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Mark Thiessen.

Grazer, a female bear who is the two-time defending champion in the popular online Fat Bear Week competition, is shown Sept. 27, 2024, in Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska. (M. Carenza/National Park Service via AP)

What to know about Fat Bear Week, and the brawny bruins ready to battle for the title

September 18, 2025

The annual Fat Bear Week featuring gluttonous brown bears at Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve is back. Online voting for the fattest juvenile bear begins Thursday. The main event starts Tuesday, when organizers pit 12 of some of the largest brown bears on the planet against each other in a single-elimination, bracket-style tournament online. People can vote at fatbearweek.org after watching livestreams featuring the bears at explore.org. The contest started in 2014, and drew only about 1,700 votes from dedicated bear cam viewers. But the event has exploded online, and more than 1 million votes were cast last year.

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FILE - A sign supporting citizenship for American Samoans is posted outside the Log Cabin Gifts store on the waterfront in Whittier, Alaska, May 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen, File)

10 Alaskans born in American Samoa plead not guilty in voting case highlighting citizenship issues

September 4, 2025

Ten Alaska residents pleaded not guilty to voter misconduct or other charges. Their cases have drawn renewed attention to the complex citizenship status for people born in the U.S. territory of American Samoa. All live in the Alaska community of Whittier. The state contends they falsely claimed U.S. citizenship when registering or attempting to vote. The Pacific Community of Alaska, an advocacy group, has pleaded their cases to the state’s attorney general. The group contends local and state officials have at times been confused about the law and given incorrect information about voting to American Samoans. The group also said the state did not perform due diligence in determining citizenship status before pursuing charges.

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Alaska man gifted $22,000 motorcycle by Russian government after viral interview

August 19, 2025

An Alaska man might have walked away as the biggest winner of last week’s high stakes summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage. He came away with a new motorcycle, courtesy of the Russian government. Mark Warren already owns a 2007 Ural motorcycle with a sidecar and was driving it in Anchorage earlier this month when a Russian television crew saw him. They interviewed him about the difficulty in obtaining parts for it. When the Russian delegation sent 18 planes from Moscow to Anchorage for the summit last Friday, a new Ural motorcycle was on board one of the planes for Warren.

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FILE - In this photo provided by the U.S. Coast Guard, smoke rises from cargo vessel Morning Midas approximately 300 miles south of Adak, Alaska, June 3, 2025. (U.S. Coast Guard/Courtesy of Air Station Kodiak via AP, File)

Cargo ship carrying new vehicles to Mexico sinks in the North Pacific weeks after catching fire

June 24, 2025

More troubles for the cargo ship that caught fire earlier this month off Alaska’s Aleutian Island chain. Officials report the Morning Midas sank Monday. The ship caught on fire June 3, and all 22 crewmembers abandoned ship in a lifeboat. They were rescued by a nearby vessel. Fire damage, bad weather and water seepage caused the ship to go down. The U.S. Coast Guard says there’s no visible pollution but both they and the ship’s management company have ships on site in case that changes. The ship was carrying about 3,000 cars to a major Pacific port in Mexico when it caught fire. It’s not clear if any of the cars were taken off the ship before it sank.

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This May 24, 2025, photo shows Kell Morris, upper right in a brown hat, trapped under a 700 pound rock near Seward, Alaska. (Jason Harrington/Seward Fire Department via AP)

A 700-pound boulder pins Alaska man face-down in a glacier creek for three hours

May 29, 2025

An Alaska man escaped unscathed after being trapped by a 700-pound boulder for three hours during a hike in a remote area last weekend. Kell Morris’ wife held his head above water to prevent him from drowning. It took seven firefighters and inflatable air bags to lift the boulder off him as he drifted in and out of consciousness. The accident happened near Seward as he was walking on the bank of a glacier creek, and the whole slide slid out from under him, like an avalanche of rocks. He was airlifted out and taken to a hospital for observation. He and his wife plan to go hiking this weekend — on established trails.

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