Lawmakers vote on House Bill 254, a bill that would ban social media accounts for kids under 14 and require adult websites to verify users’ ages. (Eric Stone/Alaska Public Media) Stories are posted on the statewide news page. Send news tips, questions, and comments to news@alaskapublic.org. Follow Alaska Public Media on Facebook and on Twitter @AKPublicNews. And subscribe to the Alaska News Nightly podcast. Friday on Alaska News Nightly: Lawmakers are skeptical of a social media ban for children under 14 passed by the Alaska House. Plus, Native boarding school survivo ..read more

Lawmakers vote on House Bill 254, a bill that would ban social media accounts for kids under 14 and require adult websites to verify users’ ages. (Eric Stone/Alaska Public Media) A ban on social media accounts for children under 14 passed the Alaska House Friday with significant bipartisan support, despite some opposition citing privacy and constitutional concerns. If passed by the Senate and signed into law, the ban would also require 14- and 15-year-olds to get written parental consent before creating social media accounts. Rep. Andrew Gray, an Anchorage Democrat, added the social media limi ..read more

A lot of people were living in tents and under tarps in the woods at Anchorage’s Mountain View snow dump, pictured here on June 27, 2023. Anchorage city workers posted signs here and at Davis Park warning that they’d be back to clear away the encampments. (Jeremy Hsieh/Alaska Public Media) Anchorage and many other western cities are anticipating a ruling this summer from the U.S. Supreme Court that could change how they’re allowed to police homeless camping. The High Court heard arguments Monday in a case from Grants Pass, Oregon, in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit had ea ..read more

Donald McQuade, center, poses for a photo with Public Defender Agency attorneys Benjamin Dresner, left, and Kyle Barber at the Nesbett Courthouse in Anchorage on Nov. 29, 2023. (Jeremy Hsieh/Alaska Public Media) An Oregon man was ordered Friday to spend half a century behind bars for murdering an Anchorage teenager in a 1978 cold case.  Superior Court Judge Andrew Peterson handed down Donald McQuade’s 50-year prison term in the death of 16-year-old Shelley Connolly, according to the Alaska Department of Law. A jury found McQuade, now 67, guilty of first-degree murder in the case in Decemb ..read more

King Cove in August 2023. (Theo Greenly/KUCB) The city of King Cove is worried about the future after its seafood processor announced earlier this month that it will cease operations. The plant, formerly owned by Peter Pan Seafood Company, is the economic engine of the community on the Alaska Peninsula.  A new owner will take over the processing plant, but it’s unclear when the facility will reopen. Kirsten Dobroth is the Alaska reporter for Undercurrent News, which is a commercial fishing and seafood industry trade magazine. She’s been reporting on what this means just ahead of salmon se ..read more

A team of scientists and Alaska Native community members use an autonomous underwater vehicle to explore the continental shelf west of Prince of Wales Island in southeast Alaska, seeking submerged caves and rock shelters that would have been accessible to early inhabitants of the region. (From NOAA) A few years ago, a set of 20,000-year-old human footprints in a dry lakebed in New Mexico set scientists reeling. Those fossilized footprints, originally discovered in 2009, called into question what we thought we knew about when people first showed up in North America. Archaeologists thousands of ..read more

Dr. Jharrett Bryantt, the superintendent of Anchorage School District, listens to public testimony at the Anchorage School District Meeting on December 19, 2022. (Valerie Lake, Alaska Public Media). The Anchorage School District announced plans to close schools over the next three years at a school board work session Tuesday. Due to steadily declining student population, decreasing birth rates in Anchorage and continued outmigration from Alaska, staff framed the potential closures as “right-sizing” the number of schools. The district has nearly 6,000 fewer students than it did in 2010, and enr ..read more

Crosses represent opioid overdose deaths in Alaska at a 2023 event in Anchorage organized by the David Dylan Foundation. (Rachel Cassandra/AKPM) More Alaskans died from an opioid overdose last year than ever before, according to preliminary data, and the state reported the nation’s highest per capita increase in opioid overdose deaths.  The numbers are heartbreaking, said Lindsey Kato, the director of Alaska’s Division of Public Health. She said overdose deaths can have a ripple effect of grief, especially in smaller communities. “I’ve lost many friends to the opioid epidemic, family memb ..read more

Students exit the Marie Drake building, which houses the Juneau School District’s alternative high school, Yaaḵoosgé Daakahídi, and Montessori Borealis, on Wednesday, April 24, 2024. (Clarise Larson/KTOO) The Juneau School District’s plan to close schools and consolidate grades means some buildings will sit empty after the end of the school year. But the City and Borough of Juneau is seeking proposals from community organizations to fill that space.  City Manager Katie Koester said that could mean using it for child care, housing or anything else that might benefit the community.  “T ..read more

The Federal Communications Commission has restored net neutrality rules that ban content providers from restricting bandwidth to customers. (Photo by Michael Bocchieri/Getty Images) Consumers can look forward to faster, safer and more reliable internet connections under the promises of newly reinstated government regulations. The Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 on Thursday to reclassify broadband as a public utility, such as water and electricity — to regulate access to the internet. The move to expand government oversight of internet service providers comes after the COVID-19 pand ..read more