Alaska

Underwear to return to city in new store

Palmer will have underwear once more.

This small town has not had panties and briefs since the early 1990s. That’s not to suggest the locals are not wearing underwear. They are, or so they assure us, and this being cold, cold Alaska, we’re inclined to take their word for it.

Since three stores in Palmer closed, there has been no place in town to buy underwear, or any other clothes for that matter, except for a tourist T-shirt. People have to drive 20 miles round-trip to Wasilla, or 80 miles round-trip to Anchorage, to buy their drawers.

But those days are about to end with the opening March 3 of a Fred Meyer supermarket in this town of 5,500.

“Yes, we will have underwear,” store manager John Mayer said to whoops, laughter and applause Wednesday at a Palmer Chamber of Commerce luncheon.

Washington, D.C.

Bush OKs relaxed air pollution estimates

In a decision that raises the possibility of increased pollution in national parks across the United States, the Bush administration will allow North Dakota to change the way it estimates air pollution over the Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

The change, announced Friday in Bismarck, N.D., means that a consortium of power companies will be able to go ahead with a coal-fired power plant in North Dakota, and other power plants could open in the future, according to state officials.

Compliance with the Clean Air Act’s requirements on national parks is determined by a system for estimating pollution levels. The new system, which is expected to produce lower estimates, could allow new coal-fired plants to be built near the North Dakota park without violating the law.

David Glatt, chief of the environmental health section of North Dakota’s Health Department, said the changes should make the state’s estimates better match the actual air quality over the park.

Several environmental groups challenged the state’s description of what the new system will do.

Oklahoma

Race riot victims seek extension on limitations

Lawyers for victims of a 1921 race riot and their descendants asked a federal judge Friday to exceed the statute of limitations by eight decades and allow their case to go forward.

The city and state have asked U.S. District Judge James Ellison to dismiss the case, which seeks reparations for lost loved ones, destroyed businesses and burned homes in the then-thriving black community of Greenwood.

The fighting broke out May 31, 1921, after whites and blacks clashed outside a courthouse where a black man was being held on allegations of assaulting a white woman. The confirmed death toll was 37 but some estimates range as high as 300.

The lawsuit alleges that Tulsa police deputized a white mob, and National Guard troops used violence against blacks for what they characterized as an uprising.