Ketchikan: Eagle Scout Project Helps Local Fire Departments By DICK KAUFFMAN - Jeff Owings completed his Eagle Scout project at Fire Station #1 with a donation of 20 backboards he constructed with the help of other Scouts and local businesses. Members of four local fire agencies were on-hand Friday afternoon for the presentation of the backboards which are used to carry injured persons.

The Ketchikan Fire Department, North Tongass Volunteer Fire Department, South Tongass Volunteer Fire Department, and the Ketchikan International Airport firefighters each received 5 backboards made by Owings that would be beneficial in any large-scale event.- More...
Sunday - June 19, 2005

National: In future, driver's licenses may be mailed to you By LANCE GAY - Soon to be gone are the days when you could walk out of your local Department of Motor Vehicle office, putting your new driver's license in your wallet on the same day you make an application.

That's one of the changes expected to come under a new federal law known as the Real ID Act. Drivers will have to present verified proof of birth data, citizenship and residency to get a new license.

Because DMV officials are going to have to verify the information - and that process will take some time - experts predict that most busy DMV offices soon will send licenses and renewals via the U.S. mail, just like most U.S. passports are currently delivered. - More...
Sunday - June 19, 2005

National: Trajectory of a crisis By LISA HOFFMAN - There's a mighty hoo-hah blowing across the ocean from Britain, one amplified by blasts from American bloggers about the timing of President Bush's decision to go to war with Iraq.

An unofficial Capitol Hill hearing Thursday, chaired by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., is likely to add spin to the swirling controversy that centers on what's come to be known as the "Downing Street Memo," a once-secret report on a meeting British Prime Minister Tony Blair held with aides in July 2002.

At it, they discussed what was characterized as Bush's "determination" to invade Iraq - even though the White House was publicly denying such a decision had been made. The threat of weapons of mass destruction was concocted to justify a war, the memo implied. - More...
Sunday - June 19, 2005

National: Carew has new issue for Father's Day By ANSLEY HAMAN - Baseball Hall of Famer Rod Carew will spend this Father's Day urging dads-to-be to save something for their children that he could not for his - umbilical cord blood.

Cord blood, once considered medical waste, contains stem cells unique to a child that have proven useful in treating more than 60 diseases, including leukemia, sickle cell anemia, diabetes and heart disease. - More...
Sunday - June 19, 2005

Yoram Yom-Tov, a zoologist from the University of Tel Aviv, measures one of several hundred marten skulls at the University of Alaska's Museum of the North in Fairbanks. Photo by Ned Rozell

Alaska: Alaska shrews getting larger because they're warmer? By NED ROZELL - Some of Alaska's tiniest creatures may be getting larger, and a warmer climate might be the reason, according to a scientist from Israel.

Yoram Yom-Tov of Tel Aviv University was in Fairbanks recently for a meeting on evolution that drew hundreds of his colleagues from all over the world. In his presentation, Yom-Tov said that the size of Alaska's masked shrews has "significantly increased" during the last 50 years.

He makes that claim after comparing body length and weight measurements of more than 2,000 masked shrews in Alaska that are now in the University of Alaska Museum of the North's collection in Fairbanks. The museum has skin, bones, and some frozen flesh of more than 86,000 mammals, including thousands of shrews. From his office in Tel Aviv, Yom-Tov was able to access the information about the masked shrews from the museum's website. - More...
Sunday - June 19, 2005

National: More consumers go green By JOAN LOWY - Driven by health and environmental concerns, American consumers are increasingly turning to green products, from arsenic-free lumber to pesticide-free pet food.

Several trends have combined to fuel the surge in such consumerism. The price of many green products - from hybrid cars to organic tomatoes - is now competitive with conventional alternatives, and consumers can find more choices of environmentally friendly products in more stores than ever before. - More...
Sunday - June 19, 2005

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Jason Love: Give Man a Ball - Today, I defend men. Typically, I refrain from doing so because men are, as a rule of thumb, pigs. The expression "rule of thumb" comes from a time when a man was considered discreet to beat his family with a switch no wider than his thumb.

What do you get when you combine "man" and "men"? Mean! Just the same, I have witnessed an injustice in the way men are treated and must address it here. I am talking about the flack men take for watching sports.

Ladies, men need sports. It isn't just a pastime or trifling indulgence; it is a real, live need like eating or sleeping or peeing in the bushes. Yes, it is quite like peeing in the bushes. You see, men are more similar to dogs than they are to, say, angels. When a man sees a ball in flight, he must stop to observe. It would be painful on a molecular level for him to refrain. Like dogs, man is mesmerized by the projectile. So long as there is a ball in motion, he's happy. - More...
Sunday - June 19, 2005

Dick Morris: Personal Attacks On Hillary Will Only Embolden Her - I am no defender of Hillary Rodham Clinton's, to put it mildly. But the recent charges in Ed Klein's book to the effect that she is a closet homosexual or that Bill raped her and that this act triggered Chelsea's conception are as crazy as the list that was circulating around of the 20 or so people the Clintons allegedly had killed.

These accusations do not belong in our public dialogue. They hit below the belt and tend to discredit the more serious and sober concerns so many of us have about the danger she would present in high office.

How can anyone say if the charges are true? Ed Klein is a respected author, a former editor in chief of The New York Times Magazine and the foreign editor for Newsweek. He would not have written these charges without some substantiation. But these accusations (in The Truth About Hillary: What She Knew, When She Knew It, and How Far She'll Go to Become President) are highly personal and have little bearing on what kind of president Hillary would make. - More...
Sunday - June 19, 2005

Michael Reagan: Star Power Wins Again - When I was a youngster growing up in Beverly Hills, stardom gave you certain privileges, among them being allowed to get away with things that would have gotten everybody else in deep trouble. If you were a star, your friends and neighbors and co-stars and your studio would stand behind you because they did not want you to be knocked off your pedestal.

In plain words, if that could happen to you, it could happen to them. So we always convinced ourselves that any star who got in trouble was a victim instead of a wrongdoer. The general public seemed to think so too; we just did not want to know the truth about our stars.

Michael Jackson is a throwback to that time, and he has benefited from the fact that a lot of Americans don't like it when anybody knocks their stars - whether they are pop stars such as Michael Jackson, sports stars such as O.J. Simpson, or movie stars such as Robert Blake. We want them to stay up there on their pedestals where we put them. - More...
Sunday - June 19, 2005