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Hal Kulm (left), Luke Kulm (center) and Chanda Lawless place trash and lumber debris by the side of North Douglas Highway during a community shoreline cleanup. (Mark Sabbatini / Juneau Empire file)

News

Bits of fishing gear and buoys dominate marine debris load in Alaska, report says

Alaska’s marine debris mix shows how ocean activities and ocean currents bring trash to the state’s shores

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski delivers her annual address to the Alaska Legislature on March 18, 2025. (Jasz Garrett / Juneau Empire)

News

On budget vote, Murkowski says she was ‘hung out to dry’ and stuck between 2 bad options

Alaska’s senior U.S. senator said the state fares better under Republicans’ budget plan because of her efforts to…

Exit Glacier is photographed on June 22, 2018. (Photo by Erin Thompson/Peninsula Clarion)

News

2 rescued by park service near Exit Glacier

The hikers were stranded in the “Exit Creek Prohibited Visitor Use Zone.”

Alaska Airlines passenger jets on the tarmac at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in Washington state on Jan. 8, 2024. Alaska Airlines resumed operations early Monday, July 21, 2025, after grounding its entire fleet of planes and those of a subsidiary because of a software outage for about three hours. (M. Scott Brauer/The New York Times)

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Alaska Airlines resumes operations after software outage

The airline first requested to ground the more than 200 aircraft it operates under the Alaska Airlines brand…

Sen. Jesse Bjorkman, R-Nikiski, speaks at a town hall meeting in the Moose Pass Sportsman’s Club in Moose Pass, Alaska, on Friday, Feb. 28, 2025. (Jake Dye/Peninsula Clarion)

News

Insurance authorization bill becomes law

The bill requires insurance companies and health care providers to meet new deadlines for authorizing requests for care.

KTOO, Juneau's public radio station, is photographed in Juneau, Alaska, on Friday, July 11, 2025. (Photo by Erin Thompson/Peninsula Clarion)

News

Public radio facing cuts as Congress moves to pull back funding

KTOO could lose one-third of its budget if the House passes a bill cutting funding for the Corporation…

Photos by Bill Glude About 50 people attended a rally promoting Canada-United States friendship on the international border near Skagway on July 5.

Neighbors

About 50 people from the Yukon and Skagway attend border rally

Aim of rally in the White Pass was the promotion of Canada-United States friendship and good relations

A male sea otter pup, estimated at 2 weeks old, was rescued near Homer and admitted to the Alaska SeaLife Center rehabilitation program on June 23, 2025, in Seward, Alaska. Photo courtesy of the Alaska SeaLife Center

News

Seward’s SeaLife Center admits 2 seal pups, 1 orphaned otter

The three pups join the Alaska SeaLife Center’s ‘growing’ patient list

Gov. Mike Dunleavy compares Alaska to Mississippi data on poverty, per-pupil education spending, and the 2024 National Assessment of Education Progress fourth grade reading scores during a press conference on Jan. 31, 2025. Alaska is highlighted in yellow, while Mississippi is in red. (Jasz Garrett / Juneau Empire)

News

Dunleavy calls special session for August

Lawmakers on Wednesday said they were surprised by the move.

A few clouds disrupt the sunlight in downtown Juneau on an otherwise bright day. (Jasz Garrett / Juneau Empire file photo)

News

Alaska ranks 49th, ahead of only Louisiana, in U.S. News & World Report’s annual Best States survey

State drops from 45th a year ago, led by large drops in opportunity and fiscal stability.

A map shows projected population changes in Alaska between 2023 and 2050. (Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development, Research and Analysis Section)

News

Southeast Alaska’s population expected drop 17% by 2050, by far the most statewide

State expects to lose 15,000 residents, 12,000 of them from Southeast, according to report.

The offices of the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development in Juneau are seen on Thursday, Oct. 26, 2023. (James Brooks/Alaska Beacon)

News

Alaska demographers predict population drop, a switch from prior forecasts

For decades, state officials have forecast major population rises, but those haven’t come to pass.

In this Sept. 29, 2023, photo at the grave of Lucky Pitka McCormick, her granddaughter Kathleen Carlo, left, and McCormick’s great-great-grandchildren Lucia, center, and Addison Carlo place candles and stones on the grave during a reburial ceremony in Rampart, Alaska. Pitka was one of the Lost Alaskans sent to a mental hospital in the 1930s. Her grave was recently discovered, and family members brought her back to Alaska for a proper burial. (Wally Carlo via AP).

News

Volunteers uncover fate of thousands of Lost Alaskans sent to Oregon mental hospital a century ago

Lucy Pitka McCormick’s relatives cooked salmon, moose, beaver and muskrat over an earthen firepit on the banks of…

Rep. Cathy Tilton, R-Wasilla, presides over a mostly empty House chamber at the end of an hourslong recess over education legislation on Monday. (Mark Sabbatini / Juneau Empure)

News

Tie vote kills early House debate on education funding

Lawmakers spend much of Monday in closed-door negotiations, plan to take up bill again Tuesday.

A sign for a store that accepts food stamps and exchange benefits transfer cards is seen in this 2019 photo. Alaska has being going through a year-long crisis in processing applications for benefits. (Photo by Scott Heins/Getty Images)

News

Alaska faces new backlog in processing food stamp benefits after clearing older applications

ANCHORAGE — An Alaska state agency faces a new backlog in processing applications for people seeking food stamp…

In this photo provided by the National Park Service is Grazer, the winner of the 2023 Fat Bear Contest, at Katmai National Park on Sept. 14, 2023. The park holds an annual contest in which people logging on to live webcams in park pick the fattest bear of the year. Grazer had 108,321 votes to handily beat Chunk, who has 23,134 votes, in the finals on Tuesday. (F. Jimenez/National Park Service via AP)

News

Don’t mess with this mama bear: Grazer easily wins popular Fat Bear Contest at Alaska national park

When it comes to packing on the pounds to survive an Alaska winter, this year’s undisputed champ is…

A sign opposing the participation of trans girls in girls sports is propped against a fire hydrant outside of the George A. Navarre Admin Building on Thursday, June 8, 2023, in Soldotna, Alaska. The Alaska Board of Education met in the building to discuss a resolution that would ban trans girls from girls high school sports. (Ashlyn O’Hara/Peninsula Clarion)

News

State Board of Education bars trans girls from girls’ high school sports teams

Alaska becomes 24th state to impose such restrictions.

Matthew Murray, an attorney representing the Alaska State Employees Association, presents the union’s arguments in its lawsuit against the Dunleavy administration to the Alaska Supreme Court on Oct. 13, 2022. (Screenshot from Gavel Alaska livestream)

News

Dunleavy illegally altered rules for union dues, state supreme court rules

Nearly $450,000 in damages and costs awarded to ASEA as judgement in 2019 lawsuit upheld

Dozens of Juneau teachers, students and residents gather at the steps of the Alaska State Capitol on Jan. 23 in advocacy for an increase in the state’s flat funding via the base student allocation, which hasn’t increased sizeably since 2017 and has failed to keep pace with inflation during the past decade. A one-time funding increase was approved during this year’s legislative session. (Clarise Larson / Juneau Empire file photo)

News

What’s next for the most debated bills pending in the Legislature?

Education funding increase, “parental rights” and other proposals will resurface next year.

A channel flows through the mud flats along the Seward Highway and Turnagain Arm in Alaska on Oct. 25, 2014. Authorities said, a 20-year-old man from Illinois who was walking Sunday evening, May 21, 2023, on tidal mud flats with friends in an Alaska estuary, got stuck up to his waist in the quicksand-like silt and drowned as the tide came in before frantic rescuers could extract him. (Bob Hallinen / Anchorage Daily News)

News

Illinois man gets stuck waist-deep in Alaska mud flats, drowns as tide comes in

“…It’s Mother Nature, and she has no mercy for humanity.”