Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 39
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A 70-year-old Alaska man who was attempting to take photos of two newborn moose calves was attacked and killed by their mother, authorities said Monday. The man killed Sunday was identified as Dale Chorman of Homer, said Austin McDaniel, a spokesperson for the Alaska Department of Public Safety. The female moose had recently given birth to the calves in Homer. "As they were walking through the brush looking for the moose, that's when the cow moose attacked Dale," McDaniel said. The attack happened as the two were r...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — When it comes to packing on the pounds to survive an Alaska winter, this year's undisputed champ is Grazer. Grazer, also known as Bear 128 to the fans of Fat Bear Week at Alaska's Katmai National Park and Preserve, won this year's contest, handily defeating Chunk 108,321 to 23,134 in the finals. The annual contest, which this year drew more than 1.3 million votes from dedicated fans watching the bears live at explore.org, is way to celebrate the resiliency of the brown bears that live on the preserve on the Alaska P...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A looming government shutdown threatens to claw its way into a crowd-pleasing Alaska tradition: Fat Bear Week. Alaska's most-watched popularity contest, Fat Bear Week involves residents picking their favorite fat brown bear who's been stocking up for winter by noshing on salmon in Katmai National Park & Preserve. Viewers of the bears online vote in tournament-style brackets for those they want to advance to the next round until a champion is crowned in the weeklong contest. More than 1 million votes were cast last y...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — The Alaska Air National Guard this week traveled nearly 660 miles (1,062 kilometers) to rescue a pregnant woman on a small island 2 miles (3 kilometers) from Russia, reflecting the challenges patients face in the nation's largest state where the most remote areas have no roads and hospitals can be hundreds of miles away. There was no air strip for a fixed-wing aircraft, so the crews flew a twin-engine combat search and rescue helicopter from the Anchorage area to the island in the Bering Strait. A long-range search a...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — So this moose walks into a medical building... While that could be a setup to a bad joke, it actually happened in Anchorage on Thursday. A young moose trudging through the snow looking for a meal spotted green plants in the lobby of a medical building in the Providence Alaska Health Park and decided to drop in for a dose of greenery. The ingenious — or lucky — moose triggered the sensors on the automatic doors to the building that houses the hospital's cancer center and other medical offices, said Randy Hughes, the h...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — The second half-century for the world's most famous sled dog race is getting off to a rough start. Only 33 mushers will participate in the ceremonial start of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on Saturday, the smallest field ever to take their dog teams nearly 1,000 miles (1,609 kilometers) over Alaska's unforgiving wilderness. This year's lineup is smaller even than that of the 34 mushers who lined up for the very first race in 1973. The small pool of mushers is raising concerns about the future of an iconic race t...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Firefighters in Alaska got an unusual request for assistance last weekend from the Alaska Wildlife Troopers, but it wasn't your mundane cat-stuck-in-a-tree situation. "They were looking for some help getting a moose out of a basement," said Capt. Josh Thompson with Central Emergency Services on the Kenai Peninsula. The moose, estimated to be a 1-year-old bull, had a misstep while eating breakfast Sunday morning by a home in Soldotna, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) southwest of Anchorage. "It looks like the moose h...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Authorities in Alaska were making contact Monday with some of the most remote villages in the United States to determine their food and water needs, as well as assess the damage after a massive storm flooded communities on the state's vast western coast this weekend. No one was reported injured or killed during the massive storm — the remnants of Typhoon Merbok — as it traveled north through the Bering Strait over the weekend. However, damage to homes, roads and other infrastructure is only starting to be revea...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A rural Alaska man who threatened to assassinate both of Alaska's U.S. senators in a series of profane messages left at their congressional offices was sentenced Friday to 32 months in prison. Jay Allen Johnson was also fined $5,000, ordered to serve three years of supervised release after his prison sentence, and is barred by a protective order from contacting U.S. Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, their family and staff members for three years. "Nothing excuses this conduct, threatening our elected officials, a...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — An Alaska man walking on a shoreline wound up clinging to a chunk of ice for more than 30 minutes in frigid water when the shoreline ice broke loose and carried him out into Cook Inlet. Jamie Snedden, 45, of Homer, was rescued Saturday near the community of Anchor Point on the Kenai Peninsula. He was taken to a hospital, where he was treated for hypothermia. He was expected to fully recover, Alaska Wildlife Troopers said. Snedden "was reported to have been walking along the shoreline on the ice when it broke free and d...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Volcano scientists issued an alert Wednesday, warning that a cloud of ash — from an eruption more than century ago — was headed toward Alaska's Kodiak Island. The ash is from the powerful 1912 eruption of Novarupta, a volcano on the Alaska Peninsula that dropped volcanic ash that is still visible today. Strong northwesterly winds in the vicinity of Katmai National Park and Preserve and Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes on Wednesday kicked up the loose volcano ash. "Generally, this time of year, we get these some these north...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Allen Minish was alone and surveying land for a real estate agent in a wooded, remote part of Alaska, putting some numbers into his GPS unit when he looked up and saw a large brown bear walking about 30 feet away. "I saw him and he saw me at the same time, and it's scary," he said by phone Wednesday from his hospital bed in Anchorage, a day after being mauled by the bear in a chance encounter. The mauling left Minish with a crushed jaw, a puncture wound in his scalp so deep the doctor told him he could see bone, l...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — "We're looking for Nancy Pelosi's laptop," FBI agents told Marilyn Hueper after briefly handcuffing her. Hueper shot back: "That still doesn't explain why you're in my home. Or in Homer, Alaska." The search for the House speaker's laptop had taken a U.S. Capitol Police officer thousands of miles away from home for an FBI raid on Hueper's home, looking for something stolen during the Jan. 6 insurrection — and the person who did it. The agents would walk out of Hueper's home with iPads, cellphones and a pocket-sized cop...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Top U.S. and Chinese officials offered sharply different views of each other and the world on Thursday as the two sides met face-to-face for the first time since President Joe Biden took office. In unusually pointed public remarks for a staid diplomatic meeting, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Chinese Communist Party foreign affairs chief Yang Jiechi took aim at each other’s country's policies at the start of two days of talks in Alaska. The contentious tone of their public comments suggested the private dis...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Traveling across the rugged, unforgiving and roadless Alaska terrain is already hard enough, but whatever comforts mushers previously had in the world's most famous sled dog race will be cast aside this year due to the pandemic. In years past, mushers would stop in any number of 24 villages that serve as checkpoints, where they could get a hot meal, maybe a shower and sleep — albeit "cheek to jowl" — in a warm building before getting back to the nearly 1,000-mile (1,609-kilometer) Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. When...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — An Alaska woman had the scare of a lifetime when using an outhouse in the backcountry and she was attacked by a bear, from below. "I got out there and sat down on the toilet and immediately something bit my butt right as I sat down," Shannon Stevens told The Associated Press on Thursday. "I jumped up and I screamed when it happened." Stevens, her brother Erik and his girlfriend had taken snowmobiles into the wilderness Feb. 13 to stay at his yurt, located about 20 miles northwest of Haines, in southeast Alaska. Her b...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Seal oil has been a staple in the diet of Alaska's Inupiat for generations. The oil — ever-present in households dotting Alaska coastlines — is used mainly as a dipping sauce for fish, caribou and musk ox. It's also used to flavor stews and even eaten alone. But when Inupiat elders entered nursing homes, they were cut off from the comfort food. State regulations didn't allow seal oil because it's among traditionally prepared Alaska Native foods that have been associated with the state's high rate of botulism, which...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A stunning tale of inappropriate behavior between a politician and a television anchor, death threats and nude photos culminated in a joint police and FBI investigation, the arrest of the journalist and the resignation of the mayor of Anchorage. Ethan Berkowitz, the top elected Democrat in Alaska, submitted his resignation to the Anchorage Assembly on Tuesday night, just days after he vehemently denied allegations by YourAlaskaLink anchor Maria Athens that he had posted nude photos of himself on an underage website. T...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A wild brown bear tunneled under perimeter fencing and killed a popular alpaca at the Alaska Zoo in Anchorage, officials said Wednesday. It was killed a day later by wildlife officials. The bear had been hanging around the zoo, knocking over trash bins and breaking bear-proof latches before it got under the fence early Sunday when the facility was closed to the public. "It went through the zoo and killed our older male alpaca, Caesar," executive director Patrick Lampi said. "He was a crowd favorite." He aaid the 1...
JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska (AP) — A lucky Buddha figurine, a flight suit, several 3-cent stamps, a crumpled 1952 Mass schedule for St. Patrick's Church in Washington, D.C., and 480 bags containing individual human remains. Those were among the items recovered this month from Alaska's Colony Glacier, where an annual somber search continues for human remains and debris after a military plane crashed 67 years ago, officials said Friday. The goal is to identify and return remains from everyone onboard the C-124 Globemaster, which s...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — An abandoned bus in the Alaska wilderness where a young man documented his demise over 114 days in 1992 has been removed by officials, frustrated that the bus has become a lure for dangerous, sometimes deadly pilgrimages into treacherous backcountry. An Alaska National Guard Chinook helicopter flew the bus out of the woods just north of Denali National Park and Preserve on Thursday. Christopher McCandless hiked to the bus located about 250 miles (402 kilometers) north of Anchorage nearly three decades ago, and the 2...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Nova Knight is 5, and very serious about keeping others safe during the coronavirus outbreak. She said so in a video, the Fairbanks, Alaska, resident made that's been viewed more than 18,000 times and drawn the praise of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. "I'm sorry if you can't go to your play dates," Nova said in the March 26 video. "Don't go anywhere. And wash your hands. I'm serious." Nova lives with her parents, Robby and Rebecca Knight and her 2-year-old brother, Colton. She has more advice about washing h...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — As Iditarod mushers drove their dog teams across Alaska on Saturday, race officials scrambled to make last minute changes prompted by concerns over the new coronavirus, including asking fans not to fly to Nome for the finish. Officials late Friday night urged race fans, especially those from out of state, to skip the finish this week. City officials in Nome followed most other Alaska cities in closing or limiting access to most public buildings in wake of the state's first positive test, that of a man from outside t...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — When 57 mushers line up Sunday for the official start of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, it will be the second-smallest field in the past two decades. Only last year's field of 52 was smaller. Interest in the world's most famous sled dog race has waned in recent years, in part because of smaller cash prizes that make it difficult for mushers to compete in an expensive sport. Animal rights activists also have stepped up pressure on sponsors to drop their support. Now, Iditarod officials are looking to breathe new life...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A man accused of killing a woman who was seen strangled in videos on a digital memory card was charged Thursday with the death of another woman, authorities in Alaska said. Brian Steven Smith acknowledged to detectives that he was the man in the images and videos recovered from the card, according to a document filed by the state Department of Law. Smith, 48, also said he shot another woman and told police where he disposed of her body, the document states. Anchorage police identified that woman as Veronica Abouchuk. A...
