The Weekend Off: News You Missed

Photo by Zach D Roberts

Alaska

ADN.com – Anchorage’s deadly year: With 34 homicide victims, violence hits home

In 2016, some 34 people were killed by homicide in Anchorage.

For many, it was the year the city’s violence hit home, even if they didn’t personally know any of the victims. The killings happened in nearly every corner of Anchorage: from an Eagle River apartment complex to Kempton Hills, a south-side subdivision best known for its great trick or treating and community wide garage sale.

KTUU – Latest chapter in the opioid epidemic hits Alaska

For the first time a powerful synthetic opioid, disguised as oxycodone has been found in Alaska.

According to Jay Butler, State Medical Officer, the drug discovered contained a lethal amount of fentanyl.

NY Times – A Wrenching Choice for Alaska Towns in the Path of Climate Change

In the dream, a storm came and Betsy Bekoalok watched the river rise on one side of the village and the ocean on the other, the water swallowing up the brightly colored houses, the fishing boats and the four-wheelers, the school and the clinic.

National

NY Times – Nixon’s Vietnam Treachery

Richard M. Nixon always denied it: to David Frost, to historians and to Lyndon B. Johnson, who had the strongest suspicions and the most cause for outrage at his successor’s rumored treachery. To them all, Nixon insisted that he had not sabotaged Johnson’s 1968 peace initiative to bring the war in Vietnam to an early conclusion. “My God. I would never do anything to encourage” South Vietnam “not to come to the table,” Nixon told Johnson, in a conversation captured on the White House taping system.

UIowa.edu – Flood threats changing across US

The risk of flooding in the United States is changing regionally, and the reasons could be shifting rainfall patterns and the amount of water in the ground.

In a new study, University of Iowa engineers determined that, in general, the threat of flooding is growing in the northern half of the U.S. and declining in the southern half. The American Southwest and West, meanwhile, are experiencing decreasing flood risk.

The Guardian – Planned Parenthood sues to stop Texas cutting it from Medicaid program

Planned Parenthood has asked a federal judge to stop Texas from cutting it from the state’s Medicaid program, which the country’s largest abortion provider says would reduce health services for nearly 11,000 low-income women.

International

The Washington Post – China’s vow to shut down its ivory trade by the end of 2017 is a ‘game changer’ for elephants

China promised Friday to halt its domestic ivory trade completely by the end of 2017, a decision greeted by environmentalists as offering real hope for an end to a poaching crisis that is wiping out tens of thousands of elephants across Africa.

BBC.com – Nightclub attack: Manhunt after dozens killed in Istanbul

Police in Istanbul are hunting for a gunman who opened fire at a well-known nightclub, killing at least 39 people.
The attack happened at Reina nightclub early on Sunday, as hundreds of revellers marked the new year.

DigitalJournal – Costa Rica powered by renewable energy for over 250 days in 2016

Costa Rica completes 2016 without having to burn a single fossil fuel for more than 250 days. 98.2 percent of Costa Rica’s electricity came from renewable sources in 2016.

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