Alaska News

An Alaskan village claiming that global warming is eroding its shoreline has taken its fight to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Residents of an Alaskan village threatened by an eroding coastline have lost an appeal in a closely watched case against some of the biggest oil producers in the world.

The Libor scandal, which began in London with bankers accused of manipulating a key global interest rate, has reached the Alaskan wilderness. Or at least that's the hope of New York plaintiffs' lawyer Brian Murray. He filed a lawsuit Wednesday on behalf of investors in Alaska - as well as investors in Wyoming, North Dakota and about 20 other states - that accuses banks of violating various state antitrust laws in allegedly rigging the London interbank offered rate.

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.