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Actress Jennifer Aniston knows something about Haines that even some longtime residents don't: The town is home to some of the finest wooden bathtubs that money can buy. Aniston is one of the celebrity customers of the small operation that's been slowly growing and carving a name for itself in the luxury wood bathtub world for the past two decades. Buyers include Larry Ellison, the billionaire founder of the software giant Oracle, as well as hundreds of less affluent customers enticed by the...
Telecommunications company GCI will end its longtime email service next year, a move that will force customers to transition to new email providers. Spokespeople with GCI, Alaska’s largest telecommunications company, said the service will end sometime in mid-2024. At that point, customers will no longer be able to access or use their gci.net account, according to a draft fact page posted online. “We will provide our customers formal notice at least six months in advance of email deactivation deadline,” GCI spokeswoman Heather Handyside said...
A state judge has ordered a tourist shop outside Denali National Park to stop selling products labeled as “Made in Alaska” after the state accused the shop of repeatedly selling fake souvenirs and art. According to a complaint filed by the Alaska Department of Law on July 20 in Fairbanks, the owners of a shop known variously as The Himalayan and Mt. McKinley Clothing Company repeatedly attempted to mislabel foreign products as Alaska-made. At one point, the owners of the store told an undercover investigator “that an alpaca poncho depic...
A major highway project improving the connection between Anchorage and the Kenai Peninsula has more than doubled in cost over the past five years — from $350 million in 2018 to the latest estimate of $840 million — and the new pavement is still four years away from opening to the public. The bypass — officially the Sterling Highway Milepost 45-60 Project — is a decades-old plan to divert traffic around the small Kenai River community of Cooper Landing by creating a 10-mile bypass cut through the forested and sloped terrain north of the town. C...
While Alaska’s state government has made progress in getting more people the food stamps they are entitled to receive, advocates say the process to appeal denials or delays is breaking down. Food stamps are a federal benefit managed by the states, and there are rules for how quickly a state has to get the benefit to qualified applicants. Alaska has been taking an unlawfully long time to process most applications since last fall. Citizens have a right to a legal hearing when the state takes too long to get them food stamps or denies their a...
Tracking changes in permafrost can take years and sometimes decades, lags that cannot keep up with the transformations in the rapidly warming Arctic. Now scientists will be developing new technology to track those changes in real time, thanks to a project funded by Google. The company has awarded a $5 million grant to the Massachusetts-based Woodwell Climate Research Center to create a system combining satellite data with artificial intelligence to spot the changes as they occur. The project is led by Anna Liljedahl, an Alaska-based Woodwell...
Tracking changes in permafrost can take years and sometimes decades, lags that cannot keep up with the transformations in the rapidly warming Arctic. Now scientists will be developing new technology to track those changes in real time, thanks to a project funded by Google. The company has awarded a $5 million grant to the Massachusetts-based Woodwell Climate Research Center to create a system combining satellite data with artificial intelligence to spot the changes as they occur. The project is led by Anna Liljedahl, an Alaska-based Woodwell...
Alaska’s state school board has unexpectedly delayed a vote on a proposed regulation that would prohibit transgender girls from playing on girls high school sports teams. Board chairman James Fields said the delay was warranted by “hard questions” about whether the regulation could violate students’ right to privacy, among other legal issues. “I’d be in favor of a special meeting and allowing us to show the public and show our constituents that we’re not just doing this to quickly rush through it. We want to take a good long look at all of the...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy has vetoed a bill defining electric-assisted bicycles the same as regular bicycles — which passed the Legislature by a combined vote of 57-2 — because “it creates unnecessary bureaucracy by regulating recreational activity,” according to a spokesperson. House Bill 8, sponsored by Rep. Ashley Carrick, a first-term Fairbanks Democrat, sought to revise state code to allow most e-bikes to ride anywhere a regular bike is allowed such as roads, bike lanes and multi-use trails. The bill also said owners of e-bikes generat...
With colder months approaching, Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson said July 24 that the city likely will not use a municipally owned sports arena as a large-scale homeless shelter again this winter, and to prevent people from freezing to death on the street, his administration wants to purchase plane tickets for people who want to travel to communities within Alaska or warmer climates out of state. “I am not going to be responsible for people freezing to death on the street. … I’m doing everything I can to keep that from happening,” Bronson said du...
Which came first, the magister squid fishery or the magister squid market? A Juneau charter fishing operator was recently awarded a $230,000 grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to find out, and fishermen might soon have a chance to diversify in the face of declining fish stocks and high barriers to entry in other markets. "It's the chicken and the egg. Do you start researching how to catch them or if there's a market?" said Richard Yamada, who has dedicated the past...
Whale Pass youngster Jesse Dempsey started practicing taekwondo as a kindergartner with a very simple goal: to help control his temper. In the past five years, Jesse has made strides toward that objective and progressed his skills to the point where he could compete at the international level. And recently the 10-year-old has found plenty of training partners in his small town on Prince of Wales Island. Despite a population that rarely crests above 100 even during the busy summer season, Jesse...
A Juneau man inadvertently filmed his own drowning on Mendenhall Lake with a GoPro camera mounted on his helmet, but authorities who recovered the camera have not yet found his body, officials said July 18. Alaska State Troopers said teams would continue to search the lake for the body of Paul Rodriguez Jr., 43. Troopers said a helmet with a camera attached to it that was confirmed to have belonged to Rodriguez was recording on July 11 when his kayak overturned and he went into the water. “The recording continued showing that the kayak o...
A federal judge on July 18 dismissed a year-old lawsuit by the state against the federal government over liability for contaminated land given to Alaska Native corporations under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971. No Alaska Native corporations or Native groups joined the lawsuit, and in an order published July 18, Judge Hezekiah Russel Holland found multiple problems with the state’s arguments, ultimately ruling that they should be dismissed. The state had argued that three prior acts of Congress required the Department of the Int...
Canada`s worst-ever wildfire season has choked much of North America with dangerous smoke for months, coupling with deadly heat around the globe in a summer that`s focusing the world`s attention on the perils of climate change. By last week, some 42,000 square miles had burned in Canada — half again more than the entire Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska. About 900 fires were actively burning, with only about one-fifth considered under control. “I watch this pretty much 24/7,” Mark Smith, the air quality meteorologist for the Alask...
Recently published federal data shows that Alaska’s payment error rate for administering food stamp benefits was the highest of any state during the past fiscal year. Between October 2021 and September 2022, the Alaska Division of Public Assistance reported a payment error rate of nearly 57%, compared to a national average of 11.5%. Public assistance advocates say the error rate, which measures how accurately a state agency processes federal benefits, sheds light on continued problems at the Alaska Division of Public Assistance, which for n...
Working together in long, tandem strokes, Terry Gardiner and John Sund rowed beneath looming cruise ships along Ketchikan's waterfront on July 10, then turned into Bar Harbor to meet a couple dozen friends and family waiting for them on shore. It was the end of a 925-mile rowing trip from Seattle to Ketchikan for the two men, born and raised in Ketchikan, now in their 70s. The two have been partners in personal and professional escapades for years. Gardiner served in the Alaska House of...
Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor joined 18 other Republican attorneys general last month in a letter calling on the federal government to preserve state governments’ access to private medical records. That access could be used to restrict access to abortion and gender transition care. The attorneys general are opposing a proposed federal rule that would “prevent private medical records from being used against people for merely seeking, obtaining, providing, or facilitating lawful reproductive health care.” Idaho, which has criminalized abort...
The Alaska Marine Highway System may have to cancel some Lynn Canal sailings this week as the state ferry system’s hiring woes continue through the peak summer travel season, its top official said Friday, July 14. “We’re at risk of shutting the Hubbard down this next week because we can’t get another licensed engineer onboard,” AMHS director Craig Tornga told the ferry system’s operations board. The Hubbard was scheduled to sail between Haines, Skagway and Juneau six times in the week ending Saturday, July 22, and those sailings were in jeo...
The Southeast Alaska commercial troll fishery closed to the retention of chinook salmon at 11:59 p.m. Wednesday, July 12. That’s when the Alaska Department of Fish and Game expected that the target of 77,100 chinook for the summer’s first retention period would be reached. The commercial summer troll fishery for chinook opened July 1, after the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals granted a stay of a previous court order that would have prevented the fishery from opening. A lawsuit filed by a Washington state-based conservation organization aga...
An investigation into the July 6 fire that destroyed most of St. Catherine of Siena Catholic Church in Petersburg determined that the blaze started with maintenance work outside the building. Petersburg Fire Marshal Ryan Welde said in a statement that the fire was accidental. The fire started at ground level on the exterior of the building, the statement said. The fire marshal’s report did not explain what maintenance work was underway that ignited the flames. The fire then traveled up the wall via rigid foam insulation behind the vinyl s...
Alaska’s Supreme Court, with support from the state bar association, approved a waiver at the end of last year that will allow specially trained nonlawyers to represent Alaskans in court on some issues. Nikole Nelson, Alaska Legal Services Corp.’s director, said the system is unique to Alaska — no other state has a program quite like it. She said these nonlawyers with legal training are crucial because there isn’t enough legal representation in the state. “As long as I’ve been working in legal aid, which is my entire legal career, we’ve faced...
Nick Begich III, a Republican candidate who lost to Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola in last year’s races for Alaska’s lone U.S. House seat, said Thursday, July 13, that he will run against Peltola again in 2024. Peltola hasn’t announced a re-election campaign but has been raising money and has a campaign manager. In an August special ranked-choice election to replace Young, Begich finished third out of three candidates, behind Peltola and fellow Republican Sarah Palin. Post-election analysis of all ranked-choice ballots indicated that had Begic...
Alaska saw a drop in the number of food stamp recipients over the past year far larger than any other state as processing delays caused low-income households to miss out on their benefits. While more than half of states actually had an increase in SNAP beneficiaries, among those that saw a decline none came anywhere close to the 69% drop in participation Alaska experienced through this spring. Behind Alaska, Maryland saw a 21% decrease, Arkansas saw a 19% decrease and New Jersey saw a 14% decrease between March 2022 and March 2023. Those...
Thousands of aboveground tanks that store diesel fuel and other petroleum products would no longer be regulated by the state, under a proposal from the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. The proposal is to repeal regulation of what are known as Class 2 facilities, which are scattered throughout the state and store between 1,000 and 420,000 gallons of non-crude oil products such as diesel, heating oil and gasoline. If the state regulation is repealed, those Class 2 facilities will no longer be required to register their storage...