Alaska News

By Dennis Zaki
"Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."

By Barry S. Zellen
With the fractious Copenhagen climate summit nearing its end, and President Obama planning to attend the final day of negotiations in the hope a presidential "surge" will help to close the gap that still divides the industrialized North from the developing South, the world's attention remains keenly fixed on the normally quiet capital of Denmark.

In another reflection of our economic times, during the past 12 months the Iditarod Trail Committee has experienced a loss in funding of nearly $1 million dollars.

A Q&A with Barry Zellen on his new book, Arctic Doom, Arctic Boom: The Geopolitics of Climate Change in the Arctic
Arctic Doom, Arctic Boom considers the geopolitical transformation taking place at the top of the world as the polar ice cap thaws and a new sea emerges from beneath the ice pack and opens up to maritime commerce and naval activity.

Alaskans, who currently pay the highest health insurance costs in the nation for premiums purchased by individuals, would see among the largest insurance premium reductions, under the national health insurance reform bill pending in the U.S. Senate, according to a just-released congressional study.

The Iditarod Trail Committee announced today that 75 mushers have officially entered to run the 2010 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. There is the possibility that the number of entrants may grow. Applications that are postmarked before midnight November 30th will be accepted.

Michele Linehan will get a hearing Thursday by the Alaska Court of Appeals to try to overturn her murder conspiracy conviction of commercial fisherman Kent Lupik in 1996.

By Stephen Taufen
$626,500 might not have been quite enough to get on the board of the Norton Sound Economic Development Corporation (NSEDC), one of six Western Alaska community development quota (CDQ) groups established into fisheries law at the hands of former U.S. Senator Ted Stevens. But that's how much its for-profit subsidiary, the Siu Alaska Corporation donated to two local charitable organizations right before the October 6 election in Nome.