Rep. Craig Johnson, R-Anchorage, speaks on April 24, 2024 in support of a measure calling for a stay of a court decision that ruled key elements of the state’s homeschool system unconstitutional. (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. Wednesday on Alaska News Nightly: Opponents of a proposed gold mine in Western Alaska sound off about Congresswom ..read more

Sean Gaither, director of housing at Covenant House, shows Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Administration for Children and Families Jeff Hild where homeless youth are able to get clothing. (Wesley Early/Alaska Public Media) Anchorage youth homeless service provider Covenant House is receiving a $1 million federal grant aimed at supporting young Alaskans as they age out of the foster care system.  Jeff Hild is principal deputy assistant secretary for the federal Administration for Children and Families. He announced the funding during a tour of Covenant House on Wednesday. “Yo ..read more

Left: Anchorage mayoral candidate Suzanne LaFrance speaks to supporters at a rally on April 12, 2024, at the IBEW Hall in Anchorage. (James Oh/Alaska Public Media) Right: Incumbent Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson waves to passing traffic on April 2, 2024. (Matt Faubion/Alaska Public Media) Anchorage’s incumbent Mayor Dave Bronson is facing an uphill battle against frontrunner and former Anchorage Assembly Chair Suzanne LaFrance in the upcoming runoff election.  “We got a lot of doors to knock. We got a lot of calls to make, texts to send, postcards to write and votes to win over,” LaFrance t ..read more

Rep. Sarah Vance, R-Homer, speaks on the House floor on April 24, 2024. (Eric Stone/Alaska Public Media) The Alaska House of Representatives is considering a bill that would require adult websites to verify users are 18 or older. The bill would require sites that, as the bill puts it, “contain a substantial portion of pornography” to use a “commercially reasonable age verification method.” Similar bills have passed in more than a dozen other states. Rep. Sarah Vance, R-Homer, is sponsoring the effort in the House. “This is simply trying to safeguard our children, because we do know that pornog ..read more

The cargo plane that crashed Tuesday, April 23, 2024, was flying to a remote Alaska community to deliver fuel. The plane is photographed here, parked in Fairbanks, in August 2023. (KUAC) Federal officials say the pilots of a cargo plane carrying thousands of gallons of fuel reported a fire just after taking off from Fairbanks Tuesday, then tried to turn back before they died in a fiery crash along the Tanana River. The Federal Aviation Administration said in an incident report Wednesday that both pilots of the Douglas C-54, a four-engine propeller plane, were killed at about 10 a.m. Tuesday in ..read more

Rep. Craig Johnson, R-Anchorage, speaks on April 24, 2024 in support of a measure calling for a stay of a court decision that ruled key elements of the state’s homeschool system unconstitutional. (Eric Stone/Alaska Public Media) The Alaska House of Representatives is weighing in on a court decision that threatens key elements of the state’s homeschool system.  Anchorage Superior Court judge Adolf Zeman ruled earlier this month a law authorizing cash payments to homeschool parents that can be spent on private or religious schooling violates the state Constitution. The judge called on lawma ..read more

People fish off North Douglas in July 2023. (Clarise Larson/KTOO) A new University of Alaska research project will look at how human-caused climate change affects fishing, farming and harvesting in the Gulf of Alaska to build resilience for communities that rely on the ocean. Twenty million dollars of funding from the National Science Foundation will support the work of 23 researchers at all three University of Alaska campuses in Fairbanks, Juneau and Anchorage. Jason Fellman of the Alaska Coastal Rainforest Center is one of the principal investigators on the Interface of Change project. He sa ..read more

Navy SEALs stationed on the East Coast jump from an MC-130J Commando II near Kodiak, Alaska, Sunday, February 25, 2024. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post) The United States military has become more focused on training in Alaska, as Russia and China have looked to expand into the resource-rich and increasingly ice-free Arctic. And that goes not just for conventional forces, but also for Special Operations forces like Navy SEALs and Army Green Berets. Both were training in Alaska this past winter by parachuting into frigid water off Kodiak or skiing through the woods around Fairbanks, among ot ..read more

Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan has said noncompete agreements stop workers from switching jobs, even when they could earn more money or have better working conditions. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images) The Federal Trade Commission narrowly voted Tuesday to ban nearly all noncompetes, employment agreements that typically prevent workers from joining competing businesses or launching ones of their own. The FTC received more than 26,000 public comments in the months leading up to the vote. Chair Lina Khan referenced on Tuesday some of the stories she had heard from workers. “We heard ..read more

Mary Peltola making campaign ads on the Kuskokwim River in 2022, when she ran for Congress as a salmon advocate and an opponent of the Donlin Creek Mine. (Liz Ruskin/Alaska Public Media) Congresswoman Mary Peltola has joined Alaska’s U.S senators on a legal brief in support of the proposed Donlin Creek Mine in Peltola’s home region of the Kuskokwim Delta. Tribal and subsistence advocates in the region are shocked that Peltola, whose campaign slogan was “Fish, Family and Freedom,” would take this position. Sophie Swope, executive director of a Bethel-based tribal coalition called Mother Kuskokw ..read more