Sorted by date Results 1435 - 1459 of 1731
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...
The Alaska Supreme Court has upheld the $20,000 fine imposed on a Metlakatla commercial fisherman who took coho salmon in 2014 in a closed area, without a state fisheries permit. In a 4-0 ruling, the justices rejected the appeal filed by the fisherman and the Metlakatla Indian Community, which had argued the state lacked jurisdiction in the waters around Alaska’s only Indian reserve. John Scudero Jr. was cited for three commercial fishing violations and fined $20,000 after a one-day trial in 2015. The U.S. Coast Guard in 2014 reported the v...
JUNEAU (AP) - Gov. Mike Dunleavy has delayed until Aug. 16 the start of the next special session of the Legislature, following a request by legislative leaders for more time to find a compromise on the state’s fiscal future. The special session had been set to begin Monday. Special sessions can last up to 30 days. The letter requesting that the governor postpone the session was signed by Senate President Peter Micciche, House Speaker Louise Stutes, Senate Minority Leader Tom Begich and House Minority Leader Cathy Tilton. The Republican and D...
JUNEAU (AP) - A divided federal appeals court panel has struck down several campaign contribution caps in Alaska, including a $500-a-year limit on what an individual can give to a candidate for the Legislature or governor. The decision, released last Friday, also struck down a $500-a-year limit on individual contributions to non-party groups and the $3,000-a-year cap on total nonresident donations a legislative candidate can raise. It upheld as constitutional a $5,000 limit on what political parties can contribute to municipal candidates. A...
JUNEAU (AP) - An assistant state attorney general identified by a news outlet as the person behind a social media account that posted racist and antisemitic comments no longer works for the state Department of Law, an agency spokesperson said. Grace Lee said that Matthias Cicotte’s last day with the department was July 27. She declined to say if he resigned or fired. The department last week said it had assigned Cicotte’s cases to other employees while it investigated the matter. Attorney General Treg Taylor, in a statement, cited con...
JUNEAU (AP) – Absent an appeal and reversal by the state Supreme Court, Alaskans next year will select candidates for governor, Legislature and Congress without partisan primary elections. A state court judge on July 29 upheld a new voting process set to take effect for next year’s elections. Superior Court Judge Gregory Miller said, “that the voters in November 2020 chose one system over the other does not make the new law … unconstitutional.” Voters last year approved a system that will end party primaries and institute ranked-ch...
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Baby salmon are dying by the thousands in one California river, and an entire run of endangered salmon could be wiped out in another. Fishermen who make their living off adult salmon are sounding the alarm as blistering heat waves and extended drought in the U.S. West raise water temperatures and imperil fish from Idaho to California. Hundreds of thousands of young salmon are dying in Northern California's Klamath River as low water levels brought about by drought allow a...
Alaska Airlines said it was not aware that a passenger who boarded Flight 73 in Sitka the morning of July 20 had tested positive for COVID-19 a day earlier “We would never allow someone to travel that is COVID-positive, knowing they were COVID-positive,” Alaska Airlines spokesman Tim Thompson said July 21. “Our priorities are for the safety of staff and employees.” State public health Denise Ewing said a visitor from outside Alaska who was in Sitka on vacation tested positive for COVID-19 on July 19 and was provided test results, includi...
It’s funny how life works out sometimes — how people often are in the right spot, at the right moment. Danielle Wakefield, the assistant coach for the Nunaka Valley Little League softball team from Anchorage, was in Ketchikan for the Junior Division state softball tournament last week. And it was shortly after her plane landed on July 15 at the Ketchikan airport that she realized the diamond from her ring was missing. The diamond has special meaning, as it’s the only thing Wakefield has from her late father. “I had nothing else from him,” she s...
JUNEAU (AP) - The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced plans Monday to review whether the Southeast Alaska wolf population merits Endangered Species Act protections. In 2016, the Fish and Wildlife Service determined the wolf did not warrant such protections. The agency said Monday that a petition from conservation groups to protect the Alexander Archipelago wolf included information indicating protections may be warranted due to potential threats associated with logging, illegal and legal trapping and hunting, climate change impacts and...
TURNER, Ore. (AP) - The heat wave that recently hit the Pacific Northwest subjected the region’s vineyards to record-breaking temperatures nine months after the fields that produce world-class wine were blanketed by wildfire smoke. But when temperatures began climbing close to 120 degrees Fahrenheit in late June, the grapes in Oregon and Washington state were still young, as small as BB’s, many still shaded by leaf canopies that had not been trimmed back yet. The good news for grape growers, wineries and wine lovers is the historic heat wav...
JUNEAU (AP) - Updated maps add 200 homes and other buildings to hazard zones for landslides and avalanches in Alaska’s capital city, bringing to about 550 the total number of structures that would be considered at moderate to severe risk of being damaged or destroyed if disaster struck. The new maps, finished this year, used technology to chart the risks and are meant to update hazard maps made in the 1970s. The area reviewed includes downtown Juneau. The Juneau Planning Commission is expected to review the maps next month before they a...
“I don’t know, somehow you kind of get addicted to it, I guess,” Matt Nore said. Nore, volunteering with the Parks and Recreation Department, will be hosting jiu jitsu classes starting next month. Nore has grown up enjoying combat sports, he said, starting with wrestling in high school. He also participated in mixed martial arts through the Alaska Fighting Championship before he was first deployed to Iraq around 2004. He started getting back into jiu jitsu early this year, he said, and wants to begin teaching others the basics so he can keep...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration said July 15 it is ending large-scale, old-growth timber sales on the nation’s largest national forest — the Tongass National Forest in Alaska — and will instead focus on forest restoration, recreation and other non-commercial uses. The announcement by the U.S. Forest Service reverses a Trump administration decision to lift restrictions on logging and road-building in the Southeast Alaska rainforest, which provides habitat for wolves, bears and salmon, and encompasses several communities totalin...
OTIS, Ore. (AP) - Wildfire smoke was thick when Tye and Melynda Small went to bed last Labor Day, but they weren't too concerned. After all, they live in a part of Oregon where ferns grow from tree trunks and rainfall averages more than six feet a year. But just after midnight, a neighbor awakened them as towering flames, pushed by gusting winds, bore down. The Smalls and their four children fled, as wind whipped the blaze into a fiery tornado and trees exploded around them. When it was over, th...
While growing up in the First City, Emilio Torres always knew he was going to make a movie. A recent graduate of New York University's film school, Torres arrived back in Ketchikan early in July to work with a cast of local actors and friends from film school to bring his debut short film, "The Ladder," to life. Torres, who moved to Seattle from New York City, described the project as a philosophical sci-fi short film about a fisherman who is confronted with a choice to change his life forever....
JUNEAU (AP) - U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski ended the latest quarter with a big cash-on-hand advantage over conservative Republican rival Kelly Tshibaka, according to fundraising reports released July 15. Murkowski, a Republican who has not officially announced plans for reelection next year, came into 2021 with about $1 million in her campaign coffers. She reported bringing in about $1.1 million during the most recent fundraising quarter and having $2.3 million available as of June 30, her report shows. Tshibaka, a former state Department of...
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) - Pandemic restrictions on Florida-based cruise ships will remain in place after a federal appeals court temporarily blocked a previous ruling that sided with a Florida lawsuit challenging the regulations as burdensome. The one-paragraph decision by a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was filed at 11:50 p.m. Saturday, just minutes before a Tampa judge's previous ruling against the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention restrictions was set to take effect. The judges' issuance of a...
FAIRBANKS (AP) - It has been a record-breaking year for sockeye salmon catches in Alaska’s Bristol Bay region this year, an official said. “We’re approaching 27 million total run,” Tim Sands, a state Department of Fish and Game area management biologist said of the Nushagak District. “Our average run would be 9 million, so to be triple the average is amazing.” The region has experienced numerous record-breaking days. The all-time record for catch in the Nushagak District on one day was more than 1.7 million set on June 30. “Then the very next d...
JUNEAU (AP) - A Utah man who was sentenced to 30 years in prison last month in the beating death of his wife on an Alaska cruise has died, the Alaska Department of Corrections said. Kenneth Manzanares was in the department’s custody, at its prison in Juneau, when he was found unresponsive in his cell July 14, the department said in a statement. Lifesaving measures were attempted but he was later pronounced dead, the department said. Manzanares is the seventh person to die in the department’s custody this year, according to the department, whi... Full story
The owner of the former sawmill property at 6-Mile Zimovia Highway has been working with the borough since last year on an application to develop the site into an industrial subdivision, offering more than 32 acres for sale as individual lots. The property would include 24 lots, ranging in size from 0.36 to 2.36 acres, with 60-foot-wide roads and utilities serving the subdivision, which is zoned for waterfront development. “The preliminary (subdivision) plat has been conditionally approved,” said Carol Rushmore, borough zoning adm...
State officials say the highly contagious delta variant is likely driving the increase in COVID-19 cases reported in Alaska, plus the fact that more than 40% of Alaskans over the age of 12 still had not received at least their first vaccination shot as of last week. Sitka has reported its worst outbreak in seven months, with 20 new cases reported Tuesday. There were 51 active cases in the community and at least 15 people hospitalized as of Monday evening. Almost all of the recent cases in the community were among unvaccinated people. Sitka...
A group seeking Gov. Mike Dunleavy's ouster has yet to gather enough signatures to force a recall election, nearly two years after getting started and with just over a year before the 2022 primary election. Recall Dunleavy Chair Meda DeWitt said the organization was slowed by the pandemic last year but still continues to gather signatures. She said its leaders are expected to meet soon, though she declined to say when. The last update on the recall group's website is dated April 26 and showed 57,897 signatures collected. DeWitt said the group...
NEW TOWN, N.D. - On oil well pads carved from the wheat fields around Lake Sakakawea, North Dakota, hundreds of pump jacks slowly bob to extract 100 million barrels of crude annually from a reservation shared by three Native American tribes. About half their 16,000 members live on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation atop one of the biggest U.S. oil discoveries in decades: The Bakken shale formation. The drilling rush has brought the tribes unimagined wealth - more than $1.5 billion and...