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Alaska’s slow start to wildfire season a relief after Connecticut-sized area burned last year

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Alaska’s slow start to wildfire season a relief after Connecticut-sized area burned last year


ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Alaska is off to the slowest start of a wildfire season in three decades — an immense relief one year after fires scorched nearly enough land to cover Connecticut and even threatened remote Alaska Native communities on the tundra.

Thanks to a cool, wet summer, wildfires so far this year have burned just 1½ times the size of New York’s Central Park.

“If you were to kind of draw up a recipe for what would be a benign fire season in Alaska, we really have really checked all those boxes just this summer so far,” said Brian Brettschneider, a climate scientist with the National Weather Service.

It’s a far cry from last year, when the state burned in ways rarely or never seen.

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A lightning strike in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in southwest Alaska, a region primarily made up of tundra, threatened two Alaska Native villages with about 700 total residents before firefighters put it out. Smoke from a fire that prompted a three-week evacuation for a subdivision in the community of Anderson blanketed Denali National Park and Preserve, one of the state’s premiere tourist destinations.

One home was destroyed in that fire and several seasonal cabins were lost. The only fatality in last year’s fires came when a helicopter pilot moving equipment to support firefighters died in a crash.

In all, last year’s fires consumed 4,844 square miles (12,545 square kilometers) — just slightly less than the size of Connecticut. Of course, Alaska is huge; Connecticut could fit within it 118 times, according to the tourism website alaska.org.

This season’s favorable weather is thanks to an upper level trough of low pressure over the Bering Sea and western Alaska. It’s bringing cooler air, promoting cloud cover and encouraging the arrival of moisture from the Gulf of Alaska, which helps keep plants from drying out, Brettschneider said.

Firefighters hired by state and federal agencies are not sitting around lamenting they have no fires to fight, said Sam Harrel, a spokesperson for the Alaska Division of Forestry. The state is using money from the infrastructure bill to remove fuels to prevent future fires, he said.

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Alaska has also sent about 100 firefighters to help battle wildfires engulfing neighboring Canada.

The one drawback to the cooler, wetter summer is that some Alaskans are missing out on what is traditionally a short summer season. Eberhard Brunner, an 85-year-old photographer from Anchorage, wore a raincoat as he captured images of geese at the city’s Westchester Lagoon on Thursday.

“It should be nice and should be sunny, in the 70s,” Brunner said. “If the weather keeps me home, I’ll never be able to get out.”

Naomi Reupena-Tuaiao, a Honolulu native working in downtown Anchorage on her summer break from college in Nebraska, wishes it was just a little warmer.

“It’s just cold,” she said from under a large red umbrella. She had been standing outside in the rain for about seven hours, directing tourists to a trolley. Her shoes were wet and she was wearing two jackets.

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Anchorage has only gone above 70 degrees F (21.1 degrees C) once this year.

Even though conditions favor the low fire season now, Brettschneider said that could quickly change.

The state is still about 10 days away from the historical peak for lightning season — last year, an astounding 61,000 lightning strikes were recorded from July 5-11 — and it only takes a few days of sunny, breezy, dry weather to provide fuel for wildfires.

“Things can change on a dime, but so far, so good,” he said.

The fire season generally concludes in Alaska at the end of August.

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Connecticut

Tractor-trailer carrying thousands of gallons of fuel catches fire on I-91 in Wethersfield

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Tractor-trailer carrying thousands of gallons of fuel catches fire on I-91 in Wethersfield


A tractor-trailer hauling thousands of gallons of fuel caught fire on Interstate 91 North in Wethersfield on Friday morning.

State police said state troopers responded to I-91 North near exit 24 around 7:42 a.m. and found the cab of a tractor- trailer carrying 7,500 gallons of fuel on fire.

The driver was able to get out of the truck and was not injured, according to state police.

The fire departments from Wethersfield and Rocky Hill responded to the scene to extinguish the fire and troopers shut down I-91 North and South as well as oncoming traffic from Route 3 to I-91 South.

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Because the truck was hauling fuel, troopers worked to move drivers who were nearby, state police said.

I-91 South reopened shortly after the fire was out.

The left two lanes of I-91 North have been reopened and the state police Fire & Explosives Investigation Unit is also responding to assist with the investigation.

State police said the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection later responded to the scene.

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Connecticut couple charged in alleged Lululemon theft spree that netted up to $1 million

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Connecticut couple charged in alleged Lululemon theft spree that netted up to  million


A Connecticut couple has been charged in connection with an elaborate two-month theft spree at Lululemon stores across the country that an investigator with the retailer estimates netted about $1 million worth of product.

Jadion Richards, 44, and Akwele Lawes-Richards, 45, were arrested on Nov. 14 in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Minnesota suburb of Woodbury. The couple, from Danbury, Connecticut, were charged with organized retail theft after a Lululemon retail crime investigator contacted local authorities in Minnesota.

But Lululemon’s investigator said evidence shows their crimes go back to September and took place in states like Utah, Colorado, New York and Connecticut, according to the criminal complaint.

Attorneys representing Richards and Lawes-Richards did not immediately respond to USA TODAY’s request for comment Thursday.

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Richards claimed he was racially profiled, complaint says

Richards and Lawes-Richards were stopped after exiting the Lululemon store in Roseville, Minnesota, on Nov. 14 when the security alarm went off, according to the criminal complaint. Richards allegedly claimed store employees racially profiled him and the two were allowed to leave afterward.

The Lululemon investigator later alleged the two visited the store the day before on Nov. 13 with an unidentified man and stole 45 item valued at nearly $5,000. That same day, the pair had allegedly conducted four other thefts in Minneapolis, Edina and Minnetonka.

Officers arrested the couple at the Lululemon in Woodbury. The two denied any involvement in the theft, with Lawes-Richards allegedly claiming they were staying with her aunt and had only been in Minnesota for a day.

Officers found several credit and debit cards on the couple, as well as an access card to a Marriott hotel room. Using a search warrant, officers found 12 suitcases in their room, including three filled with Lululemon clothing with tags attached worth over $50,000, according to the complaint.

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In all, the company investigator estimated the couple has taken up to $1 million in stolen product, according to the complaint, which does not detail how he arrived at the high figure.

Couple blocked cameras among other tactics: Investigator

The Lululemon investigator said one of the couple’s alleged tactics was for one of them to distract associates while another stuffed product in the clothes they were wearing, according to the complaint.

Another technique involved the two strategically exiting the store, with one of them holding a cheap item they had bought and the other carrying more expensive products that had sensors, according to the complaint. When the alarm would sound off, only the person with the cheap, purchased item would stay behind and show a receipt, while the other would keep walking with the stolen product, the complaint says.

The pair are accused in eight Colorado theft incidents between Oct. 29 and 30, and seven thefts in Utah on Nov. 6 and 7, according to the complaint.

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The pair are currently being held at the Ramsey County jail in Minnesota, court records show. Their next court appearance is set for Dec. 16.



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Connecticut readers get the shaft from newspaper’s vulgar Jets headline blunder

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Connecticut readers get the shaft from newspaper’s vulgar Jets headline blunder


Ouch!

A newspaper in Connecticut had an unfortunate typo involving Jets linebacker C.J. Mosley’s herniated disc on Monday.

This past Monday, The Chronicle, a newspaper covering Eastern Connecticut, published an AP story on the front page of its sports section in the print edition that referred to Mosley’s “herniated d–k.”

Mosley has missed the Jets’ four games with the injury — the one in his neck, that is.

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Jets linebacker C.J. Mosley speaks with the media before practice in Florham Park, NJ. Bill Kostroun/New York Post

In the copy, Mosley’s injury was not shafted, getting described correctly in the nut graph.

The unfortunate phallacy did not go unnoticed: in an extra twist, the error went viral when it was posted on the X account of David Coverdale, the 73-year-old singer of Whitesnake.

An editor for The Chronicle told The Post that the newspaper would be issuing a correction in the paper.

Last week, prior to the Jets’ loss to the Colts, Mosley spoke about how he hoped to return after the Jets’ bye, when they host the Seahawks on Dec. 1.

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“That’s definitely the goal,” he said. “I’m in a position where I’ve played a lot of football. Me missing this time won’t hurt me as much as another guy that might need this opportunity. It’s about safety at the end of the day. When I go home, I’m Clint Mosley. I’m C.J. I’m not the football player.”

Mosley said the birth of his daughter, who arrived the week after his injury, put things in perspective for him.

“I had a full week of having a normal neck and ever since then every time I’m looking down, my neck’s hurting,” Mosley said. “It puts things in perspective. There’s a lot of life after football. When I’m done playing, I want to make sure I’m 100 percent.”

From head to toe and everywhere in between.

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