Michelle Theriault Boots

The risk mounts with each passing year, a new report concludes: Lengthening fire seasons, natural increase in vegetation loads, climate-change-driven weather patterns and dwindling budgets for fire mitigation “pose an increasingly higher risk for the potential loss of life, homes, and infrastructure.”

A public sanction — of an entire state agency — in a usually secret child welfare case is almost unheard of.

The lawsuit says the moose hunt would violate the Alaska Constitution because it would grant “exclusive or special privileges to hunt and fish for Alaska wildlife to a specific group.”

The brutality of the 1985 killings — and Fletcher’s young age at the time, 14 — drew widespread attention in Anchorage. A judge waived Fletcher’s case into adult court.

In April, eight people believed to be homeless died outdoors in Anchorage. The man on the Fireweed Lane sidewalk was one of them.

But the data illustrates a circumstance both unseen and commonplace in Alaska’s biggest city: In April, unhoused people were found dead on a sidewalk, in a ditch, in a sleeping bag tucked in the corner of a parking lot, along the state’s busiest highway.

All three Kenai state judges have asked to be recused from any involvement in the case.

While many elements are still unknown, the case could signal that an activist group has successfully influenced the way Alaska’s grand jury system works — putting discretion of which allegations are investigated and the power of criminal prosecution in new hands.

The closure of the arena to all but 90 of the most vulnerable and disabled clients represents the first time in recent memory that the city has turned homeless residents to the street with no sanctioned shelter or legal camping to receive them.

When Black Birch Books announced a drag storytime event, it put owner Taylor Jordan and her business squarely in the middle of a culture war playing out in Alaska and across America. She’s fine with that.

The case is the second time in a month Alaska prosecutors have charged a cold case sex crime based on the results of an effort to reexamine long-untested DNA evidence.

The Alaska Board of Game approved a proposal that would allow for a limited moose hunt within Anchorage’s Kincaid Park, only for hunters with physical disabilities and mobility limitations. The city would still need to sign off. And a lot of logistics have yet to be worked out.

Less than 70 miles from finishing his first Iditarod, rookie Hunter Keefe spent the night riding out a wicked windstorm in an emergency shelter. It turned out to be the finishing touch on a race Keefe said was a “joyride all the way.”

Eddie Burke Jr. is 2023′s rookie of the year, finishing seventh as a wave of top finishers rolled into Nome. But the last stretch wasn’t much fun for some of them.

“It shows that in some parts of rural Alaska, mushing’s not dying,” said Aniak musher Richie Diehl, who placed third after champion Ryan Redington and second-place finisher Pete Kaiser.