From a research priority perspective, it ranks high to figure it out.” - Alaska Department of Fish and Game pathologist Jayde Ferguson said researchers aren’t sure exactly what role Ichthyophonus plays in the Yukon River king salmon decline yet, but it could be important.

Stan Zuray’s son Joe hangs salmon to dry several years ago. The fish were dried int he traditional manner; the site was a family fish camp on the Yukon River. (Photo provided by Stan Zuray)

By Yereth Rosen

When Stan Zuray began noticing white spots, a mushy texture and a weird “sour watermelon” smell in the Chinook salmon he was pulling from the Yukon River, he knew something was going wrong.

That was back in the 1980s. By about 1990, he and others just stopped fishing what he calls “the ass end of the king run” because the fish were so low in quality, he said.

A summary sheet is seen during ballot review on Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2024, at the headquarters of the Alaska Division of Elections in Juneau. (Photo by James Brooks/Alaska Beacon)

The first two votes in Alaska’s Aug. 18 primary election have already been cast.

According to records published by the absentee and petition office of the Alaska Division of Elections, two voters — one in South Carolina and another in Hawaii — returned their ballots on July 17.

By James Brooks

Two of Alaska’s largest labor organizations have sued Gov. Mike Dunleavy for failing to promptly fill two seats on the board that governs the state’s public employee pension plans.

The Alaska AFL-CIO, National Education Association-Alaska and five individuals filed suit Wednesday in Anchorage Superior Court, seeking a court order that would require the governor to fill seats on the Alaska Retirement Management Board that are designated for the teachers’ and public employees’ unions.

Very few homes in Adak are occupied, yet many, like these in the town’s Sandy Cove neighborhood, are the subject of federal subsidies to provide an internet service that is now outdated. Photographed on June 8, 2026. (Marc Lester / ADN)

By Kyle Hopkins, ProPublica and Anchorage Daily News

On an island in the Bering Sea 1,200 miles from Anchorage, Alaska, sits an abandoned house on an abandoned Navy base. There is no furniture, and the wind blows through broken windows. The last people to live here moved away long ago. Yet a bright orange pipe with a black fiber-optic cable inside runs from the outer wall down into the surrounding soil.

The cable was installed to connect the home to the internet after the base closed. It costs more than $340,000 per year to provide this building and hundreds of others — all but a few of them empty — with internet access no one says they use.

The money being wasted is yours.

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