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ANCHORAGE -- President Bush's proposed $2.23 billion budget for fiscal year 2004 would cut millions from the Denali Commission and from spending on Alaska Native education but would add money for missile interceptors at Fort Greely and new oil lease sales on North Slope.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski praised Bush for including federal revenues of $1.2 billion from drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in his plan.
"With the White House firmly behind the effort to open ANWR, I believe we are another step closer to making it a reality," she said. But proposing it in the president's budget doesn't make it so. Exploration of the refuge's coastal plain can't begin without Congress' approval.
The same is true for the budget itself. The president offers an annual spending blueprint, but then it goes to Congress. Senate Appropriations Chairman Ted Stevens often restores cuts the administration proposes to Alaska programs, and then some.
Silver Bay Logging seeks bankruptcy protection
JUNEAU -- Wrangell-based Silver Bay Logging has filed for bankruptcy protection, citing depressed lumber prices and increased costs of harvesting federal timber in Southeast Alaska.
The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, which will free it from the threat of creditors' lawsuits while it reorganizes. Under current plans, Silver Bay would continue to run its Wrangell sawmill, company President Dick Buhler said in a press release.
The company has been selling some real estate holdings and equipment during the past 18 months to pay its creditors.
"There certainly is enough value in the assets of the company to pay our debts, but we need more time to liquidate them in today's miserable economic conditions," Buhler said. "The recession has made it very difficult to find buyers for our surplus real estate, aircraft and logging equipment."
Errol Champion of Juneau, general manager of the company's aviation division, said total liabilities are just over $5 million.
The company plans to employ about 200 people in its logging, sawmill, marine and aviation divisions this summer. In the late 1990s, the company had upward of 500 employees, Champion said.
NATION
Orders to U.S. factories bounced back in December, rising by 0.4 percent, providing a dose of good news for the nation's manufacturers, which have borne the brunt of the fitful economic recovery.
The over-the-month increase -- the second advance in the last three months -- marked an improvement over the 0.8 percent decline registered in November, the Commerce Department reported Feb. 4.
December's performance was slightly better than the 0.3 percent advance analysts were expecting.
Stronger demand for computers and household appliances more than offset weaker demand for automobiles and other transportation equipment.
On Feb. 3, a more forward-looking report showed that manufacturing grew in January for the third straight month though at a slower pace, as worries about a war with Iraq dampened optimism.
The pair of reports on manufacturing offered a hopeful sign that the beleaguered sector of the economy may be healing after suffering through a sick spell that started in the late summer.
WORLD
TOKYO -- A record 214,000 Japanese individuals filed for bankruptcy last year as the nation continued to struggle with its now chronic economic slump, Japan's top court said Feb. 4.
A total of 214,634 Japanese filed for bankruptcy nationwide in 2002, up 33.8 percent from 160,457 the previous year, Supreme Court spokesman Isao Umezawa said.
Personal bankruptcies in Japan have been on the rise amid increasing corporate failures, restructuring and pay cuts.
Japan's unemployment rate remains at record high levels, and a government study late last year found that about half of the unemployed had no income.
Personal bankruptcies accounted for 95 percent of all the bankruptcies filed last year, he said.
Corporate bankruptcy filings totaled 19,458 in 2002, up 0.1 percent from the year before for the second-highest figure in the postwar period, the private credit agency Teikoku Data Bank said last month.
-- Compiled from business wire services.
