'Sailing' Front Page Photo by Carl Thompson        Ketchikan Charter Commission Information - Forum Viewpoints Opinions/Letters Baseball: Give the kids your support by Neil Gray - Lakeside, CA - 04/30/04 In Response to: Wolves after our kids by Brad Groghan - Juneau - 04/30/04 Enjoy the history by Rick Lauber - 04/30/04 On the subject of smoking... by Kody Ansharr - Ketchikan - 04/30/04 Thieves of the Alaska Permanent Fund by Don Hoff Jr. - Hixson, TN - 04/30/04 Fear is rampant in Ketchikan by Scott McAllister - Juneau - 04/30/04 Read More Viewpoints Publish A Letter April 2004 Click on the date to read the stories & to view photos published on that day... S M T W T F S   29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30   Today's Front Page Front Page Archives               Alaska: Large Majority of US Senate Supports Comprehensive Energy Bill Says Murkowski - U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R- Alaska) noting that a clear majority of the U.S. Senate supports a comprehensive energy policy said Thursday she will continue to press for passage of a comprehensive energy plan, including incentives for construction of an Alaska natural gas pipeline project. The Senate Thursday supported passage of most of the comprehensive energy bill - the non-tax provisions of the energy bill -- by a vote of 55-43, but the measure needed 60 votes to overcome a continuing filibuster against most any legislation in the Senate. The Senate next week likely will take up the tax provisions, including most of the financial incentives for an Alaska gas line, as part of a Senate jobs bill. "While it is mildly disappointing that the Senate could not quickly approve this version of the energy bill, this vote clearly shows that the majority of the Senate understands the need for passage of legislation to increase this country's supplies of petroleum, natural gas and other energy sources from coal to renewable energy. At a time of record high prices for gasoline and for natural gas and with the summer driving season just starting the pressure will only build for passage of an energy bill this year to address this nation's urgent need for energy," said Murkowski. She said the vote was not indicative of the Senate's view of the need for energy legislation since a host of procedural concerns continue to cloud the Senate and prevent it from making headway on its agenda for the year. She said she hopes the partisan gridlock will break next week when the Senate returns to consideration of its jobs bill, formally the Foreign Corporation Sales/Extra Territorial Income (FSC/ETI) bill. That bill includes $13 billion of energy tax breaks including three tax incentives to aid construction of an Alaska gas line project: a marginal well credit to offset unlikely low natural gas prices, accelerated tax depreciation for segments of an Alaska gas line and a tax deduction for construction of a needed North Slope gas conditioning plant. - Read more... Friday - April 30, 2004

The view from inside a pingo German permafrost scientist Lutz Schirrmeister of Potsdam hands a rope to Kenji Yoshikawa, a Fairbanks permafrost scientist who has drilled a 30-foot hole into a local pingo. Ned Rozell photo. Alaska: The view from inside a pingo - Hanno Meyer smiled like a little boy when he emerged from a 30-foot hole drilled into a forested mound in Interior Alaska. "Even though I am studying permafrost, it's the first time I've been in a pingo," said Meyer, who had the day before flown to Fairbanks from Potsdam, Germany, where he works at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research. The guide to Meyer's tour inside an Alaska pingo was Kenji Yoshikawa, an assistant professor of water resources at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. While Meyer was en route, Yoshikawa had supervised the drilling of a 30-foot deep, two-foot wide hole into the solid ice west of Fairbanks. Pingos are mounds with cores of ice that pimple the landscape of Arctic and Interior Alaska. The mounds can range from the size of a Volkswagen Bug to a domed stadium, and the one Yoshikawa drilled into is large enough to provide the foundation for a castle. But no castles sit atop Yoshikawa's pingo; there are only spruce trees and a carpet of moss. - Read more... Friday - April 30, 2004

South Tongass Sunset Front Page Photo by Cindy Moody Columnists Michael Reagan: War Against Whom? - Since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, over 43 million babies have lost their lives to abortion. That's equivalent to the entire population in 17 states within the United States. Last Sunday, hordes of pro-abortion fanatics celebrated those deaths during the misnamed March for Women's Lives in Washington. According to eyewitness accounts they behaved like the barbarians they are. It was not for women's lives they were marching, but simply to safeguard their rights to kill the unborn in massive numbers. - Read more... Friday - April 30, 2004 Dick Morris: How To Buy A French Veto - Anyone who pines for genuine international multilateralism would do well to follow the bribes now being uncovered in the United Nations' Oil-for- Food scandal. Why did France and Russia oppose efforts to topple Saddam Hussein's regime? And why did they press constantly, throughout the '90s, for an expansion of Iraqi oil sales? Was it their empathy for the starving children of that impoverished nation? Their desire to stop theUnited States from arrogantly imposing its vision upon the Middle East? - Read more... Friday - April 30, 2004 More Columnists...

The June Allen Column is made possible in part by these sponsors. Cick on each name to visit each web site. June Allen Column Ketchikan's Cruise Ship Industry; A light-hearted look at its origins - Tourists are nothing new to Ketchikan. These seasonal visitors have been spilling out onto the downtown docks for more than a century now. They share certain traits: They're thrilled to find themselves in distant, exotic Alaska; they find Ketchikan quaint and charming; and, they are wide-eyed and excited as they board charter fishing boats, or climb into sightseeing coaches to rumble off over the city's trestle streets. The basic awe most people feel when seeing our little town remains constant, even after a century. The things that have changed over the years are the much larger numbers of ships and visitors visiting each summer and the numbers of attractions available to them. At the turn of the 20th century, brand new Ketchikan was even then being visited by tourists and journalists. In The Ladies World Magazine of March 1905, travel writer Myra Drake Moore described the Ketchikan she visited the summer of 1904: "[Ketchikan] is the port of entry into Alaska it and its sister towns of Juneau and Skagway are all very much alike in architecture, and seem to be 'happen-so's'. Ketchikan," she archly wrote, "has accumulated itself." - Read the rest of this story by June Allen... Saturday - April 17, 2004 Ketchikan's First City Players; Did you hear that applause? A biography of Alaska's herring: A little fish of huge importance... Read more stories by June Allen...

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