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The Alaska Board of Education and Early Development unanimously voted to ban trans girls from competing in girls sports in Alaska. (Screenshot from Aug. 31, 2023) The Alaska Board of Education voted unanimously Thursday to approve a ban on transgender athletes participating in girls’ high school sports. The change will apply to all public high…

A network of pipelines, seen on Aug. 23, 2018, snakes through a portion of the Greater Prudhoe Bay Unit on Alaska’s North Slope. The oil and gas industry has more impact on Alaska’s economy than any other industry, a new study finds. (Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon) The oil industry packs a bigger economic punch than any…

The Lemon Creek Correctional Center. (Photo courtesy Alaska Department of Corrections) The deaths of two men by suicide in Alaska prisons in the past year have prompted legal advocates to sue the state on their families’ behalf. The American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska filed its wrongful death lawsuit Thursday against the Department of Corrections…

Lauren Anderson, the director of behavioral health at Providence Medical Center, said that the new behavioral-health crisis stabilization center will have an immersive open space for a relaxing atmosphere. (Mizelle Mayo/Alaska Public Media) Providence Alaska Medical Center broke ground Monday on a new mental health crisis stabilization center in Anchorage. The center will have space…

Still from Kendrick Whiteman’s “Night Terror” series of short films. This week on State of Art we’re hearing from filmmakers Kendrick Whiteman and Logan Smith. They’re both products of Alaska Teen Media Institute and are peer mentors with the youth media training organization. Whiteman was featured at the Anchorage International Film Festival in 2022 and…

(Courtesy Of Kimberly Fitka O’Domin’s Family) About 50 people gathered around a coffin last month in Kimberly Fitka O’Domin’s home in Marshall to welcome her home and say their goodbyes.  Friends, family and community members were finally able to bury her almost two months after she went missing from the Southwest Alaska village on June 15.…

Some of the 2,000 (on average) butts collected during a recent clean-up of Sitka’s Crescent Park strip and downtown. (Amanda Roberts) As Sitka heads toward a record cruise season, with over half-a-million visitors, some obvious things are up — like sales tax revenue and traffic. But some less obvious metrics are on the rise, too.…

Chris Colbert(left) and Jenn Miller(right) of Renewable Independent Power Producers prepare to cut the ribbon on the opening of the new solar farm located in Houston, Alaska on Tuesday August 29, 2023 (Adam Nicely/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…

Cattle investigate some human visitors to Chirikof Island in 2022. (Shanna Baker/Hakai Magazine) Alaska does not count cows as a native species, but on far-flung Chirikof Island, in the Kodiak Archipelago, feral cattle dominate the harsh landscape. It’s a hard life out there for an unmanaged herd of roughly 2,000 cows, though, and some have…

Winds were strong enough on Thursday afternoon to snap this birch tree at the base in Anchorage’s Airport Heights neighborhood on Aug. 31, 2023. (Valerie Lake/Alaska Public Media) Strong winds on Thursday downed trees across Anchorage and knocked out power for thousands of residents. The National Weather Service forecast had called for southeast winds to rapidly…

Emergency-service officials at Fairbanks International Airport, Eielson Air Force Base no longer train with firefighting foam containing PFAS. (KUAC file photo) 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:…

High waters have swamped the edge of Eklutna Lake, seen on Tuesday, and caused damage to the 13-mile trail that skirts the glacier-fed waterbody. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon) Trail advocates gathered on Tuesday morning at Eklutna Lake, a glacier-fed, turquoise, oblong body of water nestled in the mountains of Chugach State Park, to celebrate…

Dale Marshall prepares to off load his pumpkin Monday afternoon for the Alaska State Fair’s Pumpkin Weigh off. August 28. 2023. (Matt Faubion/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. Tuesday…

The aftermath of an explosion that destroyed Talkeetna Tako on Main Street in the early morning hours on Tuesday. (Phillip Manning/KTNA) A taco truck exploded Tuesday on Talkeetna’s Main Street. The blast damaged nearby buildings and could be heard for miles. It happened around 4:30 a.m. The explosion sent debris dozens of yards away from…

The ferry Tustumena is seen July 20, 2021, in Southwestern Alaska. (James Brooks photo) A year after a failed prior offering, the state of Alaska is planning to hire a shipyard to build a replacement for the ferry Tustumena. The new ferry is expected to cost almost $325 million, with the federal government picking up much…

A three-man team of scientists are traveling the middle section of the Yukon River by boat with a local guide this summer. They’re looking for signs of dinosaurs that once roamed here during the early Cretaceous Period, which was around 100 million years ago. (Emily Schwing/KYUK) Stories are posted on the statewide news page. Send news tips,…

An aerial view of Ketchikan. (KRBD file photo) A plane believed to be carrying two people from Glennallen to Ketchikan has been missing since Sunday, according to a report by the Alaska Department of Public Safety.  The plane, a Beechcraft Bonanza, left Glennallen at 8:50 a.m. on Sunday. It was last heard from about 18 miles inland…

Ben Kolendo waits to be called on with his hand raised at a Mat-Su school board meeting on Aug. 16, 2023. (Screenshot of MSBSD meeting) A new proposal from the Matanuska-Susitna school board would significantly weaken the role of the board’s student representative. The proposed changes are a big departure from how most other student…

Courtroom C in Juneau on March 22, 2023. (Yvonne Krumrey/KTOO) The trial for Jeffrey Fultz, a former Juneau-area chiropractor accused of sexually assaulting 14 patients, still has not been scheduled — more than two years after he was first charged.  District Attorney Jessalyn Gillum told KTOO on Wednesday that the long wait is partly due…

An Alaska State Troopers SUV in Bethel. (File/KYUK) Alaska State Troopers say that a man was shot and killed in Alakanuk on Tuesday. According to an online dispatch, 20-year-old Kobe Cook entered a home in the Yukon River village and started fighting another man. Troopers said Josiah Chikigak, 19, was also in the home and shot…

This aerial picture shows tanks used for storing treated water at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant. Japan began releasing wastewater from the plant into the Pacific Ocean on Thursday despite angry opposition from China and local fishermen. (Photo by STR/JIJI PRESS/AFP via Getty Images) FUKUSHIMA, Japan — Japan began releasing water from its crippled…