Sorted by date Results 201 - 225 of 252
ANCHORAGE (AP) — The Anchorage assembly has overridden the mayor’s veto of an emergency order instituting a mask mandate for 60 days. The assembly on Oct. 14 overturned Mayor Dave Bronson’s veto of the measure requiring masks for most everyone in indoor public spaces on a 9-2 vote. Alaska averaged about 900 new infections a day last week, down from the September surge but still high enough to lead the 50 states in per-capita COVID-19 cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Almost half of last week’s new cases w...
ANCHORAGE (AP) — Alaska State Troopers on Monday said a Kake man who reported missing on Saturday was found dead by a canine team searching for him. Troopers said the body of 55-year-old David Dalton was found Monday about 2.5 miles from where his pickup truck was parked near Sitkum Creek, south of Kake, on Kupreanof Island “It appears that Dalton succumbed to the elements,” troopers wrote in an update posted to their webpage. The body has been sent to the medical examiner’s office in Anchorage for an autopsy. Dalton was last seen Friday...
JUNEAU (AP) — A federal report aimed at improving aviation safety in Alaska recommends improvements in providing weather information to pilots and continued work to update maps with information on mountain passes, among other steps. The Federal Aviation Administration, which released the report Oct. 14, said it will establish a team to outline plans for implementing the proposals. Several of the recommendations are already underway, the agency said. The report comes after the National Transportation Safety Board in early 2020 called for a c...
BOSTON (AP) - The wreck of a storied military ship that served in two World Wars, performed patrols in waters off Alaska for decades, and at one point was captained by the first Black man to command a U.S. government vessel has been found, the Coast Guard said Oct. 14. A wreck thought to be the U.S. Revenue Cutter Bear, which sank in 1963 about 260 miles east of Boston as it was being towed to Philadelphia, where it was going to be converted into a floating restaurant, was located in 2019. But i...
ANCHORAGE (AP) — An Alabama man accused of using pepper spray and throwing a metal rod at law enforcement officers protecting the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection has been arrested in Alaska, according to court documents filed in federal court. The FBI took Christian Manley into custody last Friday in Anchorage. During an arraignment Tuesday, a judge set a detention hearing for Thursday afternoon. Authorities did not disclose why Manley was in Alaska. He faces several charges, including assaulting or resisting officers using a d...
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — A customs dispute at the U.S.-Canada border in Maine is threatening America’s supply of Alaska pollock used for popular products such as fish sticks and fast-food sandwiches. The pollock has a complicated supply chain. After being caught offshore Alaska, the fish are transported by ship to New Brunswick, Canada, near the border with Maine. Then they’re loaded onto rail cars for a brief trip down 100 feet of track in Canada, before being put on trucks and crossing the border into the U.S. for processing. U.S. Custo...
JUNEAU (AP) — Two Alaska state senators have tested positive for COVID-19 and a third was not feeling well, Senate President Peter Micciche said Tuesday. The senators who tested positive are Republicans David Wilson, of Wasilla, and Lora Reinbold, of Eagle River, according to the Anchorage Daily News. Reinbold has been the Legislature’s loudest critic of masking, testing and vaccinations during the pandemic. Sen. Click Bishop, of Fairbanks, said he is feeling ill but has tested negative for COVID-19 and believes he has a cold or the flu, the ne...
FAIRBANKS (AP) — A bus that people sometimes embarked on deadly pilgrimages to Alaska’s backcountry to visit can now safely be viewed at the University of Alaska Fairbanks while it undergoes preservation work. The bus was moved to the university’s engineering facility last week while it’s being prepared for outdoor display at the Museum of the North, Fairbanks television station KTVF reported. The abandoned Fairbanks city bus became a shelter for hunters and others using the backcountry near Denali National Park and Preserve, but it became...
ANCHORAGE (AP) — Several Republican state lawmakers are urging easier access for Alaskans to ivermectin amid the pandemic, though ivermectin is not authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for preventing or treating COVID-19. Senate Majority Leader Shelley Hughes, of Palmer, said she urged Gov. Mike Dunleavy and the state health commissioner to consider supplying Alaskans with vitamins and drugs, including ivermectin, “that some Alaskan physicians are prescribing but pharmacies aren’t filling.” Three Republican House members testifi...
JUNEAU (AP) — A federal judge last Friday sided with two psychiatrists who said they were wrongfully fired for political reasons when Gov. Mike Dunleavy took office in 2018. Anthony Blanford and John Bellville, who worked at the Alaska Psychiatric Institute in Anchorage, declined to submit resignation letters requested by the chair of Dunleavy’s transition team and later by his chief of staff, Tuckerman Babcock. Blanford and Bellville subsequently were fired. Attorneys for the men in court records argued that Babcock — in demanding resig...
There’s been an increase in rude, violent behavior in Anchorage schools, and the superintendent wants parents to help address it with their children. The bad behavior has included a fight at a high school that prompted a large police response, along with a TikTok challenge where students caused thousands of dollars in damage to school bathrooms, KTUU-TV reported. “Wrangell schools got off lightly” in September’s bout of TikTok-inspired vandalism, Bob Davis, assistant principal at the middle and high schools, said in a letter to parents last we...
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Cruise ships are returning to San Francisco after a 19-month hiatus brought on by the pandemic in what's sure to be a boost to the city's economy, the mayor announced last Friday. The Majestic Princess sailed into the port of San Francisco on Monday, the first cruise ship to dock in the San Francisco Bay Area since March 2020 when the Grand Princess captured the world's attention and made the coronavirus real to millions in the United States. The ship was carrying people infected with the coronavirus, and thousands of p...
The state has activated emergency crisis protocols that allow 20 hospitals to ration care if needed as Alaska reports among the nation’s worst COVID-19 infection rates of recent weeks, straining the state’s limited health care system. The declaration last Saturday covers three facilities that had already announced emergency protocols, including the largest hospital, Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage, and facilities across the state, including hospitals in Wrangell and Petersburg. Though Wrangell Medical Center is covered under the o...
SEATTLE (AP) — Alaska Air Group has told its 22,000 employees they will be required to get a COVID-19 vaccination. There are some exceptions to the policy, which has shifted since last month, The Seattle Times reported. In an email Sept. 30 to all Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air employees, the Seattle-based company said employees will now be required to be fully vaccinated or approved for a reasonable accommodation. Officials said the new policy would be in accordance with the White House executive order that requires all federal contractors t...
JUNEAU (AP) — The state plans to emphasize telework for many of its 14,000 employees this month as the COVID-19 pandemic strains Alaska’s health care system. Gov. Mike Dunleavy, in a memo to state department leaders, said the state “must take measures to protect its health care infrastructure while still providing essential government services to its residents.” He wrote that effective Sept. 27, the state will emphasize telework “to the maximum extent practical,” while still maintaining public services. The policy will remain in effect unti...
The Biden administration is stepping up its work to figure out what to do about the thawing Arctic, which is warming three times faster than the rest of the world. The White House said Sept. 24 it is reactivating the Arctic Executive Steering Committee, which coordinates domestic regulations and works with other Arctic nations. It also is adding six new members to the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, including two Indigenous Alaskans. The steering committee had been moribund for the past four years, not meeting at a high level, said David...
TANACROSS — One Alaska Native village knew what to do to keep out COVID-19. They put up a gate on the only road into town and guarded it round the clock. It was the same idea used a century ago in some isolated Indigenous villages to protect people from outsiders during another deadly pandemic — the Spanish flu. It largely worked. Only one person died of COVID-19 and 20 people got sick in Tanacross, an Athabascan village of 140 whose rustic wood cabins and other homes are nestled between the Alaska Highway and Tanana River in the state’s Inter...
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — The number of sockeye salmon making it to central Idaho from the ocean this year is one of the worst returns in the past decade, with only 43 fish so far, state wildlife managers said Sept. 28. But the Idaho Department of Fish and Game said a hatchery program intended to prevent the species from going extinct allowed the release of 1,211 sockeye into Redfish and Pettit lakes to spawn naturally. The agency in August also started an emergency trap-and-truck operation at Lower Granite Dam on the Snake River in Washington due t...
JUNEAU (AP) — A Canadian mining company has been looking for precious metals on Chichagof Island in Southeast Alaska. Millrock Resources, a Vancouver, British Columbia-based company, several years ago applied to the U.S. Forest Service for drilling permits to renew exploration on claims that once comprised the historic Apex and El Nido gold mines. However, the exploration never happened. CEO Gregory Beischer said the company wasn’t able to secure financing. The mines produced precious metals in the early 20th century. “But it really has been...
ANCHORAGE (AP) — Federal prosecutors have charged three men with leaving a special viewing platform and getting too close to bears in Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve. The remote park on the northern Alaska Peninsula, about 250 miles southwest of Anchorage, protects some of the highest densities of bears in the world and requires visitors to abide by special rules. Mature male brown bears at Katmai can weigh up to 900 pounds. The U.S. attorney’s office filed charges last month in the August 2018 incident. Spokesperson Lisa Hough...
ANCHORAGE (AP) — A U.S. District Court judge has ruled against plans by the Native Village of Eklutna to build a tribal gaming hall about 20 miles north of downtown Anchorage. The tribe had intended to offer pull-tabs, bingo and lotteries at the site, the Anchorage Daily News reported. The tribal government said the gaming hall would support jobs, tourism and the economy. The U.S. Department of Interior in 2018 concluded the tribe does not have jurisdiction over an eight-acre allotment where it has sought to build the gaming hall. Members of t...
STEVENS VILLAGE — In a normal year, the smokehouses and drying racks that Alaska Natives use to prepare salmon to tide them through the winter would be heavy with fish meat, the fruits of a summer spent fishing on the Yukon River like generations before them. This year, there are no fish. For the first time in memory, both king and chum salmon have dwindled to almost nothing and the state has banned salmon fishing on the Yukon, even the subsistence harvests that Alaska Natives rely on to fill their freezers and pantries for winter. The remote c...
The first 100 out-of-state health care workers have started arriving in Alaska to help at medical facilities overwhelmed with record patient counts due to surging COVID-19 infections. The state health department has contracted to bring on 470 health care workers, including about 300 nurses, to help the strained workforce. Alaska is using $87 million in federal funds to cover the costs. The first health care personnel reported to the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage for orientation on Tuesday. The contractor said the remaining nurses,...
JUNEAU (AP) — Officials are aiming to send out the first wave of Permanent Fund dividend payments to Alaska residents the week of Oct. 11, a Department of Revenue spokesperson said. The department’s Genevieve Wojtusik said in an email Sept. 22 that the first wave would include those who filed for their PFD electronically. She said the second round of payments, which would include those who filed paper applications, would go out about two weeks later. The Legislature mid-September appropriated $730.5 million for dividends this year of about $1,...
ANCHORAGE (AP) — Residents of Alaska’s largest city often contend with bears and moose, but state officials are warning of another wild animal that has been causing problems: river otters. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game says river otters have attacked people and pets in some of the city’s most popular outdoor areas, the Anchorage Daily News reported. Officials are asking people to be extra careful when they are around rivers, creeks and lakes along the city’s greenbelt. Earlier this month, a 9-year-old boy was taken to an emergen...
