ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska publicly backed gay marriage on Wednesday, becoming the third Republican senator to do so as she spoke out ahead of potentially landmark rulings from the Supreme Court on the issue.

Murkowski, 56, wrote in an essay posted on her Senate website that her decision was swayed, in part, by meeting a lesbian couple from Anchorage, one of whom was in the National Guard, who had adopted four children.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – Two volcanoes are erupting on the Alaska Peninsula in the southwestern part of the state’s mainland but the sputtering emissions of ash and lava at the different sites are unrelated, scientists said.

Pavlof Volcano, an 8,261-foot (2,518-metre) peak located about 590 miles southwest of Anchorage, has been erupting sporadically since May 13.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – The U.S. Army officer in charge of a remote missile-defense station in Alaska has been temporarily relieved of his command over accusations that he had turned a blind eye to improper sexual relations at the facility, an Army spokesman said Thursday.

The suspension of Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Miley, commander of the 49th Missile Defense Battalion at Fort Greely, comes as policymakers in Washington have focused renewed attention on sexual harassment and sexual assault in the ranks of the U.S. armed forces.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – A Fairbanks man was killed in what appears to be the first fatal bear mauling in the state this year, the Alaska State Troopers said on Friday.

Robert Weaver, 64, was found dead Thursday night outside a remote lake cabin near Delta Junction, a town about 90 miles southeast of Fairbanks, the troopers said, adding it was unclear what kind of bear had mauled him.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – A 24-year-old man has been charged with killing an elderly couple and raping their 2-year-old great-grandchild, in a crime that occurred just hours after he was released from prison in a separate sexual-assault case, state officials said on Tuesday.

Jerry Active was arrested on Saturday by police and has been charged in the murders of Sorn Sreap, 71, and her husband, Touch Chea, 73, and the rape of the toddler they were babysitting that night. Active is also charged with raping Sreap.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – Days before a Shell drillship went aground in the storm-tossed Gulf of Alaska, it was clear that towing failures could spell disaster for the vessel, the crew and the marine environment, a company official told a U.S. Coast Guard panel on Monday.

The Kulluk, having completed preliminary drilling on an exploration well in the Beaufort Sea, broke away from its tow lines, and support vessels attempting to regain control of the drillship developed their own engine and mechanical problems, Norman Custard, Royal Dutch Shell’s Alaska emergency response leader, told the panel.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – One of Alaska’s most active volcanoes, which has been belching ash and spewing lava since last week, has forced regional flight cancellations and dusted some nearby communities with ash, scientists and local officials said on Monday.

Pavlof Volcano has sent up ash as high as 22,000 feet, with the cloud blowing eastward and the eruption showing no signs of abating, according to the federal-state Alaska Volcano Observatory.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – One of Alaska’s most active volcanoes has erupted with clouds of ash and steam, and lava is flowing down its snow-covered flank, scientists said on Wednesday.

Pavlof Volcano began erupting on Monday and was still belching clouds, the Alaska Volcano Observatory said.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – The lives of urban-dwelling bears are chronicled in neck-cam video clips showing their trash-trawling, birdseed-raiding and bear-bonding antics as several of the burly creatures caroused through Alaska’s biggest city.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game collected about 60 hours of footage last summer from tiny cameras mounted on the collars of four black bears and two brown bears known to frequent the environs in and around Anchorage, a city of some 30,000 humans.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, May 8 (Reuters) – U.S. oil & gas
exploration and production company Hilcorp Energy Co built on
its recent Alaska foray by picking up 19 new leases in the
declining Cook Inlet in the southern part of the state,
according to early results from a state auction on Wednesday.

Privately owned Hilcorp spent $2.6 million of the total
$4.46 million in high bids offered for 28 tracts sold at the
state’s Division of Oil and Gas lease sale, according to the
preliminary results.