Annie Feidt, Alaska Public Media - Anchorage

The federal government says there are huge amounts of undiscovered natural gas reserves in Cook Inlet. The United States Geological Survey assessment finds almost 10 times the amount that was estimated in 1995.

The Department of Natural Resources is declaring a new Renaissance for oil and gas in Cook Inlet. A lease sale Wednesday was the most successful in recent memory, taking in 110 bids and raising $11 million.

The state has received more than 100 bids for this year's Cook Inlet oil and gas lease sale. That's the highest number since 1983. At the lease sale Wednesday morning in Anchorage, the state will learn the dollar amount of the bids and which tracts companies are interested in.

A concert promoter in Anchorage is refunding more than 1,000 Dwight Yoakam tickets for a show that was supposed to happen this weekend. The concert was scheduled for June 25 in the Alaska Dome.

Picture a giant chicken coop in the middle of a treeless island in the Gulf of Alaska. But the coop is really an old concrete Air Force radar tower. And instead of chickens, it holds Black-Legged Kittiwakes. Photos courtesy of USGS/Voice of USGS biologist Scott Hatch

The Interior Department is backing away from a plan to make millions of acres of undeveloped land in the west eligible for federal wilderness protection. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar made the announcement in a memo today to the director of the Bureau of Land Management.

The U.S. Postal Service is making changes around the country to try to shrink a budget deficit of billions of dollars. Alaska is no exception. The post office is reorganizing how it oversees the bypass mail program in the state. And it is considering a big change in how Juneau residents receive mail.

A group of scientists who study the Pribilof Islands are on their way to Seattle for a North Pacific Marine science conference.

State officials are cautiously optimistic about a new type of on shore oil development that could help feed the sputtering Trans Alaska Pipeline. A new company called Great Bear Petroleum is armed with almost half a million acres in new leases and a plan to go after unconventional oil sources on the North Slope.