In the town where NFL Hall of Famers are immortalized each year, Kenai’s Allie Ostrander added to her own illustrious resume over the weekend by coming in fourth place at the U.S. 6K Championships in Canton, Ohio, on Saturday. The Alaska Sports and High School Sports Hall of Famer clocked in at 18 minutes, 20 seconds, which was just 12 seconds behind the top finisher and her former college teammate at Boise State, Emily Venters of Utah.

“Nothing more fun than ripping sub-5 miles down the streets of Ohio and reaching my max heart rate with over a mile to go,” Ostrander said in an Instagram post. “I felt strong and am excited about the trajectory I’ve been on this year.”

Anchorage’s Daishen Nix made his 2026 NBA Summer League debut over the weekend for the Houston Rockets and reached double figures in both minutes played and points scored in the two games he appeared. On Friday, in a 97-86 win over the Denver Nuggets, he came off the bench and logged 10 points in 25 minutes. The next day, in a 102-89 loss to the Toronto Raptors, he played one less minute but tied for the third-most points on the team with 16, which included knocking down a trio of 3-pointers.

Anchorage basketball player Isaiah Moses recorded his fourth and fifth straight games of double figures in scoring and helped propel the Perry Lakes Hawks in back-to-back wins last week in the NBL1 Australia. In a 110-88 triumph over the Rockingham Flames on Thursday, he recorded 11 points and four assists. The former Dimond star and Gatorade Player of the Year logged 20-plus points for the fourth time in his last five games with 26 points in a 104-75 win over the Goldfields Giants on Saturday. Moses went 6-of-10 from behind the arc and nearly had a double-double with nine assists.

Anchorage’s Coen Niclai recorded his team-leading fourth home run of the season for the Wareham Gatemen in the Cape Cod summer baseball league this past Thursday. In the top of the fourth inning in a 4-2 loss to the Chatham Anglers, the two-time Alaska Gatorade Player of the Year and recent Oregon State University commit sent a fly ball soaring out of the park over right center field.

Juneau’s Hunter Carte entered elite company Saturday when he led the Auke Bay Post 25 Alaska Legion baseball team to a 10-0 victory over visiting East. The recent graduate, who helped lead the Crimson Bears to a 2026 high school state title, recorded the first no-hitter in Legion baseball in two years and the seventh since the league adopted the pitch count in 2018. With the win, the team extended its six-game winning streak and remains atop the league standings as the regular season nears a close.

No one envies the Alaska Legislature being called back into a second special session on the proposed liquefied natural gas pipeline. One wonders if legislators are being held hostage to the governor’s predetermined decision. While the benefits of an LNG project are easily imagined, the economic risks of the Alaska LNG project must not be ignored.

Alaskans are not assured that Glenfarne, the company that was granted 75% of this project in an undisclosed document, won’t just flip it — sell it — to another entity after it gains billions of dollars in concessions from Alaska. Why the sudden change by Glenfarne and the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation from saying no legislative action was needed to the recent assertion that billions of dollars in property tax reductions are now necessary? It is without question that local municipalities will collectively incur hundreds of millions of dollars in direct impact costs.

Will Alaska give away another resource “farm” again? How would Alaska respond if the LNG project stalls and our resource continues to be a stranded asset? No purchaser has signed on the dotted line to actually buy fixed quantities of our gas. Are prospective purchasers interested? Yes. Have they signed binding contracts? No.

Russia has natural gas pipelines flowing into China. Russia has substantial volume to sell, having lost its natural gas sales to Europe after invading Ukraine. China currently produces 60% of its oil and natural gas needs by fracking its resources in western China. What would keep the Chinese from selling their or Russian natural gas to Alaska’s potential customers in Asia?

Natural gas prices have remained steady, which says there is plenty of it. Can Alaska’s project, including costly export facilities, be built at a cost that allows it to compete?

Legislators, please respond. But don’t sell out the interests of Alaskans. Glenfarne’s and AGDC’s lack of truthful answers raises many red flags. The correct decision is to let Glenfarne pay for its project. If it can’t or won’t, it isn’t economic.

Patrice Lee is a 49 year resident of Alaska, a retired math and science teacher, and a former elected member of the Interior Gas Utility Board of Directors. She lives in Fairbanks.

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The intense marine heat wave conditions that began roiling the Bering Sea in about 2016 resulted in the lowest winter sea ice extent measured in 150 years, widespread bird and marine mammal die-offs, a drastic shift in fish populations and a crash of snow crab stocks.

Now new research is tying the marine heat wave to the recent collapse of Yukon River chinook salmon.

A study published in April, written by scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center and University of Alaska Fairbanks, showed the correlation between the extreme heat wave conditions and the nosedive in Yukon River chinook stocks. The heat wave was accompanied by a dramatic increase in deaths of older juvenile and adult chinook that, had they survived, would have returned from the ocean to freshwater spawning grounds, the study found.

The study was published in the journal Ecological Applications.

The Yukon River’s runs of chinook, also called king salmon, have been in a long-term decline since their past heyday, when they numbered in the hundreds of thousands and the river was one of the biggest sources of that salmon species.

The sharp downturn in recent years resulted in a 2022 return that was the lowest on record. Widespread fishery closures have been in effect for years along the Yukon River system in both Alaska and Canada.

The study evaluated four general reasons for the sharp decline: poor juvenile “recruitment” into the ocean, which refers to the successful migration of surviving juvenile fish from freshwater; deaths of fish in the marine environment at the start of their migration back to freshwater; harvests that target the salmon; and bycatch, the unintentional harvest of salmon by commercial fishing vessels targeting other species, such as pollock.

Poor juvenile recruitment emerged as an important factor, which was to be expected, the study said.

“Not surprisingly, we found evidence to suggest that impacts operating in the early life stages have likely contributed to declines in run sizes over the past two decades, which is consistent with previous research,” NOAA Fisheries researcher Lukas DeFilippo, the lead author, said in a statement.

But the information about spiking mortality among adults and older juveniles was new, the NOAA scientists said. That new trend represents “an apparent shift in the critical life history stages and processes” for Yukon River chinook, and a potential bottleneck limiting population recovery, the study said.

Exactly how the heat wave conditions caused deaths of salmon at sea is yet to be determined, the study said. It listed several factors that could have worked in combination, including lack of suitable prey, infections by the parasite Ichthyophonus and other diseases, as well as increased energy demands brought on by warmer temperatures.

Harvests, either intentional or as bycatch, did not emerge as important factors in the recent Yukon chinook declines, the study found.

The study contained some warnings.

Even though the marine heat wave conditions have eased, the abundance of prey that salmon need in the ocean has not returned to normal, it noted. And mortality rates in those later life stages continue to be higher than they were prior to the latest heat wave.

And the heat problems for older salmon are likely to become more common in years to come, the study said.

“Given that marine heatwaves are expected to become more frequent and severe with continued warming . . . similar rises in mortality—and concomitant limitation of productivity and recovery potential—as described here could become increasingly common in the future,” the study said.

An earlier study by NOAA Fisheries and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game tied successive heatwaves in both the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska to sharp declines in chum salmon stocks. That 2023 study also pointed to higher mortality out in the ocean.

Originally published by the Alaska Beacon, an independent, nonpartisan news organization that covers Alaska state government.