Anchorage news

• LIVE: Gov. Walker discusses special session

  17-07-2017 23:52
  
  Governor Bill Walker will hold a press conference at 2 p.m. Monday to discuss the second special session of the 30th Alaska Legislature.The post LIVE: Gov. Walker discusses special session appeared first on KTVA 11.
  
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• Doctors find 27 contact lenses in woman’s eye

  17-07-2017 22:54
  
  (Credit: The BMJ)
  LONDON — Doctors intending to perform cataract surgery on a 67-year-old woman in Britain found something rather unexpected: 17 contact lenses mashed together in her right eye.
  In a case report published Monday in the journal BMJ, the doctors said that the woman had worn monthly disposable contact lenses for 35 years; she had “deep set eyes” and poorer vision in that eye, which they said might have contributed to a failure to remove some of the lenses.
  The doct
  
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• Hiker dies of heart attack on Flat Top

  17-07-2017 22:25
  
  A tourist died Sunday afternoon after suffering a heart attack while hiking Flat Top Mountain.
  Alaska State Troopers received the report just after 4 p.m. Sunday and Anchorage Fire, Life-Med and a State Park Ranger responded to the trail head.
  Troopers say 70-year-old David Irwin, of Georgia, had a heart attack and died.
  Irwin’s body was taken to the State Medical Examiner’s Office.
  The post Hiker dies of heart attack on Flat Top appeared first on KTVA 11.
  
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• Why one Ohio lawmaker wants first responders to ignore opioid overdose calls

  17-07-2017 22:07
  
  Middletown City Councilman Dan Picard. (Credit: CBS News)
  The opioid crisis sweeping the country is putting a growing financial and emotional strain on many communities. More than 4,000 people died from unintentional drug overdoses last year in Ohio alone.
  Many coroners in the state say the death toll will be higher this year.
  CBS News correspondent Tony Dokoupil visited Middletown, Ohio, where the sheriff is refusing to allow deputies to carry the opioid antidote naloxone because of safety conc
  
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• Home Depot fires 70-year-old Army veteran for confronting shoplifters

  17-07-2017 22:00
  
  PEARLAND, Texas — A 70-year-old Army veteran has been fired from a Houston-area Home Depot after trying to stop suspected shoplifters from taking thousands of dollars’ worth of merchandise.
  KTRK-TV in Houston reports that Jim Tinney says he was fired last month from the store in Pearland.
  Tinney says he was trained to not confront shoplifters and knows he violated company policy, but that his military training just kicked in when he noticed three men attempting to steal tools. He thr
  
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• Air Station Kodiak rescue swimmers grant boy’s wish

  17-07-2017 21:14 via ktoo.org
  
  Andrew Bishop, 8, right, was named an honorary petty officer third-class by the U.S. Coast Guard Air Station Kodiak as part of his Make-A-Wish to be a rescue swimmer. (Photo by Meredith Manning/USCG)
  The rescue swimmers of Air Station Kodiak recently made a young boy’s dream come true. Andrew Bishop, an 8-year-old from Woodland, Washington, qualified to have his wish to become a Coast Guard rescue swimmer granted by the organization Make-A-Wish Foundation Alaska & Washington.
  The found
  
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• Story Time with Aunt Phil: Founding Fairbanks

  17-07-2017 21:10
  
  During the gold-rush heyday, communities like Girdwood, Hope and Circle City teemed with thousands of hopeful fortune seekers. But as stampeders’ desires for golden riches turned into the reality of lost dreams, most gold-rush boomtowns dwindled into little more than faded memories.
  A discovery in July 1902 birthed a gold rush town that has stood the test of time, however. Fairbanks can trace its roots to one merchant, Elbridge Truman Barnette, a man who wanted to position himself as a sup
  
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• ADN reports large salaries, small workload for state fisheries commission

  17-07-2017 21:04 via ktoo.org
  
  
  The House Fisheries Committee heard public testimony on House Bill 112 Thursday morning. The bill would eliminate the Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission.
  Two state commissioners are making big money even though they don’t have much work left to do. That’s the story recently reported by Nathaniel Herz with the Alaska Dispatch News, who investigated the state’s Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission.http://media.aprn.org/2017/ann-20170712-04.mp3“There are some i
  
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• Dunleavy announces plans to run for governor in Alaska

  17-07-2017 20:21 via ktoo.org
  
  Sen. Mike Dunleavy, R-Wasilla, during a Senate Finance Committee meeting on April 3, 2017. (Photo by Skip Gray/360 North)
  JUNEAU — A Republican state senator has announced plans to run for governor in Alaska.
  U.S. Sen. Mike Dunleavy of Wasilla on Monday filed with the Alaska Public Offices Commission a letter of intent to run.
  The election will be held next year. Gov. Bill Walker, a Republican-turned-independent, has not formally announced whether he’ll seek re-election.
  Dunleavy had
  
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• Martin Landau, Oscar-winning actor, dead at 89

  17-07-2017 18:34
  
  LOS ANGELES — Martin Landau, the chameleon-like actor who gained fame as the crafty master of disguise in the 1960s TV show “Mission: Impossible,” then capped a long and versatile career with an Oscar for his poignant portrayal of aging horror movie star Bela Lugosi in 1994’s “Ed Wood,” has died. He was 89.
  Landau died Saturday of unexpected complications during a short stay at UCLA Medical Center, according to a statement sent to CBS News by his publicist Dic
  
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• Senate health care bill on brink of collapse, vote tally shows

  17-07-2017 18:24
  
  Two Republican senators have already said they’ll oppose a second version of leadership’s health care plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, and one more could kill the bill, although, with Arizona Senator John McCain’s absence, the vote has been delayed.
  The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) was expected to release a cost estimate of the revised legislation Monday, but on Sunday said that estimate would be delayed. Some Republican senators had been awaiting the CBO
  
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• Anchorage mom copes with losing son to drugs

  17-07-2017 18:17
  
  In late May, 25-year-old West High School graduate Dylan Fuhs had a passport photo taken. His mother says he planned to leave the country for treatment for a heroin addiction. That photo would be Dylan’s last picture ever taken. He didn’t make the treatment trip.
  On June 5, he was found dead in his Anchorage home of an overdose. His mother says a needle was still stuck in jeans from an injection in his leg.
  Dylan’s mother, Karen Malcolm-Smith, would rather focus on something el
  
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• Miners’ Brooks crowned ABL Home Run Champion

  17-07-2017 18:11
  
  The 2017 Alaska Baseball League All-Star Sunday started with a bang, as the top college players in the summer league competed in the annual Home Run Derby.
  Eleven players from five teams took their swings in round one, with only four advancing to the second round. From there, Miners infielder Nick Brooks faced Chinooks pitcher Preston White in the third and final round.
  Each player had three minutes to launch as many balls over the fence as he could. One 30 second timeout was also available for
  
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• Harvesting Alaska: Shrimping in Prince William Sound

  17-07-2017 18:08
  
  When you think of harvesting from the ocean this time of year, most people think of fish like salmon and halibut. However, for many people in Prince William Sound, it’s all about the shrimp.
  At first, it was an excuse for Emmie and Mark Swanson to get out on the water. Mark is a retired Coast Guard commander, and their boat, the Swedish phrase for ‘sailing summer cottage,’ is their relaxing retreat. That is until they discovered that shrimping was addicting. Their enthusia
  
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• More than 1 ounce of meth seized by Ketchikan police

  17-07-2017 17:28
  
  KETCHIKAN, Alaska (AP) – A nearly month-long investigation by the Ketchikan Police Department has resulted in the seizure of more than 1 ounce (28 grams) of methamphetamine.
  The Ketchikan Daily News reports  the department began investigating June 20 after a suspicious package was mailed to a residence.
  A search warrant was issued and authorities say they found just more than an ounce of methamphetamine inside the package. The package was sent to 41-year-old Angelina Maria Martinez. S
  
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• Maryam Mirzakhani, prize-winning mathematician, dies at 40

  17-07-2017 06:01 via ktoo.org
  
  Professor Maryam Mirzakhani, who won the Fields Medal in 2014, has died at age 40.
  Stanford University
  Nearly three years after she became the first woman to win math’s equivalent of a Nobel Prize, Maryam Mirzakhani has died of breast cancer at age 40. Her death was confirmed Saturday by Stanford University, where Mirzakhani had been a professor since 2008.
  Mirzakhani is survived by her husband, Jan Vondrák, and a daughter, Anahita — who once referred to her mother’s wor
  
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• Floodwaters hit record highs in river north of Chicago

  17-07-2017 06:01 via ktoo.org
  
  A man carries sandbags to reinforce the barrier he build to keep the floodwater from reaching his house in Gurnee, Ill., Friday. Illinois officials say flood damage north of Chicago is expected to worsen this weekend as water flows down rivers.
  G-Jun Yam/AP
  It’s been more than 30 years since the Des Plaines River hit the flood stages that it reached Friday, setting records with flood stages from 12 to more than 16 feet in several cities in northeastern Illinois — far above the flood
  
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• ‘Nones’ in Juneau changing religious landscape

  17-07-2017 05:28 via ktoo.org
  
  
  Grass grows in a planter off a window of St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church in downtown Juneau on July 15, 2017. The Catholic Cathedral of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary is in the background. (Photo by Jeremy Hsieh/KTOO)
  Today, Alaskans are on average less religious than the rest of the country, and a subset who don’t identify with any particular religion is growing, according to data from the Pew Research Center.http://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/ktoo/2017/07/14NO
  
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• Homer Rotary Club plans peace-based arts program for elementary kids

  17-07-2017 05:28 via ktoo.org
  
  (Flickr photo by Hc_07)
  The Rotary Club of Homer is collaborating with a German foundation aimed at cultivating peace through painting. The Together in Peace Foundation has been running its United Paintings program throughout Europe for 21 years.
  The initiative aims to educate elementary-aged children about the idea of peace through curriculums in the classroom. At the end of the program, kids express what peace means to them by painting on canvas banners.
  The program will now take root right he
  
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• Mom warns of “Pink” drug that killed 21-year-old son

  17-07-2017 04:34
  
  Mary Elliott and her son Jeremy in the hospital before his death from a drug overdose. / via KHOU
  A mom says her son was killed by something she had never heard of before, a drug so powerful, it’s seven times more potent than morphine.
  “I thought I did everything right and when this happened I asked myself, ‘What I did wrong?'” Mary Elliott, who lost her son Jeremy earlier this year, told CBS affiliate KHOU.
  There’s no cure for this mother’s pain, but there&rs
  
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• Police respond to disturbance involving man with gun at Carrs Safeway

  17-07-2017 03:42
  
  Anchorage Police responded to a disturbance involving a male with a gun at the Carrs Safeway store on Gambell Sunday afternoon.
  Police say they got to the supermarket at 1:17 p.m., after receiving a report that a man had a gun in the area of 14th Avenue and Fairbanks Street in the Carrs parking lot.
  According to a Nixle report, some customers at the store helped officers locate the suspect and his vehicle at a nearby residence. He was arrested and charged with numerous assault charges.
  No injur
  
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• Family tired of waiting for manslaughter trial to begin

  17-07-2017 03:18
  
  The family of a Wasilla teen who died trying to save his friend’s life says the wait for justice has grown too long.
  Austin Edenfield, 15, was killed in February of 2016 when he was struck by a truck on North Pittman Road.
  Austin was walking with a friend, Will Johns, when the truck swerved onto the shoulder of the road. Edenfield managed to push his friend out of the way, but was struck himself and died at the scene.
  Kim Blocker, Austin’s mom, said the family is frustrated. In the n
  
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• George A. Romero, father of the zombie film, is dead at 77

  17-07-2017 02:41
  
  NEW YORK (AP) – George Romero, whose classic “Night of the Living Dead” and other horror films turned zombie movies into social commentaries and who saw his flesh-devouring undead spawn countless imitators, remakes and homages, has died. He was 77.
  Romero died Sunday following a battle with lung cancer, said his family in a statement provided by his manager Chris Roe. Romero’s family said he died while listening to the score of “The Quiet Man,” one of his favo
  
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• Space artifacts up for grabs at Sotheby’s first space-exploration themed auction

  17-07-2017 02:26
  
  Sotheby’s is holding their first space-exploration themed auction on the 48th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing on June 20.
  On June 13, Sotheby’s previewed the items up for auction, which includes a bag used to collect the first lunar samples, space photography, equipment used on Apollo missions and memorabilia.
  The items are from both the American and Russian space programs and are expected to fetch between $3-5 million, with the lunar expected to fetch the most.
  “I t
  
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• House dust may spur growth of fat cells, study suggests

  17-07-2017 02:08
  
  Could something as simple as household dust be contributing to America’s obesity epidemic?
  Small amounts of household dust appear to contain many of the compounds that can spur fat cells to accumulate more fat — at least in lab settings, according to research published this week in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.
  The researchers took samples of indoor dust from 11 North Carolina homes, and tested extracts from those samples in a mouse pre-adipocyte cell model.
  Acc
  
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