Free Republic

A Beaver (Harris Aircraft Services from Sitka) narrowly avoided a surfacing whale while landing at Angoon. on July 10 '14 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu2WEWRkoXk Pilot may not have seen the whale, but the exhale plume was certainly a tipoff. Hit pause/play to freeze the plume of mist and the whale's back.

It's rich and fatty and not the least bit offensive in flavor, at least according to taste tests by managers at the Musk Ox Farm in Palmer. Last week, cows started to wean their babies, and for the first time in two decades managers decided to try milking the musk oxen.

Nome is used to rowdy residents, but some relatively new transplants are making a real nuisance of themselves -- although unlike the colorful characters of the early 20th century gold rush days, these visitors have four legs, not two. Musk oxen are wandering into the city on the Seward Peninsula, and despite loud noises, water hoses and even a blow-up bear coated in ursine urine, they don't want to leave.

While little Mosca the Jack Russell terrier was being noisily killed by wolves earlier this month in Chugach State Park just above Anchorage, the dog's owner was hiking along a trail to Wolverine Peak unaware of what was going on because he was wearing headphones.

A black bear crashed a toddler's birthday party in Juneau on Saturday after it climbed onto the roof of a house, then burst through a skylight and landed in the living room.

GCI celebrated the launch of 3G data service in Bethel by flying in 6,000 McDonald’s cheeseburgers. The Friday lunchtime crowd stretched out and around the parking lot of the Long House Hotel. Standing over 100 people in line for burgers, GCI’s Vice President for Wireless Services, Dan Boyette, says crews are continuing to tweak the network, but it appears to be functioning as intended. “All of those things that people really had trouble doing before like browsing the internet or sending pictures..that sort of thing will work fine now with the 3G speed, while it’s tough with the 2G or...

WASHINGTON - A Virginia man is furious after he was pulled over in Alexandria while driving in a funeral procession. He missed his great-grandmother's burial because of the delay, his family says. Now Alexandria police are reviewing the stop. With their hazard and headlights on, Heather Spinner and her husband were on Duke Street driving to the Mount Comfort Cemetery on June 12 when they noticed red and blue flashing lights in the rear-view mirror. "My brother-in-law behind us was actually pulled over for running a red light," Spinner says. Both her husband and brother-in-law, R.G. Spinner, removed their yellow...

A young California mother attacked by a grizzly bear while running along a remote road through the woods at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson says she was at one point sure she was going to die. In a video interview with military officials 12 days after the attack, Jessica Gamboa, wife of a soldier on the base and mother of a 4-year-old son, said she thought her life was over after the bear knocked her to the ground, picked her up by her backside, carried her across the road, dropped her to the ground, and worked her over twice more before finally...

Paco, a 2-year-old Chihuahua-pug mix, was killed and eaten by a brown bear as Sitka resident Paula Myers watched in horror just a few feet away on Monday. Paula Myers never imagined that her first bear encounter would occur just a few feet from her Sitka home, and that her dog, 2-year-old Chihuahua-pug mix Paco, would be killed and consumed by a brown bear right in front of her eyes. Myers and her husband, Brad Langdorf, moved to Sitka in January to work at Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium. Coming to Alaska was a new adventure for the couple, Myers...

Leon Merkes a World War II era paratrooper.....waiting to board an Alaska Airlines flight to Portland and then on to Washington DC to visit the World War II memorial.Alaska Airlines is providing free air fare for the vets.

Wind gusts on Monday afternoon blew a Wasilla pilot off course at takeoff from a rural airstrip in the Matanuska Valley — and stuck him and his plane into a tree 40 feet off the ground.

As two state troopers struggled to arrest his father, a 19-year-old man armed himself with an assault rifle and shot them seven times, killing them outside his home in a remote Alaska village, authorities said in charges filed Saturday.

An Anchorage police dog was credited with helping catch two suspects in a car theft after they led officers on a chase through a Muldoon park early Thursday morning. About 4:20 a.m., a police officer near Baxter Road and East Northern Lights Boulevard spotted a Toyota 4Runner reported stolen from an East Anchorage home a day earlier,

Among AA adherents (and even nonbelievers), it is acknowledged and grimly understood that “there are such unfortunates” who will not achieve sobriety – and who, because of the chronic and progressive nature of the disease, will die. “They are not at fault; they seem to have been born that way,” the Big Book says. One of those unfortunates it seems was state Rep. Steve Smith, R-Mound, who served his district and the state for 21 years running – the longest tenure of any House Republican at the time. Though a cause of death has not yet been released, Smith’s son,...

Four-time Iditarod champion Lance Mackey was arrested near Fairbanks on Saturday for violating conditions of release in a pending 2013 DUI case by driving without a valid license, the Alaska State Troopers said.

Alaska State Troopers said a 24-year-old Homer man fatally shot himself with a trooper's pistol during a struggle Wednesday night. About 10:17 p.m., a woman reported to troopers that her ex-boyfriend had assaulted her at her home on East End Road near Homer, according to a trooper dispatch posted Thursday morning Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2014/04/03/3407761/troopers-homer-man-fatally-shoots.html?sp=/99/100/&ihp=1#storylink=cpy

A Haines woman beat back a wolf with a ski pole but was unable to keep it from killing and devouring one of four dogs she was walking with during a midday ordeal near 40 Mile Haines Highway.

Young abided by letter of law; spirit of law takes a beating The House Ethics Committee has ruled that Alaska Rep. Don Young didn't violate the law in accepting 12 checks totaling $60,000 for his legal defense fund from 12 businesses owned by one family. As the committee pointed out, the companies are technically 12 separate entities in Louisiana, but they represent exactly one political interest.

An alleged robber and getaway driver are now charged with manslaughter after a homeowner killed their accomplices, police say. The trouble began Nov. 10, when three people entered a trailer on the 700 block of Muldoon Road, demanding money and drugs, according to police. The man inside shot and killed two of the 19-year-old robbers, police say. Now the alleged accomplices of the two men shot and killed face charges for both the robbery and the deaths. The robbers believed there was a marijuana grow at the trailer, the indictment says.

The commander of Air Station Sitka testified Thursday he was prepared to recommend that the matter against the co-pilot in a fatal helicopter crash be dropped, but indicated those plans were trumped by the new Coast Guard admiral in Alaska.