Wrangell Sentinel -

To keep Alaska communities safe and workloads manageable, Department of Public Safety Commissioner Jim Cockrell said he would need 35% more state troopers than he has now. After he fills the 62 vacancies in the department, he wants to ask for about 9... Full story

United States ocean territory could expand by an area more than twice the size of California, with most of that in ocean areas off Alaska, under a claim being prepared by the federal government. The U.S. State Department in December announced... Full story

Sitka’s Mount Edgecumbe volcano is wired. On Jan. 26, the Alaska Volcano Observatory announced the completion of a new instrument network intended to measure the activity of a volcano that could be awakening after a period of dormancy. The network i... Full story

A new Matanuska-Susitna Borough Assembly resolution urges residents to own weapons and ammunition to compensate for limited local law enforcement in Alaska’s fastest-growing region. The action, which doesn’t have the power of law, reflects ong...

A bill before the House Resources Committee would tighten residency requirements for Alaska sportfishing, hunting and trapping licenses. Community groups have raised concerns that a gap in state law allows people who don’t live year-round in A...

Alaska’s Department of Health risks losing federal funding for its food stamp program, warned a letter from the United States Department of Agriculture on Jan. 30. It said the department is out of compliance with federal standards for the S... Full story

Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy has joined 24 other Republican governors in support of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s decision to ignore a U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing federal agents to remove razor wire installed by Abbott’s administration along the... Full story

Robb Arnold has withdrawn his candidacy to represent Ketchikan, Wrangell and Metlakatla in the state House. Arnold wrote in a statement to the Ketchikan Daily News on Thursday, Feb. 1, that he had ended his campaign. Under state law, Arnold could...

Alaska Airlines has begun flying Boeing 737 Max 9 jetliners for the first time since the aircraft were grounded after a panel blew out of the side of one of the airline’s planes. The airline said it resumed flying the Max 9 with a flight from S...

Southeast salmon fishermen say they weren’t surprised by the news that the nonprofit Wild Fish Conservancy has launched a fresh effort that could shut down Alaska’s king salmon fisheries. Last year, Southeast Alaska king salmon troll fisheries were t...

Unless the Legislature decides otherwise by mid-March, Gov. Mike Dunleavy will take over appointment of the entire nine-member Alaska Marine Highway Operations Board. State law reserves four of the seats for appointment by legislative leaders, but...

The Alaska Legislature failed on Jan. 18 to override Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto of $87 million in one-time additional state funding for the 2024-2025 school year. The vote was 33-26 and did not fall along party or political caucus lines. Forty-five v... Full story

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