Ketchikan: Renovation continues under plastic wrap - The major repairs to the construction of the acute care patient wing at Ketchikan General Hospital, which opened in 2000, continues on schedule. The City of Ketchikan has contracted with Dawson Construction to carry out the repair. Begun in May, the tear-down phase of the exterior stucco and support system has now been completed.

Renovation continues under plastic wrap Ketchikan General Hospital Photo courtesy KGH

In order to work on the shell of the building while protecting patient rooms, a temporary sheetrock wall has been constructed two feet in from the windows in every room. An engineered scaffolding system was then erected outside and then completely covered in plastic. Within this "baggie", workers removed the damaged stucco and bolts. - More...
Wednesday - July 13, 2005

Alaska: Governor Signs Six Crime Bills; Bills combat gang and school violence, identity theft, DUI, and protect victims' rights - Alaska Governor Frank H. Murkowski signed into law six bills intended to address problems associated with juvenile crime, violence in our schools, identity theft, victims' rights and drunk driving.

Since taking office, the Murkowski administration has hired 34 additional state troopers, toughened the state's bootlegging and DUI laws, closed legal loopholes that have allowed criminals to avoid prosecution and made other enhancements intended to keep Alaska communities safe. - More...
Wednesday - July 13, 2005

Martin Named Alaska Superintendent of the Year Photo courtesy KGBSD

Ketchikan: Ketchikan's Harry Martin Named Alaska Superintendent of the Year - The Alaska Association of School Administrators (AASA) announced Tuesday that Harry Martin is Alaska's Superintendent of the Year for 2006.

Harry Martin has been Superintendent of the Ketchikan Gateway Borough School District since 2000. Prior to being appointed Superintendent in Ketchikan, he served in several different educational capacities in the Bering Strait School District in Unalakleet, over a 14year period. He was a principal, special education director, curriculum & instruction director and associate superintendent during the years he worked in the Bering Strait School District. - More...
Wednesday - July 13, 2005

Ketchikan: PeaceHealth announces new system-wide CEO - PeaceHealth recently announced that Alan Yordy assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer and President of PeaceHealth in Bellevue on July 1, 2005 following the retirement of John Hayward, CEO since 1997.

PeaceHealth is a not-for-profit health care system, sponsored by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace, with services in Washington, Oregon, and Alaska - including Ketchikan. The health system office and provincial offices of the Sisters are located in Bellevue, Washington. - More...
Wednesday - July 13, 2005

National: Experts urge Bush to quickly address Rove situation By MARGARET TALEV - President Bush appeared to be standing by chief political adviser Karl Rove on Tuesday, but for a second day he resisted pressure to address a growing controversy over what role Rove played in the leaking of a CIA operative's identity two years ago.

Democrats, meanwhile, began calling on the president either to dismiss Rove, who is a White House deputy chief of staff, or go public with details that could clear him in connection with leaks in 2003 that revealed that Valerie Plame, the wife of a former ambassador, Joe Wilson, was a CIA officer. - More...
Wednesday - July 13, 2005

National: Key questions at the center of Rove controversy By ROBERT COLLIER - The controversy over whether presidential adviser Karl Rove revealed the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame as part of a public-relations battle over the Iraq war leaves many questions that can be only partially answered. Among them:

Q: What was the likely motive for the leaking of Valerie Plame's identity as a covert CIA agent to columnist Robert Novak, which he published on July 14, 2003? - More...
Wednesday - July 13, 2205

National: Senate rejects bid to send more anti-terror funds to larger states By LAWRENCE M. O'ROURKE - The Senate took a major step toward guaranteeing that small and rural states continue to receive a sizable slice of homeland security spending by voting 65-32 Tuesday against a proposal that would have shifted the allocation to states that may be most at risk of terrorist attack.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., described the vote as a victory for pork-barrel politics that spread money where it wasn't urgently needed over a policy that focused spending on areas of the greatest need, such as California and New York. - More...
Wednesday - July 13, 2005

National: London bombings give new ammo in fights to save military bases By LISA HOFFMAN - No sooner had the smoke cleared from the London bombings than assorted U.S. lawmakers seized on the terror attack as a reason to save their military installations from the base-closing ax.

Within a day of the July 7 attacks, House Republican leader Tom DeLay of Texas said they demonstrated the necessity of keeping a small fleet of Air National Guard F-16 fighter jets at Ellington Field to protect Houston. - More...
Wednesday - July 13, 2005

National: Another Vietnam? Yes and no By MARGARET TALEV - Iraq and Vietnam.

When President Bush's critics drew the analogy during the March 2003 invasion, it was hypothetical, politically tinged and not very widely held.

Two years and four months later, however, as body counts rise in Iraq and the insurgency appears holding strong, the inclination to compare the Vietnam War with what is happening now in the Middle East is wending its way into mainstream America. - More...
Wednesday - July 13, 2005

Viewpoints Opinions/Letters Where does the Alaskan oil go? By John B. Hughes - Tuesday Retort: Beating a Dead Horse By Don Hoff Jr. - Tuesday Don Young's Comment Unbelievable By Linda Williams - Monday Protect the Social Security System By Robert Freedland - Monday Beating a dead horse By Glenn Bell - Monday Proposal To The NYSE By Kevin McMahon - Monday Rep. Don Young's Smoking Pot Comment By Robert McRoberts - Sunday Above the Law? By Don Hoff Jr. - Sunday Airport Ferry Fares By Terri Lee - Sunday More Viewpoints/ Letters Publish A Letter Silent Muslim Majority By: Sandy Huffaker Cagle Cartoons Distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons, Inc. Political Cartoonists Ketchikan Calendar, Meetings, Events Today's Forecast City Police Report 07/13/05 AK Troopers Daily Dispatch Classifieds & Announcements July 2005 Click on the date for stories and photos published on that day... S M T W T F S 26 27 28 29 30 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

Science: Dinosaurs breathed like birds, researchers say By LEE BOWMAN - Forget giant lizards. When it comes to the breathing apparatus of dinosaurs, they were more like giant sparrows, according to a new study comparing dino skeletons to those of modern birds.

Writing in the journal Nature, researchers from Ohio and Harvard universities report that rather than reptilian lungs, dinosaurs sported a much bigger and more complex system of air sacs similar to that found in today's birds. - More...
Wednesday - July 13, 2005

International: Africa missing out on biotech crops, researchers say By LANCE GAY - Regulatory hurdles are preventing African farmers from reaping the benefits of genetically modified foods that could relieve hunger and lessen the need for outside food assistance, a team of international food scientists said Wednesday.

Joel Cohen, a researcher at the International Food Policy Research Institute, said many African countries are conducting aggressive research into using biotechnology to develop disease and insect-resistant plants, but the seeds they are developing aren't reaching farmers because government regulatory institutions in those countries aren't familiar with how biotechnology works. - More...
Wednesday - July 13, 2005

International: More than 3,100 acts of terrorism reported in 2004 By THOMAS HARGROVE - Americans are painfully aware of the suicide bombings in Iraq that last year claimed more than 2,700 lives.

But how many know that militants seeking independence for tiny Chechnya last year made Russia the world's second-worst hotspot for terrorism, accounting for 750 deaths?

Or that Maoist rebels in the Himalayan Mountains of Nepal last year took 5,428 hostages, accounting for 86 percent of all terrorist-related kidnappings? - More...
Wednesday - July 13, 2005

International: Working-class neighborhood obscured terrorist laboratory By DOUG SAUNDERS - On a summer evening, the Leeds neighborhood of Burley takes on a red-brick, working-class charm, as families sit on their front porches and eat fish and chips, and the thin walls of the tightly packed row houses echo with domestic bluster.

It is a ramshackle, urban mix of tie-dyed students playing their music from top-floor windows, Jamaican families cooking fish-head stew in the back yard, and a great many Pakistanis, of every imaginable faith and occupation. - More...
Wednesday - July 13, 2005

International: 69 million communists urged to toe the line By GEOFFREY YORK - It could be the biggest mass-indoctrination campaign that China has experienced since the Cultural Revolution.

Over the next year, more than 55 million Chinese people will be inculcated with Communist Party ideology in a series of Maoist-style "study sessions" and "self-criticisms." It's believed to be the most ambitious and far-reaching such campaign in China since the death of Mao Zedong in 1976.

While China has surged ahead with capitalist reforms in recent years, its political rulers have remained stuck in the mindset and methods of the 1970s, still seeking to bolster their power with heavy-handed thought-control tactics. - More...
Wednesday - July 13, 2005