House Resources Committee has filed another bill to accomplish what so many prior bills have failed to do: open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

Recent strategies to get an ANWR bill through a reluctant Senate have involved mixed marriages - ANWR and the budget, or ANWR and the defense bill. Rep. Richard Pombo's latest proposal, on the other hand, is a standalone bill dealing only with ANWR. That leaves it wide open to filibuster in the Senate.

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"There's always the chance that Sen. (Ted) Stevens and other like-minded senators could get the three votes they need to move forward and pass it with a filibuster-proof majority," said Brian Kennedy, spokesman for Pombo, R-Calif.

The Republican-dominated House has passed ANWR legislation repeatedly in the last five years, with the help of about 30 Democrats. A majority of senators have also voted to drill in the refuge, but Stevens and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, have fallen a few voted short of the 60 they need to block a filibuster, a fatal procedural delay. - More...
Tuesday - May 23, 2006

National: Treasury Department weakened under Bush By MICHELE HELLER - President Bush has been looking for a new treasury secretary for more than a year, but he has yet to find someone who wants to replace John Snow in the once-powerful Cabinet post.

The drawn-out search is uncomfortable for the White House and hammers home the view that treasury's influence and prestige has diminished under Bush.

"This administration has weakened treasury to degree I cannot recall," said Peter J. Wallison, the treasury general counsel during the Reagan administration and now a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

"I do not recall a time that treasury has been as ... excluded from policymaking as this treasury has been up to now," he said. "There are very, very good people there now, and they could be a major source of support for the administration.

But it is hard to find someone" to head the department "who will be just an errand boy," he said. - More....
Tuesday - May 23, 2006

National: Immigration-reform costs keep piling on By MICHAEL DOYLE - Vote by vote, the cost of immigration reform keeps adding up.

There is new triple-layer fencing, running more than $3 million a mile. There are new vehicle barriers, at $1.3 million a mile. There are thousands of new Border Patrol agents, hired and trained at $170,000 each.

The immigration-reform package that the Senate continues amending is, in short, a bill in more ways than one. Lawmakers intent on demonstrating their commitment to border security are loading it with programs requiring tens of billions of dollars in coming years.

"Yes, I am concerned that there won't be the funding available to meet the commitments in the bill," Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California said. "These are tough budget times.

"The cost of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and the president's tax cuts are squeezing dozens of programs, and this will be no exception." - More...
Tuesday - May 23, 2006

National: Ways to verify eligibility seen as key to immigration control By TYCHE HENDRICKS - Central to all the immigration overhaul proposals under debate in Washington is the creation of a vast electronic system for screening all potential employees in the United States to weed out workers who cannot legally be hired.

A verification system will be essential to the success of any new immigration law, experts say, because nothing else will ensure that illegal immigrants are unemployable. Without it, they say, no amnesty program or border fence will prevent the formation of a new shadow job market that would draw millions of new undocumented workers.

Civil liberties advocates worry that an extensive database linking Social Security data with immigration information would invade Americans' privacy and could lead to warrantless government data mining, be a ripe target for identity thieves and foster a "no work" list akin to the federal government's "no fly" list.

Other experts fear that a multibillion-dollar, mandatory system - which would be almost 1,500 times the size of a pilot program that already has encountered logistical problems - would be rife with errors and delays.

But friends and foes of immigration alike say there's no better solution. - More...
Tuesday - May 23, 2006

Alaska: Solitary hiker treks 1,500 miles across Alaska By CRAIG MEDRED - The first step would prove to be the toughest of Italian Ario Sciolari's winter-long solo trek across about 1,500 miles of frozen Alaska.

Back in civilization now, the 39-year-old climber admits that when his journey began near Glennallen in December, he was so fearful his knees shook.

"I was so scared in the beginning," he said. "I did not know what to expect."'

Had it not been for a commitment to walk all the way to Kaktovik on the North Slope of the Brooks Range to highlight the threat posed to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by oil drilling, the mountain guide confesses he might have bailed.

The problem was not so much the long, dark nights that embrace Alaska in December or the bitter cold. Sciolari knew enough about those things to be comfortable with them. He had completed a month-long solo winter hike the length of Scandinavia five years earlier.

What was difficult about Alaska was the sheer enormity of the landscape, the vast distances between human habitations.

Sciolari said he was scared "by the size of it and by being alone so much."

From Lake Louise, where the adventure began on Dec. 9, he headed north across a 25-mile-long system of frozen lakes into a world far different than that around Sciolari's home near Cortina D'Ampezzo in northern Italy. - More...
Tuesday - May 23, 2006

Viewpoints Opinions/Letters New Front Roads By Patti Fay Hickox - Tuesday Vigilantes along the border By Neil Gray - Tuesday Homeland security? By Ken Lewis - Tuesday Don't Spray on Long Island By Frances C. Natkong - Tuesday Good to be home... By Archie Inoncillo - Tuesday Time to return to the gold standard? By Peter Morici - Monday "YES" on the Cruise Ship Ballot Initiative By Carrie L. James - Monday Wrong about the "vigilante" groups By Erni Grace - Saturday RE: New Guest Worker Program No Substitute For Cracking Down By David Levin - Saturday New guest worker program no substitute for cracking down By Mike Harpold - Friday Palin is Party's Brightest Hope By Lysa Maher - Friday Computer Users Over 60 By Lisa Pearson - Friday Guard Won't Solve Illegal Immigration Problem By Neil Gray - Friday Ketchikan By Marvin Seibert - Friday Paintball! Sunday May 21st! By Gregory Vickrey - Friday Revilla High School was there for me. By George Jackson - Friday National Security, Needles, and Haystacks By Alan Lidstone - Friday COMMUNITY INVITED! GRAND OPENING PAINTBALL FIELD, SUNDAY May 21st By Bobbie McCreary - Thursday Good job, Trixie! By Vicki O'Brien - Thursday Life really is easy By Greg Harris - Thursday AQUARIUM OF DEAD FISH By Robert McRoberts - Thursday A winner of a plan? By Al Johnson - Thursday War on terror with a border open By Paul Groh - Thursday Illegal Immigration By Charles Mayer - Thursday MORE ON THE AQUARIUM OF DEAD FISH By David G. Hanger - Wednesday Isn't It Amazing How... By Jerry Cegelske - Wednesday An Open Letter on Illegal Immigration By Byron Whitesides - Tuesday Pesticides found in Alaska By Carrie L. James - Monday Republicans need to rely on more than Fear! By Robert Freedland - Sunday PLEASE BE COURTEOUS!!! By Alan R. McGillvray - Saturday Democrats need to call for more than revenge By Lucille Moyer - Saturday A wonderful man By Anita Hales - Friday ALS CAN STRIKE ANYONE By Linda (Teal) Kreider - Friday Some things never go out of style By Chris Elliott - Friday JOIN US SUNDAY MAY 21st - NEW PAINTBALL PARK By Bobbie McCreary - Friday More Viewpoints/ Letters Publish A Letter Political Cartoonists Political Cartoons Ketchikan May Calendar Arts This Week Today's Forecast Ketchikan Weather Data Current AK Weather Map City Police Report AK Troopers Daily Dispatch Classifieds & Announcements May 2006 Click on the date to read the stories published on that day. S M T W T F S   01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31       Front Page Archives

Ketchikan: Rev. Frye Retires In June - After 40 years in the ministry - 23 of which were in Ketchikan - Rev. Bob Frye is switching hats. He will retire the end of June, and he and his wife Carolyn plan to move to College Place, Washington, to be closer to their sons.

Rev. Frye served as pastor in the Ketchikan Presbyterian Church from 1977-2000. Their three children (Kerry, April, and Jeremy) were raised in Ketchikan. After leaving Ketchikan, Bob has served a two-point parish in Guernsey, Wyoming, and Ft. Laramie, Wyoming. During his career, he also served as pastor in Metlakatla, Alaska, Hydaburg, Alaska, and Munster, Indiana. - More...
Tuesday - May 23, 2006

Health - Fitness: Getting less sleep linked to weight gain By LEE BOWMAN - Women who sleep five hours or less each night weigh more than those getting seven hours nightly, according to a new study.

The research was presented Tuesday at the American Thoracic Society's international conference being held in San Diego this week. It found that, on average, women who only got the five hours of shut-eye weighed 5.4 pounds more at the beginning of the study than those who slept seven hours. Additionally, the women getting fewer z's gained 1.6 pounds more than the others did over the next 10 years.

"That may not sound like much, but it is an average amount. Some women gained much more than that, and even a small difference in weight can increase a person's risk of health problems such as diabetes and hypertension," said Dr. Sanjay Patel, leader of the study and an assistant professor of medicine at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

The study included 68,183 middle-aged women who were part of the Nurses Health Study, a 16-year tracking effort run by researchers at Harvard Medical School. During an initial survey in 1986, the women were asked about their typical night's sleep and then asked to report their weight every two years for the next 16 years. - More...
Tuesday - May 23, 2006

Health - Fitness: What would you give up to be thin? By SCOTT DEVEAU - Forget the sacrifices entailed in the latest extreme diet or exercise craze, according to a new study people would be willing sacrifice life and limb, literally, to avoid being obese.

Nearly half those responding to a Yale University online survey said they would be willing give up a year of their life rather than be fat - 15 percent said they would trim a decade off their lives for a thinner waistline.

A small percentage of the roughly 4,300 people surveyed even said they would rather lose a limb (5 percent), or go blind (4 percent) than put on some extra pounds.

"I guess it just shows how intensely people don't want to be obese," said Marlene Schwartz, lead researcher on the study "(Being obese) is really seen as worse than a lot of other problems that people face in life."

Swartz and her team of researchers at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale found that regardless of the weight of those responding to the survey, most exhibited a distinct anti-fat bias. Some evidence even suggests that that bias is getting worse in the general population, according to the study, which is published in the latest issue of Obesity.

"One of the things that seems different about obesity bias, as opposed to racial bias or ethnic bias, is there isn't what they call 'in-group favoritism,'" Schwartz said. "People in the group don't even feel good about being in the group." - More...
Tuesday - May 23, 2006

Health - Fitness: Study: Too many medical tests being done By LEE BOWMAN Needless medical tests are costing the U.S. health-care system potentially billions of dollars a year and are adding unnecessarily to patient stress, according to a new study.

A review of medical data from more than 4,600 Americans over age 20 found that diagnostic tests not recommended under professional guidelines, or even advised against, were ordered for more than a third of the patients.

Such tests frequently produce false-positive results that led to still more tests that drive up expense and patient anxiety, said Dr. Dan Merenstein, an assistant professor of family medicine at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington and lead author of the study. It appeared Friday in the June issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

"Many physicians, as well as their patients, appear to believe that a routine health exam should include a number of tests they feel can screen for unknown diseases, but the evidence shows that some of these tests are less than beneficial when used in this way," Merenstein said.

"More is not always better, and understanding this is especially important now that Medicare has begun to reimburse for complete physicals."

As a benchmark of usefulness, the researchers from Georgetown and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore relied on standards issued by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. That panel of experts grades screening measures using the latest scientific evidence of effectiveness. - More...
Tuesday - May 23, 2006