A snow-covered C-46 cargo plane sits on the tarmac at Fairbanks International Airport on Oct. 9, 2024. Airport officials are offering an increased incentive for new cargo airlines to fly from Fairbanks. (James Brooks photo/Alaska Beacon)
The Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities is planning to relax the requirements for a subsidy program intended to attract cargo airlines to Fairbanks International Airport.
In a March 6 public notice, the department said it will waive landing and fuel fees for a year at Fairbanks for one or more airlines that provide at least three months of weekly cargo service between Fairbanks and a new destination city.
That’s down from a requirement that they provide six months of service.
Only newly added service is eligible on a first-come, first-served basis for airlines, and the program is expected to last until 2032, according to the notice.
Currently, the Alaska International Airport System Passenger and Cargo Airline Incentive Program requires an airline to provide six months of new weekly cargo service before receiving the waiver. The new change offers an extra incentive for Fairbanks air cargo.
The overall incentive program and the new change — formally known as “Class 6” — were created by staff at DOT and the Alaska International Airport System, said Shannon McCarthy, communications director for Alaska DOT.
“The Class 6 addition concept was created to incentivize cargo carriers to temporarily move some operations during the upcoming busy construction season at ANC to FAI,” she wrote by email, using shorthand for the airports at Anchorage and Fairbanks. “Costs in Fairbanks for short term operations can be higher than negotiated contractual rates in Anchorage (hotels, fuel, etc.) so this helps offset those increases while utilizing the system and keeping the activity within Alaska and AIAS.”
McCarthy said that while the waiver “reduces revenue on those specific flights for a limited period, the program is designed to stimulate incremental operations that would likely not occur without the incentive, thereby generating new economic activity and long-term airport revenue once the incentive period ends.”
The new subsidy program is scheduled to take effect April 6; public comments on the plan can be submitted through April 5.
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Selection Sunday is right around the corner, but many men’s college basketball teams around the nation still have work to do to hear their name called inside that 68-team field. That includes the 12 teams listed in the bubble of FOX Sports’ Michael DeCourcy’s latest NCAA Tournament bracket projection. The fate of those teams is being decided with every result. So we’re helping you track how they do as they claw for one of the final, coveted spots in the Big Dance. Here’s a look at the results of each team on the NCAA Tournament bubble and what it means for their hopes: March 10 ACC Tournament: SMU beats Syracuse, 86-69 Game Recap: Boopie Miller scored 25 points to lead five starters in double figures, Jaden Toombs and Samet Yigitoglu each had a double-double and No. 11 seed SMU beat 14th-seeded Syracuse 86-69 on Tuesday in the opening round of the ACC Tournament. SMU (20-12), which had lost four ACC games in a row, advances to play 24th-ranked and sixth-seeded Louisville on Wednesday in the second round. Toombs had a double-double in the first half with 14 points and 10 rebounds, and Miller added 11 points to help SMU hold a 39-38 lead at the break. Nate Kingz paced Syracuse with 17 points. The Associated Press contributed to this report. What this result means: SMU was safe from DeCourcy’s bubble, but was listed as an 11-seed, so it remained in danger of missing the NCAA Tournament. A win against Syracuse in the first round of the ACC Tournament should help the Mustangs’ case, especially since Stanford, a fellow ACC bubble team, lost to Pittsburgh earlier in the day. What’s next: SMU will face sixth-seeded Louisville on Wednesday at 2:30 p.m. ET. Big 12 Tournament: Cincinnati beats Utah 73-66 Game Recap: Jalen Celestine hit five 3-pointers and scored 19 points, including two clinching free throws with 29 seconds to go, and ninth-seeded Cincinnati held off No. 16 seed Utah 73-66 on Tuesday to advance to the second round of the Big 12 Tournament. Moustapha Thiam added 14 points and 10 rebounds while Baba Miller had 11 points, 14 boards and six assists for the Bearcats (18-14), who also gave their NCAA tourney hopes a big boost by earning a date with No. 8 seed UCF on Wednesday. The Bearcats have won seven of their last nine games, a streak that began with a 20-point victory over the Knights in early February and includes a rare win by a road team over Kansas inside Allen Fieldhouse a couple of weeks ago. The Associated Press contributed to this report What this result means: Cincinnati has now won seven of its last nine games to climb back onto the NCAA Tournament bubble after starting the season 11-12. The Bearcats, however, are still in the “Next Four Out” of DeCourcy’s latest projection, meaning they’ll have to stack as many wins in the conference tournament to earn an at-large bid. Each of Cincinnati’s games from here on out will likely be against Quad 1 opponents above the bubble, so if the Bearcats go on a run they could earn themselves a ticket to the Big Dance. What’s next: Cincinnati will face eighth-seeded UCF on Wednesday at 3 p.m. ET. March 9 WCC Tournament: Santa Clara beats Saint Mary’s 76-71 Game Recap: Sash Gavalyugov scored 23 points including a back-breaking 3-pointer to lead Santa Clara to a 76-71 victory over No. 21 Saint Mary’s in the semifinals of the West Coast Conference Tournament on Monday night to take a big step toward making the Big Dance. The Broncos (26-7) will play No. 12 Gonzaga (29-3) in the championship game on Tuesday night. The winner receives the conference’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. While the Bulldogs are safely in the tournament, Santa Clara was considered on the bubble. The Broncos entered this game No. 42 in the NCAA’s NET rankings and No. 37 in Kenpom. Saint Mary’s (27-5) could take a hit in the tournament seeding, but the Gaels figure to get into the field of 68. They were No. 20 in the NET and No. 22 in KenPom. This is the first time since 2021 that the WCC final hasn’t been between Gonzaga and Saint Mary’s. The Associated Press contributed to this report. What this result means: The Broncos advanced to the WCC Tournament final to play Gonzaga on Wednesday. A win in that game would clinch an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. But Santa Clara should be safe, regardless, as it earned a Quad 1 neutral-site win when it beat Saint Mary’s in Tuesday’s semifinal. The Broncos were listed inside DeCoucy’s “Last Four In” as of Saturday, and this result could move them off the bubble entirely. What’s next: Santa Clara will play Gonzaga in the WCC Tournament final on Wednesday.Latest Sports News from FOX Sports
A political commentator who argued that white people are the victims of racism and need help protecting their “identity” withdrew his candidacy Tuesday for a senior diplomatic role in the State Department as Republican opposition placed his nomination in jeopardy.
Jeremy Carl was nominated by President Donald Trump to serve as assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs in June, but his confirmation appeared precarious in recent weeks after Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) vowed to vote against his confirmation.
Lawmakers grilled Carl on his views on race and religion during his confirmation hearing in February, with Republicans and Democrats pushing him to explain past remarks about the importance of protecting “white identity” in American culture. Carl later derided the hearing as “theatrical” and “brutal” in a piece published last week in The Spectator, a conservative British magazine.
In announcing his withdrawal in a social media post, Carl thanked the administration for nominating him and praised the White House for being willing not “to simply pick nominees from the same stable of ‘business as usual’ possibilities” for the role.
“Unfortunately, for senior positions such as this one, the support of the President and Secretary of State is very important but not sufficient,” said Carl, who served as deputy assistant secretary of the Interior during Trump’s first administration. “We also needed the unanimous support of every GOP Senator on the Committee on Foreign Relations, given the unanimous opposition of Senate Democrats to my candidacy, and unfortunately, at this time this unanimous support was not forthcoming.”
Civil rights and labor groups opposed Carl’s nomination, pointing to his history of inflammatory remarks about immigration and race.
Carl wrote in his 2024 book, “The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart,” that white people have faced persistent discrimination and that their identity has been “erased” from American history.
Asked by Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) to define “white identity,” Carl described the concept as “certain types of Anglo-derived culture that comes from our history.”
Carl wrote in a social media post responding to Murphy after the hearing that he was “of course, not a White nationalist” adding that “The ‘White culture’ then that I was referring to was simply the culture of the overwhelming majority of Americans who lived here” prior to 1965.
“I firmly believe that Americans of *every* race or cultural background can ultimately share in and contribute to that culture,” he wrote on X.
He also faced tough questions for agreeing with a podcast host who assailed Jews for claiming “special victim status” after the Holocaust and saying that “Hitler is always the convenient kind of bad example.”
Curtis cited those views in justifying his opposition to Carl’s nomination, writing in a statement: “I find his anti-Israel views and insensitive remarks about the Jewish people unbecoming of the position for which he has been nominated.”
Carl is not the only Trump nominee to face backlash on Capitol Hill for divisive rhetoric.
White House official Paul Ingrassia withdrew his nomination to lead the Office of Special Counsel last year after POLITICO reported a slate of inflammatory texts he sent to Republicans in a group chat, and Australian American MAGA commentator Nick Adams’ nomination to be ambassador to Australia has failed to gain support in the Senate.
Carl is a fellow at the Claremont Institute and a prominent voice on the New Right. He has frequently aligned himself with the national conservatism movement — which holds that national sovereignty hinges on the promotion of traditional Christian values — and defended the Great Replacement Theory, a far-right belief that there is an active effort to replace white Americans with non-white immigrants.
Sukakpuk Mountain and the trans-Alaska pipeline and Dalton Highway are seen on Aug. 6, 2008. The mountain is located along the northern end of the corridor that had been protected by public land orders dating to back to the 1970s. The orders were revoked by the Trump administration, clearing the way for the state to select lands and authorize development within the corridor. (Photo by Craig McCaa/U.S. Bureau of Land Management)
Ten conservation groups have sued the Trump administration over its decision to remove decades-old protections from 2.1 million acres of federal land in Interior Alaska.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Anchorage, targets the Department of the Interior’s action to overturn public land orders dating back to the early 1970s that protect a portion of the corridor around the 800-mile trans-Alaska oil pipeline.
The department’s decision, finalized on Feb. 25, allows the state government to take over the land and open it to development. Potential uses for the land include construction of the controversial Ambler Access Project, a proposed 211-mile road through the Brooks Range foothills to an isolated mining district in northwest Alaska, and a long-proposed pipeline megaproject that would ship natural gas from the North Slope.
The lawsuit alleges that the Department of the Interior violated several laws with its action by failing to hold any public hearings in affected communities, failing to provide justification for removing long-established protections from “iconic areas of northern Alaska” and other lapses.
The laws cited in the suit are the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, the National Environmental Policy Act and the Administrative Procedures Act.
The 2.1-million-acre corridor and the areas around it are “profoundly important to Alaska’s wildlife and people,” the lawsuit says. It supports 25 different species of fish, including salmon, and holds habitat for migratory birds, moose, caribou and a variety of other species, making it important to subsistence food harvesters and recreational visitors, the lawsuit says.
In a statement, the plaintiffs cited mining development as a particular threat to natural resources and the people who depend on them.
“The Trump administration conjured up flimsy and vacuous reasons about ‘putting America first’ to try to justify transferring public lands out of federal management to benefit billionaires,” said Bridget Psarianos, senior staff attorney with Trustees for Alaska, the nonprofit environmental law firm representing the plaintiffs.
“The Trump administration’s destructive obsession with giving away our public lands for the benefit of mining companies has forced us to go to court,” Matt Jackson, Alaska senior manager for The Wilderness Society, said in the statement.
The administration’s action poses special threats because the corridor now stripped of protection lies between Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the plaintiffs said.
Revoking protections that had been in place for half a century is “a blatant effort to avoid national environmental laws to allow construction of a road that will enrich foreign mining companies and harm wild lands, Alaska Native communities, and America’s conservation legacy,” Jim Adams, senior Alaska director of National Parks Conservation Association, said in the statement. “Ending these public land orders also exposes the entire eastern side of Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve to state management practices along its border that devalue park wildlife and the needs of rural residents.”
The Department of the Interior declined to comment on the lawsuit filed Tuesday.
Promoting ‘Energy Dominance’ agenda
When he announced the action on Feb. 20, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said it will help achieve President Donald Trump’s goal of “unlocking opportunity for American Energy Dominance.”
“By opening these lands, we are empowering Alaska to chart its own course and develop energy, minerals and infrastructure that strengthen America’s security and prosperity,” Burgum said in a statement then.
At the time, Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy and the state’s all-Republican congressional delegation hailed the decision as important to the state’s resource-extraction-based economy.
“Alaska has a right to produce, and Alaska has a right to benefit from our God-given resources,” U.S. Rep. Nick Begich. R-Alaska, said in a joint statement issued by the delegation.
But the Tanana Chief Conference, an organization of Interior Alaska tribes that is not part of the latest lawsuit, condemned the administration’s action.
The decision was made without necessary tribal consultation, and it could strip federal subsistence-harvesting protections from important food-gathering sites, TCC said in a statement.
“This decision opens the door to development that puts our lands, animals, waters, and subsistence resources at real risk,” TCC Chief and Chairman Brian Ridley said in the statement. “For our communities, these are not remote acres on a map. These are the places where our families hunt, fish, and gather to feed our people. Protecting these resources is critical to our food security, our culture, and our future.”
The USA is looking good so far at the World Baseball Classic. That’s attracting plenty of eyeballs. The first two games of the USA’s WBC campaign have garnered impressive viewership numbers, including 2.98 million for the 9-1 win over Great Britain on Saturday. That follows up the 2.64 million viewership figure for the USA’s 15-5 win over Brazil to open up Pool B play. The USA is undefeated through three games, having defeated Mexico in a 5-3 thriller on Monday. The USA wraps up pool stage play on Tuesday against Italy. The knockout round begins on Thursday. 2.98 Million Viewers: Great Britain at USA on FOX (Saturday, March 7) 2.64 Million Viewers: USA at Brazil on FOX (Friday, March 6) How to Watch the 2026 World Baseball Classic FOX will air two quarterfinals games and the World Baseball Classic Championship Game on Tuesday, March 17 from Miami’s loanDepot Park. The remaining matchups will air across FS1, FS2, the FOX Sports app, FOX One and Tubi. All 47 games will be available for streaming.Latest Sports News from FOX Sports
A new poll is offering a state-of-play of the race that was shaken up last week with the abrupt announcement by Republican Rep. Darrell Issa that he would leave office at the end of his term.Politics
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