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A fire Saturday night destroyed a building in Haines that housed four businesses and four apartments. No one reported any injuries. Flames poured out of the second floor and above the roof as firefighters tried to control the blaze, which eventually took down the wood-frame building. The Haines’ Quick Shop, Outfitter Liquor, Outfitter Sporting Goods, Mike’s Bikes & Boards and the apartments occupied the two-story building across the street from the waterfront. The trouble started just before 9:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 5, while Dan Mahoney was...
No injuries were reported from a landslide in Ketchikan on Sunday night, Oct. 6. Officials reported the slide occurred at about 8 p.m. on a section of Revilla Road near Ward Cove, north of downtown. The landslide began hundreds of feet up the mountain north of the road and brought tons of mud and trees crashing across a stretch of the road past the Ward Lake exit, according to borough officials. Slide debris blocked all lanes of Revilla Road near the slide area, cutting off a half-dozen vehicles. There were eight people in the vehicles,...
Juneau voters have rejected the Ship-Free Saturday proposition, with 3,751 votes in favor of the initiative and 5,788 against as of Oct. 4, with several hundred more ballots still to count. The Oct. 1 ballot proposition, the first of its kind in Alaska, attracted international media coverage. It would have banned cruise ships with accommodations for 250 or more passengers on Saturdays and also banned them on the Fourth of July. Opponents of the measure, led by the cruise industry and tourism businesses, waged an expensive campaign, with...
On the morning of Aug. 9, state biologists discovered dozens of dead fish in a creek near the Kensington gold mine in northern Southeast Alaska. Scientists from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game say their observations — and the fact that the die-off occurred downstream of a wastewater treatment plant at the large mine — suggest that the event stemmed from a water quality problem. Mine workers also used an unapproved explosive at Kensington a day before the dead fish were found, according to federal officials. But nearly two months lat...
Alaska had a record number of drug-overdose deaths in 2023, with a total that was 44.5% higher than in 2022, the state Department of Health said in a report issued last week. The 2023 drug-overdose toll was 357, a number determined through the department’s data on deaths and diseases, the report said. The Alaska statistics buck a national trend of declining overdose deaths that was reported earlier this year by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Of the few states with increases in overdose deaths from 2022 to 2023, Alaska h...
The Ten Commandments and six other historical documents will be placed on permanent display in a lobby outside the Matanuska-Susitna Borough Assembly chambers in Palmer, according to a resolution unanimously approved by the assembly on Oct. 1. The display will “honor historical documents” that have influenced U.S. and state law, the resolution states. It will include the Ten Commandments, a summary of the Code of Hammurabi (a Babylonian legal text composed during 1755–1750 B.C.), the Magna Carta (written in 1215 to establish the princ...
Alaska had the biggest decline in average life expectancy of all U.S. states in 2021, a year when health outcomes were heavily influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a recent national report. Alaska’s life expectancy in 2021 was 74.5 years, down from the average of 76.6 years in 2020, according to the report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Overall, U.S. life expectancy declined by 0.6 years in that time, mostly because of the COVID-19 pandemic and increases in drug overdose deaths and other unintentional i...
Until about 20 years ago, little was known about the abundance of colorful cold-water corals that line sections of the seafloor around Alaska. Now an environmental group has gone to court to try to compel better protections for those once-secret gardens. The lawsuit, filed by Oceana in U.S. District Court in Anchorage, accused federal fishery managers of neglecting to safeguard Gulf of Alaska corals - and the sponges that are often found with them - from damages wreaked by bottom trawling. Botto...
A new documentary, "Sugarcane," recounts the searing, traumatic history of colonization and forced assimilation of British Columbia's Indigenous people through a network of what are known as Indian residential schools. The film features former students and their descendants seeking truth, reconciliation and healing from the nation's legacy of those schools - institutions that the Canadian federal government now says carried out a "cultural genocide" through physical and sexual abuse. After...
The U.S. Justice Department has announced more than $86 million in grants for American Indian and Alaska Native communities to support survivors of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, stalking and sex trafficking. Nearly $14 million of those dollars were awarded to Alaska tribes and tribal organizations, including the village of Kake. The news comes after Alaska lawmakers increased state funding to the state’s Council on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault to make up for a decrease in one if its federal funding sources and a...
Federal managers shut down a major Alaska fishery Sept. 25 after two Kodiak-based boats targeting whitefish caught some 2,000 king salmon — an unintentional harvest that drew near-instant condemnation from advocates who want better protections for the struggling species. The Kodiak-based trawl fleet has caught just over one-fourth of its seasonal quota of pollock — a whitefish that’s typically processed into items like fish sticks, fish pies and surimi, the paste used to make fake crab. But about 20 boats will now be forced to end their pollo...
More emergency kits to save victims of opioid overdoses are on their way to Alaska schools, in accordance with a new law. It requires schools statewide to have kits on hand, with trained people on site to administer those kits if needed. Although the new law does not go into effect until late November, the state Department of Health has already begun shipping out kits with overdose-reversal medicine and associated gear. The law is the product of House Bill 202, which Gov. Mike Dunleavy signed in late August. As of early last month, about 200 of...
A pair of Tlingít villages in Southeast Alaska will receive apologies for past wrongful military action from the U.S. Navy this fall. The first of those apologies took place in Kake on Sept. 21, where U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Mark B. Sucato acknowledged the harms of a bombardment in 1869. An apology in Angoon is scheduled for Oct. 26, the 142nd anniversary of the 1882 bombardment of that village. Navy Environmental Public Affairs Specialist Julianne Leinenveber said it was determined that the...
Alaska seaweed farmers and oyster growers mingled with professors, tech industry representatives, state and federal government staff, bankers and consultants who converged at Ketchikan’s Ted Ferry Civic Center for the third-ever international Seagriculture USA conference, the first such conference in Alaska. All eyes of the 190-some conference participants earlier this month were on the promise of developing a profitable seaweed industry in Southeast Alaska, with people traveling to Ketchikan from California, Maine, Canada, The Netherlands, N...
This year’s Permanent Fund dividend, plus a one-time energy rebate bonus, will be a combined $1,702 per recipient, the Alaska Department of Revenue announced Sept. 19. The amount is slightly higher than previous estimates from the spring, in part because the number of eligible Alaskans is lower than expected. The payments will be direct-deposited into bank accounts starting Oct. 3. Paper checks, for those Alaskans who requested them, will be mailed later in October. This year’s combined dividend is about $400 more than last year’s payme...
An Alaska man accused of sending graphic threats to injure and kill six Supreme Court justices and some of their family members has been indicted on federal charges, authorities said Sept. 19. Panos Anastasiou, 76, is accused of sending more than 465 messages through a public court website, including graphic threats of assassination and torture coupled with racist and homophobic rhetoric. Anastasiou appeared in federal court in Anchorage on Sept. 18 and pleaded not guilty. He was assigned a federal public defender. A federal magistrate judge...
Alaska’s first ranked-choice presidential election ballot will list eight candidates, according to the final roster approved by the Alaska Division of Elections — and voters will be able to rank all eight people if they choose to do so. Alaska’s ranked-choice primary system to narrow down the candidates to the top four vote-getters for general elections does not apply to presidential races. The first ballots for the Nov. 5 general election are scheduled for mailing to international voters starting Sept. 20. On the front of the ballot are eight...
Vandalism of houses of worship and other religious sites is now a felony, under a bill that was signed into law on Sept. 3 by Gov. Mike Dunleavy. The measure, House Bill 238, was signed in a ceremony at the Lubavitch Jewish Center of Alaska, a campus in Anchorage that is home to an Orthodox Jewish congregation, a preschool and a museum devoted to Alaska’s Jewish history. It was also the site of recent antisemitic vandalism, part of a national trend of increasing attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions. Anchorage Rep. Andy Josephson, the b...
GCI notified Sitka customers by text message Sept. 16 that it had successfully restored cell phone and internet services which had been disrupted for more than two weeks by a fiber optic cable break on the bottom of Salisbury Sound. The break in the cable on Aug. 29 shut down GCI’s internet service and also affected texting and phone service. Company spokesman Josh Edge said Sept. 16 the cause of the break still wasn’t known. The undersea cable repair ship was headed back to its homeport of Victoria, British Columbia. The repair work started Se...
An Alaska law prohibiting anyone other than a licensed physician from performing abortions violates the state constitution’s equal protection and privacy guarantees, a state Superior Court judge ruled. There is “no medical reason” why abortions cannot be provided by advanced practice clinicians, such as nurse practitioners and physician assistants, said the Sept. 4 ruling issued by Superior Court Judge Josie Garton. Limiting abortion services to state-licensed physicians violates the equal protection guarantee because other pregn...
Alaska Airlines closed its $1 billion purchase of Hawaiian Airlines on Sept. 18, a day after the federal government removed the last major regulatory obstacle to the deal. Alaska will also assume about $900 million in Hawaiian debt. Alaska says it will keep Hawaiian as a separate brand, eliminating the need to repaint planes. To win approval from the Transportation Department, the airlines agreed to maintain current levels of service on key routes within Hawaii and between the island state and the U.S. mainland where they don't face much...
More Alaskans will be eligible for food stamps and access to health care for school-age children and young adults will increase under a new state law. Gov. Mike Dunleavy sponsored the original legislation, whose goal was to expand the services covered by Medicaid to include things like workforce development and food security. The bill takes advantage of a federal waiver that allows states to consider the underlying causes of ill health in granting benefits. The legislation was amended to include a proposal from Anchorage Rep. Genevieve Mina...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy has vetoed a bill that would have made birth control more accessible to Alaska women. House Bill 17 would have allowed women to get a year’s worth of prescription birth control at once. Currently, most insurance providers in Alaska cover only up to 90 days’ worth of birth control pills at a time. At least 24 states and Washington, D.C., have adopted laws enshrining the 12-month rule. Proponents say it is particularly important for rural women who may not be able to visit a pharmacy every 90 days, and for victims of dom...
Three young humpback whales were found dead off the west coast of Prince of Wales Island in just two weeks at the end of August. One subadult female was found on Aug. 22 in waters south of El Capitan, while a subadult female and a young male were found in waters near Craig on Aug. 30 and Sept. 2, respectively. On Aug. 30, longtime Craig resident whale-watcher Kathy Peavey heard about one of the whales, the subadult female that was found dead in Squam Bay north of Craig, from Michelle Dutro, an Alaska State Sea Grant fellow who helps monitor...
As Alaskans from different organizations convened at the University of Alaska Anchorage to brainstorm ways to reverse the state’s continuing population outmigration, a leading state economist delivered some bad news. Dan Robinson, research chief at the Alaska Department of Labor, revealed that the latest data shows that Alaska has now had 12 consecutive years with more residents leaving than arriving. That is unprecedented, he said. “This is not normal for us. It hasn’t happened before,” Robinson said on Sept. 5 at the start of the two-day...