The Weekend Off – News You Missed

Somewhere along the Seward Highway, near Anchorage.

Alaska

Juneau Empire – EPA extends decision-making on mining proposal

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will take more time to review comments on a proposal that would restrict large-scale mining near the headwaters of a world-premier salmon fishery.

Vice.com – We Spoke to the Alaskan Reporter Who Quit Her Job On Live TV to Run a Weed Dispensary

Last night, after hosting a segment on the effort to legalize weed in Alaska, local KTVA news anchor Charlo Greene quit her job in true “f**k you, f**k you, you’re cool” fashion. Charlo went off script and told her Alaskan audience, on live TV, that she owned Alaska’s only cannabis club and that she would be leaving the news world behind—in order to put all her energy towards supporting the marijuana legalization movement in Alaska. Effective immediately, Charlo has begun a new life advocating for the movement by continuing to run the only weed dispensary in the home state of Sarah Palin. Before signing off, she also added: “F**k it, I quit.”

NewsMiner.com – Election ad spending will keep coming

It’s been a month since Alaska’s hotly contested primary election ended, but political ads aren’t going to stop anytime soon.

National

NY Times – Rockefellers, Heirs to an Oil Fortune, Will Divest Charity of Fossil Fuels

John D. Rockefeller built a vast fortune on oil. Now his heirs are abandoning fossil fuels.

The family whose legendary wealth flowed from Standard Oil is planning to announce on Monday that its $860 million philanthropic organization, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, is joining the divestment movement that began a couple years ago on college campuses.

LA Times – A Sting in the Desert

For generations, the people of the Four Corners region have battled the federal government over collecting and selling Native American artifacts. Then agents persuaded a local dealer to go undercover.

Operation Cerberus Action was supposed to expose a lucrative trade in stolen antiquities.

Instead, it tore a hole in a Utah town.

The Daily Beast – In Texas Textbooks, Moses Is a Founding Father

The Texas State Board of Education is studying how textbook publishers responded to the state’s ideologically driven guidelines for teaching history. The results, say historians, are dire.

International

NY Times – For Polar Bears, a Climate Change Twist

LA PÉROUSE BAY, Manitoba — The sea ice here on the western shore of Hudson Bay breaks up each summer and leaves the polar bears swimming for shore. The image of forlorn bears on small rafts of ice has become a symbol of the dangers of climate change.

BBC.co.uk – China’s Island Factory

The appearance of these new islands has happened suddenly and is a dramatic new move in a longstanding territorial struggle in the South China Sea.

At the beginning of this year, the Chinese presence in the Spratly Islands consisted of a handful of outposts, a collection of concrete blockhouses perched atop coral atolls.

Now it is building substantial new islands on five different reefs.

International Business Times – Turkey Freed 46 Turkish Hostages From ISIS Using ‘Diplomatic And Political Negotiations’

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan says Turkey used “diplomatic and political bargaining” to secure the release of 46 Turkish hostages amid growing reports that his government has been cooperating with the Islamic State group. In exchange for the hostages, the Turks allegedly agreed to back out of a U.S.-led coalition against the militant group and help advance their campaign against the Syrian government, according to a Turkish news site that has been known to mirror Islamic State ideology. The Erdoğan government has not confirmed nor denied the reports.

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