Alaska News

Less than two years after the death of former Alaska U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens in a Western Alaska plane crash came the report he longed to see while still alive -- a government report released last week may have cleared his name in the charges against him.

Alaska and America watched the trial of Sen.Ted Stevens play out in the fall of 2008. We have watched it unravel ever since. Five months after the guilty verdict, the attorney general moved to dismiss the conviction after revelations that prosecutors failed to disclose evidence that demonstrated Stevens' innocence.

Lawyers for the tobacco industry have criss-crossed the country for decades defending against smoker lawsuits. But until this fall (or at least what passes for fall near the edge of the Bering Sea), the cigarette companies never faced a trial in Alaska.

The common law wife of a man who died of lung cancer has filed a civil lawsuit against the nation's largest tobacco company, accusing it of engaging in a deceptive advertising campaign designed to get people to smoke, including those in Alaska villages.

Attorneys general in 16 states and the U.S. government want to put a little distance between themselves and the rest of the plaintiffs in the multidistrict litigation against BP PLC over the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. They've asked U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans to separate their cases from the hundreds of lawsuits brought on behalf of businesses and individuals.