News

SUNNY VIEW—Breakfast customers finish their meal as late-morning sunshine floods the Polar Cub Café on the morning of Sunday, November 23. The restaurant will close for meal service on Friday, November 28.

Polar Cub Café to close after 50 years of operation

The Polar Cub Café’s 50-year run has come to an end. On Friday, November 28, the storied restaurant will close for meal service. On the morning of Sunday, November 23, the morning sun was just...

Glad to be safe— Chinese pilots Ping Wang and Shenghao Luo landed in Teller when their plane ran low on fuel and was icing up, after a planned stop in Nome was foiled by bad weather.

Chinese aircraft makes unscheduled landing in Teller

UPDATE: The pilots received what they needed to continue their journey and departed Teller on Saturday, landing in Anchorage that night. Teller had unexpected guests arriving in the evening of...

Volunteers prepare food boxes during the first week of November, at the XYZ Center in Nome.

Delay in SNAP benefits caused regional effects

The delay in SNAP benefits caused immediate effects in the Bering Strait region. Community aid organizations sprang into action while local grocery stores saw fewer customers and a drop in sales....

PACKED COMMUNITY HALL – Residents of Brevig Mission listened to subsistence hunter and fisherman Elmer Seetot Jr. as he expressed concern about Graphite One’s potential adverse effects to water and land, on Wednesday, November 12.

Brevig Mission residents gather comments ahead of Corps deadline for Graphite One permit

About 100 residents of Brevig Mission gathered last week in a public townhall meeting hosted by the tribe, the city and the Native corporation to address concerns about a proposed graphite mine as...

The Nome Food Bank is stocked, in this Thursday, November 13 photo. The Food Bank is open Tuesdays and Thursdays from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.

SNAP benefits can be issued as soon as Friday

SNAP benefits should be issued as soon as Friday, according to a spokesperson for the Alaska Department of Health, which administers the federal SNAP program in the state through the Department of...

IT’S HERE!— Assistant Principal Maggie Gray points excitedly to part that was needed to fix the broken AWOS system in Shishmaref, to allow for FAA weather reporting again.

At the whims of weather reporting: How village travel is affected when crucial FAA equipment goes down

Rural Alaskans know the drill. Bad weather can ground flights and interfere with one’s travel plans. Or, if it’s not the weather, flights may get grounded when the FAA’s weather reporting system does...

FOOD AID DISTRIBUTION – People enter the XYZ Senior Center to collect Food Aid boxes distributed by the Nome Food Bank and Kawerak on Monday, November 3.

Nome grapples with first week of SNAP payment delay

Kawerak and the Nome Community Center sprang into action earlier this week to cover the gap imposed by the delay in SNAP benefit payments this month. The monthslong government shutdown resulted in a...

PROPERTY USE— The Nome Common Council granted an appeal by Kanosak LLC owner Joe Burnham who asked the panel to overturn a Planning Commission determination that the use of his lot is incompatible with the commercial zoned district it is located on. Pictured is the lot and the items stored on it, which were at issue during last Monday’s council meeting.

Council grants appeal to Kanosak LLC in property use dispute

The Nome Common Council granted an appeal by Joe Burnham, sole proprietor of Kanosak LLC, overturning a decision by the Nome Planning Commission that found Burnham’s use of a property not in line...

KICKING UP DUST— A dry fall with no snow or rainfall lately, and freezing temperatures create conditions in which dust is easily kicked up by traffic on Nome’s gravel roads.

Fall dust creates unhealthy levels of air quality in Nome

Achoo, grit itching the eyes and sand in one’s mouth just by walking down the street – those are signs of living in a veritable dust bowl in Nome these days. Dust is a troublesome reality in Nome...

INDUCTED— Ada Blackjack, pictured here on deck of the ship Donaldson in 1923, was inducted into the Alaska Women’s Hall of Fame last week.

Ada Blackjack inducted into Alaska Women’s Hall of Fame

Ada Blackjack was inducted posthumously in the Alaska Women’s Hall of Fame last week. Ada Blackjack was an Inupiaq woman who reluctantly rose to fame as the only survivor of a doomed expedition to...