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A headless robot about the size of a labrador retriever will be camouflaged as a coyote or fox to ward off migratory birds and other wildlife at Alaska's second largest airport. The Alaska Department of Transportation has named the new robot Aurora and said it will be based at the Fairbanks airport to "enhance and augment safety and operations," the Anchorage Daily News reported. The department released a video in March of the robot climbing rocks, going up stairs and doing something akin to...
Federal researchers indicate the gray whale population along the West Coast is showing signs of recovery five years after hundreds washed up dead on beaches from Alaska to Mexico. The increase in population numbers comes after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association determined in November that the “unusual mortality event” that began in 2019 has ended. “It’s nice to be able to report some good news the last couple of years,” Aimee Lang, a research biologist with NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center, told The Seattle Times. The...
Alaska Airlines has begun flying Boeing 737 Max 9 jetliners for the first time since the aircraft were grounded after a panel blew out of the side of one of the airline’s planes. The airline said it resumed flying the Max 9 with a flight from Seattle to San Diego on Friday afternoon, Jan. 26. The Federal Aviation Administration on Jan. 24 approved the inspection and maintenance process to return the planes to service. Technicians at Alaska began inspections that night, the airline said. The airline said they expect to complete inspections by t...
Alaska Airlines has agreed to buy Hawaiian Airlines in a $1.9 billion deal, putting it on track for a potential clash with the Biden administration that has shown wariness about consolidation in the airline industry. The combined company would keep both airlines’ brands, rooted in the nation’s 49th and 50th states. The two airlines announced the deal on Sunday, Dec. 3. The combined business would be based in Seattle, with Alaska Airlines CEO Ben Minicucci at its head, though Hawaiian Airlines would maintain its key operations hub in Hon...
A couple of sweet-tooth bears raided a Krispy Kreme doughnut van that was stopped outside a convenience store on Anchorage’s Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson during its delivery route. The driver usually left his doors open when he stopped at the store but this time a sow and one of her cubs that loiter nearby sauntered inside, where they stayed for probably 20 minutes Sept. 19, said Shelly Deano, the store manager for Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson JMM Express. The bears chomped on doughnut holes and other pastries, ignoring the banging on t...
WAILUKU, Hawaii — In the hours before a wildfire engulfed the town of Lahaina, Maui County officials failed to activate sirens that would have warned the entire population of the approaching flames and instead relied on a series of sometimes confusing social media posts that reached a much smaller audience. Power and cellular outages for residents further stymied communication efforts. Radio reports were scarce, some survivors reported, even as the blaze began to consume the town. Roadblocks then forced fleeing drivers onto one narrow d...
A record number of people believed to be homeless have died on Anchorage streets in the past seven months, and the count could increase before the year is out, according to police data. The death count stood at 29 on July 28, surpassing the previous record of 24 set for all of last year, the Anchorage Daily News reported. Of this year’s count, more than half of the people died after the city closed its mass shelter at the Sullivan Arena on May 1, according to police incident reports. “That’s very unfortunate,” Alexis Johnson, the city’s...
(AP) - A pod of killer whales bumped one of the boats in an endurance sailing race as it approached the Strait of Gibraltar last week, the latest encounter in what researchers say is a growing trend of sometimes-aggressive interactions with Iberian orcas. The 15-minute run-in with at least three of the giant mammals forced the crew competing in The Ocean Race on Thursday, June 22, to drop its sails and raise a clatter in an attempt to scare the approaching orcas off. No one was injured, but Team JAJO skipper Jelmer van Beek said in a video...
TACOMA, Wash. (AP) - A company that operates a more than century-old hydroelectric dam near Mount Rainier National Park in Washington state will pay $1 million after synthetic field turf and its tiny rubber particles spilled into the salmon-rearing Puyallup River in 2020. Pierce County Superior Court Judge Philip Sorensen approved the amount in fines and restitution, with most to go toward restoring salmon habitat, the Washington state attorney general's office said in a statement on May 8. The office said $745,000 in restitution will be paid...
Alaska Airlines is pushing passengers to load boarding passes on their smartphones by removing airport kiosks that can be used to print the passes. The airline has removed kiosks at nine airports so far, and is telling customers to use Alaska’s app to download boarding passes or print them at home. Alaska executives said Thursday that their goal is to reduce crowding at check-in areas and get passengers to security checkpoints faster. They discussed the issue Thursday during a call with Wall Street analysts to go over first-quarter financial r...
ANCHORAGE — A judge has dismissed a sex abuse case against former acting Alaska Attorney General Clyde “Ed” Sniffen, citing the statute of limitations that were in place when the alleged abuse happened more than 30 years ago. The case, thrown out on Friday, involved allegations that Sniffen, now 58, sexually abused a then-17-year-old student in 1991 when he was 27 and was the alleged victim’s coach of her high school’s mock trial competition team in Anchorage. Sniffen had pleaded not guilty. Alaska does not currently have a statute of limita...
JUNEAU (AP) — Two Southeast Alaska men face charges in the beating death of a man who was attacked because of a social media post, according to an investigator’s affidavit. Moses S. Blanchard, 22, and Blaise A. Dilts, 21, of Klawock, face charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter and burglary in the death of 80-year-old Lincoln Peratrovich, according to state court records. The two men made their first appearance in court in Klawock on March 22. The investigation is being conducted by the Alaska Bureau of Investigation, which falls und...
ANCHORAGE (AP) — Alaska’s human rights commission has reversed an earlier policy and now is only investigating LGBTQ discrimination complaints related to workplace discrimination and not for other categories like housing and financing. The Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica reported the Alaska State Commission for Human Rights deleted language from its website promising equal protections for transgender and gay Alaskans against most categories of discrimination. It also began refusing to investigate complaints. The commission is only accepting...
State funding is being directed to help stock Alaska food pantries — including those serving rural communities — as part of a broader effort to address a monthslong state backlog in processing food stamp benefit applications. Major delays in processing applications for the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program have stressed thousands of Alaskans who depend on the monthly benefits to feed their families, and strained food bank resources across the state. State officials have attributed the processing delays to staffing sho...
A proposed overhaul of Alaska’s public employees retirement system would provide a new pension plan for state and municipal workers, intended by supporters to address the ongoing inability to recruit and retain enough employees. Half of the 20-member state Senate have signed onto the bill, sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Cathy Giessel, an Anchorage Republican. The measure was outlined in a news conference March 1 by members of the bipartisan coalition that controls the Senate. Coalition members said the 2006 legislation that moved Alaska f...
President Joe Biden’s calls in his State of the Union speech for strong criminal penalties in response to soaring deaths linked to the potent opioid fentanyl are being rebuked by harm-reduction advocates who say that approach could make the problem worse. The proposal has support among some health officials, however, including Alaska’s chief medical officer. Dr. Anne Zink, who also serves as president of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, said in a statement that she welcomes his efforts to prevent overdoses, make acc...
ANCHORAGE (AP) — A state agency that represents Alaskans who cannot afford their own attorneys intends this month to stop taking clients facing serious felony charges in parts of southwest and western Alaska due to staffing shortages. Samantha Cherot, head of the Alaska Public Defender Agency, notified the judges overseeing the Nome and Bethel judicial districts of the plans on Jan. 31, the Anchorage Daily News reported. The agency asked that Superior Court judges in those regions not assign new cases to the agency for certain felonies that c...
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — The Biden administration took a first step Feb. 3 toward ending federal protections for grizzly bears in the northern Rocky Mountains, which would open the door to future hunting in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said state officials provided “substantial” information that grizzlies have recovered from the threat of extinction in the regions surrounding Yellowstone and Glacier national parks. But federal officials rejected claims by Idaho that protections should be lifted beyond those...
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — A nonprofit group that aims to protect endangered species has asked the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to reintroduce sea otters to a stretch of the West Coast from Northern California to Oregon. Threatened southern sea otters occupy only 13% of their historic range, with a small population of the mammals currently living on California’s central coast, the Center for Biological Diversity said. “Bringing the sea otter back to the broader West Coast would be an unparalleled conservation success story,” said Kristin Carden,...
Health care services for Native Americans and Alaska Natives will be bolstered by a provision included in the government spending bill approved by Congress in the final hours of the 2022 session. The measure provides more certainty for a federal agency that delivers health care to more than 2.5 million people. A coalition of lawmakers from Kansas, Arizona, New Mexico, California, Alaska and elsewhere fought to include advance appropriations for the Indian Health Service in the bill, marking a first for the chronically underfunded agency as a...
SEATTLE (AP) — Cooke Aquaculture has filed an appeal against Washington state’s decision to end its leases for fish-farming using net pens in state waters. In court documents filed Dec. 14, the New Brunswick, Canada-based seafood giant said that the decision was arbitrary, politically motivated and contrary to science, radio station KNKX reported. In a statement, Cooke said it has a state Supreme Court ruling and legislative mandate on its side that supports the farming of native species. It also said that the 30-day deadline to harvest fis...
BELLINGHAM, Wash. (AP) — Citizen trapping of northern giant hornets in northwest Washington ended Nov. 30 without any confirmed sightings of the hornets this year, state officials said Dec. 6. The Washington State Department of Agriculture also said that no confirmed sightings of the hornets were reported nearby in British Columbia. The northern giant hornet is native to Asia and has been the target of eradication efforts after hornets were discovered in both locations in 2019. The insects are the world's largest hornets, with queens r...
JUNEAU (AP) — A recount of an Anchorage-area state Senate race reaffirmed Republican Cathy Giessel as the winner, while a recount of an Anchorage House race reaffirmed Republican Rep. Tom McKay as the winner. The Senate recount was conducted by the state Division of Elections on Dec. 7 at the request of Democrat Roselynn Cacy, who was the first of the three candidates in the race to be eliminated in the Nov. 8 ranked-vote contest. The other candidate in the race was Republican Sen. Roger Holland. Cacy had said she had questions about the r...
SEATTLE (AP) — The Washington state Department of Natural Resources said Nov. 14 it will not renew a fish-farming company’s last remaining leases on net pens in Puget Sound. Department officials said Cooke Aquaculture has until Dec. 14 to finish steelhead farming and start deconstructing its equipment, The Seattle Times reported. Cooke’s pens are located in Rich Passage near Bainbridge Island and Hope Island in Skagit Bay. Letters sent from the Department of Natural Resources to the Canada-based company on Nov. 14 indicate Cooke had a histo...
JUNEAU (AP) — A black bear cub in Southeast Alaska was euthanized after it became ill with avian influenza, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game said. It is believed that the cub, which was located in Bartlett Cove in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve west of Juneau, is the second bear diagnosed with the highly pathogenic bird flu, the Juneau Empire reported. Bird flu “passes really easily to poultry, but mammals aren’t really susceptible to it,” said Dr. Kimberlee Beckmen, a wildlife veterinarian for the department. “It’s difficult t...
