Sorted by date Results 811 - 835 of 1731
JUNEAU (AP) — Republican Sarah Palin re-emerged in Alaska politics over a decade after resigning as governor with hopes of winning the state’s U.S. House seat. She had a lot going for her: unbeatable name recognition, the backing of former President Donald Trump in a state he carried twice, an unrivaled ability to attract national media attention. But she struggled to catch fire with voters, some of whom were put off by her 2009 resignation, and ran what critics saw as a lackluster campaign against a Republican endorsed by state party lea...
Rescuing a moose that fell into a Soldotna basement was not something that Kenai Peninsula firefighter Gunnar Romatz expected on his shift Nov. 20. Nonetheless, that’s just where Romatz found himself — helping extract a young moose from the lower level of a home, where the animal became trapped after falling through a window. “Like any curious human being, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I really want to be there for this because there’s no way anybody’s gonna believe this,’ ” he said a few hours after the rescue. “I can’t even believe it.” Romatz...
On Nov. 28, the cryptocurrency bank BlockFi filed for bankruptcy, the announcement coming less than three weeks after the financial implosion of FTX, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges. The collapse of free-wheeling and unregulated cryptocurrencies is having an impact on investors who were at the bleeding edge of finance, but the impact on the $76.7 billion Alaska Permanent Fund has been muted, according to public records and statements from officials at the corporation that governs the fund. “For a while, we were getting a l...
Nearing the end of his flight from Seattle to Juneau, Frank Hughes looked out his plane window to the ground below where the outline of the Kake slowly appeared beneath him. An excitement built in him, one that he said made him feel like his heart had just skipped a beat. Though Hughes has lived in the small Southeast Native community for years and has come and gone from it too many times to count, this time was different — because he wasn’t alone in coming home. In the belly of the plane sat a sturdy black bin locked by zip ties and sca...
The 2022 Southeast Alaska salmon harvest is estimated at 29.6 million fish, mostly comprised of 17.6 million wild stock pink salmon, according to Troy Thynes, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game's regional management coordinator for commercial fisheries. Though the pink salmon harvest was only 53% of the recent 10-year average, it was above the preseason estimate of 16 million fish. "The pink salmon in Southeast have been on a strong odd year, even cycle for probably almost the past 15 years or so, and so this year compared with the parent...
WASHINGTON — A year after Congress passed the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, Alaska has been allotted over $2.6 billion, making the state one of the top recipients per capita in the country. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will ultimately provide $550 billion for infrastructure improvements across the country, distributing funding over five years to improve roads, internet connectivity, and provide clean water, among other initiatives. Democrats and several Republicans supported the bill, including Alaska Republican S...
Seventeen of Alaska’s 20 state senators and senator-elects have banded together to form a bipartisan majority coalition that members promise will be moderate and consensus-focused. Gary Stevens, a Kodiak Republican and veteran lawmaker known as a moderate, will be president, returning to the role he held from 2009 to 2012. “It’s a pleasure for me to announce that we have a very healthy majority and we’ve found a way to share responsibilities between all of us,” Stevens said at an Anchorage news conference late Friday. Cathy Giessel, a Republica...
JUNEAU (AP) —Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy has won reelection, becoming the first governor in the state since 1998 to win back-to-back terms. Dunleavy received 50.28% of the vote after final tallies were released Nov. 23. Because he won a majority of votes, the race did not go to ranked-choice voting. Dunleavy said he was “relieved that it’s over and behind us and now we can focus on the next four years.” Dunleavy, who during his first term faced a recall effort, overcame challenges in the Nov. 8 election from former Gov. Bill Walker, an inde...
JUNEAU (AP) — Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski has won reelection, defeating Donald Trump-endorsed GOP rival Kelly Tshibaka. Murkowski beat Tshibaka in the Nov. 8 ranked-choice election. The results were announced Nov. 23, when elections officials tabulated the results after neither candidate won more than 50% of first-choice votes. Murkowski wound up with 54% of the vote after ranked-choice voting, picking up a majority of the votes cast for Democrat Pat Chesbro after she was eliminated. Tshibaka in a statement posted on her website c...
JUNEAU (AP) — U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola has been elected to a full term in the House, months after the Alaska Democrat won a special election to the seat following the death earlier this year of longtime Republican Rep. Don Young. Peltola defeated Republicans Sarah Palin and Nick Begich, as well as Libertarian Chris Bye in the Nov. 8 election. Results of the ranked-choice election were announced Nov. 23. “It’s a two-year contract,” Peltola told the Anchorage Daily News after her victory — a 55%-45% margin over Palin in the final tabulatio...
A woman accused of voting illegally in both Alaska and Florida during the 2020 elections will face charges in a Florida court on Dec. 8, according to online court records. When Cheryl-Ann Leslie is arraigned on felony counts of casting more than one ballot, she will become just the second person charged with voter fraud related to Alaska’s 2020 election. Despite claims by some Alaskans that fraudulent voting changed the state’s election results two years ago, no evidence of fraud on that scale has been uncovered by investigators. After the 202...
For the past seven years, the Alaska economy has performed “at or near the bottom” nationally in four key measures of economic health, according to a report released Nov. 17 by the University of Alaska Center for Economic Development. Taken together, the state’s poor performance between 2015 and 2021 — in employment growth, unemployment, net migration and gross domestic product — place Alaska’s economic health at the bottom of all 50 states and the District of Columbia, said Nolan Klouda, the center’s executive director and lead author of the...
Alaska’s economy shows signs of prosperity. But it’s also facing an emerging crisis. A veteran economist described these contradictory forces in a presentation Nov. 16 at an industry conference in Anchorage. “We have the strangest and weirdest economy that I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been following the economy for a long, long time,” Neal Fried of the Alaska Department of Labor told the Resource Development Council for Alaska. By many measures, Alaska’s economy is in good shape, said Fried, whose economic presentations have become a staple at the...
All three incumbents likely clinched victory in Alaska’s statewide elections when the Alaska Division of Elections updated vote count results on Friday with thousands of additional absentee, questioned and early ballots from this fall’s general election. Final unofficial results will not be available until 4 p.m. Wednesday, when the division implements the state’s new ranked-choice sorting system, but voting trends have made the results clear in most races. With 264,994 votes counted, incumbent Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy had 50.3% of the v...
A new group has announced it will attempt to do away with ranked-choice voting in Alaska by ballot initiative, and former Gov. Sarah Palin was the first to sign the petition — before the outcome of her failed congressional bid ws final. Alaskans for Honest Government, a political action committee that formed last month, hosted an event Nov. 17 where group organizers launched their effort to collect signatures to put the question of reinstating the state’s former voting system to voters on the 2024 ballot. Ranked-choice voting was adopted in...
A tiny parking lot on a little-traveled downtown side street is now a landmark achievement for Alaska Natives in Juneau, with the federal government approving a “land-into-trust” application last Thursday that paves the way for a range of self-determination, economic and other benefits for the tribal owners. The application by the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska is only the second approved in the state, following one in Craig five years ago. In addition to making Tlingit and Haida eligible for more federal ser...
SEATTLE (AP) — The Washington state Department of Natural Resources said Nov. 14 it will not renew a fish-farming company’s last remaining leases on net pens in Puget Sound. Department officials said Cooke Aquaculture has until Dec. 14 to finish steelhead farming and start deconstructing its equipment, The Seattle Times reported. Cooke’s pens are located in Rich Passage near Bainbridge Island and Hope Island in Skagit Bay. Letters sent from the Department of Natural Resources to the Canada-based company on Nov. 14 indicate Cooke had a histo...
JUNEAU (AP) — A black bear cub in Southeast Alaska was euthanized after it became ill with avian influenza, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game said. It is believed that the cub, which was located in Bartlett Cove in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve west of Juneau, is the second bear diagnosed with the highly pathogenic bird flu, the Juneau Empire reported. Bird flu “passes really easily to poultry, but mammals aren’t really susceptible to it,” said Dr. Kimberlee Beckmen, a wildlife veterinarian for the department. “It’s difficult t...
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court appears likely to leave in place most of a federal law that gives preference to Native American families in foster care and adoption proceedings of Native children. The justices heard more than three hours of arguments on Nov. 9 in a broad challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act, enacted in 1978 to address concerns that American Indian and Alaska Native children were being separated from their families and, too frequently, placed in non-Native homes. The...
PHOENIX (AP) - The Indian Health Service announced last Thursday that all tribal members covered by the federal agency will be offered a vaccine at every appointment when appropriate, under a new vaccine strategy. Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, American Indians and Alaska Natives have had some of the highest COVID-19 vaccination rates across the country. But Indigenous people are especially vulnerable to vaccine-preventable illness, and IHS officials recently noticed fewer patients have be...
Leaders in the Western Alaska community of Kipnuk say the principal of nearly a decade bullied Native school staff members, put residents in jeopardy by ignoring COVID-19 restrictions and oversaw a decline in education quality. That’s why in October, according to documents obtained through a public records request, they voted to banish her from the community. School officials and tribal leaders involved in the banishment order and subsequent search by tribal police officers at the Chief Paul Memorial School at the end of last month have largely...
A top official with ConocoPhillips said the company expects to start working early next year on the $8 billion Willow oil prospect in Alaska, an effort that could lead to more than 2,000 construction jobs in the coming years. The project is located in the 23-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska on the North Slope. The reserve is home to migratory birds, polar bears and calving grounds for the Teshekpuk Lake caribou herd. Willow could potentially produce 600 million barrels of oil over a 30-year life, according to estimates. Peak produ...
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — Environmental groups have hailed a decision by the Biden administration to resume studying whether grizzly bears should be restored to the remote North Cascades mountains in Washington state. The National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said they would jointly prepare an environmental impact statement on restoring the endangered bears to the North Cascades ecosystem. Humans killed the bears off from the ecosystem long ago and restoration there will contribute to the general recovery of the endangered a...
Alaskans may have decided to re-elect Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Rep. Mary Peltola to Congress, but the final outcome will not be known until the last ballots are tallied next week and, in one or both races, ranked-choice voting is factored into the decision. Murkowski, a Republican who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump, has been the target of ire from Trump and from hard-liner conservatives. She trailed conservative Republican challenger Kelly Tshibaka by a small margin, 91,205 to 94,138, as of Monday (42.84% to 44.22%). But the...
State and federal fishery managers are forecasting a commercial harvest of about 19 million pink salmon in 2023 in Southeast Alaska, which would be a “significant drop” from the parent-year harvest of 48.5 million pinks in 2021, according to last week’s announcement from the federal NOAA Fisheries and Alaska Department of Fish and Game. A 19-million fish harvest would be at the high end of the “weak” range (11 million to 19 million fish), according to the announcement, which added that a harvest of that size would be only about 39% of the avera...