Anchorage news

• Washington lawmakers inch closer to budget deal after marathon weekend

  26-06-2017 23:51 via ktoo.org
  
  House budget chair Timm Ormsby, second from left, and Senate budget chair John Braun, on right, say they are working to get a budget deal by June 30 to avoid a government shutdown. (Photo by Austin Jenkins/Northwest News Network)
  https://cpa.ds.npr.org/northwestnews/audio/2017/06/062617A_WALEG_web.mp3It’s do-or-die week in Olympia. It’s cliché to say, but if lawmakers don’t pass a budget and send it to the governor for his signature before midnight on Friday, state gover
  
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• Duck pond at Cuddy Park is much cleaner

  26-06-2017 23:50
  
  A “Don’t Feed the Birds” campaign seems to be making a difference when it comes to the duck pond at Cuddy Park.
  Thom Eley with the Anchorage Waterways Council said levels of fecal coliform, the bacteria that comes from bird feces, is normally sky-high this time of year, but two recent tests show the levels have dropped dramatically.
  “I thought it was a fluke at first,” said Eley, so we tested again and basically got the same numbers.”
  Eley said just a year ago
  
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• Man wanted for failing to appear on assault charge

  26-06-2017 23:47
  
  Dominik Spivey. (Credit: APD)
  A 19-year-old man is wanted by Anchorage Police for failing to appear in court.
  Dominik Lacell Spivey has an outstanding warrant for failure to appear related to an assault charge from last March.
  Spivey is described as 5-foot-10, weighing 170 pounds with black hair and brown eyes.
  If you have information on his whereabouts, you’re asked to call APD.
  The post Man wanted for failing to appear on assault charge appeared first on KTVA 11.
  
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• Humpback whale breaches super-close to boat off NJ coast

  26-06-2017 23:22
  
  A New Jersey man videotaped a humpback whale surging out of the water right alongside his small fishing boat last week, and the footage has gone viral.
  The whale showed up in the waters just a mile or so off the northern coast of New Jersey. Paul Ziolkowski, of Union Beach, caught the moment on camera then posted it to Facebook, where he goes by the name “Pauly Walnuts.”
  But kids, you may want to keep the sound on mute since the video features a few colorful expletives as the huge wh
  
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• Story Time w/ Aunt Phil: Military officially moves to Anchorage

  26-06-2017 23:13
  
  On June 27, 1940, Fort Richardson and Elmendorf Field were activated near Anchorage.
  Before the military began building the original Fort Richardson, which later became Elmendorf Air Force Base, Anchorage was a typical small town. In 1938, the city’s 4,000 residents had no paved roads, no street or traffic lights, and the police chief clocked speeders by using his stopwatch.
  But it wouldn’t be long before the sleepy little town would become a hub of military activity.
  When World War
  
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• ‘Stripper boat’ back in business near Homer Spit

  26-06-2017 22:47
  
  The Wild Alaskan, Kodiak’s infamous “stripper boat,” is back in business, this time in Homer.
  Owner Darren Byler says re-opening the vessel is a political statement. He’s calling the boat’s summer tour a “First Amendment Freedom of Assembly” recreational event.
  “The reason I’m back is I’m the kind of guy who don’t like to get bullied by the government,” Byler said.
  He keeps records of his stormy past on the wall of the club.
  
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• TSA finds lobster weighing 20 pounds in checked bag

  26-06-2017 22:40
  
  A lobster was found in a checked bag at Logan Internation Airport. (Credit: Michael McCarthy via Twitter)
  BOSTON — Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents have found a number of strange things in luggage over the years, but their latest unusual discovery is unique to New England.
  CBS Boston reports that a lobster was detected in a JetBlue passenger’s checked bag at Logan International Airport on Sunday morning.
  On Monday, a spokesman shared a photo of the crustacean, whic
  
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• Shareholders re-elect Sealaska board incumbents

  26-06-2017 22:23 via ktoo.org
  
  The Sealaska regional Native corporation is headquartered in downtown Juneau. (Photo by Ed Schoenfeld/CoastAlaska News
  The management slate won this year’s Sealaska board election.
  Three incumbents and a newcomer who ran with them beat out eight independent candidates.
  Results were released Saturday during the Southeast regional Native corporation’s annual meeting, held in Hydaburg, on Prince of Wales Island.
  Another result: A measure to reduce the board’s size failed to attrac
  
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• Suspect wanted for robbing pizza delivery driver

  26-06-2017 22:08
  
  George Wong-Sin. (Credit: Anchorage Police)
  Anchorage Police are searching for a man they say robbed a pizza delivery driver at gunpoint on Sunday.
  The victim reported he’d been robbed in the 4400 block of San Ernesto Avenue, across from Williwaw Elementary School, just before 5 p.m. Sunday.
  The victim said the two people who placed the order met him outside upon arrival. One person, who police identified as 24-year-old George Wong-Sin, threatened the driver with a gun and took the pizza,
  
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• Girl falls from Six Flags ride

  26-06-2017 21:57
  
  NEW YORK — Matthew Howard Sr. was just leaving a New York amusement park Saturday evening with his family when he heard someone screaming for help.
  He looked up to see a young girl dangling about 25 feet off the ground from a slow-moving gondola ride as the sun was setting. Her little brother sat next to her in the green two-person pod, crying hysterically, saying he couldn’t hold on.
  Howard, 47, and his 21-year-old daughter, Leeann Winchell, ran over and positioned themselves under
  
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• Alaska’s orcas battle fishermen for their catch

  26-06-2017 21:35
  
  Killer whales near Metlakatla
  Killer whales have turned the tables on fishermen working in the dangerous waters of the Bering Sea off Alaska. Now the orcas are preying on the fishermen, sometimes stalking them for days at a time before stealing the catch off their lines, a problem that has worsened in recent years.
  According to marine ecologist Robert Pitman of the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, killer whales can recognize the sounds of the fishing boats, especially the hydraulic noise made by
  
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• Archaeologists find Alutiiq fishing method at low tide

  26-06-2017 21:30 via ktoo.org
  
  
  Rocks alignments representing the remains of an intertidal fish trap, Kodiak Island, Alaska. (Photo courtesy the Alutiiq Museum)
  A local archaeologist says there may be the remains of a historic Alutiiq fish trap on the north end of Kodiak Island.
  Those types of man-made formations are rare to discover in the region, he said.http://kmxt.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Fish-Trap-Desroches-June-26.mp3The Alutiiq Museum is in its second year of documenting ancestral sites on Afognak Native Corporati
  
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• Senate Republicans alter health care bill to avoid ‘death spiral’

  26-06-2017 20:53 via ktoo.org
  
  Senate Republicans have updated their plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, attempting to patch a hole that threatened to destabilize the individual insurance market.
  The original Senate bill, unveiled last week, required insurance companies to offer coverage to everyone, including people with pre-existing medical conditions.
  But there was no requirement that individuals purchase insurance. Critics said that created a perverse incentive for healthy people to go without insurance, o
  
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• Supreme Court to hear appeal in same-sex wedding cake case

  26-06-2017 20:33
  
  The Supreme Court is taking on a new clash between gay rights and religion in a case about a wedding cake for a same-sex couple in Colorado.
  The justices said Monday they will consider whether a baker who objects to same-sex marriage on religious grounds can refuse to make a wedding cake for a gay couple.
  The case asks the high court to balance the religious rights of the baker against the couple’s right to equal treatment under the law. Similar disputes have popped up across the United St
  
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• Washington man travels from Puget Sound to Alaska alone on a standup paddleboard

  26-06-2017 20:10 via ktoo.org
  
  
  Karl Kruger arrived at Thomas Basin Boat Harbor in Ketchikan Sunday evening, becoming the first SUP finisher of the Race to Alaska. (Photo by Leila Kheiry/KRBD)https://cpa.ds.npr.org/northwestnews/audio/2017/06/062617TB_paddleboard_web.mp3An Orcas Island, Washington, man has become the first person to complete the Race to Alaska on a standup paddleboard.
  Karl Kruger stroked 750 miles solo from Port Townsend up the Inside Passage, crossing the finish line Sunday evening in Ketchikan.
  A crowd came
  
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• Supreme Court revives parts of Trump’s travel ban as it agrees to hear case

  26-06-2017 19:39 via ktoo.org
  
  The Supreme Court says it will decide the fate of President Trump’s revised travel ban, agreeing to hear arguments over immigration cases that were filed in federal courts in Hawaii and Maryland and allowing parts of the ban that’s now been on hold since March to take effect.
  The justices removed the lower courts’ injunctions against the ban “with respect to foreign nationals who lack any bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States,” narrowin
  
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• Supreme Court decides to hear Trump travel ban arguments

  26-06-2017 17:28
  
  WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has decided to hear arguments on President Trump’s travel ban affecting six countries, mostly Muslim, that are deemed by the federal government to present a higher risk of terrorism to the U.S. The case will be argued in October.
  The high court also lifted most of the injunction blocking President Trump’s travel ban, allowing it to take effect in most instances.
  Here are a few of the highlights from the Supreme Court’s decision to take the c
  
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• Alaskans avoiding Bird Ridge trail following fatal black bear mauling

  26-06-2017 17:13
  
  On a sunny Sunday in Anchorage, there’s not much that’ll keep residents off the trails– but longtime Alaskans Mike Squiers and Randy Bridwell found the trail on Bird Ridge to be mostly empty.
  “There was nobody on the trail. Normally there might be 30 to 40 to 50 people on the trail right now, or more, on a day like today,” said Squiers, who says they only saw a total of three other hikers.
  A predatory black bear killed 16-year-old Patrick Cooper on the mountain a we
  
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• Ombudsman reports show failures by children’s services

  26-06-2017 04:22 via ktoo.org
  
  The seal of the state of Alaska in the governor’s temporary offices in Juneau, June 19, 2016. (Photo by Jeremy Hsieh/KTOO)
  The state’s Ombudsman’s Office has released reports for two investigations into the Office of Children’s Services – both involving the same caseworker.
  In the first investigation, a father who lived out of state was trying to gain custody of his daughter. According to the Ombudsman, the father called the caseworker more than 130 times to tr
  
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• Study: ‘weak’ correlation between warming, Southcentral lightning strikes

  26-06-2017 04:00 via ktoo.org
  
  Lightning sparked about a quarter of the 218 wildfires reported in Alaska as of Monday. But those fires account for 97 percent of the more than 151,000 acres that have been burned by fire so far this year. And more than half of those acres were blackened by five fires around Galena and southwestern Alaska.
  “The top five fires for this year so far have been lightning-started,” says Matt Clay, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Anchorage. During a webinar hosted
  
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• How the Senate health care bill could disrupt the insurance market

  26-06-2017 02:25 via ktoo.org
  
  (Creative Commons photo by tOrange.us)
  Senate Republicans have little margin for error as they prepare for a vote this coming week on a bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Some lawmakers are already raising concerns that the bill could aggravate the problem of healthy people going without insurance, driving up costs for everyone else.
  “If you can get insurance after you get sick, you will,” Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., told NBC’s Today Show. “And without the ind
  
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• ‘Grenfell Changes Everything’: Hundreds Of Homes Evacuated Over Safety Fears

  26-06-2017 02:25 via ktoo.org
  
  Officials evacuate residents of the Chalcots Estate, in London’s Camden borough on Friday evening. Camden’s local council decided to evacuate the hundreds of households due to safety concerns following the devastating fire that killed 79 people in Grenfell Tower. Alastair Grant/AP
  Authorities in London evacuated roughly 650 apartments in a high-rise complex overnight, citing fears that the complex bore many of the safety issues that Grenfell Tower did. Councilmembers for the London b
  
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• At least 150 people killed after oil truck catches fire in Pakistan

  26-06-2017 02:25 via ktoo.org
  
  Updated at 8:20 a.m. ET
  At least 150 people who had gathered to collect fuel from an overturned tanker truck in Pakistan were killed when it caught fire Sunday, according to The Associated Press.
  More than 100 people were injured, many with severe burns.
  “Authorities say most of the bodies are burnt beyond recognition and the death toll is likely to rise,” reporter Abdul Sattar in Islamabad reports for NPR. “Children and women are among the injured.”
  The oil tanker was tr
  
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• AFD conducts water rescue training on Cook Inlet

  26-06-2017 00:37
  
  The Anchorage Fire Department is warning people not to try and walk from the Anchorage shore across to Fire Island.
  Authorities say that too often, attempts turn deadly.
  Anchorage Fireman and their partners from Ted Stevens practiced water rescues Saturday afternoon. They were working with jet skis and a boat.
  AFD says in the summer, people will try to walk across Cook Inlet to Fire Island, get trapped by the rising tide and end up in the water.
  It’s not the depth of the water that proves
  
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• Marijuana board to revisit on-site consumption in July

  26-06-2017 00:28 via ktoo.org
  
  Marijuana. (Creative Commons photo by Katheirne Hitt)
  FAIRBANKS, Alaska (AP) — The Alaska Marijuana Control Board will discuss three different options for on-site marijuana consumption proposed by board members at its next meeting.
  The Alaska Journal of Commerce reports the board will meet July 11-14 in Fairbanks, to discuss proposals by board member Loren Jones, Solodtna Police Chief and board Chair Peter Mlynarik, and member Brandon Emmett.
  Jones’ proposal is it is legal only to tr
  
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• Columbus Day to be known as Indigenous Peoples day in Alaska

  26-06-2017 00:27
  
  From now on, Columbus Day in Alaska will be known as Indigenous Peoples day. Gov. Bill Walker signed House Bill 78 into law Saturday, in Utquiagvik, the town formerly known as Barrow.
  The signing took place at Nalukataq, the Inupiaq whaling festival.
  The setting was particularly symbolic for many there, where the American, Alaska and Inupiat flags all flew high while hundreds of Alaska Natives from the region gathered to celebrate their indigenous traditions. Now, the state will celebrate t
  
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• Secretary Seward statue to be unveiled in Alaska

  26-06-2017 00:21 via ktoo.org
  
  JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — A statue of Secretary William Henry Seward is just days away from being installed in downtown Juneau.
  The Juneau Empire reports the statue commemorates the 150th anniversary of the Treaty of Cession that made Alaska a U.S. territory. The statue arrived in Juneau a few weeks ago after traveling from Seward’s longtime home in New York, through Nebraska and up to Juneau.
  As Secretary of State in 1867, Steward signed and helped negotiate the Treaty of Cession with R
  
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• New children’s dental clinic opens in Southeast Alaska

  26-06-2017 00:21 via ktoo.org
  
  JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — A new children’s dental clinic has opened in Alaska’s capital city.
  The Juneau Empire reports Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium had a grand opening for the clinic earlier this week. The group renovated the lower level of its building in Juneau, adding the pediatric clinic that includes eight beds and an array of bright artwork.
  Director of Dental Services Matthew West says the project has been in the works for three or four years, with an emphasi
  
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• Anchorage’s Swayman, Evingson selected in NHL Draft

  26-06-2017 00:20
  
  Jeremy Swayman’s dad grew up a New York Rangers’ fan. Looks like he will have to root for another “Original Six” team. The Boston Bruins selected Jeremy in the fourth round of Saturday’s NHL Draft.
  The 18-year-old Anchorage native spent the last two seasons as a goalie with the Sioux Falls Stampede in the United States Hockey League.
  “It’s a surprise, but, you kind of work your whole life for it, and it feels kind of good to get that accolade your hard w
  
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