A shooting that killed two adults and severely wounded two others has stunned a tiny Alaska Native whaling village above the Arctic Circle, where parents were told they could keep their children home from school Tuesday to hug them. A 16-year-old boy has been charged as an adult with two counts each of first-degree murder and attempted murder in the late Sunday shooting in Point Hope, a remote Inupiat community on Alaska’s northwest coast, bordering the Chukchi Sea, the AP reports. The teen, Guy Nashookpuk, made his initial court appearance by telephone Tuesday. He spoke only to say “Yes ma’am” when asked questions by Magistrate Judge Colleen Baxter.
He was assigned a public defender, who entered not guilty pleas on his behalf. Baxter set bail at $1 million and scheduled a preliminary hearing for March 8. State law allows minors 16 and older to be tried in adult court on murder charges. North Slope Borough police found a man and woman dead and two other men wounded when officers responded to a shooting at a Point Hope home at 11:35pm Sunday, charging documents said. One witness told officers she saw the teen enter the home with a handgun and begin shooting. Others said they saw him flee on a four-wheeler. Nine minutes later, the teen’s father escorted him to the police station and reported “that his son had told him that he did it,” court documents said
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The teen was interviewed with his parents present and admitted the shooting, the documents said. No motive was detailed. Point Hope, with a population of about 675, sits on a triangular spit of land that juts into the Chukchi Sea. The community, known as Tikigaq in Inupiaq, is laid out in a treeless grid around the Tikigaq School. The shooting prompted the closure of the the school on Monday. Attendance Tuesday was not required.”It is totally optional if you’d rather keep your kids home to hold, hug, and explain the circumstance to them,” North Slope Borough Mayor Josiah Patkotak said in a Facebook post.
JUNEAU, Alaska (KTUU) – The Supreme Court of Alaska will be taking up the case of the State of Alaska, Division of Elections v. Daniel J. Sullivan, Jr.
The oral arguments will be held Monday at 10 a.m. via Zoom, according to an order and opening notice.
The document also specifies that a decision is expected to be made before noon on Tuesday.
According to documents from the Division of Elections, the state must start printing ballots at noon on the same day.
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This comes after an Anchorage Superior Court Judge ordered Dan J. Sullivan on to the ballot Friday.
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A new home under construction in Potter Valley in Anchorage. (Loren Holmes / ADN)
This June, two very different offers reach Alaska families, and both amount to the same thing: $10,000. The difference is everything.
Bill Walker, running for governor, would hand every eligible Alaskan a one-time $10,000 check and then end the Permanent Fund dividend for good. Ask one question: Where does his $10,000 come from?
It comes from the Permanent Fund, the people’s own money and the savings Alaskans built for their children. Walker would spend that endowment once to pay Alaskans to give up the yearly dividend forever.
Think about what that does. It cancels the annual check that gives a family a reason to keep an Alaska address and replaces it with a single payout. You hand people their own savings, call it a gift and cut the tie that held them here in the same motion. It is the oldest mistake in governing money: raid what you have saved to buy a moment’s applause and call the spending generosity.
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A plan that spends the people’s savings to send the people away is not bold. It is foolish.
Now consider the other $10,000. Through Alaska Housing Finance Corp., the state offers families up to $10,000 to build a new, energy-efficient home. AHFC raids nothing. It earns its own way. Over the years, it has returned more than $2 billion to the state treasury, and it spends some of that income the way any good business does: to win a customer.
Here, the customer is an Alaskan who wants to own a home, put down roots and stay.
That is the oldest sound move in business: Invest a little of what you earn to bring in someone who stays. The homeowner remains, the community gains a family and the corporation keeps earning. The money spent comes back. A plan that puts earnings to work to bring people home is not charity. It is clever.
Same amount. Opposite source. Opposite wisdom. One spends savings; the other spends earnings. One pays Alaskans to leave; the other pays them to stay. One empties the state; the other fills it.
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This Homeownership Month, the choice is the size of a single check, and the whole question is where the check comes from and what it asks of you. Ten thousand dollars of your own fund, to wave you goodbye. Or $10,000, earned and reinvested, to help you stay and build.
Evan Swensen is the publisher of Publication Consultants in Anchorage and the author of “What’s the Money For: A Permanent Fund Mortgage Proposal.”
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