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Fuel in the Alaska village of Noatak was $16 a gallon. The costs are more than just money.

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Fuel in the Alaska village of Noatak was  a gallon. The costs are more than just money.


Wanda Sue Web page had an issue.

“My Honda is empty proper now for a pair days,” mentioned Web page, 59, a member of the Tribal Council in Noatak, a neighborhood of slightly below 600 principally Inupiaq residents halfway between Kotzebue and Kivalina within the Northwest Arctic Borough.

Somebody had siphoned off the final little bit of gasoline within the four-wheeler she makes use of to get round city. That’s greater than an inconvenience in a neighborhood the place the value of gas hit $15.99 a gallon, a number of occasions the nationwide common and dramatically greater than even in neighboring communities. Range oil prices the identical. After a 6% gross sales tax, it provides as much as $16.47 a gallon.

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The costs for gasoline and range oil in Noatak have been already staggering due to longstanding points with how the city imports its gas, hovering for years round $9 or $10 a gallon. A number of international elements are exacerbating the prices, and never simply in Noatak. Different villages within the area are seeing upward of $10 and $12 a gallon for the primary time. And the situations which have brought about Noatak’s gasoline costs to spike are quickly going to hit extra rural Alaska communities, based on vitality consultants, as international instability in vitality markets and local weather change proceed.

The hefty gas prices made for a troublesome few months in Noatak, which had an exceptionally chilly winter this 12 months.

“I helped my mother all 12 months with gas, even (although) I’m not working myself,” Web page mentioned.

Throughout city, she mentioned, folks tried to remain heat when they didn’t come up with the money for for range oil. A number of occasions in the course of the evening she introduced wooden to her 96-year-old mom’s home. A nephew stayed along with her when he had no gas in any respect and couldn’t hold heat at his house. Some youthful males collected cardboard from the shop to burn.

“Lotta guys who will get wooden and promote wooden, which is rather a lot cheaper than shopping for range oil,” Web page mentioned. It prices within the neighborhood of $180 for sufficient logs to warmth a house for a little bit greater than every week.

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“It’s good wooden from the nation,” Web page mentioned.

However even to get out a methods and haul again logs, she mentioned, you want a snowmachine, sled, chain noticed and sufficient gasoline to energy the entire operation.

The identical is true for the small variety of residents who sometimes journey 22 miles from the neighborhood alongside a snowmachine path to the street that connects Pink Canine Mine with its port terminal on the Chukchi Coastline. The mine does restricted gross sales of 55-gallon drums priced according to their a lot cheaper bulk gas order. However once more, Web page mentioned, like paying for an Amazon Prime or Costco membership, it is advisable have some cash with a view to avoid wasting cash, and many individuals haven’t any selection however to spend $16 on the pump.

“They nonetheless purchase it. We now have to eat, now we have to eat our meals from the land or the river,” Web page mentioned. “Lotta folks wrestle.”

‘It’s a double whammy for the villages’

One huge motive Noatak’s gas prices have been already among the many costliest within the state is as a result of all of it must be flown in. By 1992, adjustments within the Noatak River made the channel depth too shallow for barge entry, which is how nearly all coastal and river communities in Western Alaska get gas delivered in the course of the transient home windows within the ice-free season.

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Now, Noatak is one of some rural cities in Alaska which have to usher in all their gas by airplane as an alternative of barge. Although the communities leapfrog one another for the most costly gas costs, the gallons bought for a lot of this winter for $15.99 on the Noatak retailer have been very seemingly the very best in Alaska, based on information offered by the Alaska Housing Finance Corp.’s Analysis and Rural Improvement Division, which twice a 12 months gathers native gas costs from 300 communities throughout the state.

Residents received a slight break not too long ago: Gasoline costs went all the way down to $12.99 late final week.

Vitality prices are already a lot increased in rural Alaska than alongside the Railbelt, however when adjustments in river construction or coastlines have an effect on the infrastructure for gas supply, costs skyrocket.

“It’s a pure course of. Rivers in Alaska are fairly flat and have a tendency to meander. There’s not rather a lot you are able to do,” mentioned Ingemar Mathiasson, vitality supervisor for the Northwest Arctic Borough. “If a village is caught, it’s caught.”

Mathiasson lives in Ambler, alongside the Kobuk River on the opposite aspect of the borough. Lately, variable water ranges within the river have meant barges can not make their gas deliveries in the summertime, forcing Ambler and a neighboring neighborhood to fly of their gas identical to Noatak. In Ambler, a gallon of gasoline prices $12.36 a gallon.

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In line with Mathiasson, the channel not too long ago shifted alongside the close by city of Shungnak, ruining its barge entry for the foreseeable future.

Towards the top of final 12 months, storms throughout Western Alaska, outbreaks of COVID amongst airline employees, and logistical challenges arising from backlogged flights brought about Noatak to scramble for an alternate air provider as gas provides ran out. A smaller provider than the usually used service made it work, nevertheless it made the value per gallon rise by $4. The latest decline displays a return to deliveries by the city’s common provider.

International oil costs had been rising earlier than the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the struggle has created chaos in worldwide vitality programs, spiking gasoline costs. These prices are amplified additional in rural Alaska as a result of a scarcity of infrastructure like pipelines provides further logistical steps that additional swell the value.

“Each disaster on the market on the planet escalates the costs,” Mathiasson mentioned. “The airplane that brings the gas in additionally runs on the identical gas. So the price of transferring the gas, if the gas doubles, it doubles the logistics. It’s a double whammy for the villages which have to maneuver in gas.”

Mathiasson expects a sustained battle in Ukraine may contribute to grease reaching as excessive as $150 a barrel, one thing that village vitality cooperatives and utility firms in Bush cities will probably be nervously watching as they plan their bulk gas orders later this 12 months.

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The additional prices of excessive gas

“It was fairly robust this winter,” mentioned Noatak’s Hilda Sales space, who noticed folks making an attempt to warmth their houses with paper, cardboard and even scrubby little willows from the tundra.

The city was already having points with low ranges in its water tank, however with gasoline and electrical payments bulging, folks reduce on issues like warmth hint programs alongside pipes, inflicting extra bursts and freeze-ups. Annoyed by shedding water service, Sales space mentioned some individuals who have been ready snowmachined to Kotzebue to clean laundry.

“Each house, these which might be on low revenue, they have been those that have been hurting essentially the most ready for the state to ship vitality help, in order that they will get some gas. It wasn’t that a lot as earlier than, nevertheless it helped out a little bit bit,” Sales space mentioned of economic support from the state of Alaska.

Assist has come from different entities, too. Maniilaq, the regional nonprofit within the Northwest Arctic, provided each household in Ambler $500 value of gasoline or range gas, and one other $300 that may go towards meals.

“You should purchase ammo for those who’s looking for you,” mentioned 84-year-old Don Williams from his house in Ambler. “I get that gasoline after which I reserve it for when my grandkids go searching.”

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As Williams chatted on a latest Could afternoon, he mentioned there have been caribou within the space. Hunters who had cached gasoline, traded for it, or bit the bullet to pay $12 a gallon have been on their means out into the nation in search of them.

At his age, Williams has needed to retire from many subsistence actions, and was wanting ahead to his spouse’s return from a visit into Anchorage for a grandchild’s commencement.

“My grandson got here within the different day with a giant fats goose he had shot and cleaned, and boy did that look good,” Williams mentioned. “So I received that goose sitting within the freezer ready for them to come back again.”

He mentioned he worries that with costs the way in which they’re, many younger folks gained’t have gasoline cash to place into their boat engines by the point the river opens again up and subsistence harvesting will get into full swing in late summer time and fall.

“Acquired me one caribou, I used to be surviving off that,” mentioned elder Minnie Wooden, 63, additional up the river in Kobuk. “My one, I shared with a couple of households for a meal. However yeah, they shared me additionally, ‘trigger I can’t exit.”

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Wooden mentioned vitality help from the state helped, however got here late for a lot of in her city. Like most individuals in Kobuk, which has only a handful of paying jobs, she isn’t working and depends upon an elder help community for her heating gas.

“Hopefully the costs will come down,” Wooden mentioned.

Two roads

There are only a few choices out there that can deliver down gas prices within the brief time period for the communities acutely affected by them within the Northwest Arctic.

One that can make a dent are ongoing renewable tasks going up, like a not too long ago put in photo voltaic farm in Shungnak. In 2019, the borough’s Village Enchancment Fund invested in warmth pumps and photo voltaic panels in 70 houses in Ambler to assist scale back gas bills. A photo voltaic array and battery system is deliberate to come back on-line in Noatak in 2023, the majority of which is supported via a federal grant, and which may save an estimated 18,840 gallons of diesel gas a 12 months.

In line with Mathiasson, regardless that these tasks will scale back the full vitality hundreds in these communities by 10% to 30%, excessive gas prices will stay a burden.

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“We’re nonetheless gonna want the gas for heating and transport,” Mathiasson mentioned. “Till we are able to produce electrical energy decrease than what we’re doing as we speak, at a a lot increased scale than what we are able to do as we speak, we’re nonetheless gonna want gas for transport.”

The opposite possibility, for Noatak not less than, is a street connecting the neighborhood to Delong Mountain Transportation System, the 52-mile community of all-weather roads used to maneuver ore and provides from Pink Canine Mine to an export terminal on the Chukchi Coastline. That will give the neighborhood simpler entry to mine’s cheaper gas.

The borough and different stakeholders have experimented with a wintertime street as a means of opening a seasonal reference to fewer environmental impacts and regulatory red-tape, nevertheless it has thus far been unsuccessful.

A lot of the paths proposed for such a street would cross over a portion of the Cape Krusenstern Nationwide Monument, managed by the Nationwide Park Service.

“We’re actually empathetic to their wants,” mentioned Abby Wines, the interim superintendent of Western Arctic Nationwide Parklands, which incorporates the Krusenstern Nationwide Monument close to Noatak. “At this level we don’t have a proper utility from there.”

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Any land switch or easement, she cautioned, would take some time to guage.

“We’re speaking with them and we’ll evaluation a proposal once we get one thing,” Wines added.





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Alaska

Alaska Airlines Hawaii-Bound Flight Makes U-Turn to Seattle

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Alaska Airlines Hawaii-Bound Flight Makes U-Turn to Seattle


SEATTLE- An Alaska Airlines (AS) flight bound for Kahului, Hawaii (OGG), was forced to return to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) following a mid-air pressurization emergency.

Flight AS825, operated by a Boeing 737-900, was en route to Kahului when it experienced a loss of cabin pressure roughly 220 nautical miles southwest of Seattle at 34,000 feet. The aircraft made an emergency descent and safely landed back at SEA about 90 minutes after takeoff.

An Alaska Airlines (AS) flight bound for Kahului, Hawaii (OGG), was forced to return to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) following a mid-air pressurization emergency.
Photo: By Eric Salard – N408AS LAX, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43543100

Alaska Airlines Makes U-Turn to Seattle

On June 3, 2025, Alaska Airlines Flight AS825 departed Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) for Kahului International Airport (OGG), flagged by Aviation Herald.

The flight was operated by a Boeing 737-900, tail number N462AS. While cruising over the Pacific Ocean, the flight crew initiated an emergency descent from FL340 to 9,000 feet due to a pressurization malfunction.

The flight diverted back to SEA and landed without incident on Runway 34R.

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The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) confirmed that the crew reported a cabin pressurization issue and returned safely around 11:00 a.m. local time. The agency has launched a formal investigation into the incident.

A replacement aircraft, also a Boeing 737-900 (registration N468AS), resumed the journey to Hawaii and landed at Kahului approximately six hours behind schedule.

Alaska Airlines Hawaii-Bound Flight Makes U-Turn to SeattleAlaska Airlines Hawaii-Bound Flight Makes U-Turn to Seattle
Photo: By Aero Icarus from Zürich, Switzerland – Delta Air Lines Boeing 737-800; N3746H@SLC;09.10.2011/621ai, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26713097

Similar Incident

In a related incident earlier this year, Delta Air Lines (DL) experienced a pressurization emergency on Flight DL576.

The aircraft, a Boeing 737-800 (registration N399DA), departed from Mexico City International Airport (MEX) bound for Atlanta (ATL) on April 7, 2025. Shortly after takeoff, the aircraft failed to climb beyond 10,000 feet due to pressurization problems.

Complicating matters, miscommunication arose between the Delta flight crew and Mexico City ATC.

The pilots declared an emergency but also indicated they were not immediately returning to the airport. Their request for vectors to avoid terrain while completing checklists was confusing, especially given the high elevation of MEX (7,300 feet) and the mountainous surrounding terrain.

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Key Factors Behind Pressurization Emergencies

  • Terminology Misuse: Use of non-standard emergency phrases can delay ATC response.
  • Altitude Limitations: High-elevation airports reduce vertical safety margins during emergencies.
  • Incomplete Communication: Failing to clearly articulate flight intentions under stress can create avoidable misunderstandings.
  • Checklist Protocols: Flight crews often need time and space to complete troubleshooting procedures before executing a return.

Both incidents underscore the critical need for clear, standardized communication and highlight how environmental and technical constraints can quickly escalate emergencies.

Stay tuned with us. Further, follow us on social media for the latest updates.

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Former Alaska priest believed kidnapped by terrorist group, Alaska Diocese says

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Former Alaska priest believed kidnapped by terrorist group, Alaska Diocese says


FAIRBANKS, Alaska (KTUU) – A mass was held Tuesday for a former Fairbanks priest who the Diocese of Fairbanks says was kidnapped while on a mission in Africa.

On Sunday, the Catholic Diocese of Fairbanks says it received word from Nigeria that the former Rev. Alphonsus Afina and two companions were taken captive by members of Boko Haram while traveling.

Boko Haram is a self-proclaimed Jihadist militant group that has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States since 2013.

Afina had spent six and a half years in Alaska, spending his time in service to the villages on the Seward Peninsula. He traveled to Nigeria to help build a trauma center in the country for victims of Boko Haram.

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The Diocese held a mass on Tuesday where community members gathered to pray for Afina’s safe and immediate release from captivity.

“The turnout was absolutely amazing,” said Rev. Robert Fath, JCL, Vicar General of the Catholic Diocese of Fairbanks.

“We put word out [Monday], and in less than 24 hours, we had a couple hundred people gathered at the cathedral here in Fairbanks for a mass to pray for Father Alphonsus, other victims of the Boko Haram, that they be given strength and God willing, they be released back to us to continue their mission.”

No other information about Afina’s condition has been made public since Sunday.

See a spelling or grammar error? Report it to web@ktuu.com

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Interior Plans to Rescind Drilling Ban in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve

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Interior Plans to Rescind Drilling Ban in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve


A critical question demands an actionable answer. To date, many takes on various sides of the debate have focused more on high-level narrative than precise policy prescriptions. If we zoom in to look at the actual sources of delay in clean energy projects, what sorts of solutions would we come up with? What would a data-backed agenda for clean energy abundance look like?

The most glaring threat to clean energy deployment is, of course, the Republican Party’s plan to gut the Inflation Reduction Act. But “abundance” proponents posit that Democrats have imposed their own hurdles, in the form of well-intentioned policies that get in the way of government-backed building projects. According to some broad-brush recommendations, Democrats should adopt an abundance agenda focused on rolling back such policies.

But the reality for clean energy is more nuanced. At least as often, expediting clean energy projects will require more, not less, government intervention. So too will the task of ensuring those projects benefit workers and communities.

To craft a grounded agenda for clean energy abundance, we can start by taking stock of successes and gaps in implementing the IRA. The law’s core strategy was to unite climate, jobs, and justice goals. The IRA aims to use incentives to channel a wave of clean energy investments towards good union jobs and communities that have endured decades of divestment.

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Klein and Thompson are wary that such “everything bagel” strategies try to do too much. Other “abundance” advocates explicitly support sidelining the IRA’s labor objectives to expedite clean energy buildout.

But here’s the thing about everything bagels: They taste good.

They taste good because they combine ingredients that go well together. The question — whether for bagels or policies — is, are we using congruent ingredients?

The data suggests that clean energy growth, union jobs, and equitable investments — like garlic, onion, and sesame seeds — can indeed pair well together. While we have a long way to go, early indicators show significant post-IRA progress on all three fronts: a nearly 100-gigawatt boom in clean energy installations, an historic high in clean energy union density, and outsized clean investments flowing to fossil fuel communities. If we can design policy to yield such a win-win-win, why would we choose otherwise?

Klein and Thompson are of course right that to realize the potential of the IRA, we must reduce the long lag time in building clean energy projects. That lag time does not stem from incentives for clean energy companies to provide quality jobs, negotiate Community Benefits Agreements, or invest in low-income communities. Such incentives did not deter clean energy companies from applying for IRA funding in droves. Programs that included all such incentives were typically oversubscribed, with companies applying for up to 10 times the amount of available funding.

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If labor and equity incentives are not holding up clean energy deployment, what is? And what are the remedies?

Some of the biggest delays point not to an excess of policymaking — the concern of many “abundance” proponents — but an absence. Such gaps call for more market-shaping policies to expedite the clean energy transition.

Take, for example, the years-long queues for clean energy projects to connect to the electrical grid, which developers rank as one of the largest sources of delay. That wait stems from a piecemeal approach to transmission buildout — the result not of overregulation by progressive lawmakers, but rather the opposite: a hands-off mode of governance that has created vast inefficiencies. For years, grid operators have built transmission lines not according to a strategic plan, but in response to the requests of individual projects to connect to the grid. This reactive, haphazard approach requires a laborious battery of studies to determine the incremental transmission upgrades (and the associated costs) needed to connect each project. As a result, project developers face high cost uncertainty and a nearly five-year median wait time to finish the process, contributing to the withdrawal of about three of every four proposed projects.

The solution, according to clean energy developers, buyers, and analysts alike, is to fill the regulatory void that has enabled such a fragmentary system. Transmission experts have called for rules that require grid operators to proactively plan new transmission lines in anticipation of new clean energy generation and then charge a preestablished fee for projects to connect, yielding more strategic grid expansion, greater cost certainty for developers, fewer studies, and reduced wait times to connect to the grid. Last year, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission took a step in this direction by requiring grid operators to adopt regional transmission planning. Many energy analysts applauded the move and highlighted the need for additional policies to expedite transmission buildout.

Another source of delay that underscores policy gaps is the 137-week lag time to obtain a large power transformer, due to supply chain shortages. The United States imports four of every five large power transformers used on our electric grid. Amid the post-pandemic snarling of global supply chains, such high import dependency has created another bottleneck for building out the new transmission lines that clean energy projects demand. To stimulate domestic transformer production, the National Infrastructure Advisory Council — including representatives from major utilities — has proposed that the federal government establish new transformer manufacturing investments and create a public stockpiling system that stabilizes demand. That is, a clean energy abundance agenda also requires new industrial policies.

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While such clean energy delays call for additional policymaking, “abundance” advocates are correct that other delays call for ending problematic policies. Rising local restrictions on clean energy development, for example, pose a major hurdle. However, the map of those restrictions, as tracked in an authoritative Columbia University report, does not support the notion that they stem primarily from Democrats’ penchant for overregulation. Of the 11 states with more than 10 such restrictions, six are red, three are purple, and two are blue — New York and Texas, Virginia and Kansas, Maine and Indiana, etc. To take on such restrictions, we shouldn’t let concern with progressive wish lists eclipse a focused challenge to old-fashioned, transpartisan NIMBYism.

“Abundance” proponents also focus their ire on permitting processes like those required by the National Environmental Policy Act, which the Supreme Court curtailed last week. Permitting needs mending, but with a chisel, not a Musk-esque chainsaw. The Biden administration produced a chisel last year: a NEPA reform to expedite clean energy projectsand support environmental justice. In February, the Trump administration tossed out that reform and nearly five decades of NEPA rules without offering a replacement — a chainsaw maneuver that has created more, not less, uncertainty for project developers. When the wreckage of this administration ends, we’ll need to fill the void with targeted permitting policies that streamline clean energy while protecting communities.

Finally, a clean energy abundance agenda should also welcome pro-worker, pro-equity incentives like those in the IRA “everything bagel.” Despite claims to the contrary, such policies can help to overcome additional sources of delay and facilitatebuildout.

For example, Community Benefits Agreements, which IRA programs encouraged, offer a distinct, pro-building advantage: a way to avoid the community opposition that has become a top-tier reason for delays and cancellations of wind and solar projects. CBAs give community and labor groups a tool to secure locally-defined economic, health, and environmental benefits from clean energy projects. For clean energy firms, they offer an opportunity to obtain explicit project support from community organizations. Three out of four wind and solar developers agree that increased community engagement reduces project cancellations, and more than 80% see it as at least somewhat “feasible” to offer benefits via CBAs. Indeed, developers and communities are increasingly using CBAs, from a wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island to a solar park in California’s central valley, to deliver tangible benefits and completed projects — the ingredients of abundance.

A similar win-win can come from incentives for clean energy companies to pay construction workers decent wages, which the IRA included. Most peer-reviewed studies find that the impact of such standards on infrastructure construction costs is approximately zero. By contrast, wage standards can help to address a key constraint on clean energy buildout: companies’ struggle to recruit a skilled and stable workforce in a tight labor market. More than 80% of solar firms, for example, report difficulties in finding qualified workers. Wage standards offer a proven solution, helping companies attract and retain the workforce needed for on-time project completion.

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In addition to labor standards and support for CBAs, a clean energy abundance agenda also should expand on the IRA’s incentives to invest in low-income communities. Such policies spur clean energy deployment in neighborhoods the market would otherwise deem unprofitable. Indeed, since enactment of the IRA, 75% of announced clean energy investments have been in low-income counties. That buildout is a deliberate outcome of the “everything bagel” approach. If we want clean energy abundance for all, not just the wealthy, we need to wield — not withdraw — such incentives.

Crafting an agenda for clean energy abundance requires precision, not abstraction. We need to add industrial policies that offer a foundation for clean energy growth. We need to end parochial policies that deter buildout on behalf of private interests. And we need to build on labor and equity policies that enable workers and communities to reap material rewards from clean energy expansion. Differentiating between those needs will be essential for Democrats to build a clean energy plan that actually delivers abundance.





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