US To Deploy More Ground-Based Missile Interceptors As North Korea Steps Up Threats (+video)

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Photo Credit: The U.S. Army

The U.S. is deploying 14 new ground-based missile interceptors in Alaska to counter renewed nuclear threats from North Korea and Iran, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Friday.

The new interceptors will be based at Fort Greely, an Army launch site about 100 miles southeast of Fairbanks, Alaska, and are projected to be fully deployed by 2017, Hagel said. The additions will bring the U.S.-based ground interceptor deployment from 30 to 44, including four that are based in California.

That will boost U.S. missile defense capability by 50 percent and “make clear to the world that the United States stands firm against aggression,” he said in a briefing at the Pentagon.

The announcement comes as North Korea has been making bellicose threats to void the armistice that ended the Korean War and launch a nuclear attack on the U.S. The U.S. and South Korea began annual military drills this week despite the North Korean threats.

Hagel said the U.S. would also shift some “resources,” which he didn’t specify, from the delayed Aegis anti-missile program in Europe to U.S.-based defenses, saying the Aegis program was “lagging” because of reduced congressional funding. And he reiterated previously announced plans to add a second U.S. anti-ballistic missile radar installation in Japan.

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Interior Chief: Shell ‘Screwed Up,’ Must Improve To Resume Arctic Affort

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Photo Credit: Lee Jordan

Royal Dutch Shell “screwed up” in 2012 during its troubled efforts to begin oil exploration off Alaska’s coast, and must improve planning and contractor oversight before regulators will let it return, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said.

Interior on Thursday released the findings of its 60-day review of the oil giant’s mishap-filled effort to begin looking for oil in Arctic waters off Alaska’s coast last year.

“Shell screwed up in 2012 and we are not going to let them screw up” when they seek to resume their effort, Salazar told reporters on a conference call.

“This review has confirmed that Shell entered the drilling season not fully prepared in terms of fabricating and testing certain critical systems and establishing the scope of its operational plans,” the review states.

Interior said it would require Shell to develop a “comprehensive and integrated” operational plan and complete a third-party audit of its management systems, which are two of the various recommendations in the report.

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Lazy Approach to Public Policy Remains the Status Quo

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Senate Bill 26 is terrible public policy that drastically alters the sale, exchange, permitting and use of state lands/water. It passed the House under its sister bill HB77. Obviously, the Governor has this on the fast track. Why?, one might ask.

Approximately 223,205 people (AKDOL, R&A, US Census 2010) – one third of the total state population, live in unorganized places all across the state. How will this legislation impact their lifestyles and/or livelihoods? Has this been studied?

Does city, borough or tribal governments have a role in the appeal process? It doesn’t seem so. Are any decisions throughout the appeal process resolved at the local government level before going to the highest (only) level which is Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Commissioner, or in some cases DNR Division Director?

Senate Bill 26 (SB26) gives much too much authority to one person – the Commissioner, Department of Natural Resources. To appeal the Commissioner’s decision is futile. One must appeal to the same Commissioner that wrote the first decision. The Commissioner of DNR is not even required to reply in writing.

SB26 shows an absence of fair appeal, no public impact study, and a minimal public comment opportunity. This combination makes for bad legislation. To add insult to injury, the accompanying fiscal notes say it won’t cost anything. That is unbelievable.

Contact your Senator before it becomes the law of the land. Get the word out. Let elected leaders know we want smarter public policy! We don’t need more sloppy, lazy, legislation.
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Tara Jollie is the former Director of the State of Alaska Division of Community and Regional Affairs.

Exoskeleton Allows Anchorage Man to Walk (+video)

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Photo Credit: Ekso Bionics

The idea of “wearable robots” may seem like something out of a movie, but this technology is already being used in real life.

Started as a project for the military, the exoskeleton has transformed from a device designed to allow soldiers to lift heavy loads and walk further to one that enables people with disabilities to step out of wheelchairs and stand upright.

The “Ekso” is a bionic exoskeleton developed by Ekso Bionics that gives paraplegics upright mobility. While the commercial version of the Ekso has recently been made available to hospitals and rehabilitation centers, the company hopes to make the technology more accessible so that people can use it at home and in their everyday lives, with a personal version releasing in 2014.

CEO Eythor Bender sat down with CNN to talk about Ekso, the bionic exoskeleton he helped develop.

CNN: How many years have you been working on exoskeletons?

Bender: We have been working on exoskeletons for the last 10 years. It started as a project with the military and it was funded by DARPA, the same people who funded the Internet and GPS systems. So it was groundbreaking technology, and in the year 2005 we had a breakthrough in terms of making sure that the weight of the exoskeleton transfers all the way down to the ground. So the user who is wearing it — it usually weighs up to 50 pounds — doesn’t feel the weight at all. And that’s so important because obviously you are trying to make their lives easier, not more difficult.

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Baseless: Insecure NASCAR Announcers Pick On Palin For Comments She Never Made

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Photo Credit: AP

During Fox’s telecast of the Kobalt Tools 400 NASCAR race in Las Vegas on Sunday, Fox’s NASCAR commentator Michael Waltrip and studio host Chris Myers displayed their ignorance by ridiculing former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin over words she never even said or that have never even been associated with her.

After getting tongue-tied on live television when attempting to say that Brad Keselowski’s crew chief Paul Wolfe was a master strategist, Waltrip mistakenly said Wolfe was a “master strategery.” Clearly embarrassed, Waltrip, like any insecure man, then immediately tried to make himself feel better by referring to Wolfe as someone who had “Palin strategery,” linking “strategery” to Palin.

One huge problem.

Waltrip made a fool of himself again, for Palin has never been accused of making up the word “strategery.” Will Ferrell, in a Saturday Night Live episode in October of 2000, used “strategery” in a skit about the presidential debate between Bush and Al Gore to mock Bush.

What Ferrell did to Bush was similar to what Tina Fey did to Palin when Fey, playing Palin in a Saturday Night Live skit during the 2008 election, said she “could see Russia from my house.”

Palin never said those words, but the NASCAR commentators apparently believed she did as well, for Waltrip (@mw55) and Myers (@The_ChrisMyers) then brought up that reference while they laughed at Palin’s expense when they should have been laughing at themselves.

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Nine Southeast Communities Oppose Revised Sealaska Bill

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photo credit: roy.luck

Ketchikan, Alaska – Nine communities in southeast Alaska said they oppose a bill by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) to allow an Alaska Native-owned corporation to acquire some 70,000 acres of the Tongass National Forest, arguing the bill could threaten their livelihoods. A February letter from the nine communities have asked the Chairman of the U.S. Senate Energy Committee, Ron Wyden, to kill “special interest legislation” for Sealaska Corporation.

Calling the bill introduced by Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski “unfair and morally repugnant,” the towns pointed out that the bill would “create a new injustice against us” in the name of righting a wrong against them that was settled in 1971 when ANCSA passed. The towns pointed out to Wyden in a letter two weeks ago, that the best solution is for BLM to finalize Sealaska?s designation of land in 2008 which was put on ice.

History shows federal cases dating to the 1940s holding that compensation for aboriginal land could only be for lands actually occupied and courts and judges who conducted extensive testimony finding that actually occupied lands only existed “around Native villages as they were in 1907, according to the letter.

“Instead of taking land around their villages, Sealaska wants to take land around our villages. Where is the fairness or justice in that said Myla Poelstra, the postmistress of Edna Bay.

“We relied on law that was 77 years in the making . Now Sealaska wants Congress to rewrite the law. Our towns are having none of that, “Poelstra said.

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Jury: Homer Police Not Responsible for Boy’s Injury

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A federal jury decided Thursday that Homer police were not responsible for the gunshot that left a Duluth woman’s young son brain damaged.

The boy, Jason Anderson Jr., was shot in 2006 at the Homer airport when marshals and Homer police officers tried to arrest his father, Jason Karlo Anderson, 31, a violent drug dealer who was hiding in Alaska. There is disagreement on whether the shot was fired by police or the boy’s father. Police say Anderson, a fugitive from Duluth, shot the boy and shot at police, then killed himself.

The boy’s mother, Cherry Dietzmann of Duluth, sued the city of Homer and its police department for more than $23 million, the Anchorage Daily News reported. Dietzmann settled out of court with the U.S. Marshals Service for almost $3.5 million in 2011. But the jury in the case against the city issued a verdict of not guilty on all counts, city manager Walt Wrede said in a statement.

Dietzmann’s lawyers said the city should pay more than $23 million to help the boy, now 9, and his mother with medical bills and future care and to compensate for his suffering. The boy is confined in a bed and lives with a feeding tube and ventilator.

The boy’s father served time in federal prison for kidnapping two men as a teenager and had been living in Alaska under an alias, Brandon Dietzmann. He was wanted on federal drug trafficking charges, and marshals initially sought to grab him while he was getting a rental car at the Homer Airport and separated from his children.

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Iditarod Mushers Welcome Rest in Villages

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ROHN, Alaska – Imagine standing on a sled behind a team of 16 dogs, traveling mile after desolate mile in the Alaska wilderness without any sign of other human life.

All of a sudden, lights shine off in the distance, the first village to come into view in a very long time.

Whether it’s a single cabin or a booming village of several hundred people, for mushers on the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, the villages are not only checkpoints to eat, rest and recharge, but a chance to interact with someone other than their dogs.

“There are no checkpoints that I dislike,” said defending champion Dallas Seavey. “Every time you come around the corner and see the lights of a checkpoint approaching, it’s a great sight.”

Four-time champion Martin Buser rested at the checkpoint in Rohn after a blistering fast 170-mile run that had put him hours ahead of the other teams.

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The U.S.S. Ted Stevens

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photo credit: jkbrooks85Proving once again that Congress is still about relationships, appropriators have at least found something on which they can agree: naming a warship after a late colleague.

The spending bill unveiled Monday by the House contains a provision expressing the sense of the Senate that the next large naval warship be named for former Senate Appropriations Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska.

Stevens, who died in an August 2010 plane crash in his beloved home state, served at various points over the decades as the chairman and ranking member on the subcommittee in charge of the Pentagon’s budget. Stevens had been in the Army Air Corps during World War II.

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Anchorage School Superintendent Looking for Exit

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ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — The head of Alaska’s largest school district is shopping for another job less than a year after moving north.

The Des Moines, Iowa, school district announced Saturday that Anchorage school Superintendent Jim Browder is a finalist for the job there.

Browder in an email to Anchorage School District employees Friday said he was considering a move from Alaska to be closer to a daughter and grandson in Georgia, who “have been experiencing some very severe medical issues which have not gotten better.”

“I cannot in good conscience continue to live several thousand miles away when my family members need me to be closer to them as we face these issues,” he said.

Browder is the former head of the Lee County School District in Fort Myers, Fla.

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