As you already know, over the weekend it took one story to knock off TomKitten and Brooke Shields' new baby off the headlines, and it's a far more serious one.

Interior Alaska was once again in the national spotlight, as six North Pole Middle School students were arrested on suspicion of a murder plot. The premise was to disable the school's power and telephone systems so they would kill classmates and faculty and bolt out of the area which is 15 miles southeast of us in Fairbanks.

Now school violence in Alaska isn't new. In 1997, Evan Ramsey murdered a student and principal at Bethel High School. The tragedy came weeks after Evan's father, Donald, was released from prison for assualting a newspaper publisher in the 1980's. Ironically enough, this was two years before Columbine changed everything.

Why would an attemped murder plot at a middle school would transpire here? By the way, this comes 13 years after Sophie Sergie was raped and murdered at a University of Alaska Fairbanks dormitory. But after those 13 years, there has yet to be closure as to who was the person behind it. That same year, Alaskan Independence Party founder Joe Vogler turned up missing, only to be murdered the following year. Of those two mysteries that had the Alaska State Troopers working overtime throughout 1993, only Vogler was featured on A&E's "City Confidential" in a 1999 episode. The Sergie murder never made either "Unsolved Mysteries" or of all shows, "America's Most Wanted." The killer is still out there somewhere in Alaska, North America, or the world, and the time will come when he or she steps forward and admits to committing that crime.

Anyway, on to lighter fare...Near the end of last year, you crowned "Gilmore Girls'" Lauren Graham as the Sexiest Woman of 2005 in a very controversial manner -- and I was not happy with the final outcome because of the excessive voting for her and runner-up Jennifer Garner.

That's because this year, I've decided to pull out all the stops to make sure that very same mistake won't be repeated ever again. Next week (that's right, NEXT WEEK; forget waiting till October), polling will begin for the Sexiest Woman of 2006, and here's how:

The Round 1 preliminaries will be split into two parts -- Part 1 with Groups A-D, and Part 2 with Groups E-H. The Part 1 polls will last to the end of May, and Part 2 will begin in October. Of course, the top 40 ladies after those two prelims (20 from Part 1, 20 from Part 2) will move on to Round 2 with the poll goes into full strength in late October.

Now yes, with 80 beauties vying for the title, the field always consists of new faces to go along with old favorites. I'll reveal the field for Part 1 next week, because I've been working hard to fill in those blanks.

Oh yeah...despite this announcement, I'll still have the Sexiest Man of 2006 poll in November. So long!