Sorted by date Results 3420 - 3444 of 7954
ANCHORAGE (AP) - An Alaska prison that was closed for about five years reopened Aug. 16 after a nearly $17 million renovation, corrections officials said. The reopening of the Palmer Correctional Facility in Sutton will add about 300 beds to the state’s current prison capacity of about 5,200. The prison closed in 2016 because of a declining inmate population and as the state wanted to cut costs. The state estimates it will cost about $15 million a year to operate the prison. The number of people incarcerated in Alaska increased over the past t...
JUNEAU (AP) - Alaska law enforcement agencies failed to collect DNA samples from more than 21,000 people arrested for or convicted of certain crimes over the past 25 years, in part because of confusion caused by changes to state law, officials said. The state Department of Public Safety identified 21,577 individuals who were required to have a DNA sample on file but did not. Of those, 1,555 are dead, the report states. Gov. Mike Dunleavy on Aug. 10 announced plans for the state to pursue samples in the remaining cases. It’s not clear, t...
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) - About 96,000 farmed salmon are believed to have died when a leak in a tank sent 4,000 gallons of chlorine into a fjord in Arctic Norway. Roger Pedersen, a spokesman for the salmon farming company Grieg Seafood, said the leak happened at one of its fish slaughterhouses in the town of Alta and the fish were in a waiting cage nearby at the time. “We are connecting this to a chlorine leak,” Pedersen told Norwegian broadcaster NRK, adding the company was now handling the dead fish “in a responsible way and was inves...
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) - The second sighting of a so-called murder hornet this year was reported by a person in Whatcom County this week, the Washington state Department of Agriculture said Aug. 12. Entomologists confirmed the sighting. The resident’s report included a photograph of the hornet attacking a paper wasp nest in a rural area east of the town of Blaine, about two miles from where state workers eradicated the first Asian giant hornet nest in the United States last October. The world’s largest hornet can sometimes be lethal to hum...
The governor’s Revenue commissioner has presented legislators with several revenue-raising options so that the state could afford a significantly larger Permanent Fund dividend and still balance its budget. A statewide sales tax is among the options the administration presented to the Legislature’s fiscal policy working group last Thursday. Deciding the amount of the annual dividend should come first, Senate President Peter Micciche told a meeting of Alaska mayors last week. “We have to determine what dividend we can afford,” and then decide...
Wrangell’s school bus operator is reminding parents and children that riders must wear a face mask, same as last year. But what will be new this school year is a software tool that will tell parents in real time the location of their children’s bus. Zach Taylor, of Taylor Transportation, said face masks are a federal mandate, and not something they can bend on. He asks that kids use their own masks when riding the bus, but the drivers will provide disposable masks in case anyone forgets. “That is a federal mandate, just like the airpl...
As the Delta variant spreads and as COVID-19 case counts climb throughout Alaska, more health care providers in the state are requiring that their workers get vaccinated. Full vaccination also will be required of students living in on-campus housing at the University of Alaska Southeast and at the university campus in Anchorage. The PeaceHealth hospital system, which operates the Ketchikan Medical Center, announced Aug. 3 that all caregivers will be required to be vaccinated against COVID-19 starting Aug. 31, unless they provide proof of a medi...
The 2,700-page, trillion-dollar infrastructure bill that passed the U.S. Senate on Tuesday could provide tens of millions of dollars, maybe more, to help the ailing Alaska Marine Highway System. How to use the money - assuming Congress approves the final package later this year, which is far from certain - would be decided by the governor and Alaska legislators next year. "We can't allow it to be a total replacement of the state's responsibilities," Robert Venables, executive director of the Sou...
After leading the nation in vaccination rates earlier this year, Alaska has slipped to the bottom third among the 50 states. Alaska’s rate has not moved up much in the past couple of weeks, despite an increasing number of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations statewide since mid-July — numbers that have not been this high since last winter in some communities. The higher case count — averaging almost 300 a day in the past couple of weeks and approaching 400 on a few days — comes as students are returning to school, with administrators eager f...
The Sentinel incorrectly reported Aug. 5 that two of the borough assembly seats on the Oct. 5 municipal election ballot are two-year terms. They are three-year terms. A third seat on the ballot is for a one-year term....
The Nolan Center, Wrangell’s museum, movie theater and community center, is suffering from a staffing shortage. The center has received some help from volunteers, but director Cyni Crary said they hope to hire for various new positions. “We’re basically down to just me,” Crary said. “I had one of the theater staff helping in the gift shop, and she was doing a really good job, but she’s gone for the whole month of August. I kind of lost all the help that I would have had.” Crary said they are looking for a Nolan Center coordinator,...
The number of bears getting into trash and having close encounters with people or their pets is increasing, said Chadd Yoder, Wrangell’s state wildlife trooper. And it’s likely to get worse before it gets better, he said, as bears try to fatten up before winter hibernation. Bears accustomed to searching garbage for food can become a serious issue, Yoder said, and he wants to educate people on what they can do to keep bears out of their backyards. The real hot spot for bears getting into trash is between 5-mile and 10-mile Zimovia Highway, he...
Wrangell’s Tent City Days is still a couple of months away, but organizers need volunteers to step up with event ideas so they can start putting together a schedule. The tentative dates are Oct. 14-17. Though the event, which started about 40 years ago, was created to celebrate the town’s gold rush history and provide a late-winter break from darkness and doldrums in February, organizers recently moved it to October and now are adding a different angle to the history lesson. “I would like to make it more of a learning time,” said Jillian...
As the new school year gets closer, the Wrangell School District is looking for community volunteers to serve on several committees to help inform and guide school leadership. The district is seeking applicants for seven committees: Budget/finance, calendar, curriculum, career and technical education, facilities, policy and technology. “Ideally, we’d have five to seven members at a minimum, on each,” said Kim Powell, district administrative assistant. “It’s open, and anyone who is interested is encouraged to serve.” The committees can include...
Canada on Monday is lifting its prohibition on Americans crossing the border to shop, vacation or visit, but the United States is keeping similar restrictions in place for Canadians, part of a bumpy return to normalcy from COVID-19 travel bans. U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents must be both fully vaccinated and test negative for COVID-19 within three days to get across one of the world’s longest and busiest land borders. Travelers also must fill out a detailed on application on the arriveCAN app before crossing. The Canada Border S...
JUNEAU (AP) - Efforts to recover the wreckage of a sightseeing plane that crashed in Southeast Alaska last week, killing six people, were stymied again Monday by poor weather conditions, a National Transportation Safety Board official said. Clint Johnson, chief of the agency’s Alaska region, said low clouds and fog continued to delay wreckage recovery efforts. “They are ready to go as soon as they get a weather window,” he said of the team that will handle the work. The wreckage is in a rugged, steep area that is heavily forested, at 1,800...
MIAMI (AP) - A federal judge has temporarily blocked a Florida law that prevents cruise lines from requiring passengers to prove they’re vaccinated against COVID-19, saying the law appears unconstitutional and won’t likely hold up in court. The “vaccine passport’’ ban signed into law in May by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis appears to violate the First Amendment rights of Norwegian Cruise Lines, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams wrote. In a nearly 60-page ruling issued late Sunday, the judge said Florida failed to “provide a valid evidentiary...
The 1,094-foot-long Norwegian Encore made history on Aug. 4 as it emerged from a cloudy curtain of rain to tie up in Ward Cove, about a 7-mile drive north of Ketchikan's downtown cruise ship dock. Before the ship pulled in, workers hurried to finish preparing the 57,000-square-foot cruise ship terminal for visitors, screwing smoke detectors into a restroom ceiling and drilling holes to install the last few rows of cable guardrails. As the first throng of passengers walked into what had been the...
Can slicing a 100-mile trench into the bed of the Columbia River be good for the environment? The answer is a big yes, says a team of energy developers that proposes submerging power cables in the riverbed. The developers say the cables could deliver “clean’’ energy that will be crucial for getting the most densely developed areas of the Pacific Northwest off fossil fuels. A proposal by energy developer Sun2o Partners and transmission developer PowerBridge would insert the cables into the Columbia at The Dalles in Oregon. This electrical on-ra...
JUNEAU (AP) - The federal Bureau of Land Management announced Aug. 3 it is moving ahead with a new environmental review of oil and gas leasing in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge after the Interior secretary said she found “multiple legal deficiencies’’ in an earlier review. That prior review, under the administration of then-President Donald Trump, provided a basis for the first lease sale on the refuge’s coastal plain, held in the final days of Trump’s presidency. A state of Alaska agency was the main bidder in the January lea...
ANCHORAGE (AP) - Gov. Mike Dunleavy has urged Alaskans to get vaccinated, amid a spike in COVID-19 cases driven by the Delta variant. “There is a safe, free and widely available tool to put COVID-19 in the rearview mirror,” Dunleavy said in a statement Aug. 4. “That tool is the vaccine.” Alaska has reported hundreds of new COVID-19 cases a day since mid-July, with several more deaths bringing the state close to 400 since the pandemic started 18 months ago. Infection rates and hospitalizations have been trending up. As of Monday, the vaccina...
After a one-day closure Friday due to staff exposure to an individual with COVID-19, the borough landfill will reopen Saturday for its normal business hours. City hall, which also closed to the public on Friday due to COVID exposure, will reopen Monday, according to a borough statement Friday afternoon. In announcing the closures Friday morning, the borough said they were acting "out of an abundance of caution to staff and the public." Borough officials on Thursday reported two new COVID-19 cases in Wrangell, bringing to seven the number of...
The Wrangell School District plans to start classes Aug. 30 with face masks required when staff and students are indoors — same as last year. The district is working under its COVID-19 mitigation plan, released in June, and will adapt it as needed, said Bill Burr, who took over as schools superintendent July 1. Burr said he has met with borough officials and the community’s health care provider, the SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium, “to try to get a cohesive plan all together.” Advance planning for how to respond as COVID case co...
Registration for the new school year will open online Wednesday. In-person registration will be offered 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Aug. 17 at the high school gym. Classes start Aug. 30. Teachers start back at work Aug. 25. Families registering their kids for school should not expect any big changes from last year, said Megan Powell, high school secretary. “It’s the same as last year, other than last year we didn’t do an in-person (registration) due to COVID,” she said. “It should be really easy for parents. I did it last year for my daughter and it wa...
Face masks are going back on in several communities across Alaska as health officials continue urging people to get vaccinated against COVID-19. The state reported more than 1,000 new cases of the coronavirus Friday through Tuesday, and almost 4,000 since mid-July, as the numbers have climbed to high-alert levels not seen since last January. Meanwhile, vaccination rates have not changed much, reaching 58% of all eligible Alaskans age 12 and older with at least one dose as of Tuesday, up from 57% a week ago. Alaska’s senior U.S. senator, Lisa M...
