Alaska State Troopers report that a multi-agency investigation resulted in the arrest of six people, including two juveniles, related to the fatal July 22nd shooting of 60-year-old Charles Baptiste at a North Pole residence.
Troopers say the six were involved in a plot to rob Baptiste. Baptiste was killed and another man at the residence sustained a non-fatal gunshot wound.
The suspects face a mix of charges, including murder and assault.
Whittier police arrest two men with 33-pound bag of meth
Aaron Bolton, KBBI – Homer
Whittier Police arrested two men who allegedly possessed a backpack filled with 33 pounds of methamphetamine Thursday.
Six suspects in custody in connection with North Pole murder
Dan Bross, KUAC – Fairbanks
Several suspects are in custody in connection with a North Pole murder.
Construction company says its truck didn’t drop deadly rock
Associated Press
A company working on road reconstruction on an Alaska highway south of Anchorage says its gravel trucks were not responsible for the rock that hit a car and killed an 8-year-old boy inside.
Alaska House primary has the most candidates in 22 years
Andrew Kitchenman, KTOO – Juneau
The competition is mostly within the Republican Party.
Taixtsalda Hill wildfire likely human-caused, officials say
Dan Bross, KUAC – Fairbanks
Officials suspect that the 15,000-acre Taixtsalda Hill wildfire near Tok is human-caused. Fire information officer Jim Schwarber says lightning does not appear to be a factor in the blaze which started May 23rd.
After deadly bear attack, hikers in Eagle River weigh risks
Emily Russell, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage
If you live in Alaska, you live in bear country. While the risk of a bear encounter or attack is low, there’s always a chance the worst could happen.
Value of Bristol Bay salmon rises, even as the fish shrink
Austin Fast, KDLG – Dillingham
Bristol Bay’s strong salmon returns stand in stark contrast to other parts of Alaska where the fish have trickled in slowly or seemingly not at all. Statewide, though, fish of all species are coming in smaller.
Halibut dock prices rebound, but upswing may not last
Aaron Bolton, KBBI – Homer
Halibut ex-vessel prices are seeing a slight uptick around the state, which is good news for some fishermen after prices fell about $2 per pound at the beginning of the season.
ALASKAbuds signs lease to house Bethel’s first cannabis shop
Anna Rose MacArthur. KYUK – Bethel
The ink is drying on a lease that could house Bethel’s first cannabis shop. The owner of an Anchorage marijuana store wants to expand his business to Bethel and bring Alaska’s booming cannabis industry to the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.
International journalist exchange brings Pakistani reporters to Anchorage TV station
Lori Townsend, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage
Two young journalists from Pakistan completed their assignments in Anchorage last week. Tarhub Asghar and Shaista Mairaj spent three weeks at an Anchorage Fox News affiliate as part of an international journalism exchange through the U.S. State and Education Departments.
Two young journalists from Pakistan completed their assignments in Anchorage last week. Tarhub Asghar and Shaista Mairaj spent three weeks at an Anchorage Fox News affiliate as part of an international journalism exchange through the U.S. State and Education Departments. Both reporters live and work in Lahore-the capital of Penjab. They spoke with Alaska Public Media’s Lori Townsend and said, when they found out they were getting assigned to Alaska, they packed coats, hats and gloves. Tarhub says she couldn’t believe they were being sent here.
TARHUB: “Why are you sending me to Alaska? It’s so far away.” And they were like, “Don’t worry. People spend like thousands of dollars to go there, and you’re going. We’re sending you. You’re such a lucky person. You have no idea.” Now whenever I think about that statement and the time I have spent here, I feel so lucky. I feel so happy that a lot of people don’t get the chance to come here in Alaska. It’s such a beautiful place with the beautiful people. With beautiful work as well, because of course, we are the ambassadors and we want to tell the people, “Okay. We are going happy. So that means American people are good hosts, and they’re rich with culture and stuff.” So I’m happy with my experience and my attachment as well.
TOWNSEND: How about you Shaista? How has it been for you to be here?
MAIRAJ: When I come to know that my posting was in Alaska, I was very scared. Alaska has snow up on the glaciers. When Alaska comes in my mind, the glaciers are also in my mind. I discussed it with my controller, I said, “It’s very horrible. How could I survive there? How could I go there?” He just gave me a lecture. “Please stop scaring. This is not awful. People live there, OK.” But when I come here in Alaska, you can imagine, when I watch the city as itself, it’s beautiful. Not only beautiful. It is quite similar to my own northern areas.
TOWNSEND: Tell me a little bit about some of the stories that you got to work on while you were here.
TARHUB: Basically I’m a political correspondent back in Pakistan, and I did the same stuff here. The work I have done, I have talked to the governor, I have talked to senators, I have talked to representatives. I have worked on anything, not only for here. For my own station as well. There’s a story like vote by mail, and that was new for me. That is basically not practiced in our country, so I actually made a package for Alaska, Fox Alaska, and also for my TV station. But, one thing that disturbs me is because the people I met here were very generous, very nice, and they’re very nice to my face, but the problem is my colleague who I was working with, Maria, she told me she has lost 20-30 followers because of, “Why is this Muslim girl is on television?” People commenting with angry faces on our packages and stuff. That was a bit disturbing for me. Otherwise, I enjoyed my work. I loved how the public officer is easily accessible to a general public. It’s not the same in Pakistan because we need to get through a lot of departments and we need to get through hassle before talking to any public officer.
The U.S. Coast Guard carried out a rescue on the Chilkat Inlet near Haines today after a canoe carrying 11 people capsized at Glacier Point, nine miles south of the Haines townsite.
At the top of the ticket, both of the competitive primaries for governor and lieutenant governor are in the Republican Party. There are seven Republican candidates to be governor and six from the party running to be lieutenant governor.
Most of the attention right now is focused on the leading candidates for governor: former Wasilla Sen. Mike Dunleavy and former Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell of Anchorage.
Dunleavy has built up a lead, according to polls. Treadwell is trying to make up ground, arguing that he’s better qualified.
In the House, there are 109 primary candidates running, the most since 1996. Twenty-four of the 29 competitive primaries in the Senate and the House are on the Republican side.
Alaska Republican Party Chairman Tuckerman Babcock gave two potential causes for the interest.
One is the fact that the House had a Democratic speaker for the first time in 24 years.
“There’s a lot of interest and excitement in taking the House back. And that’s generated candidates,” Babcock said.
Babcock said the second cause arises from debates within the Republican Party. One of those debates is over whether to repeal the 2016 law known as Senate Bill 91, which overhauled the state’s criminal justice system. And there’s also been a debate on whether to restore permanent fund dividends to the amount set by the formula used until 2016.
The Alaska Republican Party has voted to take the position that dividends should be restored to the full amount.
Reindeer herding is becoming an increasingly attractive economic option for communities in the Norton Sound region. As winter sea-ice cover becomes more unreliable, the traditional practice of hunting for marine mammals is more dangerous.
Some community leaders hope reindeer herds, originally imported from Scandinavia in the late 19th century, could now fill a growing gap in ensuring economic security.
Several Norton Sound communities working to expand their operations.
Richmond Toolie is the chief herder of St. Lawrence Island’s four to five thousand reindeer.
“My uncle Herman — I followed him when I was a teenager, and he taught me everything, while he was the chief herder,” Toolie said. “I enjoy doing it. I love it. I just go out there and drive all around the island.”
On this day, Toolie is working at a mobile reindeer processing plant in Savoonga. The plant is owned by the University of Alaska–Fairbanks and has been here for four years, and Greg Finstad with UAF’s range management program has trained 22 Savoonga community members on how to use it. The plant is basically two big trailers with equipment inside to store, cool, hang and butcher 16 reindeer at a time.
“Before we band-saw them, we cut them in half right here, with a chainsaw. Hang them up and cut them right in the middle,” Toolie said. “We have orders from all over Alaska and Washington.”
Those orders, and others from as far away as Australia, have convinced Savoonga tribal chief Delbert Pungowiyi that the demand for commercial meat is there.
“To us, that’s the only real promise that can really bring a huge difference to our people on the island: where we can sustain ourselves and take care of ourselves as our ancestors have, without pleading to Washington or anyone for any funding,” Pungowiyi said.
Right now, they’re limited to field slaughtering, which Pungowiyi estimates brings about $1,000 per whole carcass. But butchering it professionally, he thinks, could get at least $1,600 per reindeer.
To do that, though, they need to pay for a U.S. Department of Agriculture representative to come inspect the processing facility. They also want to build a permanent processing plant, a new corral, and new roads to make herding the reindeer more efficient.
Pungowiyi says the Native Villages of Savoonga and Gambell are seeking funding from the federal government and elsewhere for these projects. They’re also working with Kawerak, the regional nonprofit corporation, to develop a business plan, and lobbying Senator Lisa Murkowski to come visit and discuss the project.
“Really need to get that in motion because of the food security that we’re losing from the Bering Sea itself,” Pungowiyi said.
Across Norton Sound, in Stebbins, Thomas Kirk feels the same way. He’s the clerk for the community’s tribal association.
“Climate change has affected our sea-ice hunting and our marine mammal gathering,” Kirk said. “The ice is a lot thinner. And having our reindeer is a blessing.”
The herd here is estimated to be over 5,000 head, the largest in the Norton Sound region, and it’s jointly owned by the Native Villages of Stebbins and St. Michael and the chief reindeer herder, Theodore Katcheak.
The group is already selling antlers commercially, to a buyer from California, who resells it to Asian-Americans for traditional medicinal purposes, at $25 a pound.
“I also have other interests in the Asian market that would like to purchase the horns and the meat: Eastern Asia, China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan,” Kirk said.
Kirk says the triparty group wants to work with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to do an aerial survey of the reindeer, to figure out exactly how many are out there and how healthy they are. They’re also hoping to have the mobile processing plant transferred from Savoonga to Stebbins and St. Michael.
Theodore Katcheak, the chief reindeer herder says, the free-range meat is healthier than the reindeer in the freezer at the St. Michael grocery store.
“The color of this meat is dark, because they’re probably feeding in the overgrazed areas,” Katcheak said.
The meat is also a reliable food source for the communities’ residents as marine mammals become less easily obtainable.
In terms of commercial sales, Katcheak says there’s still a long way to go, for the region and for him, personally.
“I see that Sami people — they know how to handle reindeer. They’ve been doing it for many centuries,” Katcheak said. “My age, I’m 70 years old, I’m just like a little baby just waking up; I don’t know what to do. You don’t see no 20 or 30 herders in Alaska. You only see like five or six, maybe seven herds.”
Pungowiyi in Savoonga hopes to change that, by taking reindeer from St. Lawrence Island and reintroducing them to communities like White Mountain that lost their herds to encroaching caribou.
Pungowiyi envisions a coalition of reindeer-herding tribes around Norton Sound that could sell meat collectively, with a central processing plant and freezer in Nome, something the regional Reindeer Herders Association has discussed.
“If we did it right, we could become Alaska’s reindeer capital: the Bering Straits region,” Pungowiyi said.
From Savoonga’s shoreline, the bright-blue water stretches as far as the eye can see on a sunny July day. As late as 1975, though, you might have seen some sea ice here at this time of year. Now, solid sea ice isn’t a guarantee even in March.
But if Toolie, Kirk, Katcheak and Pungowiyi see their vision of a reindeer economy made real, a more solid guarantee of self-sustenance might be on the horizon.
The state government wants to hand dozens of vacant Alaska Army National Guard armories — half of which sit in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta — to local communities.
They were built during the Cold War years to monitor any suspicious activity from the nearby Soviet Union, but have been sitting vacant for about a decade.
The Native Village of Tuntutuliak uses its old armory for hardware storage.
The city of Napakiak will renovate its armory into a community multi-purpose building.
Twenty-six more communities in the Y-K Delta will soon make the decision about how to use their local armory.
“They’re not necessarily large, maybe 1,200 to 1,800 square feet, wooden construction, metal roof, probably metal siding, heating fuel tank on the outside,” Brian Duffy with the Alaska Department of Military and Veterans’ Affairs said.
With the Cold War long over, and Alaska Army National Guard recruitment plummeting, the old armories aren’t needed to conduct surveillance as they did in the past.
“What you would have, were pockets of people that served to look, see, feel, hear things in their communities that were different, and report back,” Duffy said.
The Department will not reap significant savings on maintenance or utilities by transferring these buildings.
“But what we are going to do is avoid what’s becoming, to a greater extent, a liability for the department and the community where you’ve got a building that’s sat vacant for some time,” Duffy said.
Such buildings can attract unwanted activity and relics have become liabilities to the military.
This has been more of a risk than an actual problem so far.
“But the longer they stay vacant, the greater the opportunity is,” Duffy said. “Our goal is to get them off our books and get them into the hands of an organization that can make better use of them than we are right now.”
Duffy encourages interested parties to get started early.
There’s no exchange of funds, but there is paperwork.
Any entity in the community that wants to accept the building. can if a federal agency doesn’t also want it.
Duffy suggests communities contact the Bureau of Indian Affairs or the General Services Administration of the federal government.
The goal is to divest more than 60 armories across the state over the next four years.
Each site will be inspected for pollutants. And any site found to be contaminated or unclaimed by a community will be demolished.
Some armories in the Y-K Delta — including Bethel, Hooper Bay, Kipnuk, Kwethluk and Quinhagak — will be kept by the military as facilities to train and store equipment.
A national organization called the Polaris Project takes young scientists into the field to study climate change in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. They flew participants to a site about 57 miles west of Bethel this year.
But last year, Jasmine Gil, a young scientist from Bethel who participated, said that the group marginalized her project because it relied on traditional knowledge. Now, the organization is trying to make amends.
Darcy Peter was one of the students who returned to the Polaris Project. She is Alaska Native from the Interior village of Beaver. Peter loves the Polaris Project and says that she had a good experience with the organization, but she also saw the fallout last year when fellow scientist Jasmine Gil told KYUK that the organization did not take her project seriously.
“I don’t like how things were handled. I definitely don’t,” Peter said.
Jasmine Gil is from Bethel, and her Yup’ik heritage guides how she conducts her research. She moved with her family to Sitka when she was 10 but spent her summers traveling between Kwethluk and Bethel. She was the only participant from the Y-K Delta last year.
Her project combined traditional Western science and Yup’ik knowledge to find out why lakes are disappearing in the region. In an interview last year, Gil said that some scientists at Polaris tried to persuade her to study something else.
“I said no, no, no, no… this is important to the people here and I want my work here to reflect where I come from; who I am and the people that I care for,” Gil said.
Gil declined to be interviewed for this story. She says that she is moving on from the controversy.
Sue Natali is one of the lead scientists of the Polaris Project, which is part of the Woods Hole Research Center based in Massachusetts. Natali was also present during the controversy last year and claims that at the time, she didn’t know about the tension between Gil and Polaris.
“I was very excited by her science project,” Natali said. “We provided a lot of helicopter time for her, and I really regret that she felt that way because she actually has a really awesome project and really good insight and that was not communicated to me. So as a project leader, what I do is express to everyone to try to communicate with me.”
Now a year later, Polaris is trying to repair the damage. Natali says that they have built in more one-on-one time with students and more group meetings to catch all concerns and potential problems.
Polaris researchers also hosted a community meeting in Bethel this year after their two-week research session ended. As part of the meeting, one of the Polaris Project scientists, Paul Mann, asked the crowd for suggestions.
“What are we missing? And what do you say to the next generation of scientists here about what should be looked at?” Mann asked.
Many in the crowd replied simply with this: interview the elders.
Peter agreed and added that Western scientists actually need to sit down with elders and the community to find out what they want to know. That way, scientists can also start forming relationships with people who have lived in the area for a long time.
“Science is like the black and white, and traditional knowledge is first hand observance; it’s looking at changes over time because we’ve been there for so long versus scientists who just go there, do a few studies, and then bail out,” Peter said.
Next year, Polaris researchers say that they will do two meetings in Bethel: one before the group heads out to do research, and another after it’s concluded. That way, the group can have more insight from the community and also spend more time building relationships.
The Folk School of Fairbanks has a new home – at Pioneer Park. The nonprofit school’s board of directors hopes to attract more students and offer more classes on traditional crafts and outdoors skills in the two buildings they’ve moved in to over the past couple of weeks. Board President Gordon Williams and Operations Director Don Kiely showed off the new facilities a couple of weeks ago and talked about the instruction they hope to offer there.
The old cabin that’ll house The Folk School’s offices and a classroom or two is a bit rough around the edges. But board President Gordon Williams say it’s the perfect place for the school, which for 15 years has offered hands-on instruction on such traditional skills as woodworking and gardening. Along with some 21st-century sustainability classes on subjects like recycling.
“It’s a prime location. I mean, it’s right next to the Nenana (river boat), and Centennial Hall. People walking by to go use the playgrounds and stuff walk right by here all the time,” Williams said. “So, from our standpoint, it’s a great location.”
Williams says the cabin next to the Riverboat Nenana and another nearby building both are located much more conveniently than the big cabin on Beverly Lane off Goldstream Road north of Fairbanks that the school’s been operating out of for nearly four years.
“It wasn’t great, for example, if you want to have an after-school class for kids.”Williams said, “Because parents want to be able to like drop the kids off, go get a coffee, go run and errand, come back. And that far out, that’s not really going to work for an hour, hour-and-a-half class.”
Williams says accessibility won’t be a problem now. And, consistent with the school’s emphasis on sustainability and conservation, students won’t have to drive a vehicle to get there.
“One of the things that’s really huge to me as a member of the board is that you don’t have to have a car to get here,” Williams said. “There’s bus access, there’s bike-trail access, things like that. So that we can service a broader segment of the population.”
Williams says The Folk School should have much greater visibility in Pioneer Park. And he hopes to attract some of the people who go to there with activities it’ll offer at the cabin and the wood shop, located a couple of hundred feet away, near the golden-domed Aviation Museum. He says the school will hold classes in the shop like woodworking open to people of all skill levels.
“There’s classes on the care and maintenance and use of chisels,” Williams said, referring to basic-level instruction. “And then there’s more advanced things. I mean, like classes on boat-making and building. There’s a class about how to build your own pack raft.”
On the walk across the playground to the wood shop, Williams says he hopes the new location also will enable the school to strengthen its relationships with partner organizations, like the Alaska Songbird Institute and Calypso Farm and Ecology Center, that offer expertise and a venue for teaching.
“We’re members of both Explore Fairbanks and the (Fairbanks) Arts Association, and both of those operate here at the park,” Williams said. “And so being able to develop a closer and more active relationship is going to be helpful for us.”
Williams opens the door to the building housing the wood shop and flips the light switch. The lights reveals a big shop with power tools and workbenches lined up against a wall, waiting to be set up. And it’s clear that both Williams and Don Kiely, the school’s operations director who tagged along for the tour, are excited about putting all that space to good use.
“It’s quite a bit larger than the wood shop that we had at Beverly Lane, as well,” Kiely said.
“Twice the square footage,” Williams added, “so, that’s going to be a huge improvement for us.”
Williams says the bigger shop will be great for teaching students how to build such handiworks as traditional birch-bark canoes and functional furniture like the Sand County Almanac chair, inspired by Aldo Leopold’s seminal work.
“There’s something special about when you bring people who are passionate about something they know together with people who are passionate to learn it,” Williams said.
Kiely, a longtime Folk School volunteer and supporter, says that passion comes from believing in the school and the instruction that it offers.
“It’s such a wonderful organization to be a part of – just the energy and the positive-ness,” Kiely said. “And people are so excited to be doing what they’re doing and teaching what they’re teaching. It just overflows with good karma.”
Folk school staff could use some good karma and some volunteer help in getting their new digs set up before they celebrate their opening with an official ribbon-cutting, with classes beginning soon thereafter. This fall’s lineup includes courses on designing floral bouquets and how to butcher a chicken.
Lisa Murkowski isn’t ready to say yet how she’ll vote on President Trump’s latest Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh. The senator who might cast the decisive vote on this lifetime appointment says she’s reading Kavanaugh’s decisions and wants to hear from her constituents.
Using data as a carrot, state hopes to entice interest in special North Slope oil lease sale
Elizabeth Harball, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Anchorage
The state is offering companies a sneak preview on some of the land it’s offering at this year’s oil and gas lease sale.
Nome residents continue wait for Quintillion high-speed internet
Gabe Colombo, KNOM – Nome
Residents of Nome continue to wait to access high-speed internet through Quintillion’s fiber-optic cable, though a handful of business customers are now connecting to it.
Nevada man dies when commercial canoe flips in Alaska river
Henry Leasia, KHNS – Haines
The body of Steven Todd Willis, 50, of North Las Vegas was pulled from the Davidson Glacier River by a Coast Guard helicopter crew.
Y-K Delta communities mull options for National Guard armories
Anna Rose MacArthur, KYUK – Bethel
With the Cold War long over, and Alaska Army National Guard recruitment plummeting, the old armories aren’t needed to conduct surveillance as they did in the past.
Nushagak fishing re-opened after fuel leak from capsized boat
Avery Lill, KDLG – Dillingham
In Bristol Bay, commercial fishing in the Nushagak District re-opened 4 p.m. this afternoon. It has been closed to salmon fishing for nearly a week because a 58-foot vessel sank near Clark’s Point and was leaking fuel.
Juneau’s Housing First eyes $7 million expansion
Jacob Resneck, KTOO – Juneau
Housing First is a model that creates permanent, supportive housing for the homeless. Last fall, a Juneau nonprofit built a 32-unit Housing First apartment complex to serve the community’s most vulnerable residents. Juneau’s elected officials are being asked for a multi-million dollar commitment to more than double the facility’s capacity.
Fairbanks Folk School hopes to expand traditional-skills curriculum at new location
Tim Ellis, KUAC – Fairbanks
The nonprofit school’s board of directors hopes to attract more students and offer more classes on traditional crafts and outdoors skills in the two buildings they’ve moved in to over the past couple of weeks.
Norton Sound communities look to build commercial reindeer economy
Gabe Colombo, KNOM – Nome
Reindeer herding is becoming an increasingly attractive economic option for communities in the Norton Sound region. As winter sea-ice cover becomes more unreliable, the traditional practice of hunting for marine mammals is more dangerous.
The state of Alaska is offering oil companies a sneak preview on three North Slope areas it’s putting up for bid at this year’s oil and gas lease sale.
Under a tax program enacted in 2003, oil companies agreed to release exploration data to the state in exchange for tax credits. Now, the state is offering some of that data on three North Slope areas to other oil companies for a fee. It also has pulled together a wide range of other public data on the areas, like a historical record of bids from previous oil and gas lease sales, and compiled it for companies to peruse on the state’s website.
The state is putting the three areas up for bid at its annual lease sale later this year.
Department of Natural Resources deputy commissioner Mark Wiggin said he hopes the effort attracts new oil companies to Alaska.
“What would be a really fabulous outcome is if we would incentivize or motivate additional explorers to come in and take a look,” Wiggin said.
The three areas add up to about 120,000 acres. One encompasses land and waters north of Prudhoe Bay and another is just south of Prudhoe Bay. The third is in Harrison Bay, east of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
Companies have explored for oil in these areas before. But Kevin Frank, a petroleum geologist for the state Department of Natural Resources, said some recent oil discoveries in Alaska were in places other companies explored in the past.
“There are things that are still out there — there are still discoveries being announced,” Frank said. “That’s part of the excitement right now is the discoveries that are announced are in areas that have been looked at over and over and over again.”
Editor’s note: Mark Wiggin is a member of the Alaska Public Media Board of Directors.
Lisa Murkowski isn’t ready to say yet how she’ll vote on President Trump’s latest Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh. The senator who might cast the decisive vote on this lifetime appointment says she’s reading Kavanaugh’s decisions and wants to hear from her constituents.
The Senate schedule will keep Murkowski in D.C. most of August, so she experimented with a new way to reach her constituents: an online and telephonic town hall. Hundreds of people took part. A dozen got to ask questions. And a funny thing happened: Alaska may be a red state, but not one person asked her to vote for Kavanaugh.
Murkowski told them she heard their concerns.
“And know that I, too, do not want to turn back the clock when it comes to women’s reproductive rights,” Murkowski said. “I do not want to see Roe v. Wade overturned.”
There’s no reason to believe this was a representative sample of Alaskans. The pool was a self-selected group that chose to spend an hour on the line with their U.S. senator.
But the Alaskans who got to ask questions were chosen more or less randomly from that pool. They were not screened by subject matter. At the Capitol on Tuesday, Murkowski said the listeners probably held a range of views, but it was puzzling to her that most – if not all – of the dozen who asked questions were opposed to the president’s agenda. They spoke about tariffs, the separation of families at the border, election security, abortion rights and climate change. And on Kavanaugh, the callers said they were concerned about his position on voting rights, executive power and, of course, Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion case.
“I don’t know why” no one asked pro-Trump questions, Murkowski said. “Perhaps if you are worried or concerned about something you are more apt to weigh in publicly.”
What Murkowski thinks of Kavanaugh matters. She’s one of the few moderate Republicans who sometimes bucks her party. If she and all the Democrats vote no, it would sink the nomination.
So the stakes are high.
Still, Alaska conservatives aren’t too worried. So says conservative talk-show host Dave Stieren, whose show is on KFQD. Stieren said most of his conservative callers voted for Trump because of his potential Supreme Court picks, but Murkowski’s lack of an announced position isn’t ruffling their feathers.
“I have not gotten 20 callers in row, saying ‘Lisa Murkowski better vote for Kavanaugh,” Stieren said. “I don’t think they have the sense that she’s terribly opposed to him.”
As Stieren sees it, Murkowski supports the causes of her Democratic constituents so often, she could easily vote to confirm Cavanaugh without paying any political price for it.
“They need her more than she needs them. ‘So you’re angry at me. Boo-hoo. If I wanted to run and win again, I would run and win again. Where are you going to go?'” Stieren said, channeling an imaginary Murkowski reaction.
Alaska Republican Party Chairman Tuckerman Babcock said he’s not hearing a ton of concern about Murkowski’s vote on Kavanaugh either. He believes Alaska Republicans think she’ll come around to confirm the nominee, even if it takes a while.
“This is very much how she conducts herself. Not a surprise,” Babcock said. “She’s very deliberative about these nominations, and she’s being very deliberative about this one.”
But Babcock said if Murkowski votes against Kavanaugh on philosophical grounds, to try to preserve Roe v. Wade, the political cost to her would be dramatic. He said Murkowski has been clear that she supports Roe, and Alaska Republicans know that and have re-elected her anyway.
“But if she turns down a nominee solely because of one political issue, I think that would be very difficult for most Republicans to accept,” Babcock said.
Alaska Democratic Party Chair Casey Steinau said Alaska women who support reproductive rights will hold Murkowski to account if she doesn’t reject the nominee.
“If she goes ahead and supports Kavanaugh … I think she’s just throwing the support of women – Democrats, Republicans and Independents, all across the board – just throwing their support in the garbage and saying ‘I don’t care what you think anymore and I’ve changed my mind,'” Steinau said. “I think it’s a very strong signal.”
Murkowski said she’s reading up on Brett Kavanaugh to prepare for her meeting with him, so she can form her own opinion.
Her impressions so far? Murkowski said he’s a learned man and a good writer.
The district was closed to salmon fishing for nearly a week. The wreckage of theF/V Pacific Knight, which sank near Clark’s Point last Wednesday, was leaking fuel. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game was concerned diesel floating in the tide rips could contaminate fish and nets.
Area management biologist Tim Sands has been monitoring the situation by air. He flew an aerial survey Tuesday morning.
“We basically flew down to the wreck sight and we saw no fuel coming out, no sign of any sheen anywhere,” Sands said.
Sands added that fishermen on the district’s beaches reported they also did not see or smell fuel on the water.
Even though the district’s sockeye run is tailing off, Sands said there is still significant interest in fishing for pink, coho and the remaining red salmon. At least three major processors are still buying.
Additionally, Sands said that there is “not much threat anymore” of contaminated fish for subsistence users on Dillingham beaches.
The owner of the wrecked vessel is contracting with the private company Resolve Marine on salvage efforts for the 58-foot vessel.
“Right now we are actually in a fuel removal process, so we have divers that are working on the vessel,” Todd Duke, Resolve Marine’s Alaska area manager, said. “They’re doing a couple of things. They’re pumping the remaining fuel off the vessel. They’re also sealing vents. They’re utilizing different techniques to keep any residual fuel from leaking out.”
Duke said the salvage team is also conducting surveys to better understand how the vessel is situated on the riverbed. He said that low visibility and strong tidal current have slowed diver’s efforts.
When the Pacific Knightsank, over a thousand gallons of fuel were on board. Duke said that some remains on the vessel and that divers have removed a “substantial amount,” but could not provide a specific figures.
After the remaining fuel is pumped off, the owner and insurance company will decide whether or not to remove the sunken boat.
A group of Alaska Native teenagers premiered a bilingual hip-hop video on Monday showcasing Tlingit culture and Southeast Alaska.
Although goofy, the point of the project was to give local youth a chance to take pride in their heritage and the place they come from.
The video is called “Ix̱six̱án, Ax̱ Ḵwáan,” which translates to “I love you, my people.”
Throughout the video, AJ Hoyle blends Tlingit and English lyrics together over a Native drum beat.
Hoyle raps with a hip-hop star’s swagger across scenes from Southeast Alaska, including the center of a canoe full of paddlers, fields of fireweed and the back deck of a ferry.
But the video and lyrics are fun, silly and, at times, absurd.
Bananas feature prominently, for some reason. They eat them, throw them and dance with them on camera.
Hoyle wrote most of the lyrics himself.
“So I was the rapper, also known as the emcee,” Hoyle said.
Holye has written raps before and speaks Tlingit pretty well, but this was his first time rhyming in another language.
That’s why some of the lyrics seem random, even while playing with some familiar hip-hop themes.
“I pick those blueberries / I love my mom / I smoked a fat pound of salmon / Ix̱six̱án, Ax̱ Ḵwáan,” Hoyle raps.
Hoyle also included a shout out to “This is Angoon,” a Southeast Alaska hip-hop favorite by T.N.T. and Swerv Merv. That video is a couple years old now.
“You gotta shout ‘em out or else they don’t get no publicity no more,” Hoyle said. “And like, if I have to shout out ‘This is Angoon,’ that’s good, because now all of Alaska’s known.”
The video shows the group canoeing on Auke Lake, exploring Haines, riding the ferry, fishing and picking blueberries.
Everything from the video production to ferry tickets and snacks were paid for through grant money promoting health and well-being under a tribal suicide prevention program.
“So when we were doing our storyboard for the lyrics, we wanted to have images that illustrate indigenous life in Southeast,” Will Kronick said. Kronick coordinates the suicide prevention program for the Tlingit & Haida Central Council.
Kronick said the grant was fairly open-ended, so he let the students choose what they wanted to do.
“They decided, ‘Let’s do a music video!’ And all the different scenes came out of that, too, because students wanted to do outdoor things, they wanted to go canoeing, they wanted to go fishing. So really, all of the ideas came from students,” Kronick said.
Kronick, Hoyle and another student, Marcel Cohen, worked on the lyrics for about a month.
Once they had them, it took two days to produce the song with help from Joshua LaBoca, a sound engineer who also helped produce the video. That took about 10 days.
“I didn’t do any micromanaging of them. All I said was do what you do, do what you know and go from there,” LaBoca said. “They weren’t camera shy on each of the days and that’s what made the whole thing smooth, that’s what made it fun.”
The seven students who worked on the video range from 13 to 17.
Most attend high school in Juneau, except for Jacob Brouillette. He’s from Elim, outside of Nome.
“I was visiting for the summer and I was pretty much loafing around then all of a sudden my Grandma wanted me to get out of the house,” Brouillette said.
Since he’s Yupik and Inuit, he contributed a little bit of his own culture for the video. He demonstrates a broad jump common at events like Native Youth Olympics.
So what did the teenagers take away from the experience?
“New friends and a lot of days without sleep,” Cohen said.
“It’s only OK to say ‘I smoke a fat pound of …’ if ‘salmon’ is at the end,” Hoyle said.
As for their next project, the group already has plans for a music video inspired by Childish Gambino’s “This is America.”
Expect “This is Alaska” to hit the internet sometime in the not-too-distant future.
Watch “Ix̱six̱án, Ax̱ Ḵwáan (I Love You, My People)”:
About 10 volunteers stand around a table watching poll worker Darlene Heisserer during a mock election. She’s been volunteering for close to 10 years and still stumbles on some of the questions. It’s a lot to remember. Scenarios range from voters coming in without identification to absentee voters wanting to vote in-person to latecomers wanting to vote after the polls have closed.
A volunteer rushes in out-of-breath, playing the part convincingly.
“Hi, hi, hi I know, it’s 8:02, but there was a bad accident on Lake Otis, and I got here as quickly as I could, and it was an act of God. Can I please vote anyway?” the role-playing volunteer asked.
Everyone laughs.
Heisserer explains she’ll have to fill out a question ballot because they’ve already closed the polls for the day.
The mock election is part of a poll worker training in Anchorage, led by Julie Husmann from the Division of Election ahead of the August 21 primary.
It’s been a hard year for recruiting, Husmann says. They run a youth ambassador program that pays high school students to work the polls and they employ members of the Job Corps program, but most of their workers are volunteers.
“Part of the reason we don’t have the election workers because the people who’ve consistently done it for years and years, they are aging and they can’t do it anymore,” Husmann said. “We’re not getting that new, fresh young blood to continue on.”
Hussman explained to the volunteers that in the primary election, candidates for the Democratic, Independence and Libertarian parties are listed on one ballot and Republicans are listed on the other. Registered Republican, Undeclared and Nonpartisan voters can opt for either ballot while the others only get one choice. That’s because each party makes its own rules.
Husmann says that maintaining voter privacy while helping them understand their options is imperative. She points to a sign that details each ballot’s party affiliations.
“Let’s say they have a choice of a ballot. They’d say, ‘You have a choice of either ballot. Could you please point to whichever one you’d like to receive?’ And then they can point without having to state it out loud,” Husmann said.
Husmann went on to explain that the state prohibits electioneering within 200 feet of a polling place and that includes carrying signs; wearing a candidate’s T-shirt, campaign button or hat; or discussing ballot measures. Then, she demonstrates how to feed a sample ballot into a sturdy black box.
Their current equipment is slated to be upgraded by 2020. Still, Husmann says that the current system doesn’t compromise security. She cautions volunteers to always keep equipment and ballots under lock and key and then asks for any questions. A new volunteer pipes up.
“Any kind of ID works it doesn’t have to be photo?” the volunteer asked.
“Nope, in the state of Alaska we do not ask for photo ID,” Husmann said.
Over the last decade, several states have passed new voter ID laws. Proponents of the laws say they combat election fraud. Opponents say the laws target vulnerable populations who may not have easy access to photo identification like the homeless.
“A lot of places may not have a way of getting a photo ID. Let’s go out to a village, maybe they do not have the accessibility to get photo id,” Husmann said.
Husmann says that Alaska has other ways of combating voter fraud. For example, their system tells them if a voter has already cast an absentee ballot or voted early. A utility bill or, in many cases, a verbal identification from someone working at the polling place is enough to confirm someone’s identity.
Husmann ended the three-hour training with a touch of humor.
“Don’t be scared, it’s gonna be okay. Only give out one ballot is my main thing,” Hussman laughs. “Just because we have two, everybody does not get two. They get one.”
Voters can also choose to vote early or absentee. Early voting starts August 6. The primary includes nine gubernatorial candidates and Alaska’s U.S. Representative seat. The general election takes place on Tuesday, November 6.
Alaska Public Media’s Wesley Early contributed to this story.
Residents of Nome continue to wait to access high-speed internet through Quintillion’s fiber-optic cable, though a handful of business customers are now connecting to it.
The system came online in Northwest Alaska on December 1, and Nome’s residents are the only ones waiting out of the five communities that are on the cable, including Kotzebue, Point Hope, Wainwright and Utqiaġvik.
In 2012, the Anchorage-based telecommunications company Quintillion announced its plans to build a 1,200-mile undersea fiber-optic cable from Prudhoe Bay to five coastal communities in northwest Alaska, connecting them into the company’s road-system network.
Quintillion said the fiber-optic technology could allow for internet speeds up to 16,000 times faster (100 gigabits per second vs. .006 gigabits per second) than current satellite or terrestrial tower-based broadband service in Nome and Kotzebue.
Initially, the targeted turn-on date was 2014, but a series of delays meant the cable wasn’t completed and operational until December of last year (2017).
Kristina Woolston is Quintillion’s vice president of external relations. She says there have been few problems with the system since the launch.
“We’re pleased that for two winters now our system has performed flawlessly, and we don’t expect that to change,” Woolston said. “We’ve spent an awful lot of time and resources on installing and engineering a system that is both resilient and will stand the test of time, and we’re excited about where we’re at right now.”
But Quintillion is only the owner of the infrastructure; it doesn’t sell cable bandwidth directly to customers. Instead, third-party providers — companies like GCI, TelAlaska and AT&T— can purchase capacity on the cable and then sell it to customers.
These providers negotiate with Quintillion on price, packaging and other logistics. And until deals are finalized, non-disclosure agreements often prevent information about the negotiations from being released.
Woolston would not give specifics about any talks Quintillion is having with providers.
“Every community is unique, and every provider is unique, and I can’t speak to the nature of the conversations we’ve had with providers, but I think it’s worth noting that Quintillion has made wholesale capacity on a broad base, either from large capacity down to very, very small capacity offerings to multiple providers, and we’re getting close,” Woolston said.
Woolston says Quintillion’s pricing is “significantly lower” than terrestrial or satellite service.
One provider that has confirmed business customers in Nome is Alaska Communications System (ACS). Heather Marron, ACS manager of corporate communications, says the company has been providing business service to Kawerak, Inc. since January 15, and is also now serving one other organization in Nome; but she declined to specify that organization, saying ACS had not received permission from the entity to release its name.
Besides the two organizations served by ACS, Nome Public Schools (NPS) switched in March from GCI to Quintillion fiber-optic service through Leonardo Diagnostic/Retrieval Systems (DRS), which primarily serves military clients. NPS IT Director Jacob Phillips could not be reached for further information at the time of this story’s airing.
The University of Alaska Fairbanks Northwest Campus is also now online with Quintillion fiber service as of May, through AT&T.
Northwest Campus Director Bob Metcalf says it’s an upgrade for administrative staff, who have to exchange a lot of information with the main campus in Fairbanks.
“Whereas sometimes they’d have to wait for screens to refresh and be ready for the next entry, it was a lot quicker,” Metcalf said.
Metcalf says he’s hopeful the fiber-optic internet will make it easier to connect to UAF teleconferences and events around the state. But he says video streaming still isn’t that much quicker.
“It was better, I’m pretty sure, than what we would have been getting on the satellite. But it still buffered, and it would still stall. Not so much that it was what we would do in the past, and just say, ‘Agh, this is no good,’ and just disengage, but still not seamless.”
And Metcalf says they’re also conscious that the campus serves a lot of people outside Nome who still don’t have great internet access.
“Still, a lot of our students and a lot of our communities that do rely on the old satellite connections, or, now, it’s cell service,” Metcalf said. “(We want to make sure) that we’re still staying connected with them and provide access that they can actually use. So, we don’t want to leave anyone behind.”
The City of Nome — including Nome Joint Utility System (NJUS) and the Nome Police Department — is also set to go online with Quintillion fiber service, by the end of July.
NJUS Assistant Manager Ken Morton says their current provider, AT&T, is switching them onto Quintillion’s infrastructure. Morton hopes that’ll help with.
“Less lag. Quicker service. Should make the billing process easier,” Morton said.
Dana Handeland, the city’s payroll accounting technician, says the city still has no plans to provide direct service to Nome residents.
And as of right now, none of the major providers have plans to do that, either.
GCI has not signed on to provide service through Quintillion, even for businesses. Last year, GCI completed its own telecommunications project: the 300-million-dollar TERRA ring, or Terrestrial for Every Rural Region in Alaska. TERRA provides high-speed terrestrial broadband internet to 84 Western-Alaska communities, from the Northwest Arctic to Bristol Bay.
In January, Quintillion’s Woolston said the two companies were in discussions, but GCI’s director of corporate communications, Heather Handyside, wouldn’t confirm whether those have continued or if anything has been decided.
“We are always open to working with companies and partners to deliver service, and that depends on the reliability of the service and cost points and if it is affordable for our customers,” Woolston said. “So if it looks promising, that’s always a potential in the future.”
Representatives of another telecommunications provider in Nome, TelAlaska, could not be reached for information about negotiations with Quintillion.
ACS spokeswoman Heather Marron says her company doesn’t have any definite plans to expand into residential service in Nome. When pressed for more specifics about whether Quintillion’s infrastructure is being considered, she responded:
“We’re always looking at ways to economically expand our network,” Marron said.
Another company looking to expand its services is Trinity Sails and Repair (TSR), an automobile repair shop in Nome.
Owner Rolland Trowbridge says he’s already providing unlimited residential internet plans via satellite for $299 a month, but says he’s also in negotiations with Quintillion to provide residential internet through the fiber-optic cable.
“We’ve got this game-changing, impossible thing: We have fiber-optic in Nome, Alaska, where all the way down the west coast there are towns much bigger than us that don’t have any chance of getting fiber-optic,” Trowbridge said. “And we have some big players in the game that are well-established here, but they’re not accessing it.”
So Trowbridge is trying to break open the market, but he says there’s a catch.
“Right now, nobody wants to go first,” Trowbridge said. “Because the person that goes first is going to set the standard, the price, and then everyone else is going to cut them down by a little bit.”
Another stumbling block, Trowbridge says, is that because of the location, Quintillion doesn’t have the ability to scale up the connection: They want the full subscriber money up front, money he doesn’t have.
So as a workaround, Trowbridge says he’s buying business service through ACS or DRS, and planning to start offering a few residential connections to Quintillion’s fiber to people he knows personally. He wants to see how that goes for now as he continues to negotiate with Quintillion itself.
But Trowbridge says for Nomeites dreaming about super-cheap and super-fast internet on Quintillion.
“I’ve been in the number-crunching sessions with some pretty big players in the game, and the reality is that what you’re paying — in the $150 to $300 range for internet — probably isn’t going to change,” Trowbridge said. “What will more likely change is that speeds will go up, and your limitations, your caps, or how much data you can actually use, will go away or it will also go way up.”
But Trowbridge estimates that there might not be any residential fiber-optic internet plans in Nome for 18 months.
Meanwhile, Quintillion is moving forward with plans to build more undersea cables to Tokyo and London, and also says it’s looking at expanding the cable into “a handful” of additional communities in Western Alaska. Spokeswoman Kristina Woolston would not comment on which ones.
“We have always said we intend to connect to other Alaska communities as we develop our international paths, and that has not changed,” Woolston said. “And we look forward to making some announcements here in the near future.”
Woolston emphasizes that the company is actively working with providers to iron out agreements for residential service. But neither she nor providers would give a concrete timeline for when those deals might be announced. TSR is so far the only company to even confirm that a path to residential fiber-optic internet might be in the works.
If you live in a place that’s particularly vulnerable to climate change, you want to know specifics about what that change is going to look like in the future: how high can you expect storm surges to be? How much is the permafrost going to thaw, and how fast? A Department of Energy project in Alaska is trying to get the Arctic closer to some of those answers.
On a spot of uneven tundra just a 15-minute drive from downtown Utqiaġvik, Alistair Rogers stands surveying his experimental domain: several short greenhouse-looking structures connected by a webbed plastic pathway.
Rogers is a plant physiologist at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York. He’s part of a team of scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy who are working at four sites around Alaska.
Their project is called Next-Generation Ecosystem Experiments, or NGEE Arctic, and they’re looking at some of the natural processes that happen on land in northern Alaska — like microbial activity in the permafrost, the spread of shrubs across the tundra and, in Rogers’ case, how tundra plants interact with the atmosphere.
Inside one of the greenhouses, Rogers’ colleague Kim Ely bends over a small, boxy piece of equipment.
“What I have here is a machine that we’re measuring photosynthesis and respiration rates [with],” Ely explained. “And it’s currently clamped on a little leaf down here that’s within the measurement chamber.”
The humming machine has a name tag stuck on the top, partly so it doesn’t get mixed up with the other machines, and partly because Rogers is a bit of a sports fan.
“They’re all named after New York Yankee players,” Ely said. “So there’s Bernie, and Andy, and Jorge, and Derek, and Mariano.”
The photosynthesis measurement being taken by the “Bernie” box will eventually become… math.
“Photosynthesis for example,” Rogers said. “There’s a bunch of equations which describe how the holes on the leaves open up and let CO2 in and let water out.”
Those equations will be used to make projections about how the Arctic will be impacted by climate change.
While there’s been a good amount of data collected on that kind of thing in different parts of the world, like in the grasslands and temperate forests, in the Arctic there’s been hardly any.
“What we’re trying to do is make better predictions so that we can basically provide policy-makers with more useful, actionable information,” Rogers said.
Already, Rogers says that his team has gathered data that’s helped revise some previous assumptions about how Arctic vegetation works. They hope that the combined work of all the teams on the project will refine their understanding of what may happen in the Arctic of the future.
The data is publicly available; scientists working on climate projections — or any other research — can access it online.
If the icebreaker part sounds familiar, that’s because last year’s defense authorization bill had something similar, but it was stripped out before final passage.
This year’s bill, though, is on its way to the president’s desk for his signature.
Congress included a nonbinding note with the bill saying the first of the six heavy icebreakers should be delivered by 2023.
The bill also allows $287 million in military construction projects for Alaska, according to Sen. Dan Sullivan’s office.
The annual bill authorizes Pentagon programs and provides a budget outline, but the actual spending is decided in the appropriations bills Congress has to pass each year to keep the government operating.
Tasha Kahele is a native Hawaiian. In April, she opened Aloha Poke Stop. Then in May, she got a letter from a Chicago-based chain demanding she change her restaurant’s name.
“I may be a little bias, but think we make some of the best poke in Anchorage here,” Kahele said, sitting at a table in her restaurant.
In Hawaiian, the word poke means to dice, cube or cut. At Kahele’s shop, you can order cubed, raw fish with wasabi ginger, have it Hawaiian style with limu– the Hawaiian word for seaweed, even California style with avocado, crab, and cucumbers.
Poke is a staple of the native Hawaiian culture.
“We have poke at our luaus, we have poke at our get-togethers,” Kahele explained.
Another staple of that culture is the word Aloha.
“When you walk into a business that has ‘Aloha,’ and you have a Native Hawaiian family working in [the business], you can expect that kind of spirit, that kind of food, that kind of experience when you walk in the door,” Kahele said.
But just weeks after opening, Kahele got a letter. It was from a lawyer representing the Chicago-based Aloha Poke Company, which is owned and operated by non-Hawaiians.
“Your use of ‘Aloha,’ and ‘Aloha Poke’ must cease immediately,” the letter read.
Kahele was devastated, but knew she couldn’t afford the legal fees to fight it.
“This is not our first business, so I understand the copyright [law], which is why we are so torn,” Kahele said. “We knew that we’d have to comply, but this is kind of different. [Aloha] was a word that they should never have been able to trademark or copyright, especially those two words [Aloha and Poke] together.”
A letter similar to Kahele’s was made public after it was sent to another native Hawaiian business owner. It spread online, creating a massive, angry uproar.
The Aloha Poke Company has since apologized on its Facebook page. To those who care about Hawaiian culture, it said, “we want to say to them directly how deeply sorry we are that this issue has been so triggering.”
“It’s hard to accept an apology that doesn’t sound so genuine,” Kahele responded. “It leaves out a lot.”
On top of that, the company is still insisting it owns ‘Aloha’ and ‘Aloha Poke’ when used in connection with restaurants, catering and take-out service.
Kahele said it’s not right for a company to try to take ownership of her people’s native language.
“I know some people are like, ‘[Aloha] is just a generic word, everyone says it,’” Kahele said. “But not to our people, it’s not. Aloha encompasses everything,” Kahele explained. “We live aloha, we give it, we share it. It’s not to be restricted and I think that’s why it’s so triggering to people and it’s so offensive and it’s so hurtful. It’s hurtful– for our family it’s hurtful.”
For native Hawaiian’s like Kahele, though, this appropriation of her culture is not new.
“Hawaii has been commercialized and colonized and our culture has been appropriated in so many ways,” Kahele said.
Like, Kahele said, associating any Hawaiian style food with pineapple. Customers will come into her shop and ask about her traditional style of poke.
“They’re like, ‘Oh, the Hawaiian style poke– does that have pineapples in it? And I’m like, ‘No, it has a very traditional nut base–kukui nut base– that makes it Hawaiian.”
Kahele’s restaurant shows off her traditional food and native culture. It’s also a family business, which is why Kahele chose to rename her shop Lei’s Poke Stop, after her daughter.
“If at another time we have to fight anyone for the name ‘Lei,’” Kahele said, “good luck.”
Congress authorizes six icebreakers in Pentagon bill
Liz Ruskin, Alaska Public Media – Washington D.C.
The nation’s annual defense policy bill cleared Congress Wednesday with a pay raise for the troops and a provision allowing up to six icebreakers.
Following ‘severe’ computer virus, Mat-Su borough issues disaster declaration
Casey Grove, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage
A computer virus disrupting Matanuska-Susitna Borough services has prompted a disaster declaration due to its “severity and magnitude.”
Alaska’s draft climate action plan includes carbon tax on page 43
Elizabeth Jenkins, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Juneau
Governor Bill Walker’s Climate Action Leadership Team has been discussing a robust draft plan to tackle climate change.
National chain forces native Hawaiian to drop “Aloha Poke” from Anchorage restaurant
Emily Russell, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage
Tasha Kahele is a native Hawaiian. In April, she opened Aloha Poke Stop. Then in May, she got a letter from a Chicago-based chain demanding she change her restaurant’s name.
Experiments in Northern Alaska seek to improve projections for a changing Arctic
Ravenna Koenig, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Fairbanks
“What we’re trying to do is make better predictions so that we can basically provide policy-makers with more useful, actionable information.”
Here’s what you need to know before voting in the August primary
Erin McKinstry, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage
Voting may seem simple enough. You head to your precinct, fill out your ballot and feed it through a machine, but the scenarios election workers face at the polls can get a lot more complicated. Alaska Public Media headed to a poll worker training in Anchorage to learn the ins and outs of voting in Alaska ahead of the August primary.
Science program tries to make amends after sending mixed signals to native youth in Y-K Delta
Krysti Shallenberger, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Anchorage
Last year, Jasmine Gil, a young scientist from Bethel who participated in Polaris, said that the group marginalized her project because it relied on traditional knowledge. Now, the organization is trying to make amends.
Juneau teens rap about Tlingit culture in new bilingual music video
Adelyn Baxter, KTOO – Juneau
The song features rhymes about picking blueberries, Southeast Alaska and smoking “a fat pound of salmon.”