Navy Week!

Navy Week will set sail for Anchorage, AK for the first time since the inception of the program in 2005, with a variety of outreach events scheduled June 16-22.

This year’s Anchorage Navy Week holds special significance as it coincides with the U.S. Navy’s 250th birthday — a historic milestone celebrating a quarter-millennium of maritime excellence, national security, and global leadership.

Anchorage Navy Week is the sixth of 15 Navy Weeks in 2025, which brings a variety of assets, equipment, and personnel to a single city for a week-long series of engagements designed to bring America’s Navy closer to the people it protects. Each year, the program reaches more than 140 million people — about half the U.S. population.

During Anchorage Navy Week, more than 70 Sailors, to include those with direct ties to Anchorage, will engage in education and community outreach events throughout the city.

“I’m truly honored to take part in Anchorage Navy Week because it brings together two parts of my identity that mean a lot to me — my love for Alaska and my pride in serving in the Navy,” said Cyber Warfare Technician 1st Class Olivia Nutter, a Palmer native serving with Cyber Strike Activity 63 in Maryland. “Being able to represent the Navy in my home community is something I’m incredibly grateful for. Alaska has a strong military presence overall, but the Navy isn’t as visible here, so it’s exciting to help bridge that gap and share what we do. It’s especially meaningful to be part of the very first Anchorage Navy Week as we celebrate

During Anchorage Navy Week, more than 70 Sailors, to include those with direct ties to Anchorage, will engage in education and community outreach events throughout the city.

Anchorage Navy Week events include:

U.S. Navy Band Northwest and U.S. Navy Ceremonial Guard performances throughout the week.
June 19 – Navy activities at Chinooks vs. Miners baseball game at Lee Jordan Field, Chugiak, AK
June 19 – Mayor’s Marathon Kids Mile/ June 21 – Marathon and race day events.
June 21 – Slam’n Salm’n Derby Kids Fishing Day/ June 22 – Awards Ceremony.
June 21 – Downtown Summer Solstice Festivities.

Sailors will also volunteer with organizations such as Boys & Girls Club; Food Bank of Alaska, Sleep in Heavenly Peace; VOA Alaska, Youth Employment in the Parks; Anchorage VA, and summer programs with Anchorage Public Libraries, Campfire Alaska, Girl Scouts and Cub Scouts.

Anchorage Navy Week Senior Executive, Senior Executive Rear Admiral Susan BryerJoyner, Director, Warfighting Integration Directorate, N2N61, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations., will participate in community engagements and meet with local businesses, civic, education, and government leaders.

Other Navy Week Sailors include:

Crew members from namesake ships USS Anchorage (LPD 23), USS Alaska (SSBN 732), and Pre-Commissioning Unit Ted Stevens (DDG 128).
Naval Talent Acquisition Group Pacific Northwest
Navy Reserve Center Anchorage
U.S. Navy Ceremonial Guard
Naval Construction Group ONE
U.S. Navy Bureau of Medicine
Naval History and Heritage Command
Navy Band Northwest
U.S. Naval Observatory
Navy Esports Team
USS Constitution
Hometown Sailors from Anchorage and the surrounding region.

Navy Week Schedule

Wed, June 18, 6-8 PM:First Pitch & Navy Band, Anchorage Bucs Baseball, Mulcahy Stadium
- US Navy CWT1 Olivia Nutter will do the first pitch and the US Navy Band will be performing
Thur, June 19, 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM: U.S. Navy Band Lunch on the Lawn, Anchorage Museum, 625 C Street, Anchorage
- US Navy Band Northwest
Thur, June 19, 6-8 PM: US Navy Band and Sailors, Chugiak-Eagle River Chinooks Vs. Mat-Su Miners, Lee Jordan Field, 18100 Old Glenn Hwy., Chugiak, AK
- US Navy Band Northwest & Sailors from USS Anchorage (San Diego)
Thur, June 19, 7-8 PM: Kids 1 Miler; Mayor’s Marathon; Alaska Airlines Center, 3550 Providence Dr, Anchorage
- US Navy Ceremonial Guard
Fri, June 20, 10 AM – 2 PM:Sleep in Heavenly Peace; Dimond High School; 2909 W. 88th, Anchorage
- US Navy Sailors volunteering by building beds for children in need
Fri, June 20, 2 – 4 PM:Sailors at the Youth Library; Loussac Library; 3600 Denali St, Anchorage
- US Navy Sailors in Centennial Uniforms will be visiting with youth at the Loussac library, sharing history and STEM
Sat., June 21, 12–1 PM: Slam’n Salm’n Youth Fishing Day, Ship Creek, 212 W Whitney Road, Anchorage
- Sailors assist kids fishing for salmon; food and prizes available
Sat., June 21, 6:30 PM: Solstice Flattop Hike, Glen Alps Trailhead
- For the first time ever, U.S. Navy sailors will hike Flattop Mountain in uniform to mark Alaska’s longest day of the year. Navy Band plays downtown all afternoon. Later, sailors hike Flattop to mark the longest day of the year.

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Kilmar Abrego Garcia is expected to be released from jail only to be taken into immigration custody
on June 25, 2025 at 4:18 am
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Kilmar Abrego Garcia is expected to be released from jail in Tennessee on Wednesday, only to be taken into immigration custody. The Salvadoran national whose mistaken deportation became a flashpoint in the fight over President Donald Trump’s immigration policies has been in jail since he was returned to the U.S. on June 7, facing two counts of human smuggling. On Sunday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes ruled that Abrego Garcia does not have to remain in jail ahead of that trial. On Wednesday afternoon, she will set his conditions of release and allow him to go, according to her order. However, both his defense attorneys and prosecutors have said they expect him to be taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as soon as he is released on the criminal charges. In addition, federal prosecutors are appealing Holmes’ release order. Among other things, they expressed concern in a motion filed on Sunday that Abrego Garcia could be deported before he faces trial. Holmes has said previously that she won’t step between the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security. It is up to them to decide whether they want to deport Abrego Garcia or prosecute him. Abrego Garcia pleaded not guilty on June 13 to smuggling charges that his attorneys have characterized as an attempt to justify his mistaken deportation in March to a notorious prison in El Salvador. Those charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop for speeding in Tennessee during which Abrego Garcia was driving a vehicle with nine passengers. At his detention hearing, Homeland Security Special Agent Peter Joseph testified that he did not begin investigating Abrego Garcia until April of this year. Holmes said in her Sunday ruling that federal prosecutors failed to show that Abrego Garcia was a flight risk or a danger to the community. He has lived for more than a decade in Maryland, where he and his American wife are raising three children. However, Holmes referred to her own ruling as “little more than an academic exercise,” noting that ICE plans to detain him. It is less clear what will happen after that. Although he can’t be deported to El Salvador — where an immigration judge found he faces a credible threat from gangs — he is still deportable to a third country as long as that country agrees to not send him to El Salvador. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com
US Rep. LaMonica McIver to be arraigned on assault charges stemming from immigration center visit
on June 25, 2025 at 4:18 am
U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver is set to be arraigned on federal charges Wednesday, accused of assaulting and interfering with immigration officers outside a New Jersey detention center during a congressional oversight visit at the facility. She has said she plans to fight the charges. McIver, a Democrat, was charged in a complaint by interim U.S. Attorney Alina Habba, a Republican appointed by President Donald Trump, following the May 9 visit to Newark’s Delaney Hall, a privately owned, 1,000-bed facility that Immigration and Customs Enforcement uses as a detention center. This month she was indicted on three counts of assaulting, resisting, impeding and interfering with federal officials. Habba said two counts carry a maximum sentence of up to eight years in prison. The third has a maximum of one year. McIver’s lawyer, former U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Paul Fishman, said in a statement that she would challenge the allegations “head-on” in court. The indictment is the latest development in a legal-political drama that has seen the Trump administration take Democratic officials from New Jersey’s largest city to court amid the president’s ongoing immigration crackdown and Democrats’ efforts to respond. The prosecution is a rare federal criminal case against a sitting member of Congress for allegations other than fraud or corruption. During the same visit to the detention center, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested on a trespassing charge that was later dropped. Baraka is suing Habba over what he called a malicious prosecution. A nearly two-minute video clip released by the Homeland Security Department shows McIver at the facility inside a chain-link fence just before Baraka’s arrest on other side of the barrier, where other people were protesting. McIver and uniformed officials go through the gate, and she joins others shouting that they should circle the mayor. The video shows McIver in a tightly packed group of people and officers. At one point her left elbow and then her right elbow push into an officer wearing a dark face covering and an olive green uniform emblazoned with the word “Police.” It is not clear from police bodycam video if the contact was intentional, incidental or the result of jostling in the chaotic scene. The complaint alleges that she “slammed” her forearm into an agent and then tried to restrain the agent by grabbing him. The indictment also says she placed her arms around the mayor to try to stop his arrest and says again that she slammed her forearm into and grabbed an agent. Democrats including New Jersey Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman and Rob Menendez, who were with McIver at the detention center that day, have criticized the arrest and disputed the charges. Members of Congress are legally authorized to go into federal immigration facilities as part of their oversight powers, even without notice. Congress passed a 2019 appropriations bill spelling out that authority. McIver, 39, first came to Congress in September in a special election after the death of Rep. Donald Payne Jr. left a vacancy in the 10th District. She was then elected to a full term in November. A Newark native, she was president of the Newark City Council from 2022 to 2024 and worked in the city’s public schools before that. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com
Iranian-backed hackers go to work after US strikes
on June 25, 2025 at 4:18 am
WASHINGTON (AP) — Hackers backing Tehran have targeted U.S. banks, defense contractors and oil industry companies following American strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities — but so far have not caused widespread disruptions to critical infrastructure or the economy. But that could change if the ceasefire between Iran and Israel collapses or if independent hacking groups supporting Iran make good on promises to wage their own digital conflict against the U.S., analysts and cyber experts say. The U.S. strikes could even prompt Iran, Russia, China and North Korea to double down on investments in cyberwarfare, according to Arnie Bellini, a tech entrepreneur and investor. Bellini noted that hacking operations are much cheaper than bullets, planes or nuclear arms — what defense analysts call kinetic warfare. America may be militarily dominant, he said, but its reliance on digital technology poses a vulnerability. “We just showed the world: You don’t want to mess with us kinetically,” said Bellini, CEO of Bellini Capital. “But we are wide open digitally. We are like Swiss cheese.” Two pro-Palestinian hacking groups claimed they targeted more than a dozen aviation firms, banks and oil companies following the U.S. strikes over the weekend. The hackers detailed their work in a post on the Telegram messaging service and urged other hackers to follow their lead, according to researchers at the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks the groups’ activity. The attacks were denial-of-service attacks, in which a hacker tries to disrupt a website or online network. “We increase attacks from today,” one of the hacker groups, known as Mysterious Team, posted Monday. Federal authorities say they are on guard for additional attempts by hackers to penetrate U.S. networks. The Department of Homeland Security issued a public bulletin Sunday warning of increased Iranian cyber threats. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued a statement Tuesday urging organizations that operate critical infrastructure like water systems, pipelines or power plants to stay vigilant. While it lacks the technical abilities of China or Russia, Iran has long been known as a “chaos agent” when it comes to using cyberattacks to steal secrets, score political points or frighten opponents. Cyberattacks mounted by Iran’s government may end if the ceasefire holds and Tehran looks to avoid another confrontation with the U.S. But hacker groups could still retaliate on Iran’s behalf. In some cases, these groups have ties to military or intelligence agencies. In other cases, they act entirely independently. More than 60 such groups have been identified by researchers at the security firm Trustwave. These hackers can inflict significant economic and psychological blows. Following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, for instance, hackers penetrated an emergency alert app used by some Israelis and directed it to inform users that a nuclear missile was incoming. “It causes an immediate psychological impact,” said Ziv Mador, vice president of security research at Trustwave’s SpiderLabs, which tracks cyberthreats. Economic disruption, confusion and fear are all the goals of such operations, said Mador, who is based in Israel. “We saw the same thing in Russia-Ukraine.” While Iran lacks the cyberwarfare capabilities of China or Russia, it has repeatedly tried to use its more modest operations to try to spy on foreign leaders — something national security experts predict Tehran is almost certain to try again as it seeks to suss out President Donald Trump’s next moves. Last year, federal authorities charged three Iranian operatives with trying to hack Trump’s presidential campaign. It would be wrong to assume Iran has given up those efforts, according to Jake Williams, a former National Security Agency cybersecurity expert who is now vice president of research and development at Hunter Strategy, a Washington-based cybersecurity firm. “It’s fairly certain that these limited resources are being used for intelligence collection to understand what Israel or the U.S. might be planning next, rather than performing destructive attacks against U.S. commercial organizations,” Williams said. Calls to bolster America’s digital defense come as the Trump administration has moved to slash some cybersecurity programs as part of its effort to shrink the size of government. CISA has placed staffers who worked on election security on leave and cut millions of dollars in funding for cybersecurity programs for local and state elections. The CIA, NSA and other intelligence agencies also have seen reductions in staffing. Trump abruptly fired Gen. Timothy Haugh, who oversaw the NSA and the Pentagon’s Cyber Command. The Israel-Iran conflict shows the value of investments in cybersecurity and cyber offense, Mador said. He said Israel’s strikes on Iran, which included attacks on nuclear scientists, required sophisticated cyberespionage that allowed Israel to track its targets. Expanding America’s cyber defenses will require investments in education as well as technical fixes to ensure connected devices or networks aren’t vulnerable, said Bellini, who recently contributed $40 million toward a new cybersecurity center at the University of South Florida. There is a new arms race when it comes to cyberwar, Bellini said, and it’s a contest America can’t afford to lose. “It’s Wile E. Coyote vs. the Road Runner,” Bellini said. “It will go back and forth, and it will never end.” Brought to you by www.srnnews.com
A Revolutionary War-era boat is being painstakingly rebuilt after centuries buried beneath Manhattan
on June 25, 2025 at 4:18 am
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Workers digging at Manhattan’s World Trade Center site 15 years ago made an improbable discovery: sodden timbers from a boat built during the Revolutionary War that had been buried more than two centuries earlier. Now, over 600 pieces from the 50-foot (15-meter) vessel are being painstakingly put back together at the New York State Museum. After years on the water and centuries underground, the boat is becoming a museum exhibit. Arrayed like giant puzzle pieces on the museum floor, research assistants and volunteers recently spent weeks cleaning the timbers with picks and brushes before reconstruction could even begin. Though researchers believe the ship was a gunboat built in 1775 to defend Philadelphia, they still don’t know all the places it traveled to or why it ended up apparently neglected along the Manhattan shore before ending up in a landfill around the 1790s. “The public can come and contemplate the mysteries around this ship,” said Michael Lucas, the museum’s curator of historical archaeology. “Because like anything from the past, we have pieces of information. We don’t have the whole story.” The rebuilding caps years of rescue and preservation work that began in July 2010 when a section of the boat was found 22 feet (7 meters) below street level. Curved timbers from the hull were discovered by a crew working on an underground parking facility at the World Trade Center site, near where the Twin Towers stood before the 9/11 attacks. The wood was muddy, but well preserved after centuries in the oxygen-poor earth. A previously constructed slurry wall went right through the boat, though timbers comprising about 30 feet (9 meters) of its rear and middle sections were carefully recovered. Part of the bow was recovered the next summer on the other side of the subterranean wall. The timbers were shipped more than 1,400 miles (2,253 kilometers) to Texas A&M’s Center for Maritime Archaeology and Conservation. Each of the 600 pieces underwent a three-dimensional scan and spent years in preservative fluids before being placed in a giant freeze-dryer to remove moisture. Then they were wrapped in more than a mile of foam and shipped to the state museum in Albany. While the museum is 130 miles (209 kilometers) up the Hudson River from lower Manhattan, it boasts enough space to display the ship. The reconstruction work is being done in an exhibition space, so visitors can watch the weathered wooden skeleton slowly take the form of a partially reconstructed boat. Work is expected to finish around the end of the month, said Peter Fix, an associate research scientist at the Center for Maritime Archaeology and Conservation who is overseeing the rebuilding. On a recent day, Lucas took time out to talk to passing museum visitors about the vessel and how it was found. Explaining the work taking place behind him, he told one group: “Who would have thought in a million years, ‘someday, this is going to be in a museum?’” Researchers knew they found a boat under the streets of Manhattan. But what kind? Analysis of the timbers showed they came from trees cut down in the Philadelphia area in the early 1770s, pointing to the ship being built in a yard near the city. It was probably built hastily. The wood is knotty, and timbers were fastened with iron spikes. That allowed for faster construction, though the metal corrodes over time in seawater. Researchers now hypothesize the boat was built in Philadelphia in the summer of 1775, months after the first shots of the Revolutionary War were fired at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts. Thirteen gunboats were built that summer to protect Philadelphia from potential hostile forces coming up the Delaware River. The gunboats featured cannons pointing from their bows and could carry 30 or more men. “They were really pushing, pushing, pushing to get these boats out there to stop any British that might start coming up the Delaware,” Fix said. Historical records indicate at least one of those 13 gunboats was later taken by the British. And there is some evidence that the boat now being restored was used by the British, including a pewter button with “52” inscribed on it. That likely came from the uniform of soldier with the British Army’s 52nd Regiment of Foot, which was active in the war. It’s also possible that the vessel headed south to the Caribbean, where the British redirected thousands of troops during the war. Its timbers show signs of damage from mollusks known as shipworms, which are native to warmer waters. Still, it’s unclear how the boat ended up in Manhattan and why it apparently spent years partially in the water along shore. By the 1790s, it was out of commission and then covered over as part of a project to expand Manhattan farther out into the Hudson River. By that time, the mast and other parts of the Revolutionary War ship had apparently been stripped. “It’s an important piece of history,” Lucas said. “It’s also a nice artifact that you can really build a lot of stories around.” Brought to you by www.srnnews.com
Volunteers use the universal language of music to soothe stressed shelter animals
on June 25, 2025 at 4:18 am
DENVER (AP) — It is often said music is the universal language of humanity. Now a 12-year-old Houston boy is putting that to the test among an unlikely audience — man’s best friend. Yuvi Agarwal started playing keyboard when he was 4 and several years ago noticed his playing soothed his family’s restless golden doodle, Bozo. He grew curious if it also could help stressed homeless animals. With help from his parents, who both have backgrounds in marketing, he founded the nonprofit Wild Tunes in 2023 to recruit musicians to play in animal shelters. So far he has enlisted about 100 volunteer musicians and singers of all ages and abilities to perform at nine shelters in Houston, New Jersey and Denver. “You don’t have to understand the lyrics to enjoy the music. Just enjoy the melody, the harmony and the rhythms. So it transcends linguistic barriers, and even it can just transcend species,” Agarwal said recently after playing hits like The Beatles’ “Hey Jude” and Ed Sheeran’s “Perfect” on his portable keyboard at the Denver Animal Shelter. Agarwal, who was playing for an elderly miniature poodle named Pituca — Spanish slang sometimes used to describe a snob — said many of his four-legged listeners, which include cats, become excited when he enters their kennel. But after a few minutes of playing, they calm down. Some even go to sleep. He remembers a rescue dog named Penelope that refused to come out of her enclosure in Houston to be fed. “Within a short period of me playing, she went from not even coming out of her kennel to licking me all over my face and nibbling my ears,” Agarwal said. A few stalls down from where he was jamming on his keyboard at the Denver shelter, volunteer Sarah McDonner played Mozart and Bach on her flute for Max, a 1-year-old stray boxer that tilted his head when she hit the high notes. “The animals having that human interaction in a positive way, I think, gives them something to look forward to, something that is different throughout their day,” said McDonner, a professional musician who met Argawal in Houston. She helped bring the program to Colorado after moving to Denver a few months ago. “I think it’s very important to give them something different from what they’re used to in their little tiny cages … and makes them more adoptable in the long run,” McDonner said. While the effect of music on humans has been studied extensively, its role in animal behavior remains murky. Several studies suggest that classical music generally has a calming influence on dogs in stressful environments like kennels, shelters and veterinary clinics. But some researchers warn there is not enough data to support the claim. “We always want these really simplistic answers. So we want to say that music calms animals, for example, and I think that it’s much more nuanced than that,” said Lori Kogan, a self-described “dog-person” who chairs the human-animal interaction section of the American Psychological Association. “There’s a lot more research that needs to happen before I think that we can unequivocally say that music is a great thing for animals.” Kogan, a professor and researcher at Colorado State University, has studied for more than two decades how animals and humans get along. Research involving the effect of music on dogs often produces mixed results, she said, because there are so many variables: the setting; the volume, type and tempo of the music and the breed of the dog and its previous exposure to music. She suggests a case-by-case approach to introducing music to animals. “If you play music for your pet, and they seem to like it and they appear calmer, then I think we can say that that’s a positive thing, that you’re providing some level of enrichment for that pet. … I would encourage people to give it a try and to see how their pets respond,” she said. For Agarwal, his firsthand experience at shelters is undeniable evidence that music helps comfort stressed animals, and he plans to grow Wild Tunes into a nationwide program. The volunteers get something out of it, too, he said. “You get a really great way to practice your instrument or sing in front of a nonjudgmental audience, which can boost your confidence,” he said. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

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