- FAIRBANKS, Alaska (AP) - The Morris Thompson Cultural and Visitors Center in Fairbanks is debt-free less than five years after opening its doors. The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner says a team of volunteers helped wrap up $29.3 million fundraising effort in April. That's when a pledge-matching campaign by Pogo and Fort Knox mines was the final piece of the decade-long effort. The center's executive director, Cindy Schumaker, says now the building is completely paid for. The money raised to complete the building included a combination of funding sources that included federal and state money. She says the center also borrowed $1.3 million during construction, but now has paid that money off.

- JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) - Alaska's U.S. senators have signed on to legislation that would limit the government's authority to search Americans' phone and Internet records. Sens. Mark Begich and Lisa Murkowski say there needs to be a careful balance between security and personal privacy. The proposal, according to the senators, would require that federal intelligence agencies show that communications records are somehow connected to terrorism or other intelligence activities. Murkowski, in a release, said evidence is required to get a search warrant, and the government should be held to the same standard "when digging through" communications. 

 

- JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) - Alaska Republican Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell has announced plans to seek the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Democrat Mark Begich. Treadwell says that as long as Democrats control the Senate, there will never be serious consideration of opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling. He said Alaskans also would be better served with Sen. Lisa Murkowski in charge of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Murkowski, Alaska's senior senator, is currently the ranking member. Treadwell said his campaign will fight to reverse what he calls the Obama administration's "relentless assault" on families and freedoms. Democrats sought to cast Treadwell as affluent and out-of-touch, with state party chair Mike Wenstrup saying the lieutenant governor has done "nothing for Alaska except trying to make it harder to vote."

 

- JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) - A U.S. Senate committee has advanced a bill that would provide $50 million to clean up abandoned federal wells on current or former National Petroleum Reserve lands. The money for this is expected to come from the sale of crude helium under the Helium Stewardship Act, which advanced Tuesday. The bulk of the $50 million is expected to go toward cleaning up wells in the Alaska arctic. There are about 90 abandoned wells in the Lower 48, according to information provided by the committee, with estimates that cleanup of those wells could average up to $75,000 each. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who serves on the committee, had called an Obama administration plan that called for Alaska to help with cleanup costs on lands in this state dead on arrival.

- ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - The University of Alaska Anchorage has picked Matt Thomas as its new hockey coach. Thomas was one of four finalists for the job and moves to Anchorage from minor league professional hockey. Thomas spent the last nine years in the ECHL, including the last four as coach of the Stockton Thunder. Thomas has three years' experience as an assistant college hockey coach, including two seasons at Maine from 2000 to 2002. Thomas played four seasons for Rochester Institute of Technology from 1994 to 1998.

 

- KODIAK, Alaska (AP) - The federal government is putting a former Coast Guard cutter up for auction. KMXT reports the cutter Storis was listed for auction last week on the General Services Commission website. The cutter was decommissioned in 2007, and there had been hope it would find a permanent home at the Storis Museum in Juneau. Museum secretary Joe Geldhof said their next move will be to save the Storis from the scrapyard. But it likely means it won't find a permanent home in Alaska. He says they are working with people from the Midwest to get the Storis, but it likely will wind up in Toledo, Ohio, where it was built. The Storis had its homeport in Juneau for 10 years and spent another 50 years based out of Kodiak.