Sorted by date Results 1491 - 1515 of 1769
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...
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...
OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) - Washington state’s death toll from last month’s record-breaking Pacific Northwest heat wave has risen to 78. A year earlier, Washington had just seven heat-related deaths from mid-June to the end of August, the state Department of Health said last week. From 2015 to 2020, there were a total of 39 deaths. Oregon on July 7 reported 116 deaths following temperatures that shattered previous all-time records during the three-day heat wave. Of the 116 deaths recorded in Oregon, the youngest victim was 37 and the oldest was 97. I...
LEWISTON, Idaho (AP) - Sockeye salmon at risk from high water temperatures are being captured at an eastern Washington dam to save as many of the endangered fish headed for Idaho as possible, wildlife managers said. The Idaho Department of Fish and Game said workers started trapping the salmon July 5 at Lower Granite Dam on the Snake River and trucking them to hatcheries to be artificially spawned or to Redfish Lake in central Idaho for release. Lance Hebdon of Fish and Game said water temperatures in the Snake and Salmon rivers have been as...
ANCHORAGE (AP) - The leaders of Alaska’s Republican Party on Saturday endorsed a Trump-backed conservative challenger to incumbent U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who has been one of the GOP’s most outspoken critics of the former president. The Alaska Republican State Central Committee endorsed Kelly Tshibaka in the 2022 race for the U.S. Senate seat held by Murkowski. The committee approved Tshibaka’s endorsement in a 58-17 vote during a meeting in Fairbanks. Tshibaka, who ran the Alaska Department of Administration for Gov. Mike Dunleavy, annou...
Sealaska Heritage Institute has released the first children's book in the Haida language Xaad Kil through its Baby Raven Reads program. "Nang Jaadaa Sgaana 'Laanaa aa Isdaayaan," or "The Woman Carried Away by Killer Whales," is a story carried down through generations orally and published through the work of a team of artists and linguists. "It's the first book I ever illustrated, and now it's the first children's book in the Haida language," said Haida illustrator Janine Gibbons. "I had to...
CRANBROOK, British Columbia (AP) - A Canadian Indigenous group said June 30 a search using ground-penetrating radar has found 182 human remains in unmarked graves at a site near a former Catholic Church-run residential school that housed Indigenous children taken from their families. The latest discovery of graves near Cranbrook, British Columbia, follows reports of similar findings at two other such church-run schools, one of more than 600 unmarked graves and another of 215 bodies. Cranbrook is 520 miles east of Vancouver. The Lower Kootenay B...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy used his veto power to thwart a legislative effort to boost the state ferry system budget. The governor cut almost $8.5 million from an overall appropriation of $190.7 million intended to cover the next 18 months of Alaska Marine Highway System operations. The veto scales back the budget closer to last year’s level on a 12-month basis and frustrates legislative attempts to restore some of the service cuts under the governor’s administration. This is the third budget Dunleavy has signed since he took office in December 201...
The Fourth of July is a fun time for all ages in Wrangell, even for those still learning how to walk. Sunday's festivities included toddler games on the City Hall lawn. Candy was thrown around the lawn for the kids to race to pick up, seeing who could get the most. The results were: Babies not yet crawling: Saydee Bartlett Babies not yet walking: Tylon Grant Girls not yet 2: 1st place, Ember Rae 2nd place, Emilee Stewart 3rd place, Leah Comstock Honorable mentions: Kinsley Garvey and Aeralynn...
HONOLULU (AP) — For nearly a year, Maui residents had their tropical oasis virtually to themselves. Then the visitors all came flooding back. “Over-tourism” has long been a complaint of locals on the Hawaiian island that is among the world’s most popular getaways: congested roads, crowded beaches, packed restaurants. But as the U.S. begins to emerge from the pandemic, Maui is reeling from some of the same strains seen on the mainland, like a shortage of hospitality workers. And its restaurants, still operating at limited capacity, are struggl...
ANCHORAGE (AP) - A Montana man was reunited with his 14-week-old border collie two days after the dog disappeared following a bear attack on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula. Jason Umbriaco was hospitalized after the brown bear with two cubs bit him twice June 27. “It was just a shock. I couldn’t believe it,” Umbriaco said after being reunited with Buckley. “I had kind of given up hope, and I was sort of making preparations inside to just move forward without him, and now it’s like I’m gonna have those times back of just joy, and peace.” The a...
SEATTLE (AP) - Each day, more deaths are being linked to the heat wave that struck the Pacific Northwest last week, with medical staff who treated people overwhelmed by temperatures well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit saying the toll from the extreme weather will keep creeping up. Hundreds of deaths were being investigated as heat related in Oregon, Washington state and British Columbia. The dangerous heat began June 25 and only began to subside in some areas on June 29. The death toll in Oregon alone has reached at least 95, the state medical...
It’s been about 25 years since Wrangell had a U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary detachment — and Liz Buness wants to bring it back. She thought about the need while she was working aboard the state ferries for 16 years, vowing “when I retire, maybe that’ll happen.” Buness, who retired from the Alaska Marine Highway System as a chief purser in 2019, talked with Coast Guard auxiliary officials, took the classes required for auxiliary membership, and now serves as part of the Ketchikan flotilla in Wrangell. She decided this summer is a good time to s...
JUNEAU (AP) - The state of Alaska is trying to dispose of a 58-year-old, unused ferry, and even has offered to give it free to the government of the Philippines. Gov. Mike Dunleavy offered to give away the Malaspina in a letter last month to the Philippines consul general in San Francisco, public radio network CoastAlaska reported. “This vessel is surplus to our fleet, is in need of some repairs, but does have some service life left,” according to Dunleavy’s letter dated May 20 and obtained by the Alaska Public Media network in a routine publi...
The federal government will investigate its past oversight of Native American boarding schools and work to “uncover the truth about the loss of human life and the lasting consequences” of policies that over the decades forced hundreds of thousands of children from their families and communities, U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced June 22. The unprecedented work will include compiling and reviewing records to identify past boarding schools, locate known and possible burial sites at or near those schools, and uncover the names and tri...
SEASIDE, Calif. (AP) — Mike Gravel, who served as a U.S. senator from Alaska 1969-1981 and who read the anti-Vietnam War Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record, has died. He was 91. Gravel died last Saturday, according to his daughter, Lynne Mosier. Gravel had been living in Seaside, California, and was in failing health, said Theodore W. Johnson, a former aide. Gravel’s two terms came during tumultuous years for Alaska when construction of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline was authorized and when Congress was deciding how to settle Ala...
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled June 25 that Alaska Native corporations should benefit from hundreds of millions of dollars in disputed coronavirus relief funds, rather than be denied access and the money instead spread among Native American tribes around the U.S. The justices ruled 6-3 in the case, which involved the massive pandemic relief package passed last year and signed into law by then-President Donald Trump. The $2.2 trillion legislation earmarked $8 billion for “Tribal governments” to cover expenses related to the pandemic. The f...
SEATTLE (AP) - The hottest day of an unprecedented and dangerous heat wave scorched the Pacific Northwest on Monday, with temperatures obliterating records that had been set just the day before. Seattle hit 108 degrees Fahrenheit by evening. Portland reached 116 on Monday after hitting records of 108 on Saturday and 112 on Sunday. The temperatures were unheard of in a region better known for rain, and where June has historically been referred to as “Juneuary” for its cool drizzle. Seattle’s average high temperature in June is around 70, and few...
TORONTO (AP) – Canadian border restrictions on nonessential travel to and from the United States will be extended until at least July 21, officials said last Friday, as Canada works to get a higher percentage of its residents fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Public Safety Minister Bill Blair said the move has been made in coordination with U.S. officials. There are growing calls in the U.S. to open the Canada-U.S. border for tourism and other travel considered nonessential, but less than 20% of Canadians are fully vaccinated. The yearlong b...
MIAMI (AP) - Royal Caribbean International is postponing for nearly a month one of the highly anticipated first sailings from the U.S. since the pandemic began because eight crew members tested positive for COVID-19, the company's CEO said. The brand new Odyssey of the Seas was to set sail from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on July 3, but is now postponed to July 31. Royal Caribbean International's CEO Michael Bayley said June 15 on Facebook that the decision had been made "out of an abundance of...