Wrangell Sentinel -

As the Alaska Legislature gets back to work in Juneau, the state population is on the minds of lawmakers. For the 11th consecutive year, more people moved out of Alaska than moved into it, according to new estimates published last week by the Alaska... Full story

Hoonah has submitted a petition to the Alaska Local Boundary Commission to create the state’s 20th organized borough, which would include the city and some lightly populated outlying communities. The Xunaa Borough would include Hoonah, as well as G... Full story

The Juneau school board has approved a series of immediate cost-cutting measures including a hiring freeze, plus exploring the longer-term option of a loan to help deal with an unexpected $9.5 million budget deficit. Members at the Jan. 16 meeting...

The Biden administration has taken action to conserve groves of old-growth trees on national forests across the U.S. and limit logging as climate change amplifies the threats they face from wildfires, insects and disease. Agriculture Secretary Tom...

Alaskans trying to quit their tobacco habits made some significant progress over the past year, according to the annual report released last week by the state’s Tobacco Prevention and Control Program. The program, which includes the Tobacco Quit Line... Full story

Supporters of a ballot initiative that would increase Alaska’s minimum wage, mandate paid sick leave and provide other worker protections submitted more than 40,000 petition signatures to the Alaska Division of Elections on Jan. 9, bringing their c...

Juneau school administrators are facing a severe budget shortfall partly related to flat state funding and declining enrollment. But much of the crisis comes from accounting errors that “drastically” undercounted staffing costs. The city’s schoo...

The commercial tanner crab and golden king crab season in Southeast opens at noon Feb 17. A change this year will require golden king crab fishermen to call in to the Department of Fish and Game every day to report which management area they plan to...

Boeing told employees Monday that it plans to increase quality inspections of its 737 Max 9 aircraft, following the failure of an emergency exit door panel on an Alaska Airlines flight Jan. 5. The inspections come after federal regulators grounded th...

Using an unmanned underwater drone to search a boat that had overturned near Chichagof Island, searchers on Jan. 10 located the bodies of two people who were missing after three others were rescued from the Jan. 9 accident. The three who survived...

An earthquake jolted some Sitka residents awake Thursday night, Jan. 11, but no damage was reported and no tsunami occurred. The Alaska Earthquake Center at Fairbanks said the magnitude 5.9 earthquake occurred at 10:46 p.m. on the seafloor 50 miles s...

For much of the past century, fish hatcheries have been built in the Pacific Northwest, across the U.S. and around the world to boost fish populations where wild numbers have gone down. But an analysis of more than 200 studies on hatcheries programs... Full story

In a major hit to Southwest Alaska’s fishing industry, Peter Pan Seafood will keep its huge plant in the village of King Cove shuttered this winter, meaning that the company won’t be processing millions of dollars worth of cod, pollock, crab, sal... Full story

Alaska was one of 15 states to reject federal funding that would have provided direct grocery assistance this summer to thousands of families with children in the state who are facing increased food insecurity and rising food costs. The new federal...

Successive marine heat waves appear to have doomed much of the chum salmon swimming in the ocean waters off Alaska in the past year and probably account for the scarcities that have strained communities along Western Alaska rivers in recent years, a... Full story

A polar bear found dead on Alaska’s North Slope is the first of the species known to have been killed by the highly pathogenic avian influenza that is circulating among animal populations around the world. The polar bear was found dead in October n... Full story

In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, the leader of Kake’s tribal government asked federal managers to open an emergency hunt, citing the community’s fears about having enough food. The request was approved by a federal management agency, the Fed... Full story

The Boeing jetliner that lost a door panel inflight over Oregon on Jan. 5 was not being used for flights to Hawaii after a warning light that could have indicated a pressurization problem lit up on three separate occasions over the past month, a fede...

Alaska is expected to gain 5,400 jobs in 2024, an increase of 1.7% over the past year and enough to nudge total state employment above 2019 levels for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, according to the newly published annual... Full story

Transgender girls in Alaska are now banned from competing on girls school sports teams. The new rule took effect in November. The board of the Alaska School Activities Association — which regulates school sports in the state — voted 5-3 in Oct... Full story

Just like many other Alaska communities, the service provider in Ketchikan is dropping cable TV and moving to streaming. The Ketchikan Public Utilities Telecommunications Division has announced it will stop offering cable television services in...

Alaska’s campaign ethics commission found that opponents of ranked-choice voting violated the state’s campaign ethics laws for months by funneling most of their funding through a tax-exempt church and inaccurately reporting their funding to the sta...

What if prized rare earth elements could be extracted from seaweed, avoiding the need to dig into the ground for the materials used in technology and renewable-energy equipment? That question will be addressed by a new project to examine whether... Full story

Water is warming up at the Klawock River Hatchery on Prince of Wales Island, a Southern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association facility that fertilizes and incubates 5 million coho eggs each year using Klawock River water. Hatchery manager Troy L...

The Alaska Police Standards Council has voted down a regulation change that would have allowed the state to hire corrections officers as young as 18 years old — the current minimum age is 21. The Department of Corrections floated the proposal as a t... Full story