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Jill Biden touts efforts to bring better internet to Alaska Native villages

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Jill Biden touts efforts to bring better internet to Alaska Native villages


ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — For years, when the tiny Alaska Native village of Rampart’s awful internet service would go down, the only way to reach the outside world was to await the small airplane that touched down daily with supplies and the occasional visitor.

“We had no way of getting ahold of anybody out of Rampart other than going to the airport and telling the pilot,” said tribal administrator Margaret Moses. The pilot would relay messages — including word of medical emergencies — after flying 100 miles (161 kilometers) to Fairbanks.

The Koyukon Athabascan village of about 50 people eventually upgraded to a satellite company, at a hefty price of $3,000 a month.

It’s one of scores of Alaska Native villages where spotty and expensive internet coverage is the norm — if it’s available at all. And such service can be the only lifeline for remote communities, many of which can be reached only by boat or plane.

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Now, efforts to address inequities in a longstanding digital divide are underway across the nation’s largest state by land area, particularly in Alaska Native villages, with funding provided by the 2021 infrastructure bill and other federal programs as part of the Biden administration’s Internet for All initiative.

Overall, the bill provides $65 billion in funding to improve broadband access in the U.S. Every federally recognized tribe, including 229 in Alaska, can receive up to $500,000.

Jill Biden visited the southwest Alaska community of Bethel late Wednesday on a stopover to Japan to highlight progress being made under the program, including the award of $125 million last year for two broadband infrastructure projects in the area. In doing so, it was the the first visit by a first lady to Bethel, which is about 400 miles (644 kilometers) west of Anchorage and accessible only by air.

“With high-speed internet, you’ll have better access to critical health care, new educational tools, and remote job opportunities,” the Anchorage Daily News reported Biden told a crowd at the local high school.

“It will change lives. It will save lives.” said Biden, who was accompanied by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola, an Alaska Democrat, and Alaska first lady Rose Dunleavy.

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Dunleavy said the broadband investments in the Bethel area will help create jobs. She told the crowd: “Rural Alaska has always been on the wrong side of the digital divide until today.”

An additional $5 million in grants were awarded Wednesday, including $500,000 to the Hoonah Indian Association of southeast Alaska to help train people for jobs created by a tourism boom.

Nine other $500,000 grants were awarded to three tribes in California, helping increase the speed to 314 tribal households for the Soboba Band of Luiseno Indians; providing equipment and training to the Seminole Tribe of Florida; and upgrading 17 households with high speed internet service in the Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians (Gun Lake) in Michigan.

Other grants went to tribes in Minnesota, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

“What’s been hard in administering this program is the need is just so immense when you look at the totality of Indian Country as a whole and the lack of critical infrastructure that that hasn’t been made available previously to most of these communities,” said Adam Geisler, a division chief with the administration’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration..

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Three-quarters of the 574 federally recognized tribes in the U.S. applied for over $5.8 billion in funding when the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program launched. However, the program is currently funded at just short of $3 billion, most if it from the infrastructure bill. So far, nearly $1.8 billion has been awarded to 157 tribal entities to improve broadband access.

In Alaska, 21 projects have received more than $386 million.

In the Yupik subsistence community of Akiak, 30 miles (48 kilometers) north of Bethel, tribal officials provided free broadband to the village’s 100 homes during the COVID-19 pandemic until grant money was exhausted.

The Akiak Native Community tribe wanted to use its $500,000 to at least subsidize that service. However, its grant was assigned to its Alaska Native regional corporation, which will have an internet provider eventually bring fiber broadband to Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta villages.

That’s left subsistence residents in Akiak, where a quarter of all families fall below the poverty line, to either pay $90 a month for their own satellite service or wait for fiber.

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Kevin Hamer is general manager of the Yukon Delta Tribal Broadband Consortium, a nonprofit tribal organization made up of 18 tribal governments in the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta area, including Akiak. He believes there should be flexibility in the government funding to provide immediate, affordable broadband while tribal communities wait for fiber broadband, which could take years.

Tribal communities often have expensive and terrible internet service unless they can afford to pay for their own satellite service, including shelling out $600 for the equipment. Without satellite service, there is no video classrooms for children, telehealth with medical professionals, or telecommuting.

“You are excluded from all the benefits of the digital economy,” Hamer said.



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Alaska Air price target raised to $60 from $55 at BofA

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Alaska Air price target raised to  from  at BofA


https://www.tipranks.com/news/the-fly/alaska-air-price-target-raised-to-60-from-55-at-bofa

BofA raised the firm’s price target on Alaska Air (ALK) to $60 from $55 and keeps a Buy rating on the shares. Q3 results included just over 10 days of Hawaiian Airlines with EPS modestly ahead of expectations, but “more importantly,” the company spoke to mid-single digit unit revenue growth in Q4 and said recently acquired Hawaiian Airlines is expected to approach break even in Q4, the analyst tells investors.

Published first on TheFly – the ultimate source for real-time, market-moving breaking financial news. Try Now>>

See today’s best-performing stocks on TipRanks >>

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Barrier-breaking Alaska congresswoman copes with personal tragedy as she faces tough reelection bid

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Barrier-breaking Alaska congresswoman copes with personal tragedy as she faces tough reelection bid


JUNEAU, Alaska — Alannah Hurley still gets choked up recalling Democrat Mary Peltola’s election to Alaska’s only U.S. House seat in 2022. Hurley, like Peltola, is Yup’ik and called Peltola’s election — in which she became the first Alaska Native in Congress — monumental for Hurley and her daughters.

“Finally, we have somebody in Congress who looks like us, talks like us, grew up like us, and they have lived experience, understanding the beauty and the challenges of what it means to be Native in this state and the nation,” Hurley said.

Peltola, 51, is in a tough reelection fight against Republican Nick Begich in a high-stakes race that could help determine whether Republicans or Democrats control the House. The campaign follows a year of intense personal tragedy for the lawmaker, who lost her mother and her husband, Eugene Peltola, within a four-month span in 2023.

Peltola called the weeks around her husband’s death in a small plane crash some of the most difficult of her life. She returned to Washington about a month later, arriving amid a period of Republican infighting over the House speakership. She said then that it was a difficult time for the country, too, and that she was “ready to get to work.”

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While Peltola has not spoken much publicly about navigating her grief in the glare of the public eye, people who know her well say they’ve been struck by her resilience.

“When I think about how Mary just kind of kept her head up throughout everything that she has gone through in the past couple years, I’m extraordinarily proud of her,” said Alaska’s senior U.S. senator, Republican Lisa Murkowski, who first met Peltola about 25 years ago when they were in the state legislature and they bonded as moms with boys.

“She was not allowed to grieve the way that most people would be allowed to grieve. She needed to be tough. She needed to be there at her job.”

Murkowski, a moderate who has at times bucked her own party, including its embrace of former President Donald Trump, supported Peltola two years ago and has backed her again. She noted the hyper-partisan state of politics today, where each party looks to deny the other a win.

“That’s not going to separate me from being able to say, ‘This is a good woman, a strong Alaskan who has focused on her state, who has done well for us,’” Murkowski said.

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Alaska’s other Republican senator, Dan Sullivan, has endorsed Begich, a businessman from a family of prominent Democrats, including his late grandfather, Nick, who once held the House seat, and uncle Mark, a former U.S. senator.

Begich, who ran against Peltola in 2022, in races that included Republican former Gov. Sarah Palin, said he doesn’t think Peltola has done enough to push back against actions taken by the Biden administration that have limited resource development in the state.

He is also trying a different tack than in 2022, which was the first year elections were conducted under a voter-approved system of open primaries and ranked-choice general elections. Trump, who has railed against ranked voting, previously blamed Begich for costing Republicans the seat by staying in the race that year.

This time, Begich sought to consolidate conservative support after the primary, in which he was the top-placing Republican, second to Peltola. Two other Republicans who were set to advance to the general election withdrew, which allowed two candidates who got a combined 1% of the vote, including Alaskan Independence Party chairman John Wayne Howe and Eric Hafner, a Democrat with no apparent ties to Alaska who is serving time in a prison in New York, to be on the Nov. 5 ballot.

The Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with Republican House leaders, has been running an ad aimed at Trump supporters that says a vote for Peltola would be like canceling their Trump vote.

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Peltola is seeking to prove that her special and regular election wins in 2022 following the death of longtime Republican Rep. Don Young weren’t a “fluke,” as Trump suggested during a recent tele-rally for Begich. While she has acknowledged her trailblazing status and the significance that holds to many of her supporters, she also has stressed that her job is to represent all Alaskans and emphasized her willingness to work across party lines. Most registered voters in Alaska aren’t affiliated with a party.

“When I was first running for office, people projected onto me that I would only be interested in working on Native issues or only be interested in working on issues that relate to rural Alaska,” Peltola said in an October speech to the Alaska Federation of Natives conference, a major annual gathering. “And I’m so honored to be able to message to people — Native people care about the health of a whole community, the health of the whole environment, the health of all of our society.

“We know we are not a singular group. We know everything is connected. Everyone is connected.”

During this year’s campaign, Peltola angered some Democrats by refusing to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for president, though she also said she would not vote for Trump. She’s emphasized her role as part of Alaska’s congressional delegation in urging the Biden administration to approve the massive Willow oil project on Alaska’s North Slope. The project, supported by many Alaska Native communities and groups in the region, also has broad backing from politicians and labor groups in the state. Willow’s approval is being challenged in court by environmental groups that say it flies in the face of President Joe Biden’s pledges to address climate concerns.

Both the Peltola and Begich campaigns have sought to rally supporters in a race that has drawn intense interest from outside groups. Results might not be known until Nov. 20, when ranked tabulations are set to be announced. Peltola, who was endorsed by the Alaska Federation of Natives, predicted the seat would be won by “dozens of votes.”

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“Hey, if we can survive in Alaska for over 12,000 years, we know how to find the polling place, we know how to mail in a ballot. We know how to do this,” she told the group.

Officials have said they’re working to ensure everyone can vote in the Nov. 5 election, following instances in recent elections in which some polling locations in rural Native communities opened late or didn’t open at all.

Hurley, an independent from a southwest Alaska fishing community, said she thinks Peltola has done a good job working on issues rather than focusing on party politics. She said Peltola had gone “above and beyond what could be expected” after the losses she experienced.

Hurley decried as “shameful” criticism Peltola received for leaving Washington in July to return home to fish. The announcement by Peltola’s office that she’d be spending a week “putting up fish with family to fill freezers for the winter” also came as pressure grew for Biden to not seek reelection.

Hurley said that for Native people, subsistence isn’t just about fishing but about connecting with the land and one’s culture.

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“I can’t respect her more for making sure she has the time — and taking care of her office at the same time — making sure that she has time to feed that connection or keep that connection,” she said.



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Coast Guard rescues sailor, cat from adrift sailboat in rocky weather off Alaska coast

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Coast Guard rescues sailor, cat from adrift sailboat in rocky weather off Alaska coast


KODIAK, Alaska – A sailor and his cat were rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard last Friday after becoming adrift amid rough seas off the southern Alaska coast.

The USCG received a call for help at 6:30 a.m. from a 36-foot sailboat located by the Barren Islands near Kodiak.

The ship was experiencing engine trouble in deteriorating weather conditions, according to the USCG Air Station Kodiak. Winds gusting to 45 mph and seas of 15-20 feet were pushing the vessel dangerously close to the islands.

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USCG crew launched a helicopter from Kodiak and located the sailboat, using a rescue swimmer and a hoist to successfully bring the sailor and his cat to safety on the aircraft. 

The Coast Guard said the hoist was the first of his career for one crewman, and the first for a second crewman since transferring to Kodiak over the summer.

“A job well done by all involved!” the Coast Guard said.



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