KTOO News Update
The day’s local and state news in about 10 minutes.
Newscast – Friday, May 23, 2025
In this newscast: An Anchorage lawyer has been implicated as a "cartel attorney" working for traffickers who allegedly sent hard drugs from Mexico to Alaska; It was Sen. Lisa Murkowski's 68th birthday yesterday; The Juneau Assembly considers a seasonal sales tax ballot proposition to capitalize on summer tourism; A teacher in Juneau's Mendenhall Valley is bringing current glacial outburst flood science to middle schoolers; The cruise line industry is suing Skagway over a new policy that makes a controversial change to how the borough taxes excursions sold by cruise companies
Read More »Newscast – Thursday, May 22, 2025
In this newscast: Tomorrow is the last day of school at the Juneau School District, and high school seniors are graduating on Sunday; A storm is set to hit Southeast Alaska this weekend with strong winds and heavy rain; Property taxes could go up for most Juneau residents if the Juneau Assembly moves forward with a plan to increase the rate it uses to calculate them in the next fiscal year; The Juneau School District is restructuring one of its specialized education programs. While staff and administrators say the change is desperately needed, some parents are concerned about how it will affect some of the district's most vulnerable students; The Chilkoot Indian Association in Haines is launching a new tourism effort
Read More »Newscast – Wednesday, May 21, 2025
In this newscast: The Juneau Assembly unanimously passed a resolution on Monday in support of keeping the Mendenhall Glacier Recreation Area federally owned; The City and Borough of Juneau may step in to fund positions at the Mendenhall Glacier Recreation Area formerly held by federal workers; The Juneau Assembly also unanimously approved a change for how much the city charges large cruise ships to dock at city owned facilities; Alaska lawmakers overrode Gov. Mike Dunleavy's veto of a high profile education bill yesterday
Read More »Newscast – Tuesday, May 20, 2025
In this newscast: The local advocates who filed a petition with the City and Borough of Juneau last month to put harder limits on cruise ship tourism have withdrawn it; The Juneau Assembly passed an ordinance mandating the Juneau Police Department release body-word camera footage no more than 30 days after a city police officer shoots someone; Another Ketchikan school board member stepped down, following the district's board president, superintendent and another board member; It's still not clear why the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development failed a federal test that saves the state millions of dollars; Juneau residents held a tree-planting ceremony in honor of Arbor Day yesterday.
Read More »Newscast – Monday, May 19, 2025
In this newscast: The Juneau School District Board of Education appointed Steve Whitney to the board on Saturday; Senator Lisa Murkowski has introduced a bill that would reauthorize funds for landslide monitoring projects across Southeast Alaska; The Alaska Department of Education and Early Development failed a test that allows it to include millions of federal dollars towards its contributions to education funding; Tribal leaders from across the country spoke out last week at a U.S. Senate hearing against changes within the Department of Health and Human Services; Curious Juneau: What’s the story behind the Fiddlehead Cookbook’s North Douglas chocolate cake?
Read More »Newscast – Friday, May 16, 2025
In this newscast: Five candidates have applied to fill an empty seat on the Juneau School District Board of Education after Will Muldoon resigned; Alaska regulators have assessed a $49,000 fine against Hilcorp for lapses in Cook Inlet offshore well management, the Alaska Beacon reports; Some Southeast Alaska communities had their earliest harmful algal bloom on record this year, and there is currently a paralytic shellfish toxin advisory across region for recreational and subsistence harvest; Local and state transportation officials are wrapping up a study that hones in on five locations for a potential second bridge; Thousands of new books are landing in the hands of kids across Southeast Alaska this month as the result of a partnership between the region's largest tribal government and a Native-led nonprofit with roots in the Navajo and Hopi nations
Read More »Newscast – Thursday, May 15, 2025
In this newscast: A German Shepherd who was on the lam for nearly three months has been captured to returned to her family; The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation says 400,000 gallons of process water spilled at a large lead and zinc mine in Northern Alaska yesterday; The Alaska Department of Education and Early Development is considering whether to reduce the amount of money local governments can give to school district, but a new bill would allow local governments to continue to fund school districts as they have been; Juneau's city-owned ski area expects to run a deficit for the foreseeable future, and their plan to dig out of the deficit relies heavily on revenue from a gondola that has yet to be built; Lawmakers rejected two of Gov. Mike Dunleavy's nominees for state boards and commissions in a joint session of the state House and Senate yesterday
Read More »Newscast – Wednesday, May 14, 2025
In this newscast: Lawmakers are setting aside until next year a bill that would kick off a pilot program for tribally-run public schools; The Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska can now receive reimbursements for providing child welfare services directly from the federal government; Alaska officials who help resettle immigrants say they're facing a lot of uncertainty amid the Trump administration's crackdown on legal and illegal immigration; Alaska would be in the same time zone as Seattle for four months of the year, if a bill passed Monday by the Alaska Senate becomes law, the Alaska Beacon reports; The Trump administration has started cancelling grants to tribal libraries in communities across the state, which could be debilitating for Klukwan's library
Read More »Newscast – Tuesday, May 13, 2025
In this newscast: Juneau was one of nine communities selected for an annual grant by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a health philanthropy group; Flood inundation maps that model how Juneau's Mendenhall River levee should perform have finally arrived; Initial results from a study of humpback whale health in Juneau found that the area is particularly important for females and their calves, and the findings could drive the city to consider restricting the growth of the whale watching industry; A Washington state-based conservation group is suing the National Marine Fisheries Service over king salmon, again
Read More »Newscast – Monday, May 12, 2025
In this newscast: The filing period to run for an elected position in Southeast Alaska’s proposed Xunaa Borough closes this Friday. But, a pending appeal of a state commission’s approval of the new borough could halt the special election scheduled this July, when residents will be asked whether to create Alaska’s 20th borough; Gov. Mike Dunleavy says he’s ordering a freeze on most state hiring, out-of-state travel and new regulations as oil prices tumble. Dunleavy outlined the freeze in an administrative order released Friday afternoon; Learning a language is hard. Learning a language without a teacher regularly checking in is even harder. But this year, Kake City Schools students got the chance to learn Lingít while creating multilingual poems that give people a glimpse of where they come from.
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