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Ketchikan: Ucore Sets 2020 Production Start Date for Ketchikan SMC - Ucore Rare Metals announced today the company has set a 2020 production start date for the recently announced U.S. Strategic Metals Complex to be located in Ketchikan. The Strategic Metals Complex (SMC) will be a rare earth elements separation plant. Ucore’s transition to production will be led by Mike Schrider, Chief Operating Officer and Randy MacGillivray, VP Project Development in conjunction with the engineering efforts of IBC Advanced Technologies, Inc, other specialty firms, and local Alaska based consultants. The Bokan Dotson-Ridge Rare Earth Project is located on Prince of Wales Island.

Ucore is currently entering its second phase of Alaska SMC due diligence, including: (1) specific site selection within the Ketchikan Gateway Borough, (2) design engineering, (3) construction costing (CAPEX), (4) finalization of input feedstocks from the short-list of competing alternatives, (5) operational costing (OPEX), and will reveal additional schedule highlights once confirmed.

“The decision to embark on the engineering design is a significant milestone for Ucore and Alaska; as together we accelerate to becoming a technology-based producer of individual, saleable, REE oxides in the worldwide market,” said Jim McKenzie, President and CEO of Ucore. “Our go-forward planning during H1 2018 includes the business plan, engineering, construction and operating schedules for the Alaska SMC. We’re pleased to share the highlights of this information with our shareholders and the residents of Ketchikan via a series of forthcoming press releases in the weeks and months ahead.”

“The residents of Ketchikan have expressed a great interest in our Alaska SMC project” said Mike Schrider. “We’re pleased to finally be in a position to reveal our initial schedule highlights as well as additional aspects of the design and planning process as they materialize in the immediate term.”

““We envision the Alaska SMC as the first component of the nearby Bokan Dotson Ridge rare earth element project’s surface complex,” said Randy McGillivray. “Ucore is in a position to construct a state-of-the-art rare earth separation facility that is neither energy-intensive nor a threat to air and water quality. We have the opportunity to permit and construct the first large scale REE separation facility using clean-green Molecular Recognition Technology (MRT), in an environmentally sustainable and safety conscious manner.”

Representatives of Ucore attended and actively participated in the recent US Forest Service Roundtable Discussion held on February 24, 2018, at the Ketchikan Public Library.

The one-day event, hosted and chaired by Senator Lisa Murkowski, was organized to solicit input from local stakeholders and to gain a greater understanding of the forest management challenges faced by communities in the Tongass National Forest , the nation’s largest national forest for the benefit of USFS Chief Tony Tooke.

Randy MacGillivray, Ucore’s VP of Project Development, represented the Company as a panel member in the Roundtable interactions. Also in attendance was Ucore Advisory Board member Randy Johnson, of Orca Holdings, LLC. The Ucore contingent participated in order to obtain ongoing stakeholder input and feedback, focusing on opportunities to improve access to the Tongass and build a diverse and broad-based economy in southeast Alaska, and in support of U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s efforts to ensure sustainable access to and development of mineral resources in Southeast Alaska.

Ucore recently announced the selection of Ketchikan as the location for the Company’s forthcoming U.S. Strategic Metals Complex (SMC) in January 2018). The SMC is being developed for the purpose of processing rare earth containing concentrates to coincide with the increasing demand for electric vehicles and the need to provide a domestic supply of individual REE oxides for US commercial and military technologies. Feedstock from locations in the continental US, South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia are under consideration. The Ketchikan SMC will also serve as the separation plant for REEs mined from the Bokan project into individual saleable rare earth oxides once the development of the mine project is realized.

“We’re committed to the continued pursuit of development required to advance the Bokan – Dotson Ridge Rare Earth Project on Prince of Wales Island”, said Randy MacGillivray. “We appreciate the invitation to participate in this important dialogue with the Chief of the Forest Service due to the fact that the USFS will be the lead agency during the permitting process to bring Bokan online. Further, our recent selection of Ketchikan as our targeted site for the Strategic Metals Separation Complex will serve as the first step to ensuring that saleable rare earth oxide products can ultimately be produced locally from rare earth ore concentrate.” - More...
Monday PM - March 05, 2018

Ketchikan: Ketchikan School District Leading Way For Public Education Changes - School districts across Alaska are leading the way for change in our public education systems including the Ketchikan School District. In the summer of 2014, the Ketchikan Gateway Borough School District was awarded a 3-year "Digital Teaching Initiative Grant" to start the Alaska Digital Academy.  

The intention of the Alaska Digital Academy is to deliver high quality interactive distance courses to Alaskan middle and high school students.

Now that the grant has ended, the Alaska Digital Academy has moved to its sustainability plan of offering online courses to any Alaskan student. Their scalable system is flexible enough to allow for tuition-based enrollments or, should funding allow for it, tuition-free courses.

Any students who are enrolled in one of the partner districts of Annette Island School District, Craig City School District, Hydaburg City School District, Ketchikan Gateway Borough School District, Klawock City School District, Southeast Island School District can take distance classes from the Alaska Digital Academy (AKDA). The Alaska Digital Academy works to offer increased opportunities for students through a Enriched Virtual instruction model.

These courses are taught by highly qualified teachers who are proficient in distance technology and who understand alternative forms of education.  Students will have access to teachers throughout the school day, after school hours, and when school is not in session. Students will regularly demonstrate mastery through performance-based assessments, assessments during the unit or course, and end-of-unit or -course assessments. Educators will use student assessment results to support interventions that increase student success. - More...
Monday PM - March 03, 2018

Alaska: EPA & Trident Settle Wrangell, Sand Point Fish Waste Violations - Trident Seafoods Corporation, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the Environmental Protection Agency have reached an agreement to resolve violations of the Clean Water Act for discharges of fish waste at two seafood processing facilities in Wrangell and Sand Point, Alaska. 

At the Wrangell plant, Trident has agreed to screen out most solid seafood wastes, which will reduce or eliminate waste discharges to the nearshore marine environment. Annual dive surveys at both processing plants will monitor the size of any accumulated seafood waste to ensure continued compliance with permit requirements. 

Under the agreement, Trident will limit the amount of seafood waste discharged from its Wrangell plant and remove nearly three-and-a-half acres of waste from the seafloor near its Sand Point plant.

“We are pleased that Trident has committed to removing the waste pile at Sand Point and to continue reducing the amount of seafood waste discharges from its operations,” said Edward Kowalski, Director of the EPA Region 10 Office of Compliance and Enforcement. “This settlement is the result of a productive and successful collaboration with Trident, and will help protect the seafloor, surrounding water quality, and important habitat for a variety of marine life.” - More...
Monday PM - March 05, 2018

Alaska - Nationwide: STOP School Violence Act Introduced - Today, a non-partisian group of U.S. Senators introduced the Students, Teachers, and Officers Preventing (STOP) School Violence Act of 2018, legislation that funds school security improvements and invests in early intervention and prevention programs to stop school violence before it happens. Among the Senators to introduce the legislation was Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK).

The legislation authorizes the Department of Justice to make grants for the purposes of training students, school personnel, and law enforcement to identify signs of violence and intervene to prevent people from hurting themselves or others. In addition to prevention efforts, the legislation funds evidence-based technology and equipment to improve school security and prevent school violence.  This includes the development of anonymous reporting systems, and commonsense security infrastructure improvements.  The legislation also provides funds for school threat assessment and crisis intervention teams to help schools intake and triage threats before tragedy strikes.  

The bill would authorize $75 million for FY 2018, and $100 million annually for the next ten years, which may be partially offset from a DOJ research program called the Comprehensive School Safety Initiative.

Following tragedies like Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, and now Parkland, the federal government has funded short-term school safety initiatives focused on crisis response, active shooters, and physical infrastructure. While these are important investments, we have not yet seen sustained strategies to STOP violence in our schools before it happens. Our students, educators, and local law enforcement need the tools and support to take proactive and continuous steps toward improving school safety and security. 

“There is no one, simple fix for addressing acts of violence, but a focus on prevention is an imperative. In the aftermath of tragedy, we find ourselves looking back, identifying the signals for help that were overlooked. We need a more proactive approach to address the growing violence that we see in our society,” said Murkowski. “This legislation aims to help schools implement evidence-based programs that stop school violence before it happens. By equipping individuals with the tools, knowledge, and skills needed to identify warning signs, as well as implementing anonymous reporting systems for how to notify the proper authorities with potential threats, we are taking a step in the right direction. By being proactive, we all can be part of the solution and keep our students and teachers safe.” - More...
Monday PM - March 05, 2018

Alaska - Western US: Two species of ravens nevermore? New research finds evidence of ‘speciation reversal’ - For over a century, speciation — where one species splits into two — has been a central focus of evolutionary research. But a new study almost 20 years in the making suggests “speciation reversal” — where two distinct lineages hybridize and eventually merge into one — can also be extremely important. The paper, appearing March 2 in Nature Communications, provides some of the strongest evidence yet of the phenomenon, in two lineages of common ravens.

“The bottom line is [speciation reversal] is a natural evolutionary process, and it’s probably happened in hundreds or almost certainly thousands of lineages all over the planet,” said Kevin Omland, professor of biological sciences at University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) and co-author on the new study. “One of our biggest goals is to just have people aware of this process, so when they see interesting patterns in their data, they won’t say, ‘That must be a mistake,’ or, ‘That’s too complicated to be correct.’”

“We examined genomic data from hundreds of ravens collected across North America,” said Anna Kearns, the study’s first author and a former postdoctoral fellow at UMBC, who is now a postdoc at the Smithsonian Center for Conservation Genomics. “Integrating all of the results across so many individuals, and from such diverse datasets, has been one of the most challenging aspects of this study. Next-generation genomic techniques are revealing more and more examples of species with hybrid genomes.”

When Omland initially began work on this project in 1999, common ravens were considered a single species worldwide. He thought further research might uncover two distinct species — perhaps an “Old World” and “New World” raven — but the real story is much more complicated. Omland reported the existence of two common raven lineages in 2000, one concentrated in the southwestern United States dubbed “California,” and another found everywhere else (including Maine, Alaska, Norway and Russia) called “Holarctic.”

Since then, the plot has thickened. Two undergraduates in Omland’s lab, Jin Kim and Hayley Richardson, analyzed mitochondrial DNA from throughout the western United States and found the two lineages are extensively intermixed. In 2012, the Norwegian Research Council provided major funding for the project and Kearns spent a year at the University of Oslo analyzing nuclear genome data.

The best explanation based on the team’s analysis is that the California and Holarctic lineages diverged for between one and two million years, but now have come back together and have been hybridizing for at least tens of thousands of years. - More...
Monday PM - March 05, 2018

TOM PURCELL: Never Time for Daylight Saving - I'm already dreading it.

On Sunday, March 11, at 2 a.m., daylight saving time, the practice of moving our clocks forward one hour in the spring and backward one hour in the fall, will commence.

When I wake on March 11 at my regular time - which will depend on the pub I was drowning my DST sorrows at the night before - I will be short by one hour.

I will be in a stupor, for the most part, until November, when I must set my clocks back one hour - at which time I will officially resume my perpetual confusion about what the heck time it is.

Come Sunday, half the clocks in my house - those that have been off by an hour since November - will display the correct time.

The other half, which have displayed the correct time since November, will be wrong.

Thus, when I have business meetings or social engagements to attend, I'll be one hour late or one hour early, but hardly ever on time.

Daylight saving time was first implemented in Thunder Bay, Canada, in 1908. The goal was to squeeze an extra hour of daylight out of a typical day.

The United States adopted the concept in 1918, but, reports TimeandDate.com, without uniform rules across all states, it resulted in widespread chaos in commerce and transportation.

The Uniform Time Act of 1966 addressed that challenge by synchronizing the switch dates across the country.

In an effort to save energy following the 1973 oil embargo, Congress changed DST dates again - then changed them again in 1976.

From 1987 to 2006, the country observed yet another set of DST dates - which changed one more time in 2007, to our current March-and-November cycle.

Millions of Americans have been befuddled ever since. - More...
Monday PM - March 05, 2018

RICK JENSEN: More Failures in Florida Than a Lack of Gun Control - Much went wrong leading to the massacre at Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

There were 18 direct calls to the Broward County Sheriff's office prior to the very disturbed Nicholas Cruz' rampage through the school, ending 17 innocent lives. The shiny, new FBI call center in West Virginia did not even forward warning calls to the FBI office in Miami.

If Sheriff Deputy Peterson did take FBI active shooter training, then he disregarded the fact that he was taught to enter the building and engage the shooter prior to backup arriving. If he did not take the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT),he was unqualified for such duty.

I spoke with retired DEA Supervising Special Agent and former Hillsborough County (Tampa, Florida) Sheriff's Deputy Jeffery Higgins, who said he would be surprised if an officer assigned to a school did not have this training.

They teach that even though it is best to have at least two officers "sweep" rooms in a building, it is, indeed, the duty of the officer to enter the building himself or herself to locate and engage the shooter to protect the children.

We have also learned that Broward County Sheriff Israel is a politician, a product of an elective process that encourages partisan politics to attain and then retain one's position.

Could you imagine the additional crushing heartbreak in Broward County should it be true that there were calls for the Sheriff Deputies to "stand down" during or immediately after the shooting? - More...
Monday PM - March 05, 2018