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Continued cloudiness C10
Neah Bay’s Greene named state’s 1B player of year in AP poll B1
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New state remap plan keeps Jefferson in 24th Final recommendation due for Legislature by Jan. 1 BY CHARLIE BERMANT PENINSULA DAILY NEWS AND PDN NEWS SOURCES
PORT TOWNSEND — The state Redistricting Commission put out two new legislative maps Friday, and the one for the southern and western part of the state would keep Port Townsend and other East Jefferson County communities within the legislative district on
the North Olympic Peninsula. “I can’t say what will happen with the final vote, but it appears that Port Townsend will stay in the 24th District,” Tom Huff of Gig Harbor, a Republican member of the redistricting commission, said Friday. The four-member commission is redrawing the state’s 49 legislative districts and 10 con-
gressional districts to equalize population in the wake of the 2010 Census and must send completed proposals to the Legislature for technical changes by Jan. 1. Former U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton, a Republican, had proposed moving Port Townsend from the 24th Legislative District — which also includes Clallam County and a portion of Grays Harbor County — to the 23rd District, which includes Bainbridge Island and North Kitsap County. Gorton said he advocated the move because he felt that
Port Townsend had more in common with Bainbridge Island than the western part of Jefferson and Clallam counties. But the plan — favored by the Republicans, with the two Democrats favoring keeping Port Townsend in the 24th — was opposed by legislators in both districts as well as many other elected officials. The revised plans presented Friday in Olympia were the product of the four commissioners splitting into bipartisan subcommittees to refine the plans. TURN
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December 18, 2011
Two weeks left in 2011 Home Fund campaign Jenson PENINSULA DAILY NEWS’ 2011 campaign for the “hand up, not a handout” Peninsula Home Fund enters its final two weeks today with a touching story about how the fund helped a mother of five, April Jenson, move into an apartment — and gain an outlook on life about helping others as soon as she can. The current holiday-season campaign ends Dec. 31. If you haven’t given yet, see Page C1 on how easy and equally heartwarming it is to help our neighbors.
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PENINSULA DAILY NEWS
The electronic price sign at the Safeway service station in Sequim last week.
A clip from a popular YouTube video shows Twinkles the bear waving to a visitor at Olympic Game Farm.
Peninsula bear a video sensation The ups, downs of gas
BY JEFF CHEW
PENINSULA DAILY NEWS
SEQUIM — Trying to make a drowsy 700-pound Kodiak grizzly bear wave its paw at you in the dead of winter is next to impossible. They are supposed to be hibernating,
after all. But when one of Olympic Game Farm’s grizzlies — many of which are retired film or circus performers — gave a video-recording visitor a quick, cute, human-like wave a year ago in June, it became an overnight sensation last week on YouTube.
The seven-second clip ONLINE . . . of Twinkles, a 20-yearold female grizzly that was born and raised on the farm, went viral on the Internet, with more than 2.8 million views by Saturday night. ■ See the U.S. morning televishort video sion talk shows, British of Twinkles: http:// TV and Internet news tinyurl.com/ sites picked it up around pdntwinkles the world. It can be seen on YouTube.com at http://tinyurl.com/ pdntwinkles or by going to YouTube and typing “waving bear” in the search field. “It’s kind of crazy,” said Robert Beebe, president of the game farm at 423 Ward Road, on Friday.
Calls from all over
JEFF CHEW/PENINSULA DAILY NEWS
Robert Beebe, president of Olympic Game Farm north of Sequim, gets Tug, a 2-year-old Kodiak grizzly bear, to wave. Tug’s cousin at the farm, Twinkles, also waves — but not in the winter hibernation months.
It was Tuesday morning that Beebe and Jamie Pate, game farm tour manager, learned about the video when a French newspaper called them. “They asked us if we knew about it, and we didn’t,” Pate said. The television show “Inside Edition” called next. “The first day, it looked like there were 350,000 hits on YouTube,” Pate said. “The next morning, there were about 750,000, and then Thursday, there were more than a million.” It aired on ABC TV’s “Good Morning America” and early Tuesday was posted at Yahoo.com and America Online and its news website, The Huffington Post. TURN
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Once hovering near $4 a gallon, prices falling almost daily BY JEFF CHEW PENINSULA DAILY NEWS
Gas prices from Neah Bay to Port Angeles, Sequim and Port Townsend are tumbling down almost as fast as they shot up two years ago, when they hovered around $4 a gallon at the height of the surge. Just Friday, the lowest ALSO . . . North Olympic Peninsula ■ Diesel prices were found in prices not Sequim, as they have like those of been for some time. gasoline — Prices in Sequim have why?/A6 fallen about 10 cents in the past week alone. There, Safeway and Costco are duking it out at the fuel pumps. Safeway overnight Thursday dropped its price by 4 cents a gallon to $3.31 for unleaded gas, including the 3-cent-a-gallon discount Safeway offers to its card holders. That’s well below the state average of $3.46 a gallon but way above the national average price for unleaded at $3.25 on Friday. Costco opened its pumps early Friday morning, matching Safeway’s price after the unleaded gas pump read $3.35 a gallon the day before. TURN
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INSIDE TODAY’S PENINSULA DAILY NEWS
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BUSINESS/POLITICS D1 E1 CLASSIFIED COMMENTARY/LETTERS A8 *PW COUPLES C7 DEAR ABBY C8, C9 DEATHS C7 MOVIES A3 NATION A2 PENINSULA POLL * PENINSULA WOMAN
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