A work crew and some heavy equipment moved the canoe in front of Kettleson Memorial Library on Wednesday morning.

The wooden canoe is adorned with Tlingit designs, and has been parked between Centennial Hall and Kettleson for years. It was commissioned in the late 1960s by the Greater Sitka Chamber of Commerce, and carved by George Benson, Herman Kitka and Andrew Hope.

The city of Sitka is redesigning the grounds around the canoe. So, it made the trip across the construction site on a flatbed truck to its temporary home in the Crescent Harbor shelter. It will remain there until renovations are complete.

The City of Ketchikan has announced that starting on Friday, police will start enforcing the no-parking rule along the hill on Venetia Way, which leads up to the Ted Ferry Civic Center.

The rule also applies to the fire lane next to Cape Fox Lodge.

When the main and overflow parking lots next to the civic center are full, drivers traditionally have parked along the hill. It generally happens during large events at the civic center, such as this weekend’s Wearable Art Show.

The city encourages residents to find alternate parking to avoid tickets and/or potential towing.

Because of anticipated parking issues during the popular Wearable Art Show, the city and borough have teamed up to provide a free shuttle from downtown parking areas. The shuttle will start operating about a half hour before the doors open for each show, with stops on Front Street and at the Centennial Building.

Following each performance, the shuttle will run again, taking people back to their vehicles.

Kyan Reeve of the borough Transit Department says the shuttle ride will take about 10 minutes.

Federal spending cuts may have hurt the U.S. economy's fourth-quarter growth. But don't count on that changing the dynamics of the current debate over the sequester, the ax poised to start hacking $1.2 trillion from federal spending if Congress fails to stop it by the March 1 deadline.

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As more grown children cannot find jobs and aging parents aren't working, the generation in the middle is faced with financial responsibility for both groups, a Pew study finds.

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A bill introduced Wednesday by Senator Lisa Murkowski would permit roads to be built on inventoried roadless land, providing land access to two proposed mines on Prince of Wales Island.

The bill calls for building 26 miles of road –18 through roadless areas — to Niblack mine, and another 50 miles of road to the Bokan Mountain mine.

Without road access, workers would travel to the job sites by boat or plane.

Murkowski said Southeast Alaska is in dire need of new job opportunities, and the mines would lead to hundreds of new jobs. She said roads would make it easier for employees to get to work.

A Southeast-based environmental group disagrees. Prince of Wales Island resident Bob Claus, who works for the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, said the bill is unnecessary because the roadless rule doesn’t prohibit new roads to access mining claims.

“The road project itself seems to be unneeded as well,” he said. “The mines aren’t up and running, they’re just in the permitting phase, there’s speculation as to whether they would ever start running. And this is a really inefficient way to transport people or goods across these primitive road systems that would require maintenance year round when they already have easy marine access to the Ketchikan side.”

Murkowski’s announcement states that weather could make marine crossings dangerous. Claus said that applies to land crossings, too.

“If it’s dangerous to take a boat across, then it will be doubly dangerous to drive on a lane-wide logging road through the mountains for 40 miles,” he said.

Randy MacGillivray, spokesman for Ucore, the Canadian company that is developing Bokan, says road access would be good for the mine. He said it would help with local hire opportunities, and would reduce transportation costs. A road also could help with future power needs.

“A road corridor would certainly provide excellent access to be able to one day look at lining the road with power poles,” he said.

MacGillivray said marine access works, but a road would be more reliable, especially in the winter.

Niblack is a gold, copper, zinc, and silver deposit; and Bokan is a rare-earth elements mine. The Bokan mine alone anticipates a workforce of up to 200.

Ads featuring the word and what it means to Muslims began running this week in Washington, D.C. CAIR-Chicago said the term was "misunderstood" and they wanted to correct the record.

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The company's CEO said Boeing plans to keep building its new 787s while it awaits the outcome of investigations into the cause of a fire and overheating aboard the planes. But some analysts are skeptical about continuing the assembly line before the results are in.

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