Anchorage News

By RACHEL D'ORO Associated Press ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Four-time champion Jeff King took a razor-thin lead in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on Sunday, trading places with his closest rival by departing a checkpoint one minute earlier on Alaska's wind-scoured western coast.

Anchorage police say six men held a woman and her teenage son at gunpoint while they robbed the family's South Anchorage house Saturday night.

Abortion bills. Immigration and drivers' licenses. School choice. Guns on campuses.

House Finance is set to complete its version of the state operating budget with a floor vote expected later this week.

A mild earthquake shook Anchorage and the Kenai Peninsula on Sunday morning. The epicenter was 40 miles beneath Cook Inlet with a preliminary magnitude of 3.7, according to the USGS and the Alaska Earthquake Information Center.

A state-appointed guardian is now making decisions for Bret Bohn, the 27-year-old Wasilla hunting guide at the center of a medical custody battle since he entered Providence Alaska Medical Center in October.

Those words for Alaska may mean something radically different if a sweeping crime bill, shepherded by Senate Majority Leader John Coghill, R-North Pole, passes the Legislature.

Scott Janssen cried as he sized up his situation one last time: numb fingers, wet snowsuit, broken bone, woozy head, far from help.

Julia O'Malley writes a general interest column about life and politics in Anchorage and around Alaska.

Danielle Medolla, front center, posing with her family in Anchorage, Alaska. In the background from left is her husband Robert and children Robert, 9, Christopher, 7 and Paul, 4. Danielle Medolla has spent years helping other people, now she is getting rewarded for it.

Visiting Churches: Chris Thompson is an amateur Alaskan biblical scholar and student of religion, especially as it relates to popular culture.

Gilbert Huntington, from Galena, Alaska, shares a laugh with Iditarod musher Hugh Neff, from Tok, at the Galena checkpoint during the 2014 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on Friday, March 7, 2014.

Gov. Sean Parnell has appointed a Californian who worked for 18 years in the oil industry to the state board that sets the tax value for oil-industry property despite a law that says board and commission appointees must be registered Alaska voters.

Miller, headquartered in Knoxville, Tenn., is the parent company of Cook Inlet Energy LLC, an Alaska oil and gas producer and explorer based in Anchorage.

Rep. Harriet Drummond, D-Anchorage, will miss the next two to three weeks of the legislative session to help her husband recover from heart surgery, her staff said Friday.

If you have competed in the Green River Narrows Race and made it through the turn called "Turn Left or Die," you will find Flatwater Paddling boring.

After two weeks of deliberations, jurors reached a verdict Friday morning on all but one count in the trial for three men involved in a 2011 shooting outside an East Anchorage bar that left two dead and two others injured.

Loughrey, 16, is passionate about the issues facing homeless teens in Anchorage.

Two costly, challenging and controversial road projects are being pushed this year by the Parnell administration, and on Thursday all sides made a quick case before a joint meeting of the House and Senate transportation committees.

Former Iditarod executive director and former Ruby resident Raine Hall shares the five-course meal with Jeff King after he was the first musher to reach the Yukon River checkpoint of Ruby during the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on Thursday, March 6, 2014.