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ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Alaska has awarded a contract to study whether the state can become the first in the nation to change its Medicaid program into a block grant system. Alaska Journal of Commerce reported Wednesday that the state Department of Health and Social Services issued a notice May 29 of its intent to award the contract to analyze the prospect of implementing block grants for federal Medicaid payments, work requirements for Medicaid enrollees, and shifting some Alaska Medicaid recipients to private insurance. The $100,000 c...
Petersburg families affected by the 35-day long government shutdown are receiving continued financial support from local organization despite the government reopening on Friday after President Donald Trump signed a bill temporarily opening the Federal Government for three weeks. The Petersburg Chamber of Commerce will be discussing what dollar amount they want to put on their gift cards that will be given to affected families at their meeting today. Lee’s Clothing is distributing $50 gift certificates to affected families to be used in the c...
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — A state agency plans to swap land in southeast Alaska for federal land that can be developed for timber sales. The Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority board on Thursday approved a land exchange with the U.S. Forest Service that will trade 18,000 acres (7,284 hectares) of trust lands for 20,000 acres (8,094 hectares) of federal land, the Juneau Empire reported. The trust lands are scattered throughout southeast Alaska and the exact amount to be traded must be worked out. Wyn Menefee, director of the trust authority land o...
Fishermen in Alaska who own catch shares of halibut, sablefish and Bering Sea crab will pay more to the federal government to cover 2018 management and enforcement costs for those fisheries. For halibut and sablefish (black cod) the annual fee, which is capped at three percent, is based on dock prices from the March start of the fisheries through September and averaged across the state. For this year, bills went out to 1,834 holders of halibut and sablefish shares, down by 60 from last year. Their tab ticked up from 2.2 percent to 2.8 percent...
Hundreds of boats are gearing up for the January start of some of Alaska’s largest fisheries in waters managed by the federal government from three to 200 miles offshore. Meanwhile, the government shut down over Donald Trump’s demand for nearly $6 billion in funding for a border wall of “artistically designed steel slats” has sent hundreds of thousands of workers home. Nine of the government’s 15 federal departments and several agencies were shuttered at midnight on December 21 and there is no end in sight. That includes the Commerce Department...
Protein Noodles by Trident Seafoods took top honors at the 26th annual Alaska Symphony of Seafood, winning first place in the retail category and the Seattle People’s Choice award. The winners were announced last week at Pacific Marine Expo. The refrigerated noodles are made from pollock surimi and touted as a high protein, gluten free alternative to traditional pastas. “All pastas are wheat based and they don’t contain any protein and there’s not a lot of nutritional value,” said John Salle, Trident’s senior vice president of marketing, innova...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Federal regulators are preparing an environmental review for a possible offshore lease sale in Alaska’s Beaufort Sea and environmental groups are calling foul. The legality of Arctic Ocean offshore lease sales is the subject of a federal lawsuit. Environmental groups say it’s irresponsible to plan lease sales ahead of a ruling. “Rather than moving ahead with expending large amounts of governmental resources for analyses and holding public hearings for a lease sale the court may decide is illegal, the Trump Adminis...
KETCHIKAN, Alaska (AP) – President Donald Trump recently signed into law a bill that lawmakers have called a point of unity among Republicans and Democrats. The Ketchikan Daily News reports the Save our Seas Act, which Trump signed Thursday, reauthorizes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Debris Program through 2022. The program works to reduce debris through research, prevention and reduction. The Save our Seas legislation keeps the program going by continuing to authorize $10 million per year for the next five yea...
Alaskans will celebrate Alaska Wild Salmon Day on August 10, but plans also are underway for a much bigger celebration: the International Year of the Salmon set to officially begin in 2019. The theme is “Salmon and people in a changing world” and a key focus will be a winter salmon study in the deepest regions of the Gulf of Alaska. Both are sponsored in part by the North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission (NPAFC), which for 25 years has promoted research collaboration among scientists in its five member countries – Canada, Russian, Japan...
Alaska appears to be an exception in terms of gender parity at all levels of its seafood industry. Women comprise roughly half of the world’s seafood industry work force, yet a report released last week revealed that 61 percent of women around the globe feel they face unfair gender biases from slime lines to businesses to company boardrooms. The women’s overall responses cited biases in recruitment and hiring, in working conditions and inflexible scheduling. The findings were based on 700 responses gathered in an online survey from Sep...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is moving toward oil and gas drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, fulfilling a longtime Republican priority that most Democrats fiercely oppose. A notice being published Friday in the Federal Register starts a 60-day review to sell oil and gas leases in the remote refuge, one of the most pristine areas in the United States and home to polar bears, caribou, migratory birds and other species. President Donald Trump has said he “really didn’t care” about opening a portion of the refug...
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Alaska regulators, once on the cusp of allowing on-site use of marijuana at authorized retail stores, plan to take another run at the issue this week. The Marijuana Control Board is scheduled to discuss proposed rules for allowing on-site consumption, but whether the board will reach a final conclusion isn’t clear. The board is down one member; Travis Welch resigned less than two months after his appointment to the public safety seat after being dismissed from his job as a police chief. The board’s director has recommended...
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Taking a cue from the fight over immigration, some states that have legalized marijuana are considering providing so-called sanctuary status for licensed pot businesses, hoping to protect the fledgling industry from a shift in federal enforcement policy. Just hours after U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced on Jan. 4 that federal prosecutors would be free to crack down on marijuana operations as they see fit, Jesse Arreguin, the mayor in Berkeley, California, summoned city councilman Ben Bartlett to his office w...
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan said violence in video games and movies should be discussed as part of a larger debate on gun violence and suggested Monday that states should decide whether school teachers should be armed. Meanwhile, Alaska Gov. Bill Walker, who was in Washington, D.C. for a gathering of the nation’s governors, told The Associated Press something must be done in response to the violence. But he said he wants to speak with advisers from within his administration and possibly also hear from outside voices before tak...
After deliberation on Saturday the Alaska Board of Fisheries rejected a proposal to scrap the Southeast Alaska management plan for Dungeness crab fisheries. The BoF is currently convened in Sitka for its meeting on the region’s shellfish and finfish regulation change proposals. It meets every three years, the last one being held in Wrangell in January 2015. Starting its shellfish meeting on January 11, members took testimony for 155 different proposals related to crab, shrimp and other miscellaneous shellfish. A late comer to this year’s sla...
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Alaska political leaders on Wednesday hailed as historic the passage of federal legislation that will allow for oil and gas drilling in a portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The state’s Republican congressional delegation sees it as a win decades in the making, one they say will provide a boost for this oil-reliant state. Environmental groups see it as a big mistake and say the fight isn’t over. The drilling provision was part of a larger package _ a major restructuring of U.S. tax policy _ that also repeals a...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) – President Donald Trump’s efforts to make the United States “energy dominant’’with help from Alaska got off to modest results Wednesday. The Interior Department made its largest-ever lease offering within the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska: 900 tracts covering 16,100 square miles (41,700 sq. kilometers), roughly the size of New Hampshire and Massachusetts combined. But oil companies submitted bids on just seven tracts covering 125 square miles (324 sq. kilometers). The bids totaled $1.16 million, to be split bet...
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Gov. Bill Walker on Tuesday touted the benefits a major liquefied natural gas project would bring to Alaska, though the project, which the state is pursuing with Chinese partners, is far from assured. Walker, speaking in Anchorage, told reporters the project could provide affordable natural gas to communities, create thousands of jobs and generate up to $2 billion a year in revenue for the state. Walker’s office released the agreement that Walker and Keith Meyer, president of the state-sponsored Alaska Gasline Development...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Sometime next April, pregnant cows in the Porcupine Caribou Herd in Canada will take the lead in an annual migration of nearly 200,000 animals north to Alaska. From winter grounds in Canada’s Yukon Territory, the caribou traveling in small and large groups will cross rivers and gaps in the mighty Brooks Range on the 400-mile (643-kilometer) journey. Their destination is the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a strip of flat tundra between the mountains and Arctic Ocean. The plain provides food and a v...
KETCHIKAN, Alaska (AP) — Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska weighed in on the current state of the Republican Party and President Donald Trump, saying she is concerned that the Republican Party might be becoming too exclusive and disjointed. “We seem to be more fractured within our party now than in the big-tent Ronald Reagan days,” Murkowski said. “And I worry about that; I worry about that.” Murkowski said the party used to lean less to the right and was more inclusive of differing views across the spectrum, the Ketchikan...
WRANGELL - Women from the local American Legion Auxiliary took part in the national organization's 97th annual convention last week. Three members from Merlin Elmer Palmer, Auxiliary Unit 6, joined 1,500 other delegates, as well as alternates and guests from around the United States in Reno, Nevada. Accompanied by Barbara Hommel and Zona Gregg, respectively the chapter's vice president and treasurer, president Marilyn Mork was recognized as Alaska's Woman of the Year. "I was kind of surprised...
Alaska aims to get in on the growing popularity of Home Meal kits that will deliver seafood directly to American kitchens. The kits typically offer a subscription based service where customers order weekly meals based on how many people they plan to feed and their food preferences. The kits include portioned, high quality ingredients with foolproof cooking instructions and can be delivered within hours or overnight to nearly all locations. Many grocery stores also are providing in-store options that don’t involve delivery. The kits typically c...
KETCHIKAN, Alaska (AP) – A recently approved U.S. Senate bill secures a long-awaited land trade. The $1.1 spending bill approved by the Senate on Thursday will permit a land trade between the U.S. Forest Service and the Alaska Mental Health Trust, the Ketchikan Daily News reports. The bill is heading to President Donald Trump’s desk for final signature. The land trade has been an ongoing effort by the Mental Health Trust Authority Board. The board uses land proceeds to fund the state’s mental health services. The entities began the land tradi...
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) – Going without health insurance is a risk. Going without it in Alaska can be a gamble of a much higher order, for this is a place unlike anywhere else in the U.S., a land of pitiless cold, vast expanses and dangerous, back-breaking work such as pulling fishing nets from the water or hauling animal carcasses out of the woods. And yet many people on the Last Frontier do not carry insurance. For them, the Affordable Care Act just isn’t working. For reasons that have a lot to do with its sheer size, sparse population and har...
