Graphite One Inc., a critical minerals mine in the planning stages that already has a major investment from the Department of Defense, has a new major investor: Bering Straits Native Corporation, which has committed up to $10.4 million.
This is not just an investment in Graphite One, it is a long-term investment in the region, the Native corporation said in a statement.
“We at BSNC have watched for years as Graphite One has worked to advance the Graphite Creek project and become a friendly neighbor in the region,” said Dan Graham, BSNC Interim President and CEO. “Graphite One has told us of its intent to develop an environmentally responsible project and provide an exciting economic opportunity for the region that hopefully will play a crucial role in the nation’s transition to a clean energy future. This is at the heart of our Board’s unanimous support of the project.”
Formed in 1972 under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, BSNC is the regional Alaska Native Corporation for the Bering Strait region, which includes the Seward Peninsula in Western Alaska and the coastal lands surrounding Norton Sound. The Graphite Creek Project is located on state and private land in the BSNC region.
The Graphite One Project, an owner-operated, year-round truck-and-shovel operation situated near Nome, in July announced received a $37.5 million grant from the Department of Defense, which wants to source graphite materials from the U.S., rather than overseas.
A domestic supply is crucial for the production of large-capacity batteries used in various defense applications, the Defense Department said.
Graphite One plans to mine graphite from Graphite Creek and ship it to Washington State for processing. The project is still in planning and investment stages and not yet into the permitting phase.
Rep. Eric Swalwell, a strong opponent of the Alaska energy economic sector, will be a featured guest at a fundraiser for Rep. Mary Peltola in Juneau this week.
Swalwell will be joined by other Democrats — Rep. Mike Thompson of California, and Rep. Dan Kildee of Michigan.
Swalwell supported the senatorial bid of Alan Gross in 2020, and wrote that the Democrats could flip the Senate if Alaskans only voted for Gross, who ran against Sen. Dan Sullivan with the endorsement of the Alaska Democratic Party. He wrote a book about his role in the Trump impeachments. And he proudly sponsored H.R. 815, an attempt to repeal the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge oil and gas program and to designate approximately 1,559,538 acres of land within Alaska in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as a component of the National Wilderness Preservation System, which would violate the “no more” clause of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, Section 1326.
The fundraiser is at a home in North Douglas Island, with a host of Juneau Democrats, including Sen. Jesse Kiehl, Rep. Sara Hannan, former Sen. Beth Kerttula, and various climate change activists and politicos.
Peltola won the special general election last August to replace the late Congressman Don Young, and then went on to win the November general election in 2022. She will come up for reelection in 2024 and will face Nick Begich, a Republican and the only candidate to challenge her so far.
The Anchorage Assembly has a special meeting called for Sept. 5 to pass a resolution stripping $100,000 from the mayor’s navigation center, and reappropriate it to the Anchorage Health Department, Anchorage Police Department, and Anchorage Parks and Recreation to assist with mitigation at large vagrant and homeless encampments.
Weeks ago, the Assembly sealed the deal, pulling its support for the navigation center, which was to be a place where drug addicts, homeless, and other people down on their luck could find help and temporary housing.
Mayor Dave Bronson negotiated the arrangement to pay for and build the navigation center with the Assembly’s appropriation, under a plan agreed to by him and the Assembly and signed off by both last year.
Other parts of the agreement included homeless hotels, which were a priority of the Assembly. But after the Assembly got the completion of its portion of the deal, it pulled out the support for the navigation center. Now, a massive sprawl of drug-infested camps have popped up around the city, with the homeless and vagrant problem worse than anyone has ever seen it in living memory.
The meeting has just the one item on the agenda unless another is placed “laid on the table” at the last minute. The special meeting will take place from 1-2 pm in the conference room #155 at City Hall, 632 West 6th Ave.
The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner eliminated its Saturday edition this weekend and moved to a weekend edition published on Sundays.
The newspaper is the latest to reduce its newsprint editions. It is now owned by the Helen E. Snedden Foundation, which purchased the newspaper in 2016. It remains the second-largest newspaper in Alaska, after the Anchorage Daily News, and is the farthest-north daily newspaper in America.
The announcement of the change was made in early August by Publisher Virginia Farmier, who is also the executive director of the Helen E. Snedden Foundation, nonprofit created in 2012.
The Fairbanks newspaper had $4,511,534 in revenues in 2020, down from $5,394,499 in 2019.
Earlier this year, the Juneau Empire, the third largest newspaper in Alaska, moved to a Wednesday and Saturday print edition. The Anchorage Daily News ceased printing a Saturday edition several years ago, and the Anchorage Press stopped print publication earlier this year.
A new report found that states with less restrictive marijuana policies have higher incidents of residents driving while high.
A new report shows that states that have legalized or weakened restrictions around high-THC marijuana, either for medical or recreational use, saw 32% more marijuana-impaired driving than states that have not adopted the same policies.
According to the Drug Free America Foundation study, the 18 states with less restrictive marijuana policies have seen far more cases of impaired driving of this kind, something that medical research shows can be very dangerous.
“In 2017, eight states had adopted full recreational marijuana programs (Alaska, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington) and ten states had enacted higher-THC medicinal programs (Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Vermont),” the report said. “Incidentally, seven of these states have since adopted full recreational programs. Adding to the concern is the fact that fatalities in the U.S. from marijuana-impaired drivers have risen dramatically between 2000.”
The report also points out that the potency of marijuana has skyrocketed in recent decades. This can lead to users taking in far more THC than they realize before getting behind the wheel.
“With these new products out there…especially with edibles and things, you might use one edible and not feel anything for the first 15 or 20 minutes, so next thing you know, you’ve eaten seven gummy bears or five cookies, and you don’t know when it’s going to hit you or how bad it’s going to hit you,” Amy Ronshausen, who leads DFAF, told The Center Square.
“And if that’s happening when you are behind the wheel of a car, that’s not a good thing,” she added.
Research from AAA and others has found that marijuana use significantly impairs drivers. On top of that, mixing alcohol and marijuana can create greater effects than either substance taken on its own.
“Research shows that marijuana can impair drivers in a variety of ways,” said AAA, which has conducted its own research backing this idea. “It can affect psychomotor functions such as attention, reaction time and coordination, but generally it appears to affect automated or routine driving more than tasks requiring conscious effort. Further, numerous laboratory-based studies have demonstrated that marijuana use impairs many aspects of cognitive and physical function that are necessary for safe driving.
“Marijuana can decrease car handling, can impair performance and attention while increasing reaction times, following distance and lane deviation,” AAA added.
Ronshausen said while most Americans are aware of the impact that alcohol can have on their driving, there is less awareness about the impact of marijuana.
“The general public, they see marijuana as somehow safer,” Ronshausen said. “We did a really good job at the ‘Don’t drink and drive’ message, but apparently we have not done as well of a job at the impaired driving message overall.
“You have a lot of people who haven’t really used marijuana since they were in college, and today’s marijuana is such a different product,” she added. “It’s such a higher potency. Like all drugs today, they are a higher potency and more pure…”
Ronshausen added people are often taking THC products that are far more potent than they realize.
“And there’s such a wide variety of products out there that do run the spectrum of potency, and with alcohol that’s more understandable,” she said. “You know that there’s going to be a difference between a glass of wine and Everclear, but when you are looking at these products, most people probably don’t look to see or even know, depending on how they are getting their product, what the potency is.”
Use among youth is also an issue.
“It is critical that these results impact future policy debates, especially since enforcement
data shows that between 11 to 23 percent of recreational marijuana sold ends up in the hands of minors,” the DFAF report said. “On top of that, consumption lounges, now legal in seven states (Nevada, New Jersey, New York, New Mexico, Illinois, Colorado, and California), and drive-up pot shops will keep spurring increased occurrences of marijuana intoxication and driving.”
Seventy-three thousand people at the Burning Man counter-culture festival are stranded after overnight rain dropped more than a half inch of rain on the venue near Black Rock City, Nevada.
Festival-goers have been warned to shelter in place, and conserve on their food and water, as they cannot get in or out due to the deep mud. The festival declared itself in a “national emergency.”
Access to the festival is closed, the organizers wrote on the website, as “rain returns early Sunday morning and continues through the afternoon as the low pressure system moves eastward across Black Rock City and exits the region; rain is possible at any time but is most likely from sunrise to late morning. There is a 35% chance of more than 0.25″ of rain from early Sunday morning to late Sunday night, with a 10% chance of more than 0.5″. Rains will stop and skies will clear after 5 PM. Thunderstorms, which can bring gusty winds and lightning, remain unlikely but possible, particularly after 5 PM Sunday.”
The festival started Aug. 27 and was set to end on Labor Day. The Bureau of Land Management and Pershing County Sheriff have closed the entrance, and the Reno Gazette-Journal reports organizers are rationing ice.
Nejourde Thomas “Jord” Meacham, age 22, of Pleasant Valley, Utah, died Aug. 28, while awaiting legal proceedings for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 protests at the U.S. Capitol. The cause of his death has not been revealed.
Meacham had a link to Alaska, spending his summers at Leader Creek Fisheries in Naknek, where he had many friends.
His funeral was Saturday at Myton Chapel of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint in Roosevelt, Utah.
“Nejourde Meacham was arrested less than a month ago, and faced the four basic misdemeanors that often result in plea deals and probationary sentences,” according to Ryan J. Reilly, author of “Sedition Hunters: How January 6th Broke the Justice System.”
Reilly, who reports for NBC, reported on X/Twitter that Meacham’s death had been confirmed by a published obituary and also by a court filing that cited a police report of his death.
“Jord worked on the family’s ranch, and enjoyed riding horses, hunting, fishing, and doing anything outdoors,” according to his obituary. “He was a big history buff and was a good cook — soup being his specialty.”
He was born June 16, 2001, in Pleasant Valley, Utah, to Thomas and Kelli Yardley Meacham.
Former leaders of the Proud Boys organization, Joseph R. Biggs and Zachary Rhel, were sentenced for seditious conspiracy and other charges concerning the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Biggs and Rhel disrupted a joint session of the U.S. Congress that was actively counting electoral votes for the 2020 election.
Joseph R. Biggs, 39, of Ormond Beach, Florida, was sentenced to 17 years in prison and 36 months of supervised release.
Zachary Rehl, 38, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was sentenced to 15 years in prison and 36 months of supervised release.
According to court documents, a jury convicted Biggs and Rehl as well as three other co-defendants on multiple felonies, including seditious conspiracy and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding on May 4, 2023, for actions regarding the breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Evidence presented during the trial shows that the Proud Boys organization played a prominent, often violent role in Washington, D.C., rallies in November and December of 2020.
Biggs and Rehl served in the chapter “Ministry of Self-Defense” of the Proud Boys.
After Dec. 19, 2020, Biggs and Rehl both conspired to prevent, hinder, and delay the Electoral College vote and to oppose the authority of the government of the United States.
Days before Jan. 6, Biggs, Rehl, and other co-defendants Henry “Enrique” Tarrio and Ethan Nordean hand-selected co-defendant Dominic Pezzola and others known as “rally boys.”
The “rally boys” decided on a chain of command and chose the time and place to gather while recruiting others who would also engage in physical violence.
At 10 a.m. on Jan. 6, the Proud Boys and their recruits of nearly 200 began their walk to the U.S. Capitol. At 12:50 p.m., the group started the chant a short time later, led by Biggs, “Whose Capitol? Our Capitol!” and “Whose house? Our house?”
After breaching several barricades and fences, Biggs stated, “We’ve gone through every barricade thus far.”
The group, still led by Biggs, would push forward when Law enforcement attempted to control the crowd.
While at the steps of the Capitol, Rhel sprayed an officer in the face while Pezzola smashed a window, allowing others to enter the Capitol, followed by Biggs at 2:11 p.m.
Many group members recorded and took photos on the west lawn of the Capitol, stating, “Jan. 6 will be a day in infamy.”
Rhel also made social media posts naming Jan.6 a “historical day” while telling his mother that he was “so fucking proud” of the Proud Boys’ “raid of the capitol.”
Biggs also recorded an interview, calling the Jan. 6 breach a “warning shot” that showed the government “how weak they truly are” from being “bitch-slapped… on their own home turf.” he went on to say that “Jan. 7 was warning shot to the government -look, we started this country this way, and we’ll fuckin’ save it this way.”
U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly added the federal crime of terrorism to the defendant’s sentence.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office prosecuted the crimes alongside the District of Columbia, the National Security Division’s Counterterrorism Section, and the Criminal Division’s Organized Crime and Gang Section.
The FBI Washington Field Office investigated the case, and the charges are a direct result of the cooperation across several FBI Field offices and law enforcement agencies.
As of Friday, more than 1,106 individuals have been arrested across the U.S. related to the breach Jan. 6 Capitol breach, resulting in more than 350 of those charges for assaulting or impending law enforcement.
The Coast Guard rescued 18 people from a 75-foot passenger vessel that ran aground near the Columbia Glacier on Thursday.
At 4:35 p.m., Coast Guard Sector Anchorage command center watchstanders overheard the ferry Aurora communicating with a vessel in distress. The watchstanders relayed communications through the crew of the Aurora and determined that Lu-Lu Belle, a glacier tour boat, had run aground in Columbia Bay with 19 people aboard.
Coast Guard Sector Anchorage dispatched an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter aircrew from Air Station Kodiak, an MH-65 Dolphin helicopter aircrew from Aviation Support Facility Cordova, and a 45-foot Response Boat – Medium crew from Station Valdez to respond to the situation.
Lu-Lu Belle became grounded near the glacier, and the passengers disembarked to affect rescue. The Coast Guard aircrews landed next to the vessel and safely transported all the passengers and crew to the Valdez airport by approximately 9:25 p.m. No injuries were reported.
“I want to commend all of our teams on their swift and decisive actions resulting in a flawless rescue last night,” said Coast Guard Cmdr. Scott Farr, search-and-rescue mission coordinator at Sector Anchorage. “The safe and effective rescue of every passenger on the Lu-Lu Belle is a testament to the attentiveness of our watch standers and readiness of our response crews from all of our units. We are also extremely grateful to the crew of the Aurora and the City of Valdez Fire Department, Building Maintenance, and Harbor staff, whose efforts were instrumental in the success of this case.”
The captain of the Lu-Lu Belle stayed aboard overnight and was able to refloat the vessel at high tide. Coast Guard Marine Safety Unit Valdez is working with the crew of Lu-Lu Belle to conduct salvage operations and investigate the cause of the marine casualty.
