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After a swarm of small earthquakes beneath Mount Edgecumbe caught the attention of the Alaska Volcano Observatory in April, a crew of scientists has installed seismic and GPS sensors on the mountain to monitor any further activity. While the Alaska Volcano Observatory determined in early May that Mount Edgecumbe is now an active volcano, geophysicist Max Kaufman and research technician Max Enders both have reaffirmed that there is no imminent threat of eruption. The two were in Sitka for three days late last month and installed the sensory...
On a sunny afternoon, Ketchikan International Airport got a surprise visit from some unusual guests. At about noon on June 7, five U.S. Navy F-18 Super Hornets touched down at the airport for about two hours to refuel on their way north to Eielson Air Force Base near Fairbanks. Lt. Cmdr. Brandon Hempler, one of the Hornet pilots, spoke with the Daily News by phone after the jets touched down at Eielson, where they will participate in RED FLAG-Alaska, a joint training exercise that takes place over the course of about 10 days. They’ll remain a...
A new totem pole in Juneau is 22 feet tall, almost 4 feet wide at the base and about 7 to 8 feet wide where Raven and Eagle are carved. You have to walk around it completely to see all of the elements. Unlike most poles that are carved on one side, the Sealaska Cultural Values totem pole is carved all the way around, a full 360 degrees. According to Sealaska Heritage Institute, there are only three others like it, all in Canada. Now, there's one in Alaska. "They're pretty rare, done within...
A new report from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides the most comprehensive look so far at the disproportionate toll COVID-19 is taking on Alaska Native and American Indian people living in Alaska. Overall, Alaska Native and American Indian people have made up just about a fifth of the state’s population but nearly a third of all deaths, the report found. Between the start of the pandemic in March 2020 and last December, Indigenous Alaskans were hospitalized with the virus and died from it at rates three times t...
JUNEAU (AP) —Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s office has issued a consulting contract to a former Dunleavy campaign manager who later served as a staffer to the governor for up to $50,000 in part to advise the administration on what legal fights to pursue against the federal government. The contract with Strategic Synergies was signed in April and released by Dunleavy’s office last month. Brett Huber is listed on the contract as the firm’s sole owner. The contract runs through Oct. 24. Alaska has long had a contentious relationship with the federal...
All of the nearly 11,000 Alaska households that applied for financial aid under a state-administered, federally funded program — including 40 in Wrangell — will receive some level of assistance toward mortgage payments and utilities bills. The Alaska Housing Finance Corp., which is running the $50 million pandemic-aid program, announced last week it had completed its initial reviews of the applications, determining their income eligibility for assistance, and now will evaluate individual homeowner’s financial needs. Depending on each appli...
JUNEAU (AP) — Alaska voters are facing an election unlike any they have ever seen, with 48 candidates running to succeed the man who held the state’s only U.S. House seat for 49 years. While some of the candidates in this week’s special primary have name recognition, including former Gov. Sarah Palin and Santa Claus — yes, Santa Claus, and he lives in North Pole, outside Fairbanks — many are relative unknowns or political novices — a fishing guide, a contractor, a gold miner who went to prison for allegedly threatening federal land managers. T...
ANCHORAGE (AP) — The only oil company to bid in last year’s controversial federal lease sale for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has canceled the lease it bought and asked for a refund of its almost $800,000 payment. Regenerate Alaska, a subsidiary of Australia-based 88 Energy, was one of three bidders that won leases during the rushed sale held in the waning days of the Trump administration. It was the first-of-its-kind sale for the refuge’s coastal plain. Activity on the leases has been held up by a Biden administration envir...
NEW YORK (AP) — The judge who presided over Sarah Palin’s libel case against The New York Times denied her request May 31 for a new trial, saying she failed to introduce “even a speck” of evidence necessary to prove actual malice by the newspaper. U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff made the assertion in a written decision as he rejected post-trial claims from Palin’s lawyers. Her attorneys had asked the judge to grant a new trial or disqualify himself as biased against her, citing several evidentiary rulings by Rakoff that they said were errors. T...
PHOENIX (AP) - Mary Francis had no qualms about being a poster child for COVID-19 vaccinations on the Navajo Nation, once a virus hot spot. The Navajo woman's face and words grace a digital flyer asking people on the Native American reservation to get vaccinated "to protect the shidine'e (my people)." "I was happy to put the information out there and just building that awareness and in having folks feel comfortable enough, or curious enough, to read the material," said Francis, who lives in...
The issue of whether public school funds can go toward private education is currently being reviewed by the Alaska Department of Law. Specifically: Can families enrolled in a state-funded correspondence program use their allotment to pay for private school classes? A state statute paves the way for it, there are families in Alaska excited about the option, and at least one correspondence school in the state already allows it. But the Department of Education is unclear if it’s allowed under state law, and opponents of the practice say it v...
SEATTLE (AP) — Alaska Airlines pilots have voted overwhelmingly to authorize a future strike if current contract negotiations with management and federal mediation efforts fail. The Air Line Pilots Association said May 25 that almost 96% of its members cast mail-in votes and that 99% of those authorized the union’s leaders to call a strike if necessary and when permitted after a prolonged process managed by the National Mediation Board, The Seattle Times reported. Following by two months an informational picket in April by off-duty pilots, the...
The Alaska Legislature failed to pass new restrictions on financial donations to candidates for state office. Because a federal court threw out Alaska’s old limits, the Legislature’s failure means candidates may accept unlimited amounts of money from donors inside and outside the state. “It was probably one of the most disappointing nights of my time in the Legislature to not get to see that happen, because it should have happened,” said Anchorage Sen. Bill Wielechowski. Legislative drafters finished work on a critical amendment in the closing...
Months before Alaska’s state elections, the Legislature is set for major turnover. At least 17 of the Legislature’s 60 members will be in a new position or out of office entirely by next January — and that doesn’t count anyone who loses their seat in this fall’s elections. The deadline to file for this year’s legislative elections is June 1, but many candidates have already made up their minds. Because a steep learning curve awaits new legislators, several departing incumbents said the turnover will slow the progress of complicated legislation,...
JUNEAU (AP) — The Alaska Supreme Court has affirmed a lower court ruling that the board tasked with redrawing the state’s legislative district boundaries “again engaged in unconstitutional political gerrymandering” and ordered the use of a new map for this year’s elections. Superior Court Judge Thomas Matthews in his ruling last week said it appeared that the majority of the Alaska Redistricting Board’s members had adopted a map splitting the Eagle River area into two state Senate districts for “political reasons.” Opponents of the board map sa...
JUNEAU (AP) — A special prosecutor has filed charges of sexual abuse of a minor in the third degree against former Alaska Attorney General Clyde “Ed” Sniffen. Third-degree sexual abuse of a minor is a felony punishable by two to 12 years in prison. The charges are related to Sniffen’s alleged sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl in 1991, when she was a high school student and he was the coach of her school’s mock trial team. Sniffen was 27 at the time. Sniffen was a longtime attorney with the department who was appointed attorney...
Juneau has a new housing rental crisis. The community invited 5,000 people to come for an Ironman race. With only around 1,000 hotel rooms, the city proposed a creative solution: Encouraging Juneau residents to go on vacation and rent their homes to athletes for a week. The race is Aug. 7. One athlete, Michael Bissell, of Alabama, said he was late to the game when looking for a place to stay, but he got something arranged fairly painlessly. “I was looking at hotels for about two weeks,” Bissell said. “And after no luck there like, serio...
JUNEAU (AP) — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on May 25 proposed restrictions that would block plans for a multibillion-dollar copper and gold mine in Alaska’s salmon-rich Bristol Bay region, the latest in a long-running dispute over efforts by developers to advance the mine. Critics of the Pebble Mine project called the move an important step in a years-long fight to stop the mine. But John Shively, the CEO of the Pebble Limited Partnership, which is pursuing the mine, called the EPA’s proposal a “political maneuver” and a preemptiv...
ANCHORAGE (AP) - Former President Jimmy Carter has taken the unusual step of weighing in on a federal court case involving his landmark 1980 lands conservation act and a remote refuge in Alaska, arguing against a road through the area. Carter filed a brief on May 9 in the longstanding legal dispute over efforts to build a road through the refuge at the western end of the Alaska Peninsula, worried that a recent ruling in favor of a proposed land exchange for the road across the Izembek National...
SEWARD (AP) — In the cold, choppy waters of Alaska’s Resurrection Bay, all eyes were on the gray water, looking for one thing only. It wasn’t a spout from humpback whales that power through this scenic fjord in front of Seward, or a sea otter lazing on its back, munching a king crab. Instead, everyone aboard the Nanuq, a University of Alaska Fairbanks research vessel, was looking where a 5-foot long, bright pink underwater sea glider surfaced. The glider — believed to be the first configured with a large sensor to measure carbon dioxide...
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — Scientists will set about 1,000 traps this year in their quest to wipe out the Asian giant hornet in Washington, the state Department of Agriculture said May 24. Scientists believe the hornets, first detected in the state in 2019, are confined in Whatcom County, which is located on the Canadian border north of Seattle. “We are doing pretty good right now,” said Sven-Erik Spichiger, who is leading the fight to eradicate the hornets for the state Department of Agriculture. “We know about where the nests are located in What...
By the narrowest of margins, 21-19, the House on the last night of the legislative session passed a bill implementing a statewide approach to how school districts intervene when students have difficulty reading. The session’s original reading legislation had been blocked in the House, opposed by several rural lawmakers and Democrats, but the Senate merged it into another education bill on the next-to-the-last day of session, forcing the House to accept or reject the entire package. The reading intervention bill was a priority of Gov. Mike D...
Lawmakers on the final day of the legislative session May 18 passed a bill to impose a tax on electronic smoking products, such as e-cigarettes, vaping sticks and refills. The tax, at 35% of the wholesale price, was in part a compromise between the original version of the bill, at 75%, and opponents who argued against taxing vaping products that could be a healthier alternative for smokers than traditional cigarettes, which are heavily taxed by the state and many municipalities. The new tax will take effect Jan. 1, 2023, unless Gov. Mike...
JUNEAU (AP) — The Alaska Legislature has passed a measure to formally recognize tribes in the state. The House on May 18 voted 37-2 to accept a Senate version of the bill that passed a week earlier on a 15-0 vote. The bill next goes to Gov. Mike Dunleavy. Supporters of the bill say it is an overdue step that would create opportunities for the state and tribes to work together. Putting tribal recognition into law would allow for continuity from one governor’s term to the next so that Alaska could work toward long-term solutions to issues wit...
JUNEAU (AP) — The U.S. Coast Guard has suspended the search for a 40-year-old Texas woman who fell overboard off a cruise ship in Lynn Canal, north of Juneau. The Coast Guard ended the effort May 17 after searching for Selena Pau Pres, of Houston, for about nine hours, Coast Guard Petty Officer Ali Blackburn said. The search was conducted by boat and a helicopter in the waters near Eldred Rock in Lynn Canal, about 20 miles south of Haines. The captain of the cruise ship Celebrity Solstice reported the missing woman at 3 a.m. May 17, the Coast G...