Sorted by date Results 1182 - 1206 of 1731
It's raining cold, large drops that pool on the treacherous ice in Skagway, making it the kind of day that discourages dog walking. Regardless, Mo Mountain Mutts pulls up to Seven Pastures in their shiny white minibus and nine dogs of varying sizes disembark. They shed their leashes and head to Skagway River under the direction of Mo and Lee Thompson, forging their own path through the foliage. Once the pets reach the sand, they sprint, sniff, wrestle and socialize. Mo Thompson offers advice...
JUNEAU (AP) — Individuals will be allowed to make unlimited contributions to candidates for governor and the Legislature this year under a decision by the state commission that oversees Alaska campaign finance rules. The Alaska Public Offices Commission on March 3, failed to support a staff proposal to set revised limits in place of tighter caps that were struck down by a federal appeals court panel last year. The court invalidated Alaska’s $500-a-year individual donation limit to candidates, saying it was too low. The court, however, did not...
ANCHORAGE (AP) — A federal agency tasked with investigating plane crashes is recommending that all pilots be required to communicate their positions on a designated radio frequency when entering and exiting areas not managed by air traffic control towers throughout Alaska. The recommendations to the Federal Aviation Administration are included in a report from the National Transportation Safety Board following a mid-air collision that killed seven people, including an Alaska state lawmaker, near Soldotna on July 31, 2020. The report was p...
JUNEAU (AP) — A proposal from Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration to split in half the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services — the state’s largest department — appears likely to take effect later this year. House and Senate leaders said it does not appear there are enough votes to block the move. Reorganization of the department, with more than 3,200 positions, has been billed as a way to improve operations and delivery of services. The proposal came through an executive order from the governor, and rejection of the order would req...
Alaska’s share of a $26 billion nationwide settlement with opioid distributors and a manufacturer is $58 million, the state Department of Law announced March 1. According to the Department of Law, 15% of the $58 million — roughly $8.7 million — will go to the nine cities and boroughs in Alaska that participated in the lawsuit. The remaining funds will be used by the state to help Alaskans recover from opioid addiction, the release said. The payments will stretch over the next two decades, under terms of the settlement. “All of us know someone w...
ANCHORAGE (AP) — The Interior Department has asked a federal court to let the agency suspend its right-of-way decision for a controversial, state-promoted mining road in Northwest Alaska. The department is conducting a further review of its original decision issued under the Trump administration. The agency signed the right-of-way permit in the final days before President Joe Biden took office. Federal officials filed the request Feb. 22 with the U.S. District Court for Alaska, seeking to fix what it called “significant deficiencies” in the o...
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - Climate scientists in the U.S. Pacific Northwest warned March 3 that much of Oregon and parts of Idaho can expect even tougher drought conditions this summer than in the previous two years, which already featured dwindling reservoirs, explosive wildfires and deep cuts to agricultural irrigation. At a news conference hosted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, water and climate experts from Oregon, Washington and Idaho said parts of the region should...
TOK (AP) — A new border station estimated to cost $187 million will be built on Alaska’s eastern boundary with Canada, the U.S. government announced last Friday. The Alaska Highway border crossing is about 50 miles east of Northway Junction, the closest community in Alaska. The funding for design and construction of the ALCAN Border Station will come from the federal infrastructure law, the U.S. General Services Administration said in a statement. The agency said the current border station, built in 1971, is the most isolated port of entry bet...
What dog doesn’t love finding scraps of dead salmon. Usually it’s a smelly cleanup for the dog’s owner, but this time it was a real treasure. In Haines, Lilly Ford’s Siberian Laika puppy Sacha sniffs everything, which is how Rebecca Brewer’s lost wallet was retrieved from a snow berm along Chilkat Inlet. Brewer had noticed her salmon-skin wallet missing in early February. She posted notices around town at places where she may have left it behind. She notified the police. After a few days, she canceled the credit cards inside. “I thought I’d nev...
JUNEAU (AP) — A Sitka lawmaker broke two bones in his right leg after crashing his paraglider in Anchorage on Feb. 19. Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins returned to Juneau on Feb. 23. He had been recuperating in Anchorage following surgery and attending committee meetings remotely. He will be on crutches for about six weeks. Anchorage Rep. Laddie Shaw was out paragliding with Kreiss-Tomkins when the accident occurred at Flattop Mountain. “We just got together and went for a little hike on Flattop Mountain,” said Shaw, a former Navy SEAL who regul...
The Ketchikan High School pep club’s “country” theme, for which some students dressed like cowboys for a basketball game against Metlakatla, wasn’t intended to be “racially provocative” but it had a negative effect that was “predictable and should have been prevented,” according to an investigation of the incident. The investigation, released last Friday, was conducted by the Ketchikan Gateway Borough School District following a Feb. 5 game between the Ketchikan Kings and the Metlakatla Chiefs. The report from the borough school board an...
A 45-page bill to restructure the Alaska Marine Highway System as a state-owned corporation, run by an appointed board of directors, similar to the Alaska Railroad, is going to take longer than one legislative session to review, amend and adopt — if even then. “This is going to take a big lift,” said Robert Venables, executive director of the Southeast Conference, an economic and community development nonprofit for the region that supports the concept of a ferry corporation. “This is aspirational,” he said Feb. 23, a day after the Senate Tr...
A former nominee to the Alaska Board of Fisheries and a prominent Cook Inlet commercial fisherman pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of unsworn falsification on Feb. 18, ending a six-year legal struggle that saw him accused of multiple counts of Permanent Fund dividend fraud and improperly obtaining resident fishing licenses. Roland Maw, nominated by former Gov. Bill Walker to the Fish Board in 2015 but never appointed, will pay a $500 fine and restitution of $9,582. He had been facing 12 felonies and five misdemeanors. The remaining...
OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — Three states, including Alaska, that would be affected by a proposed 6-cent-per-gallon tax on fuel exported from Washington state are pushing back on the plan, and threatening to retaliate if it is signed into law. Most of Alaska’s North Slope crude oil production is tankered to West Coast refineries, including several in Washington state, which ship refined products back to Alaska. The tax — part of a $16.8 billion transportation revenue package that has cleared the state Senate and is working its way through the House...
JUNEAU (AP) — Legislative leaders are pursuing the idea of converting a building across the street from the Capitol into 33 apartments that could be used for lawmakers and staff during sessions in Juneau. The Juneau Community Foundation last year donated the building to the Legislature. The three-story building currently is used for private offices and for COVID-19 testing for lawmakers and staff. Tenants have been told their leases will not be renewed. Estimates prepared for the Legislative Council, a panel of House and Senate leaders, s...
WASHINGTON (AP) - America's national bird is more beleaguered than previously believed, with nearly half of bald eagles tested across the Lower 48 states showing signs of chronic lead exposure, according to a study published Feb. 17. While the bald eagle population has rebounded from the brink of extinction since the U.S. banned the pesticide DDT in 1972, harmful levels of toxic lead were found in the bones of 46% of bald eagles sampled in 38 states from California to Florida, researchers...
An Alaska judge upheld most of the state’s newly redistricted legislative district map on Feb. 15 but overturned a decision that created two East Anchorage Senate seats linked with more politically conservative Eagle River. The judge also ruled in favor of Skagway, which wants to share a House district with the more cruise ship tourism-oriented downtown Juneau than with the Mendenhall Valley portion of the community. A day after the judge’s ruling, the Alaska Redistricting Board met in executive session and later voted 3-2 to appeal the rul...
A group of four Alaska college students has appealed a state court ruling that upheld a decision by Gov. Mike Dunleavy to drain the state’s $410 million higher-education investment fund. The decision made scholarship programs subject to annual legislative appropriation of state general fund dollars. The students last Friday filed their appeal of the ruling handed down a day earlier by Superior Court Judge Adolf Zeman. Unless reversed on appeal to the Alaska Supreme Court, the Alaska Performance Scholarship program and WWAMI, which helps pay t...
NEW YORK (AP) - Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin lost her libel lawsuit against The New York Times on Feb. 15 when a jury rejected her claim that the newspaper maliciously damaged her reputation by erroneously linking her campaign rhetoric to a mass shooting. A judge had already declared that if the jury sided with Palin, he would set aside its verdict on the grounds that she hadn't proven the paper acted maliciously, something required in libel suits involving public figures. "Of course we're...
ORONO, Maine (AP)- Salmon counters found fewer of the endangered fish in Maine’s Penobscot River last year than in any year since 2016. Atlantic salmon are listed under the Endangered Species Act in the U.S., as the country’s only remaining wild populations of the fish are found in a few Maine rivers. The Penobscot is vitally important to the future of the fish, and salmon returns there are watched closely. Only 561 salmon were counted in the Penobscot last year. That was the lowest number since 2016, when 503 fish were found, the Bangor Dai...
ANCHORAGE (AP) — A provision of a U.S. Senate bill would expand tribal court jurisdiction for up to 30 Alaska tribes as part of a pilot program aimed at addressing high rates of domestic or sexual violence. Tribes that choose to participate in the pilot program — and are selected — would be able to try and sentence anyone who commits domestic violence, rape or related crimes in their villages, even if the offender is non-Native. The provision added by Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski is part of a bipartisan measure that would renew the 1994 Violence...
The Sitka Sound Science Center and several regional and national partners have received a five-year, $5 million grant from the National Science Foundation to develop natural hazard monitoring and warning systems in tribal communities throughout Southeast. Project KUTÍ — the Tlingit word for weather — builds on the center’s community process used in Sitka to build a landslide warning system. Sitka will serve as a hub for the project, but the goal is to “develop a co-produced regional system for warning residents of events that might lead to...
A Juneau-based fishing charter and lodge owner has a hunch that a viable commercial squid fishery could exist in Southeast. Richard Yamada, who's been operating fishing charters for 40 years, has been looking for ways to reduce the damage to his business as king salmon numbers decline. He speculates that an influx of magister squid in the northern Inside Passage might be one factor affecting salmon survival. About 15 years ago. while fishing for rockfish, he and his clients caught a magister...
JUNEAU (AP) — An Anchorage Assembly member on Feb. 17 announced plans to run as a Democrat for the U.S. House seat for Alaska that has been held by Republican Don Young since 1973. Christopher Constant made the announcement on social media. Under a voter-approved elections system that will be used for the first time in Alaska this year, the top four vote-getters in the August primary, regardless of party affiliation, will advance to the November general election, where ranked-choice voting will be used to count ballots until a candidate a...
JUNEAU (AP) — A gemstone, billed as one of the largest gem-quality opals in existence, was sold for $143,750 at auction in Alaska on Sunday. The opal, dubbed the “Americus Australis,” weighs more than five pounds, according to the Anchorage auction house Alaska Premier Auctions & Appraisals. It also has a long history. Most recently, it was kept in a linen closet in a home in Big Lake, north of Anchorage, by Fred von Brandt, who mines for gold in Alaska and whose family has deep roots in the gem and rock business. The opal is larger than a bri...