ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Alaska's Cook Inlet beluga whales were correctly listed as endangered, a federal judge ruled earlier this week, rejecting a state lawsuit that claimed the listing will hurt economic development. Judge Royce C. Lambeth of U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., said the National Marine Fisheries Service properly followed requirements of the Endangered Species Act and used the best science available in making its determination. Cook Inlet beluga whales did not bounce back after a decade, despite a ban on subsistence hunting blamed for depleting their numbers, he said. "When the best available science predicts that a recently...