Capital City Fire Rescue is crediting some Good Samaritans with saving a boat from destruction after an explosion and fire broke out in Harris Harbor Wednesday night.

Recovering from drug and alcohol addiction isn’t just about staying sober; sometimes victory can be found in screwing up less often and badly than the time before.

The University of Alaska is laying off seven people at the Geophysical Institute in Fairbanks to counteract a half-million dollar shortfall in the institute’s $35 million budget.

A former village public safety officer has been sentenced to six months in jail and fined $10,000 for selling home brew.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has directed state agencies to begin applying for federal stimulus funds after indicating she wouldn’t veto legislative approval of more than $900 million available to the state.

The recent swine flu outbreak has caused worldwide anxiety. But there’s one thing we don’t need to be anxious about: We are not facing a pandemic. As flu virologists always have defined them, pandemics involve totally new viruses to which no one has any immunity, allowing them to spread rapidly and destructively.

A magnitude 4.8 earthquake hit the waters in the Kodiak Island region.

KETCHIKAN – Screw up the head count, and the rescue fails. In 2006, a British Columbia ferry sank, and two people were not accounted for; they died on the ship. Counting people is the hardest part of the rescue – but also the most important.

My 16-year-old son made a statement to me recently that made me realize just how much this governor of ours has divided our state. My son asked me: Why doesn’t Gov. Sarah Palin like us?

The World Health Organization has just ratcheted up the threat alert for the swine flu epidemic to Phase 5 (out of 6). Along with the avian flu of a decade ago, the Hong Kong flu of 1968 and the Asian flu of 1957, swine flu has been traced to animal waste in a factory farm. Its strain is nearly identical to that of the Spanish flu, which killed more than 50 million people in 1918 to 1919.