Alaska

A federal appeals court dealt a blow Friday to oil and gas industry efforts to allow drilling in the fertile energy-producing regions in the icy seas north of Alaska. The Bush administration had started to auction off leases in the Arctic waters along Alaska's coast, which are expected to produce billions of barrels of oil. But a three-judge U.S. Court of Appeals panel in Washington ruled that the Interior Department had failed to properly assess the environmental impact of the leases.

As the temperature plunged to minus-40 degrees last month, Nastasia Wassilie waited. The 61-year-old widow had run out of wood and fuel oil, and had no money to buy more. Nor was there much food in the house. But people here in rural Alaska try to take care of themselves. Her sister would come to help. Surely she would.

In a flat, piney river valley deep in the Alaska interior, the village of Takotna is marked by a dozen or so houses, a shop, a tiny post office and a school. Intrepid gold miners ventured here decades ago. A small tribe of Athabascan Indians has hunted and fished the woods and riverbanks for generations. This summer Takotna, population somewhere between 46 and 61, has become one of the best-known villages in Alaska -- thanks to the $18.7-million airstrip the federal government is funding on the edge of town.

Sitting like a turquoise gem in a bowl of hemlock, Sitka spruce and ice, Berners Bay has long been a jewel of Alaska's Tongass National Forest. In the spring, swarms of tiny eulachon rush in to spawn, and the bay floods with hundreds of killer whales, humpback whales and sea lions in hot pursuit, along with eagles and seabirds by the thousands. Fishermen flock to its herring, salmon and Dungeness crab. Its chilly, tranquil waters are a favorite destination for kayakers.

Alaska's Mt. Redoubt erupted at least twice Wednesday as officials from a pipeline company assessed conditions at a nearby oil storage facility to determine whether to remove its contents. The Cook Inlet Pipeline Co., which is partly owned by Chevron Corp., was planning to look at whether a pumping system could be used to offload 6.2 million gallons of oil stored in two tanks, if Chevron decided to remove it.

More than 3 million acres of pristine wilderness in Alaska's Tongass National Forest would be open to logging and road building under a new management plan released Friday by the U.S. Forest Service. At 17 million acres, roughly the size of West Virginia, the Tongass National Forest in southeastern Alaska is the country's largest national forest and the world's largest intact coastal temperate rain forest.

Environmentalists want you to buy organic roses, and human rights groups tout conflict-free diamonds. Now, just in time for Valentine's Day, jewelry retailers are stepping up a campaign that aims to discourage the mining and sale of "dirty gold." A group of prominent jewelers including Tiffany & Co.

The Interior Department wants 10 more weeks to decide whether polar bears should be listed as threatened or endangered, a delay that conservation groups condemned as tied to the transfer of offshore petroleum leases in the animal's habitat. On Jan. 9 the department missed a deadline for a final decision and three conservation groups sued. In the government response Thursday, Assistant Interior Secretary Lyle Laverty said the department needed until June 30 to complete a legal and policy review.

Passengers aboard a cruise ship were left high and dry Monday for about nine hours after the vessel went aground near Glacier Bay National Park in southeastern Alaska. A Coast Guard boat towed the 207-foot Spirit of Glacier Bay on a rising tide to the middle of the bay late Monday afternoon, said Coast Guard spokesman Lt. Eric Eggen. The cruise ship, with 24 passengers and 27 crew members, ran aground at 7:12 a.m., said Jerrol Golden, spokeswoman for Cruise West Enterprises, which owns the ship.

The Alaska Railroad slices up the middle of the state like a bolt of blue and yellow lightning, into the belly of a place that is camera-ready and bountiful beyond belief. The rail line begins in the little seaport of Seward, chug-a-lugs up to Anchorage, past Denali National Park and Preserve and finally to Fairbanks, an almost 500-mile jaunt of day trips throughout Alaska's short, short summer. Why the train?