Kim Murphy

For the mother of a boy born with Apert syndrome, going home to Alaska has given her son a chance at a normal life.

Tea party activists appear eager for a comeback by Sarah Palin, urging supporters to contribute money toward recruiting her to run for the U.S. Senate in her home state, where, according to an email sent out this week, she has a "clear path" to defeat incumbent Democrat Mark Begich.

Los Angeles County officials have confirmed they are in "very preliminary" discussions about taking the unused Mat-Su ferry Susitna off the borough's hands. They would use it as an emergency-response link to Catalina Island.

Wildlife managers are calling it an ecological success story. Conservation advocates say it threatens to undermine years of work to recover a once-endangered species.

Most people think of Alaska as one of the last great escapes from urban pollution. But they have not spent a winter in Fairbanks or the nearby town of North Pole, where air quality readings in November were twice as bad as Beijing's.

Now that the mole who helped bring down the Alaska Peacemaker Militia has talked publicly, the question on some Alaskans' minds is: Why was FBI informant William Fulton involved in political campaigns?

A drilling rig that launched landmark exploratory oil operations in the Chukchi Sea this summer has been cited by the U.S. Coast Guard for serious "discrepancies" in its safety and pollution discharge equipment, the latest in a series of vessel problems that have plagued Royal Dutch Shell's foray into the Alaska Arctic.

Wainwright, a town of 550 people on barren bluffs of tundra 800 miles northwest of Anchorage, seems an unlikely venue for an oil boom. But the discovery of a massive undersea pool of oil just offshore in the Chukchi Sea has, for many, turned caribou dreams into lucrative oil services contracts that will create thousands of jobs across the North Slope.

The wolf pack that has enchanted thousands of visitors at Denali National Park did not produce any pups this year and its members have dispersed widely throughout the park, says a petition seeking to ban hunting and trapping along the park's northeastern boundary, where a female wolf was fatally snared this year.

Here at the top of the world, the news that Arctic sea ice has reached a new low -- the smallest footprint since satellites began measuring it three decades ago -- is not much of a surprise.

Less than two weeks before drilling off Alaska's northern coast is due to begin, a series of troubling construction delays has left the Arctic Challenger without federal certification.

Conservation groups are pushing the U.S. to back an agreement that would ban most international trade with Canada in polar bear parts. Inuit leaders from Canada's far north are preparing to fight back.