Alaska Volcanic Eruption Intensifies; Lava Advances in Hawaii

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Photo Credit: LA Times

Photo Credit: LA Times

A volcano in the Alaska Peninsula launched an ash plume 30,000 feet into the air on Saturday morning, while officials in Hawaii say lava continues to advance on a town that has been sitting in the path of a slow-moving molten slide since June.

Mt. Pavlof, which has been erupting since Wednesday, continues to see intense seismic activity, and pilots in the area were reporting ash clouds as high as 30,000 feet above sea level, according to the state’s volcano observatory.

The Federal Aviation Administration has yet to impose flight restrictions in the area, according to spokesman Ian Gregor, but the agency did issue several notices to pilots regarding the eruption.

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Alaska One of Eight States Facing Double-Digit Premium Hikes In 2015

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Federal and state officials have kept fairly quiet about Obamacare premiums in the days before the health law’s next open enrollment period, but one thing’s for sure: rates are going up this year.

A PricewaterhouseCoopers report on all individual market premiums — on and off Obamacare exchanges — found a large range of rate changes, from a drastic 35 percent hike in Colorado to a 22 percent cut, also in Colorado (the state’s Obamacare exchange changed the geographic rating areas this year to cut costs for ski resort towns). Overall, the average rate hike nationwide is 5.6 percent, according to PWC.

First, all that information isn’t set in stone. Most states haven’t compiled final premium information for the Obamacare exchange. Just seven states — Colorado, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Oregon and Vermont — and Washington, D.C. have made final rate announcements. Of course, the states that did publish final rates had more reason to want the data out there — they had a lower average hike of 3.5 percent.

But the number of big losers is far outweighing the winners. Eight states are facing double-digit rate hikes, while just four states have reported decreases.

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Alaska's Senate, Governor Races in Limbo as State Begins Counting More than 53,000 Ballots

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Photo Credit: dmcdevit

Photo Credit: dmcdevit

Alaska will begin counting more than 53,000 absentee and questioned ballots on Tuesday in an effort to resolve the state’s unsettled contests for the Senate and for governor.

Democratic Sen. Mark Begich trailed Republican challenger Dan Sullivan by about 8,100 votes after Election Night. Begich is banking on the uncounted votes after waging an aggressive ground game in rural Alaska.

The outcome of the new round of vote-counting won’t change the balance of the Senate. Republicans gained seven seats in last week’s election, more than enough to grab the Senate majority for the remainder of President Barack Obama’s presidency.

The limbo between Election Night and the outcome of the new count created a vacuum the candidates’ spokesmen sought to fill.

“Every Alaskan deserves to have their vote counted, and past experience indicates that counting these votes will favor Begich and draw this race closer,” Begich’s spokesman, Max Croes, said in an email Monday to The Associated Press.

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MI Man’s WWII Dog Tag Found in Alaska

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earl-vogelarWhen Mario Gandolfo went for a walk along the Pacific Ocean shoreline in Nome, Alaska on Nov. 4, he was looking for sea glass. But he found something quite different: A World War II military dog tag washed into his hand.

“I was just kind of taken aback,” Gandolfo told 24 Hour News 8 Sunday via Skype.

The dog tag, which is about 70 years old, belonged to an Earl L. Vogelar. It had a Grand Rapids, Mich. address stamped on it.

Gandolfo decided he had to know more about Vogelar and wanted to find his family to give them the ocean-battered piece of metal.

“This was someone’s life in World War II,” he said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Alaska's Election Nightmare

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Photo: Rick Bowmer/AP

Photo: Rick Bowmer/AP

[Thousands of voters have used] Alaska’s first-in-the-nation internet voting system. And according to internet security experts, including the former top cybersecurity official for the Department of Homeland Security, that system is a security nightmare that threatens to put control of the U.S. Congress in the hands of foreign or domestic hackers.

Any registered Alaska voter can obtain an electronic ballot, mark it on their computers using a web-based interface, save the ballot as a PDF, and return it to their county elections department through what the state calls “a dedicated secure data center behind a layer of redundant firewalls under constant physical and application monitoring to ensure the security of the system, voter privacy, and election integrity.”

That sounds great, but even the state acknowledges in an online disclaimer that things could go awry, warning that “when returning the ballot through the secure online voting solution, your are voluntarily waving [sic] your right to a secret ballot and are assuming the risk that a faulty transmission may occur.”

That disclaimer is a pre-emptive admission of failure, says Bruce McConnell, who served until 2013 as the top cybersecurity officer for DHS. “They admit that they are not taking responsibility for the validity of the system,” McConnell told The Intercept. “They’re saying, ‘Your vote may be counted correctly, incorrectly, or may not be counted at all, and we are not taking any responsibility for that.’ That kind of disclaimer would be unacceptable if you saw it on the wall of a polling place.”

In 2012, Alaska became the first state to permit internet balloting for all voters, and no problems were reported during the system’s first deployment. But there weren’t any high-profile races then, and Alaska wasn’t an electoral factor in the presidential race.

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Murkowski Highlights Climate Change In Alaska

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Photo Credit: Ted S. Warren / AP

Photo Credit: Ted S. Warren / AP

On election night in a hotel ballroom in Anchorage, Alaska, Sen. Lisa Murkowski picked up a chair and waved it over her head.

“I am the chairmaaaaaaaaaaan!” she shouted.

The Republican takeover Tuesday night puts Murkowski in charge of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. That’s great news for Alaska, which is always eager for the feds to allow more oil drilling up here. But what does her chairmanship mean for the other side of that coin — global warming?

At that same election-night party, Murkowski said she takes climate change seriously.

“I come from a state where we see a warming. We’re seeing it with increased water temperatures; we’re seeing it with ice that is thinner; we’re seeing it with migratory patterns that are changing,” she said. “So I look at this and I say this is something that we must address.”

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Monster Storm to Hit Alaska: May Be Biggest in Recorded History

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Photo Credit: Satellite / NASA

Photo Credit: Satellite / NASA

A powerful storm is slated to move over the Bering Sea this weekend, possibly becoming one of the most intense storms to ever impact the region.

The former Super Typhoon Nuri is forecast to track northward into the Bering Sea, located in between Alaska and Russia, on Friday, losing its tropical characteristics as it does so.

At this point, the system will undergo rapid intensification, producing howling winds as the central pressure plummets to near record levels.

Due to the massive size of the storm, impacts can be felt hundreds of miles away from the storm’s center through much of the weekend.

Large waves and hurricane-force winds are expected to be the highest impacts with waves in some areas topping 45 feet Friday night and into Saturday.

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Alaska’s Marijuana Legalization Measure 2

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Photo Credit: inquisitr.com[Update: With 100% of Alaska precincts reporting, the marijuana initiative appears to have passed by 52% to 48%. Absentee and some early ballots still remain to be counted, but they are unlikely to change this result.]

Alaska’s marijuana legalization is coming to vote for a second time this decade in the 2014 elections. The initiative, Measure 2, would make recreational marijuana legal for adults and regulate it similar to alcohol.

In a related report by The Inquisitr, Florida’s marijuana legalization effort went to pot in the final 2014 elections results. Although Amendment 2 supporters vow to try again during the 2016 election, Oregon’s marijuana legalization results had the entire state buzzing.

Alaska’s ballot Measure 2 is the northern state’s initiative to legalize marijuana. If Measure 2 is passed, it would remove state legal penalties for possession of up to one ounce of marijuana by adults 21 and older and establish a regulatory framework for licensed businesses to cultivate and sell marijuana to adults, similar to the laws enacted in Colorado and Washington state.

Medical marijuana is already legal in Alaska, though the state has seen previous efforts to legalize recreational pot fail. Even though recreational marijuana would be legalized at the state level it would still remain a federal crime, according to BallotPedia.

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Keep Moving in the Red Direction

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Photo Credit: Arthur ChapmanWhile Alaska has had brief spurts of liberty and conservatism over the years, it has steadily moved forward to being a red state. This year we’re threatened with a leap backwards to the democrat’s dream of the dark ages of government control.

In the past, Alaska has had great moments that highlighted the desire for liberty. The libertarians who got rid of the income tax, conservative independent Wally Hickel winning the governorship and even the campaign and victory of Sarah Palin, who ran on a conservative populist platform even though she didn’t carry that through once elected.

In 2008, the conservative Ron Paul supporters had a large presence at the Republican State convention, but were unable to form the two-thirds majority needed to oust the corrupt chair of the party. In 2010, Joe Miller won the primary with his conservative liberty-minded principles, and narrowly lost the general election against the liberal write-in candidate Lisa Murkowski, but garnering 90,000 votes in the process.

In the spring of 2012, the conservatives were able to win all the offices in the Republican state party before the liberals illegally kicked them out. That fall, the conservative voters came together and ousted the democrat-led spending coalition that had tripled the state budget. Finally achieving a conservative majority in both houses, and having conservative Sean Parnell as governor, we were able to get oil tax reform, a history-making LNG project and they cut the budget by billions.

Alaska is finally coming out of decades of liberal dominance, but a new threat has arisen. The democrats realizing that they are on the losing end of history have made a last minute Hail Mary attempt to thwart the conservative steamroller. They have allied with moderate Bill Walker to combine the democrat and liberal independent votes to try and retake the governor’s office. This will put an immediate halt to development around the state and further their dreams of making Alaska into one big park. Currently, the tickets are polling so close they’re within the margin of error. This election will ultimately rest on who gets out and votes. The liberals have three propositions that they want to pass that will get them to the polls. I would just like to encourage conservatives to not ignore the election Tuesday; the fate and direction of Alaska and your future hangs in the balance. Please don’t let the liberal machine win be default. Vote Tuesday.

Lance Roberts is an engineer, born and raised in Fairbanks. He is a member of the Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly. The views expressed here are his own and do not represent the assembly or borough administration.

Ebola Can Live "For Weeks" in Arctic Environment

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Photo Credit: Defense Science and Technology Laboratory [T]he UK’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) tested two particular filoviruses on a variety of surfaces.

These were the Lake Victoria marburgvirus (Marv), and Zaire ebolavirus (Zebov).

Each was placed into guinea pig tissue samples and tested for their ability to survive in different liquids and on different surfaces at different temperatures, over a 50-day period.

When stored at 4° (39°F), by day 26, viruses from three of the samples were successfully extracted; Zebov on the glass sample, and Marv on both glass and plastic.

By day 50, the only sample from which the virus could be recovered was the Zebov from tissue on glass.

‘This study has demonstrated that filoviruses are able to survive and remain infectious, for extended periods when suspended within liquid and dried onto surfaces,’ explained the researchers.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Kevin Bennett ‘I don’t want her within three feet of anyone’ Governor threatens to arrest Ebola nurse after she defied quarantine to go for a bike ride and order pizza

By Martin Gould and Louise Boyle.

The Governor of Maine has threatened to arrest Nurse Kaci Hickox after she broke the state’s mandatory Ebola quarantine by saying: ‘I don’t want her within three feet of anyone.’

The 33-year-old, who tested negative for the deadly disease earlier this week, defied the guidelines by going on a bike ride with partner Ted Wilbur.

Later in the day, the pair also had a pepperoni and mushroom pizza delivered to their home in Fort Kent, Maine, before settling down to watch The Avengers film.

Her actions enraged Governor Paul LePage with lawyers from the state going to court to demand the nurse give a blood test.

‘This could be resolved today. She has been exposed and she’s not cooperative, so force her to take a test. It’s so simple’ he told ABC.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: APFearing Ebola? Doctors Say Get a Flu Shot

By LINDSEY TANNER.

Fever? Headache? Muscle aches? Forget about Ebola — chances are astronomically higher that you have the flu or some other common bug.

That message still hasn’t reached many Americans, judging from stories ER doctors and nurses swapped this week at a Chicago medical conference. Misinformed patients with Ebola-like symptoms can take up time and resources in busy emergency rooms, and doctors fear the problem may worsen when flu season ramps up.

That’s one reason why doctors say this year it’s especially important for patients to get their flu shots: Fewer flu cases could mean fewer Ebola false alarms.

“The whole system gets bogged down, even if it’s a false alarm,” Dr. Kristi Koenig said during a break at the American College of Emergency Physicians’ annual meeting.

Since the first Ebola diagnosis in the U.S., on Sept. 30 in a Liberian man treated in Dallas, doctors say they’ve had to reassure patients with many fears but none of the risk factors.

Read more from this story HERE.