ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – Rocker Ted Nugent has agreed to plead guilty to a federal wildlife violation for killing one black bear too many during a hunting expedition at a national forest in Alaska, according to court documents filed on Friday.

This week the “Cat Scratch Fever” singer and gun enthusiast met with some other federal officials – the Secret Service – after he made some heated remarks about President Barack Obama.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, April 20 (Reuters) – Fresh on liquor
store shelves, in time for an unofficial holiday celebrating
marijuana use, is a new vodka distilled in Alaska with hemp seed
- but it won’t give drinkers a pot-induced high.

Wasilla-based Alaska Distillery this week introduced
“Purgatory,” which it says is the world’s only vodka distilled
with the seed associated with the marijuana plant.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – An Anchorage construction contractor was indicted on Wednesday on charges of kidnapping a teenage barista from a drive-up Alaska coffee stand, killing her, and extracting ransom payments from her family after she was already dead.

Israel Keyes, 34, was accused of murdering 18-year-old Samantha Koenig, whose body was found in early April in an ice-covered lake just outside of Anchorage two months after she was snatched from the coffee stand at the end of her shift.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – Investigators hunted for clues on Friday to determine who shot to death two members of the U.S. Coast Guard at a communications station on Alaska’s Kodiak Island, federal officials said.

Agents are treating Thursday’s killings, the first fatal shootings at a Coast Guard facility in Alaska in over a decade, as a double homicide, said Eric Gonzalez, an Anchorage-based special agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigations.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – Two members of the U.S. Coast Guard were shot dead at an air base on Kodiak Island off Alaska, prompting an investigation by the FBI and a lockdown of the base and nearby schools, officials said on Thursday.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said there was no immediate evidence of terrorist intent or sabotage, but a security alert was in force at the installation because the circumstances surrounding the deaths were unknown.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – A team of U.S. and Russian scientists has launched the biggest population survey to date of Bering Sea ice seals as federal authorities consider endangered species protections for the marine mammals, a U.S. government spokeswoman said on Wednesday.

As part of the project, which began this week, scientists are flying by plane at low altitude – just 800 to 1,000 feet above the surface – across 20,000 nautical miles of U.S. and Russian waters, tracking the seals with infrared and digital cameras.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, April 8 (Reuters) – A storm dumped more
than 4 inches (10.9 cm) of snow on Anchorage over the weekend,
bringing the total snowfall for Alaska’s largest city to a
record 11.2 feet (3.4 meters) for the year, the National Weather
Service said on Sunday.

The official snow tally was 134.5 inches (3.42 meters), 1.9
inches (4.8 cm) above the previous record set in the winter of
1954-1955, the weather service said.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – Symptoms of a mysterious disease that has killed scores of seals off Alaska and infected walruses are now showing up in polar bears, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said on Friday.

Nine polar bears from the Beaufort Sea region near Barrow were found with patchy hair loss and oozing sores on their skin, similar to conditions found in diseased seals and walruses, the agency said in a statement.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – The Coast Guard opened fire on Thursday on a derelict Japanese fishing vessel washed out to sea by last year’s devastating tsunami in a bid to sink it and eliminate a threat to navigation, a spokesman for the agency said.

The Coast Guard, which hopes to send the ship to the ocean floor, fired on the vessel with a 25 millimeter machine gun, said Petty Officer First Class David Mosley, a spokesman for the Coast Guard.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – The Coast Guard had plans to sink a derelict Japanese vessel drifting toward Alaska that was washed out to sea by last year’s devastating tsunami, but has postponed the operation for now, a spokesman said on Thursday.

Plans to use explosives to send the fuel-laden ship to the ocean floor were on hold because there is a fishing vessel nearby, U.S. Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Kip Wadlow said.