Sorted by date Results 1518 - 1542 of 1731
Miami-based Norwegian Cruise Line is threatening to keep its ships out of Florida after the governor signed legislation banning businesses from requiring that customers show proof of vaccination against COVID-19. The company says the law signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis is at odds with guidelines from federal health authorities that would let cruise ships sail in U.S. waters if nearly all passengers and crew members are vaccinated. “It is a classic state-versus-federal-government issue,” said company CEO Frank Del Rio. “Lawyers believe that feder...
JUNEAU (AP) – The U.S. Coast Guard has sunk a derelict, abandoned tugboat in 8,400 feet of open water 145 miles west of Juneau. The Coast Guard, in a news release, said the 107-foot-long, steel-hulled Lumberman was sunk May 2. Coast Guard Petty Officer 3rd Class Janessa Warschkow said crews scuttled the tugboat by opening water valves to flood the vessel, with rounds fired from the Coast Guard Cutter John McCormick to help speed up the process. The cutter had towed the Lumberman to the site where it was sunk. The Coast Guard said it c...
HONOLULU - A crew returned from the northernmost islands in the Hawaiian archipelago last month with a boatload of marine plastic and abandoned fishing nets that threaten to entangle endangered Hawaiian monk seals and other animals on the uninhabited beaches stretching more than 1,300 miles north of Honolulu. The cleanup effort in Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument lasted three weeks and the crew picked up more than 47 tons of "ghost nets" and other marine plastics such as buoys, crates,...
JUNEAU (AP) - Alaska U.S. Rep. Don Young said he will seek reelection to the seat he has held since 1973. The Republican, in an April 28 statement announcing his reelection plans, said with the challenges facing Alaska, this is “not the time to take risks on someone untested and unproven.” Young, 87, is the longest-serving Republican in the U.S. House. He won his latest reelection bid in November, with 54.4% of the vote, against Alyse Galvin. Galvin also lost to Young in 2018, losing by a wider margin in 2020. The incumbent’s closest reele...
A bill moving through the state House would require state recognition of Alaska’s 229 federally recognized tribes. Supporters say the measure is needed to encourage better collaboration and consultation between the state and tribes; formally acknowledge Alaska tribes’ sovereignty, history, culture and contributions; and potentially allow them to access additional resources. “By supporting this bill, you are uplifting these unique and resilient people that have been here for 10,000 years,” Brooke Woods, of the Athabascan Interior communi...
ANCHORAGE (AP) - Federal agents served a search warrant at a small resort in Homer last week, saying they were looking for a laptop stolen from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office during the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, one of the Homer Inn and Spa owners said. Agents on April 28 confiscated laptop computers and a cellphone, owner Marilyn Hueper said. A cellphone belonging to her husband, Paul Hueper, was also searched by agents but not confiscated, she said. Marilyn Hueper said agents also claimed there was photographic evidence that she w...
JUNEAU (AP) - The Alaska Court System has temporarily disconnected most of its operations from the internet after a cybersecurity threat on Saturday, including shutting down its website and removing the ability to look up court records. The threat blocked electronic court filings, disrupted online payments and prevented hearings from taking place by videoconference for several days, officials said. “I think for a few days, there may be some inconveniences, there may be some hearings that are canceled, or some judges who decide to shift from v...
Norwegian Cruise Line will donate a total of $10 million to six communities most damaged economically by the loss of cruise ship travelers last year and again this summer. The company announced it will send the money to Juneau, Ketchikan, Sitka, Skagway, Hoonah and Seward, Howard Sherman, executive vice president, said on Juneau radio station KINY on Tuesday. The cruise line often donates to its partner communities during times of crisis, Sherman said in a morning radio interview. Norwegian Cruise Line has given money and supplies to...
WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House is naming Tommy Beaudreau, a former Obama administration official, to be deputy secretary at the Interior Department after dropping plans for a more liberal nominee who faced key Senate opposition. President Joe Biden on April 14 nominated Beaudreau, a former chief of staff at the department who was the first director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. The agency, created after the disastrous BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, oversees offshore...
ANCHORAGE (AP) - When the coronavirus pandemic began last year, Carolina Tolladay Vidal's pinata business in Alaska ground almost to a halt. "Many of the projects I had were moved to other dates," she told Alaska Public Media on April 16. "Many were canceled." Tolladay Vidal had to find fresh ideas to rejuvenate her Anchorage-based business and settled on making large, coronavirus-shaped pinatas. After Tolladay Vidal posted a photograph of a homemade coronavirus pinata on social media, the...
The Alaska House of Representatives has passed a bill intended to prevent teacher layoffs the next two years with early appropriation of state funding to local school operating budgets. Though helpful in its intent to provide funding certainty to school districts, it does not solve the budget problems of districts, such as Wrangell, that have seen steep enrollment drops during the pandemic. State funding for local schools is based on their annual student count. In previous years, late budget action by the Legislature has forced some school...
Alaska Airlines has banned an anti-mask state senator for refusing to follow federal law and airline policy requiring face masks. "We have notified Senator Lora Reinbold that she is not permitted to fly with us for her continued refusal to comply with employee instruction regarding the current mask policy," spokesman Tim Thompson said in a prepared statement Saturday, adding that the suspension was effective immediately. Reinbold, an Eagle River Republican in her ninth year as a state...
JUNEAU (AP) - Celebration, a four-day dance-and-cultural event billed as the largest gathering of Alaska Natives in Southeast Alaska, will return next year as an in-person event after widespread immunizations in the nation’s largest state, organizers said April 22. Sealaska Heritage Institute said the event celebrating Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian cultures will be held in Juneau from June 8-11, 2022. The institute’s board of directors decided to return to an in-person event after the release of coronavirus vaccines, widespread imm...
HYDER - Gov. Mike Dunleavy has offered COVID-19 vaccines to residents of the small British Columbia town of Stewart, with hopes it could lead the Canadian government to ease border restrictions between Stewart and the tiny Alaska town of Hyder a couple miles away. "We couldn't ask for better neighbors than the Canadians. But ... their (virus) mitigating approaches have affected us greatly by slowing down traffic, limiting traffic," Dunleavy told The Associated Press as he ended a long day of...
JUNEAU (AP) - Two planes collided while on sightseeing flights near Ketchikan in 2019 because the pilots’ views were obscured and aircraft-tracking systems failed to warn them about the other aircraft, federal investigators concluded April 20. Six people died and 10 people survived the May 13, 2019, midair collision. The National Transportation Safety Board in its probable-cause finding determined that the limitations of the “see and avoid” concept prevented the pilots from seeing each other before the collision. The board also cited a lack...
JUNEAU (AP) - Juneau residents have filed paperwork for citizens initiatives that would impose limits on cruise ships in Alaska’s capital city. The proposed measures submitted April 12 would ban large cruise ships at certain times and over a specific size from Juneau. Filing paperwork is the first step in getting on the ballot. The city clerk has until May 3 to certify or deny the paperwork. If supporters are allowed to go forward, they would need to collect signatures from nearly 3,000 registered Juneau voters for each of the three measures t...
Free COVID-19 vaccinations will be made available at four airports in the state starting June 1, Gov. Mike Dunleavy said April 16 as he unveiled plans aimed at bolstering the state’s pandemic-battered tourist industry. Dunleavy also outlined plans for a national marketing campaign aimed at luring tourists using federal aid money and said the airport vaccination offering is “probably another good reason to come to the state of Alaska in the summer.” The state plans to offer vaccines at airports in Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau and Ketchikan, the...
Alaska’s economy isn’t getting worse, but it could also be a long way from substantial improvement. University of Alaska Anchorage Institute for Social and Economic Research economist Mouchine Guettabi said many of the indicators showing improvements in recent months are more tied to the normal seasonality of the state’s economy and less about a recovery from the forces of the pandemic. “Our losses ballooned over the summer and then shrunk back down in fall and the winter. That doesn’t mean things are getting better; it just means that we’r...
JUNEAU (AP) - Alaska state Sen. Lora Reinbold was removed as Senate Judiciary Committee chair on April 19, the 91st day of a legislative session in which she has often clashed with fellow Republicans, including other Senate majority members and Gov. Mike Dunleavy, and frequently ignored and protested legislative rules to wear a face mask and undergo regular testing for COVID-19. The committee change was approved by the Senate 17-1, with Reinbold the lone no. The Eagle River Republican, in her ninth year in the Legislature, was replaced as...
John Waghiyi remembers rushing his cousin to the clinic in the Bering Sea city of Savoonga in December, worried he was having a possible heart attack while out butchering a bowhead whale. Waghiyi arrived to see elders waiting in the lobby for a COVID-19 vaccine. Waghiyi, 66, said he joined them and got a shot before returning to the coast to help finish the whale harvest. Elders, he said, have set the tone in the Alaska Native community of 735 on the coast of isolated St. Lawrence Island....
Alaska discriminated against some same-sex spouses for years in wrongfully denying them benefits by claiming their unions were not recognized even after courts struck down same-sex marriage bans, court documents obtained by The Associated Press show. The agency that determines eligibility for the annual Alaska Permanent Fund dividend denied payments for same-sex spouses or dependents of military members stationed in other states for five years after a federal court invalidated Alaska’s ban on same-sex marriage in 2014 and the U.S. Supreme Court...
BETHEL (AP) - A coastal village about 70 miles southwest of Bethel has mandated that only fully vaccinated people will be allowed into the community’s stores and businesses. Kongiganak, with a population of less than 500, had 50% of its eligible residents vaccinated against COVID-19 with at least one dose as of April 9, KYUK-AM reported April 14, citing the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corp. Sheila Phillip, the Kongiganak Traditional Council secretary, said that people who are fully vaccinated can go inside the village’s two stores if they wear mas...
ANCHORAGE (AP) - Some Alaska agencies that work with victims of domestic violence and sexual assault are expecting large federal funding cuts to take effect when the fiscal year starts on July 1 — so they are asking the Legislature for help. Suzi Pearson, director of Anchorage-based Abused Women’s Aid in Crisis, said she was surprised by the extent of the cuts announced by the State Council on Domestic Abuse and Sexual Assault. “When we were told 30 to 33%, I think we all kind of stopped breathing,” Pearson said. The reductions are the result o...
SEATTLE (AP) - The Biden administration has reversed a decision by its predecessor to sell the federal archives building in Seattle, following months of opposition in Alaska, Washington and Oregon - and a lawsuit. The federal Office of Management and Budget has withdrawn its approval for the sale, which would have forced the transfer of millions of Pacific Northwest records to facilities in Kansas City, Missouri, and Riverside, California. A federal judge already had blocked the sale in response to a lawsuit by the states of Washington and...
Ketchikan Daily News Two crew members aboard the state ferry Matanuska have tested positive for COVID-19, the Alaska Marine Highway System reported Monday. A member of the Matanuska’s engineering crew began showing symptoms while the ferry was sailing northbound to Ketchikan from Bellingham, Washington, according to the AMHS statement. “The ship’s captain followed the AMHS COVID-19 mitigation plan and quarantined the crew member in their cabin with the ventilation system turned off,” the state said. When the ship arrived in Ketchikan on Sund...