Lisa Demer

I came with the assignment of telling stories about life in rural Alaska. Sometimes I felt I came close to getting that story right. Usually I felt I was just on the other side of understanding.

“It was probably one of the toughest if not the toughest races I’ve ever done,” Kaiser said.

Dogs not used to running on glare ice struggled to get traction. Sleds slid suddenly this way and that.

Mushers say they expect the new double-loop route, created with safety in mind, to play mind games with their dogs – and themselves.

The fisherman was “creek robbing,” a term that describes when commercial fishing is done illegally at the mouths of salmon streams, a prosecutor said.

The Alaska Department of Transportation said on Twitter that “all available equipment is out and crews are working overtime.”

"That would be beyond my imagination that that would ever happen in Alaska,” state homeland security director Mike Sutton said of the alert from Hawaii.

The Anchorage jail set up a recording system to get information from suspected serial killer Israel Keyes. But after he killed himself in 2012, the recordings went on until 2016.

Detectives are calling Aarron Settje and Carlton Tarkington "persons of interest" in the East Anchorage homicide Jan. 13.

“My parents were saying their ‘I love yous,’ ” Sitka's Caroline Mau said. “I was just trying to hold it together.”

A disturbance between two groups of young adults resulted in one shot being fired, police said.

Frozen ground and the land’s natural slope were keeping the spill contained, the school's operations manager said.

The Wasilla City Council this week approved a new law that bans thin, single-use plastic bags starting July 1 at grocery stores, retail shops and restaurants.

“We actually in some cases allow 14-year-old children to marry. I don’t care if their parents want it. I don’t care if a judge approves," Sen. Berta Gardner said. "I think it’s wrong.”

Alaska State Troopers say the man raped, bit and slapped the 14-year-old girl. Prosecutors will take the matter to a grand jury.