Sorted by date Results 1645 - 1669 of 1769
JUNEAU (AP) - More people are leaving the city of Juneau than arriving because of state budget cuts and declining state jobs, labor officials said. The Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development estimates more than 1,300 people have moved out of Juneau since the city’s population peaked at 33,162 in 2015, public radio KTOO-FM reported. Juneau lost 172 residents from July 2018 to July 2019, and 286 residents from July 2019 to July 2020, officials said. The state population has also declined during that time. Agency economist Sara Teel...
After missing 2020 due to the pandemic, the Southeast Alaska State Fair in Haines plans to return this year. The board voted unanimously last month to put together some version of the annual event, according to the Chilkat Valley News in Haines. But it will not be a normal year. Southeast Alaska State Fair Executive Director Kari Johnson said events are likely to be smaller and will certainly be outdoors. “We are hopeful,” Johnson told KHNS public radio. “Yes, there’s going to be one. It might be big, it might be small. … I think we’re kin...
JUNEAU (AP) - Officials in Alaska’s capital city are working on measures to prevent disruptions of online public meetings that have included verbal abuse of at least one assembly member. The use of videoconferences allows the public to continue observing and participating city government meetings during the coronavirus pandemic, but there have been problems, Juneau public radio station KTOO reported Jan. 26. City officials estimated there have been about a dozen instances of what has become known as “Zoom bombing,” or planned disruptions of me...
ANCHORAGE (AP) - Fewer Alaska residents had routine cancer screenings in 2020 than in the year before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, doctors said. There were 330 fewer mammograms and 28 fewer lung cancer screenings last year than there were in 2019 at Juneau’s Bartlett Regional Hospital, said Paul Hawkins, director of the hospital’s diagnostic imaging center. Some medical providers said the screening decrease was likely linked to anxiety related to the virus that has lasted through the pandemic, the Anchorage Daily News reported Jan...
JUNEAU (AP) - Alaska has detected the state’s first known case of the coronavirus variant identified last year in the United Kingdom, officials said Jan. 26. The infected person is an Anchorage resident who had traveled to a state where the variant had already been detected, the Alaska health department said. The person first experienced symptoms on Dec. 17, was tested three days later and received a positive result Dec. 22. The resident lived with another person in Anchorage, who also became ill. Both isolated and have since recovered, o...
ANCHORAGE (AP) - Severe child abuse cases in Alaska have increased significantly at times during the coronavirus pandemic, experts said. As students return to classrooms, child welfare advocates are assessing the impact of the pandemic on child abuse, Alaska Public Media reported Jan. 27. Visits by one clinic to children in need of hospitalization for severe injuries because of suspected abuse skyrocketed by 173% in the past year, said Mike Canfield, a spokesperson for Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage. “This absolutely reflects a...
NEW YORK (AP) - Illustrator Michaela Goade became the first Native American to win the prestigious Randolph Caldecott Medal for best children’s picture story, honored for “We Are Water Protectors.” Goade is a member of the Tlingit and Haida Indian tribes in Southeast Alaska. “We Are Water Protectors,” written by Carole Lindstrom, is a celebration of nature and a call for environmental protection that was conceived in response to the planned construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline through Standing Rock Sioux territory. “I am really hono...
JUNEAU (AP) - State wildlife officials have reported that 68 wolves were taken by trappers in 2020 on or near Prince of Wales Island. Conservationists had unsuccessfully attempted to block the 21-day wolf trapping season from November to December. Alaska Department of Fish and Game officials had ruled that trapping would not pose a danger to the overall wolf population. Conservationists had argued that state and federal officials were allowing unsustainable killings. “If you can catch 68 wolves in three weeks,” Schumacher told CoastAlaska pub...
JUNEAU (AP) - Alaska held the enviable position of having the highest rate of coronavirus vaccinations per capita in the nation as of this week, the state said. As of Monday, more than 80,000 Alaskans had received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, and nearly 18,000 had received both doses, according to a report in the Anchorage Daily News. That does not include shots administered through the departments of Defense or Veterans Affairs but does include vaccinations handled through Indian Health Service partners. That’s a gain in four d...
The first ship built for what would become Alaska's state ferry system sank Jan. 13 in a windstorm and dock collapse in Anacortes, Washington, where the decommissioned Chilkat had been moored to a concrete floating pier. The ship sank about 85 miles north of Tacoma, where it was built in 1957 at a cost of about $300,000 to provide daily service between Juneau, Haines and Skagway. When Alaska entered the union on Jan. 3, 1959, the Chilkat became the first Alaska state ferry, later joined by four...
JUNEAU (AP) - A proposal to split the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services into two organizations has been criticized by health care workers, social service organizations and tribal governments. Gov. Mike Dunleavy announced the reorganization plan last month, saying the department had become too large and its administration too burdensome to operate as a single entity, the Juneau Empire reported Jan. 14. Dunleavy issued an executive order to establish the Department of Health and the Department of Family and Community Services. The...
HAINES – Mark Kelly, 50, manager of the Funny Farm lodge north of Haines relied on a weak Wi-Fi signal and his iPhone’s Siri voice command app to call for help after he was buried and pinned underneath a pile of snow, ice and firewood on Jan. 4. Kelly was listening to a podcast and collecting firewood to feed the boiler of the lodge on Mosquito Lake Road, 30 miles north of Haines, at around 11:30 p.m. Several feet of ice and snow had collected on the woodpile to the point that a cornice had developed. Kelly, a former heliski guide who has bee...
JUNEAU (AP) - Sealaska Corp. has announced plans to get out of the logging business after more than 40 years. The Juneau-based Alaska Native corporation announced the change Jan. 11 in a sign of Southeast Alaska’s economic transition away from logging, CoastAlaska public radio reported. The transition is not expected to affect future profits or dividends, but is part of a long-term strategy to generate ``sustainable value’’ for shareholders, the corporation said. Sealaska CEO Anthony Mallott said in a statement that logging created value for t...
SEATTLE (AP) - Alaska Airlines has banned more than a dozen passengers from all future travel with the company after they refused to wear masks and caused chaos during a flight from the nation’s capital to Seattle. The airline said the 14 passengers were rowdy and argumentative on a Jan. 7 flight from Dulles International Airport, outside Washington, D.C., to Seattle. The flight departed the suburban-Virginia airport the day after pro-Trump rioters stormed and damaged the U.S. Capitol. “Last night, a number of passengers onboard Alaska Air...
ANCHORAGE (AP) - The usual transportation difficulties in rural Alaska have presented unique obstacles for the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, officials said. Dozens of remote villages lack hospitals and road connections, while ultracold freezers required for storage of specific varieties of the vaccine are essentially nonexistent, Alaska Public Media reported. Tribal health care providers responded by mobilizing a massive effort delivering thousands of doses to remote areas. Providers airlifted vaccine to villages using a fleet of...
Wally Smith, 83, a retired industrial arts teacher in Anchorage, donated $1,000 to Haines disaster relief efforts last month because he “had a kindness to repay to those who were kind to me” during a trip to the Southeast community in 1964. Smith was responding to the Dec. 2 mudslide that killed two people, damaged homes and stunned the Lynn Canal community. Back in 1964, Smith was on his way to the Haines ferry terminal bound for the Lower 48, where he would attend graduate school in Colorado. While driving through Canada, a fellow tea...
WASHINGTON (AP) – U.S. Rep. Don Young of Alaska issued a call for bipartisanship among his congressional colleagues while giving the oath of office to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Jan. 3. As the longest-serving member, Young, a Republican, is dean of the House and has the responsibility of swearing in the speaker. Pelosi, a California Democrat, was reelected to the role she’s held since January 2019. Young used the occasion as an opportunity to try to bring together the political parties that have become more deeply divided during Donald Tru...
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump vetoed a bill Jan. 1 that would have gradually ended the use of large-mesh drift gillnets deployed exclusively in federal waters off the coast of California, saying such legislation would increase reliance on imported seafood and worsen a multibillion-dollar seafood trade deficit. Trump also said in his veto message to the Senate that the legislation sponsored by Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., “will not achieve its purported conservation benefits.” Feinstein iss...
JUNEAU (AP) - The Alaska Legislature has required all lawmakers and staff to wear masks during the upcoming session in a bid to stop the coronavirus from spreading. The Legislative Council passed the mandate 11-1 in a virtual meeting the last week of December that determined the rules and guidelines for the session beginning Jan. 19 in Juneau. Only Palmer Republican Rep. DeLena Johnson voted against the policy. Lawmakers and staffers who refuse to have their temperature taken or answer health screening questions will not be allowed to enter...
The year has come to a close, and a new one looms. Many are likely happy to see 2020 go, just as many are also likely eager to see what 2021 has to offer. In either case, this Friday afternoon offers a chance to celebrate in Wrangell fashion; with the annual Polar Bear Plunge. The event will take place at Shoemaker, at 1 p.m. The plunge has been a local tradition for over 20 years now. It had humble beginnings, long ago in the year 2000. In an interview with the Sentinel, Clay Hammer said that...
Led by the Alaska Congressional Delegation, the U.S. Congress has approved more than $3.62 million for the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to continue baseline water quality monitoring at the international border for Southeast Alaska’s transboundary rivers, and to shore up U.S. Department of State involvement on the issue of British Columbia (B.C.) mining, and mining contamination, near rivers that flow into the United States. The funding was included as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, and approved by Congress on December 2...
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) – Alaska Airlines has said it intends to purchase 68 new Boeing 737 MAX planes despite the model having been grounded in 2019 after a pair of high-profile crashes that killed 346 people. The company said in a statement Tuesday that it would only fly the aircraft after its “own assessments, verifications and internal reviews determine that the aircraft is safe throughout our network for our guests and our crews.” The aircraft took its first commercial flight in almost two years with a journey from Sao Paulo to Porto Alegre in...
KODIAK, Alaska (AP) – The Coast Guard has said it responded to a report of an oil spill from one of its own ships off the coast of Alaska. The Coast Guard said in a statement on Sunday that the 180-foot (55-meter) buoy tender boat started to discharge hydraulic oil on Saturday around 9:40 a.m. in Womens Bay, about 420 miles (675 kilometers) south of Anchorage. It was not immediately clear how much oil had spilled, but the tank involved has a maximum capacity of 914 gallons (3 kilolitres), officials said. Crews from the Marine Safety D...
PETERSBURG - Water from this month's heavy rainfall ripped at deformities in a culvert that runs underneath the Public Works yard, opening up a portion of the pipe and causing a landslide near Hammer Slough. The culvert diverts water from a creek that runs parallel to Kiseno St. to Hammer Slough. When 6.63 inches of rain fell over the town on Nov. 30 and Dec. 1, water in the creek became backed up as the culvert struggled under the volume of water, said Public Works Director Chris Cotta. The...
PETERSBURG – After an anxious three months, the rocky mountain goat Kaleb Baird shot with a bow and arrow on the Cleveland Peninsula has been certified by Pope and Young, a conservation club, as the largest billy ever taken down with a bow in the world. "It was a killer animal and a great goat," said Baird of Petersburg. "It's neat that he gets to be recognized as number one." The mountain goat had a final score of 53 1/2 inches, according to Pope and Young. Baird said an official scorer took t...