Alaska, Deaths | featured news

A small plane carrying all three teachers for a remote Alaska village crashed in wilderness terrain, killing the pilot and one of the teachers, a school official said Sunday.

Ted Stevens, the temperamental, powerful politician who helped secure statehood for Alaska and won billions of dollars in federal largesse for the region in 40 years as its U.S. senator, died in a small-plane crash in the rugged, fog-shrouded hills above Bristol Bay in Alaska, authorities said Tuesday.

Rescuers held back overnight by high winds and low clouds managed on Tuesday to reach a downed plane in southwest Alaska that had been carrying former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens and former NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe.

As governor of Alaska and U.S. secretary of the interior, Walter J. Hickel confounded critics by ricocheting from pro-business stalwart to ardent environmentalist.

The president of ConocoPhillips Alaska was killed in an avalanche and another person in his snowmobiling party is missing, according to Alaska State Troopers.