C.J.: Former KSTPer gets network taste of his D.C. dream

Six months after Mark Albert's exit from KSTP-TV, he's in D.C. freelancing for the local CBS station, WUSA, and the network for a few days.

"I'm really grateful for the opportunity to freelance at CBS News for a weekend," Albert said via e-mail Monday.

Albert has had a piece of many big stories including the week's biggest, the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. He did the Sunday report about the major gap in air security that allows an astonishing number of international passengers to go unscreened for stolen passports.

"@malbertnews just saw u on CBS news congrats … job well done," wrote his former KSTP colleague @bethmcdonough5 Sunday on Twitter. @BillLunnKSTP tweeted: "Just watched your @CBSEveningNews report. Well done! Nice to see you on the network level where you belong."

On Tuesday, WCCO-TV's @heatherbrown21 tweeted: "Great to see you on CBS!!! Welcome to the family!"

Humm, wonder what that means?

Albert told me in August that his dream job was "White House correspondent." He's a lot closer to that dream now than he was working in the Twin Cities.

"The weather in Minnesota has been a huge story this winter so we've been happy to help where we can with a lot of reports from Jamie, but others including Rachel Slavik, Nina Moini, Lauren Casey and more have also done live shots," news director Mike Caputa e-mailed. "We got a nice comment from Scott Pelley one night during Evening News that Jamie comes from 'a great newsroom at WCCO' and that made our entire staff feel proud."

Way I see it, those glowing remarks that Yuccas makes in a WCCO promo about how happy she is to be at this station means she can never leave.

Back-to-back Gophers Women's "Natty Champ," as @RachelRamsey44 describes herself on Twitter, told KFAN she was doubly impressed with President Obama when the NCAA Champions went to the White House.

KFAN's Paul Allen wanted to know what Obama's "aura" was like at the ceremony where the NCAA champions were honored. Ramsey said various other teams had been invited to the room for handshakes and photos, yet when the president walked in he focused on Minnesota: He said, Golden Gophers, woot, woot!

Then as Obama worked the line shaking hands, he shortened Ramsey's first name to "Rach." She didn't know if that was intentional or, my words here, an R-S-P-E-C-T flub, but Ramsey liked it.

Arizona added to former Viking Darren Sharper's legal problems with an indictment for two more charges of sexual assault and three charges of administering dangerous drugs for assaults alleged to have happened in November.

A grand jury heard the allegations and returned the indictment on Tuesday, the Tempe Police Department announced Wednesday.

Media report that Sharper is in custody in Los Angeles, where he has pleaded not guilty to drugging and sexually assaulting two women in California. Sharper is being investigated for sexual assaults in Louisiana, Florida and Nevada.

He was expected to be released Thursday, the deadline a California judge set for New Orleans authorities to charge Sharper. But that was before these Arizona charges were filed.

C.J. can be reached at cj@startribune.com and seen on Fox 9's "Buzz." E-mailers, please state a subject; "Hello" does not count. Attachments are not opened.