It appears I am not the only person who has been solicited by someone in Nigeria.

During the Corbin Douglas Sr. trial this week in U.S. District Court in Binghamton, Judge Thomas McAvoy called for a short break.

As he walked back toward the courtroom, he pulled aside FBI Special Agent James Lyons, who is assisting federal prosecutor Miroslav Lovric.

McAvoy handed a letter to Lyons and asked him if he could look into it.

It’s from a woman in Nigeria seeking help, McAvoy said.

Later, I was able to speak with Lyons, who said Nigeria scams are just one facet of a worldwide problem with Internet or postal con artists. He said the FBI routinely refers people to the Internet Crime Complaint Center at www.ic3.gov.

The website is a collaboration between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center.

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Not everyone had a good experience leaving the National Baseball Hall of Fame Induction ceremony in Cooperstown two weeks ago.

About 75,000 people from all over the country descended on the lakeside village of about 2,000 residents.

The visitors flowed into the area by plane, car and bus during the days and hours before the ceremony. But they all left at once.

The influx for the Hall of Fame induction was as if the entire populations of Schenectady and Oneonta were suddenly transplanted into 1.6-square-miles of homes and small businesses.

When the crowd departed the grounds of the Clark Sports Center, Susquehanna Avenue was turned into a sea of people. It was the million fan march.

The Daily Star received a number of letters to the editor recounting harrowing tales of escape from a Hurricane Katrina-like evacuation.

A bus got rocked, some in the crowd turned ugly, and it took hours to leave Cooperstown, the letters said.

But emergency officials said arrests were few and medical emergencies were minor. There were no deaths from stampedes, car accidents or anything else.

I was not trying to get out of a parking ticket, as one letter writer suggested in a response to my story quoting emergency officials who said things went surprisingly well.

Maybe the letter writers were expecting free limousine rides to go with the free admission to the induction ceremony.

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Ian Kiraly’s record striped bass is following me around.

In May I wrote a story about how Kiraly "" a recent Cornell University graduate from Franklin "" caught a 55-pound, 6-ounce striper from the Hudson.

The story was linked to a number of fishing and hunting websites, which often had photos of the fish.

Last week, while in Jerry’s Bait and Tackle in Portlandville, Jerry offered me a revised copy of the 2006-08 fishing regulations guide.

For most of my adult life, the inside cover of the guide has included a picture of former Gov. George Pataki decked out in a plaid shirt. In his place for the revised edition was a picture of Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Pete Grannis, a Gov. Spitzer appointee.

But what really caught my eye was a smiling Kiraly on page one posing with that finned phenomenon.

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On the DEC front, Grannis appears to be listening to sportsmen who have voiced concern about ballast water being dumped into the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes.

Discharged ballast water is known to have introduced zebra mussels and the round goby. Many think viral hemorrhagic septicemia was introduced in the same way. The discharge and taking on of ballast water is used to stabilize ships during loading and unloading.

The DEC said in a media release this week that invasive species are discovered in the Great Lakes at about a rate of two per year.

An exemption to the federal Clean Water Act effectively allows ocean-going ships to dump ballast water in American’s inland waters, the DEC said.

But Grannis is lobbying the Environmental Protection Agency to close this loophole.

"Invasive species compete with, prey upon and substantially alter the environment of our native species of plants, fish and wildlife," Grannis told the EPA. "These invasive species have a devastating effect, not only on the environment, but also on the economy. They have hurt recreational and commercial fishing, as well as tainted water supplies and hindered energy production."

The DEC media release refers to ballast discharge as the "likely suspect" in the emergence of VHS. This is the strongest language to date from the agency on the cause of a virus responsible for large fish kills.

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Staff Writer Jake Palmateer covers Oneonta City Hall and police and fire departments ... and fishing.