Emily Russell

The U.S. Coast Guard is gearing up for a busy summer in the Arctic.

The Nome City Council will meet Monday night to debate the purchase of property at Anvil Mountain from Sitnasuak Native Corp. If the purchase goes through, the city would also own the White Alice communication towers constructed by the Air Force during the Cold War.

A Department of Defense drill to train for a disaster in icy waters will be held in Nome this summer -- but not until after a large Arctic-bound cruise ship has arrived.

A camp constructed by the U.S. Navy on a sea ice floe in the Arctic was evacuated last week. The camp’s early closure coincided with a new record low sea ice extent in the Arctic.

Two British explorers were rescued from the icy waters of the Bering Strait Friday afternoon. The men were attempting to cross the strait when they began to drift north into open ocean.

Last week, Nome’s city council passed its first set of commercial marijuana regulations. Among other things, the law sets hours of operation -- including extended hours during Iditarod season.

The Northwest Arctic Borough’s largest private employer and source of revenue is suing the borough over a recent hike in taxes.

Last Friday a bearded seal became stranded on Nome’s west side of town. Although it showed some signs of sickness, experts released the seal back into the wild.

Royal Dutch Shell pulled out of its multiyear and multibillion-dollar plan to drill in the Chukchi, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers put its plan for a deep draft Arctic port on hold. But at city meetings in Nome, all eyes are fixed on the future and a strategic plan to position its port for Arctic growth.

It’s been a long and unproductive road for the Rock Creek Mine — but now that it's being liquidated, money will finally flow into the pockets of its current owner, Bering Straits Native Corp.

Angelo Wilke-Page hopes to become the first person to circumnavigate the world from north to south solely under human power. As a training run, he's first circling the globe from east to west.

Cruise-ship passengers are becoming an increasingly common sight in Nome, and there's no indication that the area's tourism boom is going away soon.

President Obama is expected to announce during his visit to the state next week a project led by the Denali Commission to assess whether 31 rural Alaska communities affected climate change should be relocated or protected in their current location, a federal official speaking at a U.S. Arctic Research Commission in Nome said this week.