Anchorage news

• Scientists welcome new rules on marijuana, but research will still face obstacles

  03-05-2024 23:17 via ktoo.org
  
  For decades, researchers in the U.S. had to use only marijuana grown at a facility located in Oxford, Mississippi. A few other approved growers have been added in recent years. (Brad Horrigan/Hartford Courant/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
  As the Biden administration moves to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug, scientists say the change will lift some of the restrictions on studying the drug.
  But the change won’t lift all restrictions, they say, neither will it decrease
  
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• Juneau’s hospital set aside $8.1M to buy property. The deal fell through, but that won’t solve Bartlett’s budget issues.

  18-06-2024 22:33 via ktoo.org
  
  Juneau Bone & Joint Center on Monday, June 17, 2024. (Clarise Larson/KTOO)
  Bartlett Regional Hospital isn’t taking over the Juneau Bone & Joint property after all. 
  On Monday, the Juneau Assembly authorized the hospital to put $8.1 million back into its savings. That money was originally supposed to buy the property that houses the business.
  The decision comes as the board for Juneau’s city-owned hospital contemplates cutting or reducing some services to address a major
  
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• Juneau’s mayor is running for reelection

  18-06-2024 21:37 via ktoo.org
  
  Juneau Mayor Beth Weldon talks during a city meeting in December 2023. (Clarise Larson/KTOO)
  Juneau Mayor Beth Weldon has announced that she plans to run for a third term in October’s local election. 
  In an interview on Tuesday, she said the decision to run didn’t come easy. 
  “It’s been an extremely tough decision to make, especially with my husband, Greg’s, passing,” she said. “But I just come back to the same thoughts that I’m committed
  
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• Accidental discovery of sunken ship near Sitka reveals surprising history

  18-06-2024 19:45 via ktoo.org
  A dive team investigated the site of a sunken wooden vessel in Herring Cove on Friday, June 14, 2024. (Katherine Rose/KCAW)
  On Sunday June 9, a mariner fouled his anchor in Herring Cove. Every time he tried to move the anchor, a little oil sheen and debris would pop up.
  “He called us to check and make sure that there wasn’t any known debris in the area, and to try to see if there was a known snag,” said Petty Officer First Class Heather Darce in an interview with KCAW. Darce is
  
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• Invasive European green crabs are expanding their territory in Southeast Alaska

  18-06-2024 18:43 via ktoo.org
  
  European green crabs collected from Metlakatla’s Tamgas Harbor this week. The crabs were trapped in shrimp pots. (Photo courtesy of Dustin Winter).
  Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced on Friday that shells of the invasive European green crab were spotted along the shores of Bostwick Inlet on Gravina Island near Ketchikan.
  European green crabs have the potential to wreak havoc on commercial and subsistence fisheries in Alaska — the crabs are highly competitive and very hungry
  
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• Coalition of labor and Alaska Native leaders throws its weight behind Peltola

  18-06-2024 18:37 via ktoo.org
  
  U.S. Congresswoman Mary Peltola speaking to the Alaska Federation of Natives in 2023. (Matt Faubion/Alaska Public Media)
  A new organization called Alaska Jobs Coalition has launched a $500,000 ad campaign to support Alaska Congresswoman Mary Peltola.
  The online and TV spots laud Peltola’s support for Willow, the Conoco Phillips project to develop oilfields in the National Petroleum Reserve Alaska.
  The Alaska Jobs Coalition formed earlier this year as a non-profit and announced that its ini
  
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• Trump announces his pick in Alaska’s US House race: Dahlstrom

  18-06-2024 18:32 via ktoo.org
  
  Donald Trump promoted Sarah Palin for U.S. House at a 2022 rally in Anchorage. She finished second. (Kendrick Whiteman/Alaska Public Media)
  Former President Donald Trump has endorsed Republican candidate Nancy Dahlstrom in the race for Alaska’s sole seat in the U.S. House.
  In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump called Dahlstrom a “winner” and a “proven fighter.”
  Dahlstrom is a former legislator and former commissioner of Corrections. She’s now Alaska&rs
  
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• Seward’s Lydia Jacoby won’t swim 100-meter breaststroke event at Paris Olympics

  18-06-2024 18:26 via ktoo.org
  
  Seward swimmer Lydia Jacoby greets fans at the Anchorage airport after returning home from the 2021 Olympic trials. (Valerie Lake/Alaska Public Media)
  Seward swimming phenom Lydia Jacoby fell short of an Olympic sequel Monday after failing to clinch a fast enough time in the 100-meter women’s breaststroke final event.
  Jacoby, 20, placed third in the 100-meter breaststroke finals in Indianapolis. She swam a time of 1:06:37, in the same event she took home Olympic gold in 2021 with a time of
  
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• Newscast – Monday, June 17, 2024

  18-06-2024 03:00 via ktoo.org
  
  
  https://media.ktoo.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/20240617-News-Update.mp3
  In this newscast:It’s taken 44 years, but a hydroelectric project in Angoon finally has all the funding and most of the permits to launch,
  A rare mountain lion was shot and killed on Wrangell Island earlier this month,
  Tongass Voices: The Evening Star on creating spaces for queer Indigenous people
  
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• Tongass Voices: The Evening Star on creating spaces for queer Indigenous people

  18-06-2024 01:02 via ktoo.org
  
  The Evening Star performs at the Crystal Saloon in Juneau on June 11, 2024. (Ḵaachgóon Rochelle Smallwood/Raven’s Tail Studio)
  This is Tongass Voices, a series from KTOO sharing weekly perspectives from the homelands of the Áak’w Kwáan and beyond.
  The Evening Star is a Pawnee and adopted Athabascan performer who’s known for storytelling, comedy, making music, and DJing. She came to Juneau during Celebration on her Indigequeer  tour. 
  She
  
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• State sues Alaska Motor Home after customers say they were swindled and harassed

  17-06-2024 18:39 via ktoo.org
  
  Recreational vehicles parked outside the office of Alaska Motor Home on June 14, 2024. (Matt Faubion/Alaska Public Media)
  An Anchorage renter of recreational vehicles has again been sued by the state over deceptive business practices — three years after the firm was penalized for similar issues.
  Alaska Motor Home, along with registered owners Peter and Cole Harkovitch, are named in a state complaint filed Thursday. The company, which faced state action in 2019, has abruptly closed its door
  
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• Coast Guard icebreaker Healy headed to Alaska for three Arctic research missions

  17-06-2024 18:31 via ktoo.org
  
  The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy, a 420-foot icebreaker homeported in Seattle, breaks ice in support of scientific research in the Arctic Ocean during a 2006 cruise. The Healy is now on its way to Alaska and scheduled to complete three missions this year, including a sailing through the Northwest Passage to Greenland. (Photo by Petty Officer Second Class Prentice Danner/U.S. Coast Guard)
  The U.S. Coast Guard cutter Healy, the largest U.S. icebreaker, is on its way to Alaska for the first of thr
  
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• An influx of chum salmon in the Canadian Arctic could be the same fish missing from Western Alaska

  17-06-2024 18:16 via ktoo.org
  
  Frankie Dillon displays a chum salmon caught in the Big Fish River, near Aklavik, Northwest Territories, in 2023. (Photo by Colin Gallagher, DFO)
  Johnnie Storr grew up fishing with his dad in the hamlet of Aklavik, a small town on the Mackenzie River Delta in Canada’s Northwest Territories. Depending on the season, they looked for Arctic char, Dolly Varden or whitefish.
  “We fished for char in the fall time,” Storr said. “Soon as there was enough ice, we walked out and set
  
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• Newscast – Friday, June 14, 2024

  15-06-2024 03:01 via ktoo.org
  
  
  https://media.ktoo.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/20240614-News-Update.mp3
  In this newscast:Cultural ambassadors are now at the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center to teach Lingit culture and history to tourists,
  Representative Mary Peltola recently introduced two bills aimed at addressing bycatch in federal trawl fisheries
  
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• Juneau Afternoon: ‘Pretendians’ podcast, SHI Multilingual Audio Dictionary, ‘Mom’s Unhinged’

  15-06-2024 02:53 via ktoo.org
  
  
  Screenshot of the Multilingual Audio Dictionary from Sealaska Heritage InstituteFriday, June 14, 2024 — Full EpisodeOn today’s program:“Pretendians” is Canadaland’s newest podcast: What do some of the most prominent and successful Indigenous artists, leaders and professors have in common? They aren’t IndigenousThe newly launched “Multilingual Audio Dictionary” from Sealaska Heritage Institute“Moms Unhinged” comedy show at Centennial Hal
  
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• New cultural ambassadors deepen tourists’ experience of Juneau’s Mendenhall Glacier

  15-06-2024 02:08 via ktoo.org
  
  
  Jinkasee.ee Rose Willard explains a náxw, or halibut hook to visitors. She is one of 10 cultural ambassadors at the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center on June 13, 2024. (Photo by Yvonne Krumrey/KTOO)https://media.ktoo.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/14ambassadors.mp3
  When tourists come to Juneau, the Mendenhall Glacier is usually near the top of their sightseeing list. It gets hundreds of thousands of visitors each summer.
  And now, those visitors will have the chance to learn more about Indi
  
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• An Alaska energy blogger breaks down the looming, much-nuanced Cook Inlet gas shortfall

  14-06-2024 23:56 via ktoo.org
  
  A specialized unit called a jackup rig, at left, drilled a natural gas well last year at Hilcorp’s Tyonek platform, right, in Cook Inlet. (Nathaniel Herz for Alaska Public Media)
  Alaskans who depend on natural gas for heat or electricity are confronting a looming shortfall in Cook Inlet, and many of them have questions about how soon utilities might need to start more expensive gas imports.
  There are a few proposals to lessen the blow to ratepayers’ pocketbooks, but some are wonderin
  
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• Garden Talk: Companion planting in Southeast Alaska, with zucchinis

  14-06-2024 23:05 via ktoo.org
  
  
  Companion planting at Tidal Wood Food and Forage in Juneau. (Joel Bos)
  Companion planting is a technique gardeners can use to increase their yield, boost soil fertility, and reduce weeds and pests. For this week’s Garden Talk, Joel Bos of Tidal Wood Food and Forage shared his companion planting techniques.
  Listen:https://media.ktoo.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/14GT_Zuccs.mp3
  This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
  Chloe Pleznac: Let’s talk about companion pl
  
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• Gov. Dunleavy picks second ex-talk radio host for lucrative fish job after first rejected

  14-06-2024 22:42 via ktoo.org
  
  Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy speaks to reporters during a news conference Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2024. (Photo by James Brooks/Alaska Beacon)
  In May, the Alaska Legislature narrowly rejected a conservative talk radio host’s appointment to a highly paid position regulating the state’s commercial fisheries.
  Now, after the failure of that pick, Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy has chosen a new appointee with a similar — though not identical — background for the six-figure job at the Co
  
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• Murkowski votes with Democrats on IVF bill, as Sullivan joins most GOP senators to block it

  14-06-2024 19:13 via ktoo.org
  
  The U.S. Capitol, as seen from the East Plaza. (Liz Ruskin/Alaska Public Media)
  Alaska’s U.S. senators split their votes earlier today over a bill to protect in vitro fertilization. Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins of Maine were the only Republicans to vote in favor of advancing the Democratic bill.
  Sen. Dan Sullivan joined all other Republicans in voting to block the bill. He signed onto a Republican letter accusing Democrats of “false fear-mongering” about reproductive
  
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• Pennsylvania craftsman restores stonework at Sitka church

  14-06-2024 19:01 via ktoo.org
  
  
  Randy Bollinger works on one of the sidewalls at the front of the Church, resetting stones. (Jeb Sharp)https://media.ktoo.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/11MASON.mp3
  If you stop by St. Peter’s by the Sea Episcopal Church on Lincoln Street this month you might catch stonemason Randy Bollinger working outside. He is restoring some of the stonework on the exterior of the 125-year-old building.
  “I identify as a craftsman,” Bollinger said on a recent morning as he reset stones on one
  
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• Anchorage sisters tap readers’ rapture for romance with new bookstore

  14-06-2024 18:49 via ktoo.org
  
  Ally Hartman, co-owner of Beauty and the Book Alaska, welcomes in customers for the store’s grand opening in Anchorage on Saturday, June 8, 2024. (Matt Faubion/Alaska Public Media)
  Ally Hartman and Baylee Loyd’s bookstore is an experience. Each of the three rooms has a distinct vibe and different subgenres sorted by colors on the shelves. One room is green and white, another pink, and the third is black.
  “The dark room isn’t going to be all romance. It’s going to be
  
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• Newscast – Thursday, June 13, 2024

  14-06-2024 03:00 via ktoo.org
  
  https://media.ktoo.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/newscast.mp3
  In this newscast:A drag story time in Seward faced a bomb threat on Saturday, but the event persisted,
  Curious Juneau: What will happen to Juneau’s City Hall mural if the city moves out?
  
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• Juneau Afternoon: Dirty Cello, ‘Pride & Prejudice,’ and Juneau-Douglas City Museum

  14-06-2024 02:41 via ktoo.org
  
  
  Dirty Cello, pictured in Studio 2K at KTOO, will play the Gold Town Theater on Thursday, June 13. (Bostin Christopher/KTOO)On today’s program:Dirty Cello, international touring band, to play the Gold Town Theater, June 13 at 7:00 p.m.Theater Alaska’s production of “Pride & Prejudice” to play Juneau June 19 through July 14Juneau Douglas City Museum’s summer walking tours and exhibitions
  Bostin Christopher hosts the conversation. Juneau Afternoon airs at 3:00 p.m.
  
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• Alaska Wildlife Troopers take lead on last week’s mountain lion death on Wrangell Island

  14-06-2024 02:25 via ktoo.org
  A mountain lion. (Photo by Justin Shoemaker/USFWS, Public Domain)
  Mountain lions aren’t known to live in Wrangell, but that doesn’t mean the Southeast Alaska island hasn’t served as stomping grounds for the apex predator.
  In fact, a mountain lion was shot and killed on the south end of Wrangell Island recently.
  Alaska Wildlife Troopers and the Alaska Department of Fish & Game were notified of the death on June 3 and took possession of the carcass. Troopers are leading the i
  
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• Juneau man dies in Seattle hospital after a city-owned truck struck him

  14-06-2024 00:50 via ktoo.org
  
  Juneau Police Department vehicles in downtown Juneau on June 13, 2024. (Clarise Larson/KTOO)
  A Juneau man died in a Seattle hospital after a City and Borough of Juneau employee driving a city-owned truck struck him as he was lying in the drive-through lane of a bank in the Mendenhall Valley, police and city officials said.
  Police identified the man who died as 38-year-old Armando Sanchez. The incident happened early in the morning of June 1 at True North Federal Credit Union on Postal Way.
  Junea
  
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• What will happen to Juneau’s City Hall mural if the city moves out?

  13-06-2024 20:20 via ktoo.org
  
  
  Gary Waid points to the man depicted on the “Raven discovering mankind in a clamshell” mural at City Hall on Monday, June 11, 2024. The man is modeled off of Waid in the ’80s. (Clarise Larson/KTOO)https://media.ktoo.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/CJmuralMP3.mp3
  Spanning an outside wall of City Hall in downtown Juneau, there’s a 10-and-a-half by 61-foot mural called “Raven discovering mankind in a clamshell.” 
  It shows Raven opening a clam and releasing a
  
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• Royalty-free terms draw only three oil and gas lease bids in Alaska’s Cook Inlet

  13-06-2024 19:04 via ktoo.org
  
  A view from Skilak Lake Road across Cook Inlet to Mount Redoubt, an active stratovolcano in the Aleutian Range. (Credit: Lisa Hupp/USFWS)
  A state oil and gas auction that offered royalty-free leases in the Cook Inlet basin as an incentive for new exploration drew only three bids, according to results released Wednesday by the Alaska Division of Oil and Gas.
  The annual areawide Cook Inlet sale featured special terms for the 725 tracts covering 3 million offshore and onshore acres in the basin: A
  
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• As Alaska’s boreal forest warms, land managers face tough questions about how, or whether, to respond

  13-06-2024 18:57 via ktoo.org
  
  
  A glimpse of the boreal forest between Cantwell and Fairbanks, Alaska. (Lois Parshley)
  Northern ecosystems are seeing some of the planet’s most sweeping changes from climate warming. For some animals and plants, that has posed a threat to their very existence and, for humans, a couple complicated questions: Can we — and should we — do anything to save them?
  In Alaska, one area where land managers and ecologists are wrestling with those questions is the boreal forest, home to sp
  
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• Environmental groups ask feds to reconsider the trans-Alaska pipeline and plan for its removal

  13-06-2024 18:49 via ktoo.org
  
  A stretch of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System near the Toolik Field Station in the North Slope Borough. (Rashah McChesney/Alaska’s Energy Desk)
  A coalition of environmental groups has filed a legal petition with the federal government to reconsider how the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System contributes to climate change and to begin phasing the 800-mile line out of existence.
  The government first authorized the pipeline right-of-way across federal land in the 1970s, sparking an economic boom tha
  
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