Sorted by date Results 1039 - 1063 of 1731
The Ketchikan Public Library last Friday morning held a Drag Queen Storytime event that attracted so many participants that library staff held three readings. The reading room is able to hold 25 people, Children’s Library Assistant Anne Marie Meiresonne said, and it was brimming for each reading. The event has attracted much controversy in recent weeks, with supporters and detractors attending Ketchikan City Council and Ketchikan Gateway Borough Assembly meetings to share their support and opposition, as well as debating the issue on social m...
PALMER — The Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District board on June 15 approved Alaska’s first local ban on transgender girls participating in girls sports and other school-sponsored activities. The change requires schools designate school-sponsored athletic teams or sports as male, female or coed, and requires participation in a female sport to be based on the participant’s biological sex at birth. Officials say the Mat-Su policy will not apply to visiting teams from other districts. The Mat-Su proposal’s language mirrors the wording in a bil...
Western Alaska villagers have endured the worst chum salmon runs on record, several years of anemic Chinook salmon runs in the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers, harvest closures from the Bering Sea coast to Canada’s Yukon Territory and such dire conditions that they relied on emergency shipments of salmon from elsewhere in Alaska just to have food to eat. Many of those suffering see one way to provide some quick relief: Large vessels trawling for pollock and other groundfish in the industrial-scale fisheries of the Bering Sea, they say, must stop i...
ANCHORAGE (AP) — Challenges have been filed to keep Wasilla Republican state Rep. David Eastman’s name off the ballot in his reelection bid, arguing that his affiliation with the far-right Oath Keepers disqualifies him under the state constitution. Several people said they filed complaints related to a section of the constitution that prevents from holding public office anyone who “advocates, or who aids or belongs to any party or organization or association which advocates, the overthrow by force or violence of the government of the Unite...
If early results hold up in Alaska’s 48-candidate special primary election for U.S. House, the August general election to fill the last months of the late Rep. Don Young’s term will provide voters the choice between two Republicans, an independent and a Democrat. Former Gov. Sarah Palin and Nick Begich III, both Republicans, were the top two vote-getters in the primary, which closed to voting last Saturday. Independent Al Gross came in third, and former state Rep. Mary Peltola, a Bethel Democrat running in her first statewide campaign, was in f...
Alaska’s unemployment rate reached its lowest level ever for April, two years after it hit a record high during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The state’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate dipped to 4.9% in April — the latest data available from the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development. In April 2020, the unemployment rate shot to an unprecedented 11.9% a month after the pandemic was declared, levels that exceeded even the mid-1980s downturn in the state, according to Labor Department data dating back to 1976. Toda...
The Race to Alaska launched a flotilla north to Ketchikan from Port Townsend, Washington, on Monday. The 750-mile wind- and human-powered race has two starts: 5 a.m. Monday for the first leg, which organizers call the “The Proving Ground,” and noon Thursday for the second leg, which organizers call “To the Bitter End.” R2AK advertising is notoriously humorous and full of hyperbole. One description of the race on its website explains the event as: “It’s like the Iditarod, on a boat, with a chance of drowning, being run down by a freighter,...
An Anchorage Superior Court judge is considering when and if it is legal for a state legislator to ban a constituent from the lawmaker’s legislative Facebook page. On June 8, Judge Thomas Matthews heard oral arguments in a lawsuit brought by an Eagle River woman against Sen. Lora Reinbold, an Eagle River Republican. After hearing arguments, Matthews took the case under advisement, with a decision to be issued soon. Bobbie McDow, the plaintiff, is asking for an injunction against Reinbold, plus financial damages and attorney fees. The verdict co...
The state’s COVID-19 public health emergency order put in place 15 months ago will be rescinded on July 1, announced Alaska Department of Health and Social Services Commissioner Adam Crum. “The COVID situation has mellowed out to where our systems are in place, our hospitals know how to deal with this, our health care providers have tools they need, because a lot of the treatments are actually commercially available or they’re able to order themselves directly,” Crum said at a press conference on June 6. “And so, because of that, I am going to...
Repairs to damaged mooring dolphins at the Sitka Sound Cruise Terminal will take longer and cost more than originally expected, now estimated at over $2 million, dock officials said. Until repairs are made, only one ship, not two, can use the dock at a time. The dolphin off the north end of the Sitka Sound dock was damaged May 9 when it was struck by the Radiance of the Seas as it was maneuvering nearby. The damage reduced the number of available docking spaces from two to one, said Chris McGraw, manager of the privately owned cruise terminal....
JUNEAU (AP) — Alaska House Majority Leader Chris Tuck said he will not seek reelection this year, citing a redistricting map that put him in House and Senate districts where he would have had to run against friends and fellow Democratic lawmakers. Tuck joins Senate President Peter Micciche, a Soldotna Republican, and Senate Minority Leader Tom Begich, an Anchorage Democrat, in deciding not to seek reelection. Tuck had filed to run for an Anchorage House seat for which Rep. Andy Josephson also filed. Tuck withdrew on June 8. If Tuck had run f...
Just as Alaska’s tourism season heats up, Princess Cruises said it will close one of its five lodges in the state this summer because of staffing shortages. The Copper River Princess Wilderness Lodge will close this Friday, according to a statement provided June 6 by Negin Kamali, a spokeswoman with Princess Cruises. The lodge had opened on May 19 for the first time in more than two years, after the COVID-19 pandemic halted major cruise sailings to Southcentral Alaska until this summer. Located a 3½-hour drive northeast of Anchorage in Co...
KETCHIKAN (AP) — The Ketchikan Gateway Borough Assembly has overwhelmingly reversed the mayor’s veto of grant funding to a group that provides support to the LGBTQ+ community. The assembly voted 6-1 on June 6 to override Mayor Rodney Dial’s veto of $1,638 in grant funding to the Ketchikan Pride Alliance, the Ketchikan Daily News reported. Dial defended his veto during a presentation in attempts to persuade the assembly to let the veto stand. He said the group was an advocacy organization promoting activism. Assembly Member Judith McQue...
The recent news that the longtime Alaska Marine Highway System ferry Malaspina will be officially retired and will remain in Ketchikan's Ward Cove as a privately owned and operated museum and a training vessel is good news to its fans who had feared that the "Mal" would suffer the same fate as its sistership, the Taku, which was sold in 2018 and scrapped in India. The Malaspina, along with the Taku and the Matanuska, were the first mainline ferries in the fleet, all going online in 1963. They...
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...