Sorted by date Results 2768 - 2792 of 7954
Canada’s Minister of Transport has announced that cruise ships are again welcome at the nation’s ports, starting April 6. The COVID-19 pandemic stopped all cruise ship traffic in 2020 as Canada closed its waters, and the revenue hit was substantial for Alaska businesses and municipalities that rely on summer travelers. Even when cruise ships resumed limited operations in 2021, they had to bypass Canadian ports and traffic to Alaska was a fraction of past summers. A major barrier to the ability of ships to sail between the Lower 48 and Ala...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy and Alaska state senators said Friday they support legislation to temporarily suspend the state’s 8-cents-a-gallon tax on gasoline and also taxes marine and aviation fuels for one year, in an attempt to reduce the hit of rising fuel prices on Alaskans. No such legislation had been introduced, but Dunleavy, who is running for reelection this year, called for a suspension of the taxes to be added to a bill sitting in the House Finance Committee since last year. That bill would raise the state’s tax on gasoline by 8 cents a gal...
Applications are now being accepted for a federally funded financial assistance program for Alaska homeowners. Applications will be accepted through April 4 by the Alaska Housing Finance Corp., which is administering the $50 million program to help homeowners hurt by income loss the past two years due to the pandemic. As of last Friday, 13 Wrangell homeowners had preregistered for the program, out of almost 5,400 people statewide, according to Stacy Barnes, public affairs director at the agency. The aid can go toward eligible homeowners’ m...
KENAI (AP) — Republican Charlie Pierce, Kenai Peninsula Borough mayor, has picked the chair of the Alaska Parole Board, Edie Grunwald, of the Matanuska Valley, to be his running mate as he campaigns for the governor’s job. Grunwald previously ran for lieutenant governor in 2018, finishing second in that year’s Republican primary to Kevin Meyer, the current office holder. Under a new voter-approved election system, which will be used for the first time in Alaska this year, candidates for governor and lieutenant governor will run as a team from...
JUNEAU (AP) — A bill in the Alaska House would repeal a provision of law that allows a court to grant permission for someone as young as 14 to marry. House members last Wednesday adopted the repeal as an amendment to a bill dealing with witness requirements for marriage. A vote on the amended bill was pending and could occur this week. The measure, if it passes, would still have to go to the Senate. The bill would leave in place another provision of law that allows for 16- and 17-year-olds to marry with parental consent. Anchorage Rep. Sara R...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Alaska’s congressional delegation welcomed Friday’s announcement by President Joe Biden that the U.S. will dramatically downgrade its trade status with Russia as punishment for its invasion of Ukraine, including banning imports of Russian seafood. Russia exported $1.2 billion in seafood products to the U.S. in 2021. That made it the eighth-largest seafood exporter by value to the U.S. last year, the Anchorage Daily News reported. The main products were snow crab, king crab and cod, according to data from the National Marin...
PASCAGOULA, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi shipyard workers, Navy sailors and the family of the late U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska gathered for the keel authentication of a ship that is named for Stevens. The ceremonial welding March 9 marked the foundation of Ingalls Shipbuilding’s new guided-missile destroyer for the Navy, the USS Ted Stevens. Stevens was a pilot during World War II. The Alaska Republican served in the Senate from 1968 to 2008. He was 86 when he died in 2010 in a plane crash in Alaska. “In many ways, Sen. Stevens embodies the spi...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal officials are extending the requirement for masks on planes and public transportation for one more month — through mid-April — while taking steps that could lead to lifting the rule. The mask mandate was scheduled to expire March 18, but the Transportation Security Administration said last Thursday that it will extend the requirement through April 18. TSA said the extra month will give the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention time to develop new, more targeted policies that will consider the number of cases...
JUNEAU (AP) — The state has issued a corrected birth certificate for the teenage designer of the Alaska flag, after researchers who were looking into his heritage found records indicating he was born more than a year earlier than previously believed. The change means John Ben Benson Jr. — believed to be the only Indigenous person to design a state flag — did so when he was 14, not 13. Alaska Superior Court Judge Adolf Zeman last week ordered the state to issue a birth certificate for Benson with the birth date of Sept. 12, 1912, and for his m...
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — National Park Service Director Chuck Sams said March 8 that he and other officials are committed to boosting the role Native American tribes can play in managing public lands around the U.S. He told members of a congressional committee during a virtual hearing that part of the effort includes integrating Indigenous knowledge into management plans and recognizing that federal lands once belonged to the tribes. Sams was questioned about how the National Park Service could use existing authority and recent executive d...
DULUTH, Minn. (AP) — Medical student Fred Blaisdell has a few months to go before anyone calls him doctor, but the Oneida Nation tribal member has already learned one lesson around the importance of Native physicians serving Native patients. During a recent psychiatry rotation at a Minneapolis clinic, he introduced himself to a patient who lit up when she heard him speak Ojibwe. “After that, the patient really opened up and started to talk about a lot more things that she hadn’t really engaged with us before,’’ recalled Blaisdell, 27, who i...
YUROK RESERVATION, Calif. (AP) - The young mother had behaved erratically for months, hitchhiking and wandering naked through two Native American reservations and a small town clustered along Northern California's rugged Lost Coast. But things escalated when Emmilee Risling was charged with arson for igniting a fire in a cemetery. Her family hoped the case would force her into mental health and addiction services. Instead, she was released over the pleas of loved ones and a tribal police chief....
Parks and Recreation Director Kate Thomas stands at the tidelands in front of City Park, where the borough plans to build a rock staircase and add a handrail to provide easier access to the waterfront. Thomas estimates the work may cost $2,000 to add the steps, which will blend in with the boulders that make up the naturally rocky shoreline. The department will look at what's left over in the budget from this fiscal year that ends June 30 or turn the page to the upcoming fiscal year to pay for...
ANCHORAGE (AP) — Don Young, a blunt-speaking Republican and longest-serving member of Alaska’s congressional delegation, has died. He was 88. His office announced Young's death in a statement Friday night. “It’s with heavy hearts and deep sadness that we announce Congressman Don Young, the Dean of the House and revered champion for Alaska, passed away today while traveling home to Alaska to be with the state and people that he loved. His beloved wife Anne was by his side," said the statement from his spokesperson, Zach Brown. Young lost co...
State House lawmakers have proposed paying Alaskans almost $1,300 as an “energy relief check” on top of the annual Permanent Fund dividend. As presented by the House Finance Committee on Friday, the two payments would total about $2,500 this year for every eligible Alaskan. The energy relief payment would use some of the state’s unexpectedly high oil revenues to help residents hit by rising fuel prices, record inflation and ongoing financial recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, lawmakers in the House majority said in a written statement on Ma...
The SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium and the borough are negotiating another year of voluntary payment in lieu of taxes on the nonprofit’s property in town. SEARHC paid property taxes when the clinic and hospital were under construction, Finance Director Mason Villarma said March 2, even though those tribal-owned parcels are exempt from property taxes. Construction on the $30 million hospital started in 2019; the facility opened in February 2021. SEARHC paid $331,000 for the 2021 tax year. Payments in lieu of taxes, or PILTs, “are re...
The Forest Service is bulking up how many permits it issues to the Anan Wildlife Observatory in order to allow as many visitors to the site as people and bears can handle, while also protecting the habitat. And it has a mid-March start date for a contractor to tear down the existing observatory to put up a new one in time for the July 5 to Aug. 25 viewing season. The current limit is 60 permits a day during the season, District Recreation Staff Officer Tory Houser said Friday. That was implemented back in 2003. “So many people loved Anan and we...
Students at Evergreen Elementary are looking to make a difference in the community by making a difference in the lives of pets needing forever homes. The fifth grade class leadership group learned that St. Frances Animal Shelter was itself in need of a forever home, so they decided to begin fundraising to help the nonprofit get closer to its goal of buying or building a new shelter. As part of the social-emotional learning program that started at the beginning of the school year, instructor Tawney Crowley said students would be taught...
The borough has received a nearly half-a-million-dollar state grant, intended to help Wrangell cover some of its revenue losses due to the pandemic’s hit to the economy. The grant is $469,785, which the borough assembly may put toward buying a new garbage truck and replacing the exterior siding of the pool building at the recreation center. The assembly was scheduled to consider the expenditures at its Tuesday meeting. The borough had requested $1.8 million when it applied for the grant from the Division of Community and Regional Affairs in D...
State ferry system and Transportation Department officials plan to gather this week in Ketchikan to consider options for fulfilling the advertised summer schedule amid a continuing shortage of onboard crew. The department failed to meet its self-imposed timeline of hiring enough workers by March 1 to ensure that the Columbia on May 1 would return to service for the first time since fall 2019. The Alaska Marine Highway System had said it needed to hire at least 166 new employees to staff up its fleet — a gap of about one-quarter of its total aut...
The Forest Service is considering building a new cabin at Highbush Lake on the Wrangell road system. The project is listed on the Forest Service’s Schedule of Proposed Actions, or SOPA, which “contains a list of proposed actions that will soon begin or are currently undergoing environmental analysis and documentation.” The agency’s list invites the public to “indicate your interest in specific proposals,” according to (www.fs.fed.us/sopa) the Forest Service website. People can write in and provide input. The new cabin is a good candidate b...
What’s being labeled as a social-emotional fair is aiming to give kids skills that will be useful to them in life after school. On April 5, Wrangell High School and Stikine Middle School will host an event that involves various organizations throughout the community to help students learn everything from stress-reduction skills to how to balance a checkbook. “We’ve been struggling ever since COVID, or even before that with the social-emotional situation with our kids,” said Bob Davis, the assistant principal of both schools. “Krissy Smith ove...
A planned expansion doubling the number of rooms at the Stikine Inn, Wrangell’s only operating hotel, has been delayed for at least a couple of years due to the current economic climate. The business owners had purchased property from the borough to expand with 30 additional rooms and tourism-related retail space, co-owner Will Goodale reported to the state in the Stikine’s liquor license renewal application this winter. The Stikine received a fill permit from the Army Corps of Engineers and had filled in an area for the hotel addition. The own...
Sara Gadd brewed up a business plan in 2019 that would keep coffee and customers flowing. At nearly 2 years old, Drive-Thru Brew has served countless customers and helped Gadd realize a dream of owning her own business doing what she loves. Gadd, 32, was born and raised in Wrangell and grew up in a coffee-loving household. "My great-grandma's (nickname) was Coffee Gram. We come from a long line of coffee lovers. I've always drank coffee as long as I can remember." That love of coffee is what...
The owner of a Wrangell company that makes body care products learned by a text that she had won the grand prize at a state competition for commercial goods made or derived from Alaska seafood. She had just returned to town from a trade show in New York City. Waterbody, owned by Angie Flickinger, won the grand prize for its Deep Blue Sea Bath Soak at the 2021- 2022 Alaska Symphony of Seafood awards ceremony on Feb. 24 in Juneau. Flickinger's company is among the top 10 finalists given booth...
