Holland America’s cruise ship Zuiderdam will be the setting for the event scheduled for late June.

Vampire scholar John Edgar Browning is scheduled to host a vampire movie festival. Also scheduled to join the cruise is Dacre Stoker, a great-grandnephew of “Dracula” author Bram Stoker and a co-author of a sequel, “Dracula: The Un-Dead.”

___

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Officials with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Thursday that further tests show the substance is consistent with spores from fungi that create rust, which accounts for the color.

Scientists say they still have not determined whether this spore is among the 7,800 known species of rust fungi.

The gunk appeared Aug. 3 at the edge of Kivalina (KIV’-uh-LEE’-nuh), an Inupiat Eskimo community at the tip of a barrier reef on Alaska’s northwest coast.

The substance quickly dissipated, but residents have said they worry about the effect on the water quality, and some wildlife and plants.

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The eruption at Cleveland Volcano is a slow effusion of magma that is forming a lava dome, and not an explosive eruption that generates large ash plumes, said John Power, the scientist-in-charge at the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

“So far, it’s just lava as far as we can tell from our satellite imagery and the people who have managed to see it from passing airplanes,” he said.

The volcano is in a very remote area, on uninhabited Chuginadak Island, and that lowers the danger level.

“Certainly, if there were people who were going to be in the area, they would need to be concerned but there aren’t many of those folks there right now,” he said.

Currently the lava dome is confined within the summit crater. Power said the biggest danger would be if the lava dome began to grow large enough to spill out, then it could begin to generate ash-producing explosions.

“If it were to explode and push a bunch of ash up into the flight levels, then it would be a much more dangerous situation,” he said.

Based upon past observations at several volcanoes, dome growth like this can go on for weeks to months.

“It’s something we’re going to be watching very closely, or as close as we can given our operational constraints there,” he said.

There is no real-time seismic network at the volcano, located in the Aleutian Islands 939 miles southwest of Anchorage. Officials are not able to track local earthquake activity related to volcanic unrest. For pictures, they also have to rely on satellite imagery or what people in airplanes snap as they pass the volcano and send to the observatory.

Given the current level of activity and hazards, he said they don’t plan to fly to the volcano, especially considering the expense.

But weather has cleared in the last few days to allow better satellite imagery.

“We’ve had a few good days where the top of the volcano has been sticking out of the clouds, so things are looking nice for us in terms of direct observations,” Power said.

Short-lived explosions with ash clouds or plumes exceeding 20,000 feet above sea level are frequent on Cleveland. It last showed signs of unrest last summer, with a small ash emission and lava flows on its upper flanks.

The observatory says the last significant eruption of the 5,676-foot volcano began in February 2001 and eventually produced a lava flow that reached the ocean.

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The teenagers had been in the backcountry for some time, training with the National Outdoor Leadership School, which has a sizable staff focused on outdoors education and training in Palmer, the county seat of the Matanuska-Susitna Borough in Southcentral Alaska.

Two of the teenagers were badly mauled by the bear and suffered “serious, life threatening injuries,” according to a press release from Megan Peters, a spokesperson for the Alaska State Troopers and Department of Public Safety. Two others were seriously injured but sustained non-life-threatening injuries. The three others all suffered “minor injuries or had exposure-related issues,” Peters said.

All of the teenagers were between 16- and 18-years-old and were from the Lower 48, Peters said. Their families have all been notified, as had counselors at the National Outdoor Leadership School, which is assisting troopers in investigating the accident.

The teenagers were identified as: Samuel Boas, 16 of Westport, Conn.; Noah Allaine, 16, Albuquerque, N.M.; Shane Garlock, 16, Pittsford, N.Y.; Joshua Berg, 17, New York, N.Y.; Samuel Gottsegen, 17, Denver, Colo.; Simeon Melman, Huntington, N.Y.; and Victor Martin, 18, Richmond, Calif.

Troopers at the Talkeetna office received word about 9:30 Saturday night that a beacon assigned to the school had been activated in the wilderness about 34 miles east of mile 143 of the Parks Highway, near Chulitna. …

Read the complete story only at Alaska Dispatch.

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“I thought: `I’m going to die,’” the 17-year-old Denver resident said. “I thought, `This just can’t be happening to me.’”

Then the bear left, only to return a moment later to continue mauling him and his other teenage friends. When the minute-long attack ended, four teens, including Gottsegen, were injured. Three others were unhurt.

The attack Saturday night in the Talkeetna Mountains north of Anchorage came as the group was nearing the end of a 30-day course to learn how to survive in the backcountry. The teens were at the stage of the course where they could try out their skills without adults around.

Authorities believe the bear was aggressive because it was with its cub. Gottsegen said no one ever saw a cub.

The group was hiking through bushes that got so thick they decided to wade through a river, walking in single file. Around a bend in the river, Joshua Berg, 17, of New City, N.Y., began yelling “Bear! Bear!”

The bear took him down first. The animal made angry, snarling noises as it attacked, Gottsegen told The Associated Press from his hospital bed in Anchorage, recounting the attack.

It was so sudden. There was no time to pull out their bear deterrent spray and no one had a gun. Berg, badly wounded, called for someone to set off the personal locator beacon they carried for emergencies.

Gottsegen said everyone scattered and he ran, even though the students had been told to play dead.

His instincts wouldn’t let him, though.

“When I heard that bear, when I saw it, it was all just like natural instincts,” he said. “All night long I was thinking I should have played dead.”

He kicked at the grizzly, to no avail.

Then the bear struck him, biting him on the head, lashing out at the teen’s arms and chest, puncturing a lung and breaking two ribs. The attack on the group probably lasted less than a minute, he said.

After it was over, it started raining.

The teens set up a camp and tended to the injured, making good use of their survival skills. They plugged a deep wound in Gottsegen’s torso with a plastic trash bag secured with an Ace bandage.

They also activated the beacon.

Patricia Allaire, the mother of another injured student, Noah Allaire, 16, of Albuquerque, N.M., said her son initially tried to activate the beacon, thinking the bear was gone, but then it struck again.

The bear thrashed the teen’s head and back and slightly puncturing a lung. He was listed in good condition Monday at a hospital.

Authorities received the signal around 9:30 p.m. Saturday, and dispatched rescuers.

A trooper and pilot in a helicopter located the students in a tent shortly before 3 a.m. They decided the two most seriously injured would need a medical transport aircraft.

The trooper and another student stayed with the badly injured teens for a couple hours until more rescuers arrived in a specially equipped helicopter, Gottsegen said.

The uninjured student who remained was 16-year-old Samuel Boas of Westport, Conn.

Boas has training as an emergency medical technician, said Bruce Palmer, the spokesman for the National Outdoor Leadership School, a Lander, Wyo.-based organization that leads many such excursions.

The group operated the backcountry training course.

The other students injured were Victor Martin, 18, of Richmond, Calif., who was treated at a hospital for a bite wound above his ankle and then released, according to Palmer.

The teens were in the 24th day of their course when the attack occurred. Gottsegen said they had been calling out to alert bears of human presence as they traveled.

Berg remained in serious condition Monday, while Gottsegen was upgraded to good from serious.

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Sea Serpent Hunt Underway in Alaska
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In paranormal expert George Eberhart's book "Mysterious Creatures: A Guide to Cryptozoology," he writes that, "The most common descriptions mention a large, rounded object like an overturned boat; several humps in a line; or a long neck and a hump… …

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