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National: Boomers turn 60 wondering how to keep the party going By MARY DEIBEL - The generation that didn't trust anyone over 30 starts turning 60 New Year's Day as the first of 76 million baby boomers confronts how to keep the celebration going for the next 20, 30, and even 40 years they are likely to live.

Their collective $2-trillion-a year spending power gives them twice the financial muscle of their thrifty parents, who learned savings habits the hard way as Depression-era babies. That financial factoid alone should make boomers an inviting target for marketers hoping to influence how they spend and how they save their money.

It's been that way since birth: Boomers have been the proverbial "pig in the python," as money manager Harry Dent puts it, setting trends from Dr. Spock's spoiled kids to the "summer of love" and Woodstock era to today's double-income families. - More...
Tuesday PM - December 27, 2005

National: Pride mixes with grief as troops pack up By ANNA BADKHEN - Sgt. Kenneth Stephens' humvee is a beaten and scarred roadmap of the year he and his Army battalion spent fighting insurgents on the hostile plains of north-central Iraq.

A spiderweb of cracks scars the right rear side window, where a fragment of an exploding car bomb hit the truck July 6.

A fissure runs through the dusty armored windshield on the passenger's side where shrapnel from a roadside bomb struck Nov. 4.

On Dec. 15, the day Iraqis voted for the first full-time parliament since Saddam Hussein's regime fell, someone fired several shotgun rounds, and a spray of fingernail-size dents now pockmarks the glass.

"This truck is pretty banged up," said Stephens, 25, of Oneida, Tenn., who, along with the 900 weary soldiers of the 2-7 Infantry Battalion of the 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, is heading home after a year in the scarred, hostile Sunni triangle. - More...
Tuesday PM - December 27, 2005

National: Louisiana probing allegations of euthanasia in Katrina chaos By ALAN FREEMAN - Louisiana's attorney general has confirmed that his office is investigating allegations that euthanasia was used to end the lives of ill and elderly patients at a hospital in the chaos that flooded over New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

The disturbing story of what may have happened at Memorial Medical Center, where 45 bodies were found two weeks after the hurricane hit, is unclear, but enough information has emerged to raise serious questions about whether hospital staff may have stepped over ethical boundaries and hastened the death of their patients.

"We can confirm that euthanasia is what we are investigating," said Kris Wartelle, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Charles Foti, who added that there is no proof yet that doctors actually put any patients to death prematurely. - More...
Tuesday PM - December 27, 2005

International: United States Concerned About Rising Violence in Sri Lanka - The United States is concerned about the erosion of the four-year-old cease-fire in Sri Lanka and the increase in violence between the government and rebels, according to a statement by State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli on December 27th.

The statement said that on December 24th, representatives of the some of the co-chairs of the Sri Lanka Donors Group met with rebel group leaders to urge an end to violence and positive engagement in peace talks. The State Department said December 27 that the United States, as one of the donors' group co-chairs, "reiterates this message in the strongest possible terms." - More...
Tuesday PM - December 27, 2005

Science: Woolly mammoth genome comes to life - History has been made by mapping a portion of the woolly mammoth's genome by a McMaster University geneticist, in collaboration with genome researchers from Penn State University and the American Museum of Natural History. The discovery, which has astounded the scientific world, surpasses an earlier study released recently by Nature that also concerns the woolly mammoth.

Hendrik Poinar, a molecular evolutionary geneticist in the department of anthropology and pathology at McMaster University, says his study involves the vital nuclear DNA within a Mammoth rather than the lesser mitochondria, on which the Nature study is based.

"Mitochondria is so 1980s. It only allows you to look at the maternal side of evolution," says Poinar. "The nuclear DNA we've mapped gives us our first glimpse at both sides of evolution. We can sequence Neanderthals, animals, plants. Basically, if we find a well-preserved specimen, we can sequence its genome." - More...
Tuesday PM - December 27, 2005

American Legion Auxiliary Shares Comfort With Comforters American Legion Auxiliary members Linda Pratt, Sharon Kelly, and Shirley Carlin distributed the comforters. Photograph courtesy Ketchikan General Hospital

Ketchikan: American Legion Auxiliary Shares Comfort With Comforters - The members of Ketchikan's American Legion Auxiliary made 24 plush polar-fleece comforters for the residents of the New Horizons Transitional Care Unit at Ketchikan General Hospital. - More...
Tuesday PM - December 27, 2005

Laine Welch: Year-end Brings Glimpse of New Crab Management Results - As the year draws to a close, it gives us a first glimpse at how the crab rationalization plan is starting to play out in the Bering Sea.  The new management system began this fall with golden king crab in mid-August, followed by red king crab and snow crab on October 15.

Here is a sampler of facts and stats from state and federal sources:

The Coast Guard reported no lives or vessels lost during the fall crab fisheries.

The Bristol Bay red king crab fishery ended December 8 (by regulation it can run through mid-January). That compares to a four day fishing season last year. A fleet of 89 boats (down from 250 last year) delivered 16,372,400 pounds of king crab in 255 landings, or 99 percent of the catch limit.  The average price was $4.50/lb, down 20 cents from last year. (On the quota share market, shares of red king crab topped $30 a pound, according to Dock Street Brokers.) - More...
Tuesday - December 27, 2005

Viewpoints Opinions/Letters How about an alternative? By Rick Grams - Tuesday PM Portal to somewhere! By David Hull - Tuesday PM RE: Unanswered Questions By Peg Travis - Tuesday PM Vote for Rob Sanderson Jr. - Where experience counts!! By Kevin Kristovich - Tuesday PM "Indigenous" By Janelle Hamilton - Tuesday PM Vote for Rob, He's the man for the job!! By Kevin Kristovich - Monday PM Unanswered Questions By Jay Jones - Monday PM Remember the men and women in uniform By David M. Korkowski - Monday PM Letter To Santa By Jerry Cegelske - Friday PM Holiday Blues & Networking By George Miller - Friday PM Town Tree is Beautiful By Al Johnson - Friday PM Holiday Wishes By Karen & Charlie Jones - Friday PM Heartfelt Thanks for Those who Supported the Toy Drive! By Tyla Williams - Friday PM Thanks to KTGW/KTKN - Gateway 106.7 By Samantha Kuzakin - Friday PM 2005 By Joseph Branco - Friday PM Ketchikan Youth Court By Karen Lybrand - Friday PM Guard Rails & Free Speech By Penny Eubanks - Friday PM More Viewpoints/ Letters Publish A Letter Political Cartoonists Political Cartoons Ketchikan December Calendar Ketchikan Arts This Week Today's Forecast Current AK Weather Map City Police Report 12/12/05 AK Troopers Daily Dispatch Classifieds & Announcements December 2005 Click on the date for stories and photos published on that day... S M T W T F S   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

Bill Steigerwald: Iran Is The Real Threat To Peace; Interview with Ilan Berman, author of "Tehran Rising" - While we wait to see how the war in Iraq turns out, we might want to take a closer look at the Middle Eastern country that the experts say actually poses the single greatest challenge to the United States and the war on terror -- Iran.

Iran -- the Islamic Republic formerly known as Persia -- is not only considered the globe's No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism, it is hard at work trying to produce its own nuclear weapons.

Ilan Berman, a vice president for policy for the American Foreign Policy Council, has written a new book about Iran, "Tehran Rising," which spells out the threat Iran presents to U.S. policy-makers and its Persian Gulf neighbors. I talked to Professor Berman Dec.14 by phone from his offices in Washington. - More...
Tuesday PM - December 27, 2005

Dick Morris: Spy Story Could Bite Dems - Whom did the Valerie Plame leak hurt? Valerie, who went from undercover to on the cover when she posed for Vanity Fair? Joe Wilson, who got a best-selling book out of the deal?

The current leak, however, of classified material relating to National Security Agency tactics in intercepting conversations between people abroad and those within the United States is a vastly serious proposition that may have materially compromised investigations in progress and tipped terrorists off to our methods so that they can hide among us undetected.

This leak, far more than the Valerie Plame incident, deserves a full investigation to identify who spilled the beans and to whom and how. The consequences of this leak alone merit an independent investigation and, perhaps, a trial for treason. - More...
Tuesday PM - December 27, 2005

Martin Schram: Big Brother is back - We can drop the glittering ball amid the crush in Times Square. We can count the final seconds in the crush-free solitude of our TV parlors. We can wear silly party hats, blow silly noisemakers, kiss significants or strangers, inadvertently miss midnight by falling asleep in our Lazy Boys, or advertently miss it by banishing ourselves early to bed in the grandiloquent philosophy of, like, whatever.

We can ring out 2005 and ring in 2006. But we can't seem to rid ourselves of 1984. - More...
Tuesday PM - December 27, 2005

Paul Campos: Was the 'Intelligent Design' decision intelligent? - A sure sign that a belief system has triumphed over its opponents is that it stops thinking of itself as a belief system at all. Instead it becomes "what every rational person knows to be the case," or "simple common sense," or, more concisely still, "the truth." In other words, the truly orthodox never think of themselves as orthodox. This allows them to crush all dissent to their orthodoxy with a good conscience, since what reasonable objection could there be to sincere attempts to stamp out self-evident falsehoods?

Thus we have just been treated to the remarkable spectacle of liberals shouting hosannas to the heavens in praise of a federal court ruling that makes it illegal to even mention the existence of a dissenting point of view in a public-school classroom. The court held that a Dover, Pa., school board violated the Constitution when it mandated that a short statement be read at the beginning of the school year to ninth-grade science classes. - More...
Tuesday PM - December 27, 2005