Sorted by date Results 3230 - 3254 of 7954
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...
The borough assembly approved a one-acre tidelands lease to Canoe Lagoon Oysters at its Tuesday night meeting. Co-owner Brian Herman said the business would use the intertidal area in front of the former airplane pullout at 4 Mile Zimovia Highway to raise oysters in floating containment bags and hold them for sale. Having the site in Wrangell would allow the operation to bring maturing oysters over in good weather from the existing farm on the Blashke Islands, established in March 2020, making it easier to harvest the oysters when bad weather...
None of the four contested races in last week’s municipal election were close, though the number of voters who cast ballots compared to last year was about as close as it can get. Last year’s municipal election tallied 485 voters. This year’s total was 486. “Yes, you are reading that correctly, we had one more voter this year than we had last year,” Borough Clerk Kim Lane reported to the assembly this week. The assembly certified the results Oct. 7, after the canvass board had counted early and absentee votes and resolved several questione...
By the time they are done touring the state on Nov. 1, the Alaska Redistricting Board will have visited 24 communities to gather public comments on six proposed maps for redrawing boundaries of every legislative district in the state. On Oct. 7, four of the five board members met with community members in Wrangell at the Nolan Center to explain the maps and how the boundaries were determined. The board will consider the information from its community meetings to decide on its final maps by the Nov. 10 deadline. When completed, each of 40 state...
Wrangell’s Tent City Days start Friday and run through Sunday, with 20 events scheduled for the fall festivities that come a day before Alaska Day on Monday, which celebrates the U.S. purchase of the territory from Russia in 1867. In keeping with the historical theme, there are some gold rush-named activities among the varied three-day schedule. And in keeping with COVID-19 safety, organizers advise on the event’s Facebook page: “Please mask up. Follow state/local health mandates. Don’t feel well? Stay home and call your medical provide...
Dialing a number within the 907 area code will soon require all 10 digits of a phone number — that’s the number along with the area code. Starting on Oct. 24, under a new federal requirement, it will be mandatory to dial all 10 numbers for calls within the same area code in more than six dozen area codes around the country. Although people can already dial all 10 digits to complete a call, the requirement won’t be hard-coded until the mandatory date. After Oct. 24, callers may not be able to complete a call by dialing only seven digits and c...
Devyn Johnson grew up playing sports in Wrangell. She didn't think about fitness until she was an adult – who, like a lot of people, gained the "Freshman 15" after high school, that bit of extra weight which comes after college starts, the responsibilities of adulthood creep in and high school gym class and sports are in the rearview mirror. So, she started to jog. A half mile at first, and then it stretched out from there into longer distances. Jogging turned into a love of working out. "I l...
Melissa Curttright has been a registered nurse for 16 years - the past two weeks in Wrangell. Like so many other hospital workers, the pandemic changed her plans. The 52-year-old RN from Oklahoma City said she saw 75% of her hospital's intensive-care unit staff leave, and then she took to the road. She's been traveling now for almost a year. Wrangell is her latest assignment through SnapNurse, an Atlanta-based nurse staffing agency, after Los Angeles. Alaska has contracted with an Atlanta...
Cases are starting to come down in Alaska after weeks of record-setting COVID-19 infections across the state. After averaging almost 1,250 new cases a day Sept. 21-27 — far above the numbers of the previous record of last December — the statewide average was just over 800 a day Oct. 5-11, according to the state’s COVID-19 data dashboard. That’s still significantly above the average of the past three months, when 560 new cases a day were reported. Alaska had low case counts in May, June and July, until infections increased with the spread...
Ann Hilburn began learning American Sign Language for an elective course in college, thinking it would benefit her aspirations of becoming a nurse. That class led her to change her career field entirely. "I had just fallen in love with sign language," she said. She's passing that love on to a dozen Wrangell High School students taking her class for their foreign language requirement. Hilburn is new to the district this year. It is a language unto itself, 17-year-old senior Caleb Garcia-Rangel...
A Delta Junction resident upset over the impeachment of former President Donald Trump, illegal immigration and the direction he thinks the country is headed is accused of threatening the lives of Alaska’s two U.S. senators in a series of profanity-laced voicemails that included saying he would hire an assassin to kill one. “Your life is worth $5,000, that’s all it’s worth,” the message left at the office of Sen. Lisa Murkowski said. “And as you let in these terrorists, assassins, guess what? I’m going to use them. I’m going to hire them.” Som...
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...
By Jamie Hale The Oregonian/OregonLive After a private blessing and a prayer, the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde invited gathered media to watch as an excavator tore into a wall of the old, abandoned paper mill at Willamette Falls, Oregon, that the tribe says has stood on its ancestral grounds for too long. The tribe held a symbolic demolition event at the old Blue Heron Paper Mill on Sept. 21, representing a small step toward removing the industrial site and returning it to Indigenous hands. Chris Mercier, vice chair of the Grand Ronde Tri...
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...
As one of the rainiest cities in America, Ketchikan has learned to live with constant wet. A young couple is turning some of that water into a growing business. Literally. Ketchikan Ever Greens, run by Jess and Geoff Jans, focuses on growing, harvesting and delivering a cornucopia of vegetables - all grown through hydroponics methods in a custom-built vertical farm, housed in a metal shipping container. The Janses met in Ketchikan - Jess Jans' hometown - and left town to pursue other jobs...
The Island of Faith Lutheran Church was unable to conduct its traditional Alaska Day event last year and didn’t want to miss it a second year in a row. But COVID-19 is still a concern. So instead of inviting senior citizens to lunch at the church, volunteers will deliver halibut to the senior center, which will prepare the meals and deliver them to seniors. “We didn’t want to lose the tradition,” said Pastor Sue Bahleda. Before COVID-19, “we would host a soup luncheon here at the church,” she said. Elementary school students would sing the “A...
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - Firefighters and numerous studies credit intensive forest thinning projects with helping save communities like those recently threatened near Lake Tahoe in California and Nevada, but dissent from some environmental advocacy groups is roiling the scientific community. States in the U.S. West and the federal government each year thin thousands of acres of dense timber and carve broad swaths through the forest near remote communities, all designed to slow the spread of...
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...
Though 87 absentee and early votes and questioned ballots will not be tallied until Thursday, the leaders after Tuesday’s municipal election appear likely to win on the final count. Borough assembly candidate David Powell led Don McConachie Sr. by 47 votes after Tuesday’s election. School board candidates Brittani Robbins and Angela Allen were ahead of their challengers by about 100 votes for two open seats. And Jessica Whitaker led Julia Ostrander by 44 votes — 215 to 171 — for a one-year school board term. Races for two other assembl...
Wrangell will share a tire cutter with other Southeast communities, intending to cut down on the thousands of tires stacked at the dump by making it easier to ship out the smaller pieces. The borough assembly last Tuesday approved a resolution to share the equipment with the Southeast Alaska Solid Waste Authority. The mobile unit can separate tires from rims and then, using a powerful cutting arm, chop up the rubber into smaller, more easily transportable chunks. The tires stacked at the...
The first rule of Tech Club is talk about Tech Club. Science teacher Heather Howe wants the students who attend Wrangell High's newly formed program to share what they're learning and doing to interest more kids in attending. The T3 Alliance -often referred to as Tech Club - is a program designed to supplement the U.S. Department of Education's Upward Bound program, which helps students increase their ability to complete a secondary education, whether college or a technical school. Not all membe...
Wrangell Medical Center this week welcomed eight temporary out-of-state health care workers assigned to the hospital under a state-financed program to bring as many as 473 professionals to help relieve staffing pressures across Alaska. The state is spending $87 million in federal money to bring in the workers, allocating them to 14 hospitals and care centers around the state, as many of the facilities are at or near capacity amid a surge in COVID-19 patients the past month. Some school districts also are included in the program for nurses. The...
