Casey Grove

After winning the 2012 race by 26 seconds, Tok musher Hugh Neff's second victory on Monday was a runaway. Defending champion Brent Sass was more than an hour back.

The Tok musher built a sizable 15-mile lead between the Carmacks and Braeburn checkpoints. The Whitehorse finish line is about 100 miles away.

The ailing defending champion pulled out of the Carmacks checkpoint at about 4 a.m. Sunday. Before long two other former champs, Allen Moore and Hugh Neff, were giving chase.

As the race heats up, so does the weather as mushers hit the final quarter of the 1,000-mile race.

Hugh Neff of Tok was the first to leave the Pelly Crossing checkpoint about 750 miles into the race, even though Two Rivers musher Allen Moore arrived first. Neff pulled out at 3:42 p.m., followed by defending champion Brent Sass at 4:06 p.m. Moore continued to rest in the heat of the day.

Middle-of-the-pack Yukon Quest mushers battled blizzards and slogged through deep, fresh snow Thursday and Friday as they made their way to Dawson City, the midway point of the 1,000-mile race from Fairbanks to Whitehorse.

Eureka race leader Brent Sass and his team had 36 hours to eat and catch up on sleep at the confluence of the Yukon and Klondike rivers, where teams set up at a quiet campground about a half-mile from Dawson’s much busier riverfront.

The young musher from Eureka pulled out of Circle City first, heading towards the jumble ice of the Yukon River. Sass, Allen Moore of Two Rivers and Hugh Neff of Tok are leading the racers toward Whitehorse.

Among the field of mushers are three past champions — Brent Sass, Allen Moore and Hugh Neff.

Fairbanks start being moved to near the Morris Thompson Center, and a section in Canada near the Fortymile River is being reroute inland and up a 2,500-foot climb.

For captive polar bears, mating is often a public encounter. Such is the case for the pair at the Alaska Zoo in Anchorage, where zookeepers have been seeing a lot more activity this spring.

It took a federal jury just hours to convict James Wells of murdering two of his coworkers at a Coast Guard communications station on Kodiak Island in 2012.

After nearly 20 days of trial in Anchorage, it is up to a jury to decide whether James Wells shot and killed two co-workers at a Coast Guard shop on Kodiak Island in 2012 or if federal authorities have the wrong man.

Steven Pyle, a 48-year-old professor and foster parent, faces three counts of sexual abuse of a minor.

An Anchorage jury on Thursday found the driver in a 2012 hit-and-run collision guilty of failing to render aid to the pedestrian his car hit near Tudor Road and Arctic Boulevard. But that felony charge against Luke Jerde, 22, had not been in dispute.