ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – A former aide to Sarah Palin who wrote an unflattering memoir of his time in her inner circle has paid a $11,900 fine for using confidential state emails without permission, according to the Alaska Department of Law.

The aide, Frank Bailey, quoted the ex-governor’s emails liberally in his 2011 book, “Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin,” which chronicled how he grew disenchanted with a rising political star he once admired.

Bailey ran afoul of Alaska’s administrative ethics law by using emails that concerned the appointment of a state attorney general, according to the settlement signed last week and released by the Department of Law on Tuesday.

Those emails were confidential and should not have been used in the book or shared with Bailey’s co-authors, the agreement states.

An attorney for Bailey could not immediately be reached for comment.

The accord grew out of a complaint filed by an Anchorage Republican activist credited with discovering Palin’s habit of using a private email account for state business.

The activist, Andree McLeod, has long sought public release of emails exchanged between Palin’s private accounts and any official state accounts. News organizations have also tried to obtain them.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – Preliminary tests appear to rule out radiation from Japan’s tsunami-wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant as the cause of mysterious deaths and illness that struck scores of Alaska seals last year, federal officials said on Friday.

Preliminary tests of tissue samples from animals that fell victim to the lesion-causing disease found that radiation levels were normal and within “the typical background range for Alaska,” The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a statement.

More than 60 dead and 75 sickened seals, most of them ringed seals, were found on the northern and western coasts of Alaska last summer and fall. Some walruses were also afflicted by the disease, with a smaller number found dead.

The affected animals have bleeding lesions on their flippers and other body parts, patchy loss of hair, labored breathing and lethargy, according to NOAA, which in December declared the problem an “unusual mortality event.”

The findings that appear to clear the Fukushima plant of blame are only preliminary, Juneau-based NOAA spokeswoman Julie Speegle said, and more analysis will be conducted. Tests on healthy animals also found normal levels of radiation.

“Part of the reason it doesn’t rule it out is we need to do more in-depth tests for Cesium 137 and Cesium 134,” Speegle said.

An international team of scientists continues to investigate the outbreak, she said. Among possible causes being investigated are viruses, bacteria, biotoxins, or chemicals, she said.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – A lead dog for an Iditarod sled racing team missing for nearly a week in the woods of Anchorage has been found following a broad search effort by fans and supporters, race officials said on Tuesday.

German Iditarod racer Silvia Furtwangler was reunited with her dog, Whistler on Monday, an Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race spokeswoman said.

“She (Furtwangler) was just so ecstatic,” said Erin McLarnon, communications director for the race organization.

Whistler, named after the Canadian ski resort, disappeared a week ago, apparently jumping out of a truck headed north out of Anchorage, McLarnon said.

The truck had sled-dog carriers with enclosures for the dogs built into campers and screened windows on the enclosures, she said.

The musher and her 16 Iditarod dogs had just made the long plane journey from Norway, where they live and train, when the mishap occurred, McLarnon said.

Furtwangler did not realize that Whistler was missing until the truck was about 40 miles north of Anchorage, she said.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – The sole highway leading south from Anchorage was closed on Thursday after an early-morning avalanche swept through the mountains and over the road, state officials said.

Authorities said it was unknown how long the Seward Highway would remain closed, essentially cutting off travel between Anchorage and the Kenai Peninsula cities of Seward and Homer.

There were no reports of injuries following the 100-foot-wide avalanche, which swept down one day after a separate snow slide briefly closed the highway in the southern outskirts of Anchorage.

Rapidly warming temperatures, high winds and new snow and rain have created dangerous avalanche conditions throughout the region’s Chugach Mountains, which are already loaded with near-record amounts of snow.

“We consider the risk level at `considerable’ at this point in time,” said Rick Feller, spokesman for the state Department of Transportation and Public Facilities.

That designation means small to moderate avalanches are likely, Feller said.

The department has advised motorists to avoid travel along the route, the mountain-lined Seward Highway, if possible.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – Heavy snows in parts of Alaska are taking a deadly toll on moose as deep snowdrifts force the animals into hazardous detours on plowed roads and railroad tracks, officials said on Tuesday, prompting one group to seek declaration of a “moose emergency.”

The ambling animals are then being killed in increasing numbers in high-speed rail and road collisions, state and local officials said.

In the Matanuska-Susitna Borough north of Anchorage, 315 moose have been killed in vehicle collisions so far this winter, said Tim Peltier, a biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. The average is roughly 270 for the winter, he said.

The state-owned Alaska Railroad faces similar problems, with 131 moose killed so far this winter by trains, railroad spokesman Tim Sullivan said. That number is already higher than a yearly average of about 100 for the past three years.

“The moose like the clear areas on the tracks. We do everything we can to keep them off the tracks, but sometimes it’s impossible,” he said.

The large number of collisions this winter prompted the Alaska Moose Federation, a non-profit group associated with sport hunters, to ask Governor Sean Parnell to declare an official emergency.

Such a declaration would it easier for the group to get permits to cut trees and otherwise clear paths for the moose to escape roadway dangers, said Gary Olson, executive director of the organization.

ANCHORAGE (Reuters) – A Pennsylvania father and son have pleaded guilty to making harassing phone calls to a lawyer for former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, court documents show.

Shawn Christy, 20, and his father Craig Christy, 48, each pleaded guilty during a hearing in U.S. District Court in Anchorage on Monday to a single count of making harassing interstate telephone calls, according to the court documents.

The Christys’ guilty pleas came after an agreement with prosecutors that would have called for each to serve five years’ probation rather than prison time was rejected U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Burgess in December.

In rejecting that plea deal, Burgess said, he was concerned that the Christys seemed “undeterred” in their behavior.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Retta-Rae Randall said on Tuesday she would seek the same sentence as that proposed in the plea deal. But she said the judge will have the opportunity to impose his own sentence.

The maximum penalty for the felony of making harassing interstate telephone calls is two years in prison, Randall said.

According to court documents, prosecutors said the two made near-continuous and threatening calls to Palin attorney John Tiemessen, his law-firm colleagues and their family members

ANCHORAGE (Reuters) – A former Army soldier who was convicted of killing his wife and baby daughter shortly after returning from combat in Afghanistan was sentenced on Friday to 80 years in prison for the crimes.

Kip Lynch, 22, was found guilty last summer of first degree murder in the April 2010 shooting death of his 19-year-old wife Racquell and second-degree murder of their 8-month old baby, Kyirsta.

Lynch shot his wife numerous times in the back, head and neck while she was holding their infant daughter, according to police reports.

The bullets passed through her body, killing both mother and child, according to police reports. Lynch then turned the gun on himself in an apparent suicide attempt, but survived.

The bodies of his wife and baby remained in the family’s Anchorage apartment for a weekend before they were discovered.

Lynch was found in critical condition but recovered.

At the two-day sentencing hearing at a state superior court, Lynch’s public defender said the former soldier had served valiantly in combat but struggled with post traumatic stress upon returning home.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – A Russian tanker finished pumping an emergency shipment of 1.3 million gallons of fuel to shore in the ice-bound port of Nome, Alaska, on Thursday and prepared to head home, officials said.

Alaskans contracted the Renda, a 370-foot ice-class tanker owned by the Russian company RIMSCO, after a missed autumn fuel delivery left Nome short on fuel in the dead of winter, when the port freezes over.

The Russian vessel and its U.S. Coast Guard escort, the icebreaking cutter Healy, were expected to depart Nome on Friday, a Coast Guard spokesman said.

“They are done offloading,” Coast Guard spokesman David Mosley said. “The anticipated departure is scheduled for tomorrow.”

It will be up to the ships’ captains to determine when to disembark, a task that involves breaking the Renda out of ice that has enclosed the tanker during the fuel transfer at Nome’s harbor, Mosley said.

Once free of the frozen port, the Healy will lead the Renda through some 360 miles of sea ice to the open waters of the Bering Sea, the Coast Guard said.

The Nome area, home to less than 10,000 people, is about 200 miles from the nearest point in Russia.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – A Russian tanker was expected to finish offloading 1.3 million gallons of fuel in Nome as early as Wednesday night, officials said, easing an energy shortage in the ice-bound Alaskan port city.

The Renda, a 370-foot ice-class tanker sent to Nome from its home port in Vladivostok, has already pumped its gasoline cargo to shore and is now finishing the delivery of diesel, said Jason Evans, board chairman of the Sitnasuak Native Corp., the company that arranged for the unusual icebreaking mission.

The Renda, escorted by a U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker, is making the first-ever winter marine delivery of fuel to northwestern Alaska.

Fuel is typically barged in to Nome, which lacks outside road access, during summer and fall. The last scheduled delivery was canceled after one of the worst storms to hit the region in decades swept the Bering Sea town of 3,600.

The missed barge shipment meant Nome could face sparse fuel supplies and, if fuel had to be flown into town, extremely high prices by late winter, Sitnasuak warned. Gasoline currently costs about $6 a gallon in Nome, Mayor Denise Michels said.

Michels said caution was more important that speedy fuel flow from the Renda, which arrived in town on Friday and began sending fuel to onshore storage tanks late Monday.

“We’re not pushing. We want to make sure this transfer is done safely. If it takes another 24 hours, so be it,” she said.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – Workers pumped emergency fuel supplies into the ice-bound Alaskan port of Nome on Tuesday to ease an energy shortage after a Russian tanker braved ice-choked seas and cut through red tape to deliver the cargo, a Coast Guard official said.

The Russian tanker Renda was dispatched to Nome with a Coast Guard icebreaker escort after the town’s last scheduled barge delivery of fuel was cancelled in the fall when one of the worst storms in decades swept the northwest coastal town.

The fuel delivery is the first ever made by marine vessel to northwestern Alaska in winter, when the ocean and rivers in the region are choked with ice, Coast Guard officials said.

Emergency deliveries by air, an expensive undertaking, would have been needed if the Renda had failed to get to Nome, a town with a population of about 3,600 residents over 500 miles northwest of Anchorage.

The Renda arrived off the coast of Nome on Friday, but officials said at the time they wanted to position the ship and make all necessary arrangements to ensure a safe delivery of fuel without any spills.

Workers on the tanker and on shore began transferring the fuel late on Monday. By Tuesday morning, about 365,000 gallons of the 1.3 million gallon fuel cargo had been delivered to storage tanks on shore through hoses laid over half a mile of ice, Coast Guard spokesman Chief Petty Officer Kip Wadlow said.

The transfer process was expected to take two to three days.