Alaska | featured news

Defecating and urinating in public are already against the law in Alaska, but one small town 400 miles west of Anchorage is considering a ban of its own—and the proposed ordinance doesn't stop there. The move to beef up Bethel's public decency laws would also bar residents in the town of 6,100 from walking on city streets while drunk, reports KYUK. Doing so would allow the fines for such behavior (up to $200 in the case of public defecation) to enter the town's coffers, instead of the state's, reports the AP.

Track Palin and his wife, Britta, have filed for divorce in Alaska. They have a 1-year-old daughter, Kyla.

Confessed serial killer Israel Keyes admitted he enjoyed killing people, but couldn't or wouldn't give investigators a more meaningful answer when quizzed why he did it....

...The U.S. Department of Energy and industry partners over two winters drilled into a reservoir of methane hydrate, which looks like ice but burns like a candle if a match warms its molecules. There is little need now for methane, the main ingredient of natural gas. With the boom in production from hydraulic fracturing, the United States is awash in natural gas for the near future and is considering exporting it, but the DOE wants to be ready with methane if there's a need.

A woman is busily texting and tries to discard a cigarette butt in Kodiak, Alaska. There is a nearby cliff. The story does not end well.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Thursday that Royal Dutch Shell would be allowed to start “certain limited preparatory activities” for oil drilling in the environmentally sensitive waters off Alaska’s northwest coast.

Arctic oil ambitions ran into new problems Saturday evening when the Discoverer drilling rig, slated to begin exploratory operations in the Chukchi Sea next month, ran adrift in stiff winds in Alaska’s Dutch Harbor and came perilously close to the beach.

Notorious as the first spot in Alaska despoiled by rats,  a remote island has a new name to celebrate its rodent-free status.- but it may be harder for some to pronounce. The 10-square-mile island will now be known as Hawadax (pronounced "How-ah-thaa"), the traditional Aleut name it was given before a Japanese sailing ship ran aground there in the late 1700s and triggered Alaska's first rat invasion, state and federal officials said on Wednesday.

Bristol Palin's home life in Alaska is the subject of a reality series starring the daughter of former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

Dozens of National Guard troops have arrived in Cordova to help the Alaska fishing town dig out from massive snows that have collapsed roofs, trapped some people in homes and triggered avalanches....