By GEORGE BRYSON, Anchorage Daily News

The 10-year-long decline of the northern fur seal population hit a new low last year with the fewest number of fur seal pups born in Alaska's Pribilof Islands in 92 years.
"The Pribilof Island pup count is a major marker, and it was down by 4.9 percent since the 2006 count," said National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration biologist Doug DeMaster.

It was the last Saturday in November, and snow was falling in Anchorage. In Nome it was minus 20. In Southeast Alaska, however, the sun was shining, a rainbow arced the sky, the air temperature hugged the freezing mark, and some of the best surfers in the world were frolicking in the waves off Yakutat.

How likely is it that three neighboring volcanoes would all erupt at the same time -- as the Kasatochi, Okmok and Cleveland volcanoes in the Aleutians did this summer? About as likely as a storm that only appears once in a thousand years, says Anchorage volcanologist Peter Cervelli, who'll deliver a paper on the subject this winter to the American Geophysical Union.

A federal judge has ordered the U.S. Army to grant conscientious objector status and an honorable discharge to Pfc. Michael Barnes, a Fort Richardson, Alaska-based paratrooper who said he experienced a religious awakening in Iraq two years ago that left him opposed to war in any form.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Two Alaska state leaders have lashed out at the public record of Gov. Sarah Palin , saying that the Republicans' vice presidential pick made rape victims pay for their own forensic tests when she was mayor of Wasilla.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- When presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain introduced Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate last week, the Arizona senator emphasized her role as commander in chief of the Alaska National Guard.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Alaska infants are twice as likely to be born with major birth defects as infants in the U.S. as a whole, according to a new study by the state Department of Health and Social Services -- and officials are at a loss to explain why.

Rural Alaska Natives in homes without running water experience far higher rates of pneumonia and other serious lower-respiratory-tract infections than do Natives in homes where water is readily available for bathing and hand-washing, a new study by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- A panel of respected linguists who met in Anchorage recently is hailing new research that links the Old World language of Ket to the sprawling New World family of Na-Dene languages.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- The odds are it will miss. Still, there's a huge asteroid -- a massive rock about 160 feet long -- hurtling toward Mars.