President Trump has instructed Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to exempt Alaska’s 16.7-million-acre Tongass National Forest from logging restrictions imposed nearly 20 years ago [...]

The move would affect more than half of the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest, opening it to potential logging, energy and mining projects. It would undercut a sweeping Clinton administration policy known as the “roadless rule,” which has survived a decades-long legal assault. — The Washington Post

Today the highway serves as the main artery connecting the “Last Frontier” with Canada and the northwestern U.S., bringing tourists to Alaska cruise ships; food, supplies and medicine to remote towns; and equipment to oil fields and mines that are the region’s lifeblood...

“Communities are unable to reach each other, it’s harder to get goods there,” [...] Thawing permafrost isn’t “just an inconvenience, folks; it’s a change in the way of life.” — Bloomberg

As the story goes, the original owner of this unwieldy building located in Willow, Alaska built his house shortly after a forest fire with a clear view of Mount McKinley and Denali National Park. As the surrounding trees recovered, the pristine view was obscured and the owner decided to add few more stories, eventually spending a decade adding floors until it reached the 12-ish story tower you see today. Not surprisingly, locals refer to the building as the “Dr. Seuss House” [...]. — thisiscolossal.com

The Obama administration will change the name of North America's tallest mountain peak from Mount McKinley to Denali, the White House said Sunday, a major symbolic gesture to Alaska Natives on the eve of President Barack Obama's historic visit to Alaska.

By renaming the peak Denali, an Athabascan word meaning "the high one," Obama waded into a sensitive and decades-old conflict between residents of Alaska and Ohio. — AP

The Trans-Eurasian Belt Development would see the construction of a vast motorway across Russia. It would connect with existing networks in Europe, making road trips to eastern Russia a far easier proposition. While roads do currently run across most of Russia, the quality tends to deteriorate the farther you travel from Moscow. [...]

A new high-speed train line would also be constructed, along with pipelines for gas and oil. — Business Insider

Almost no one in America has heard of the Alaskan village of Kivalina. It clings to a narrow spit of sand on the edge of the Bering Sea, far too small to feature on maps of Alaska, never mind the United States.

Which is perhaps just as well, because within a decade Kivalina is likely to be under water. Gone, forever. Remembered - if at all - as the birthplace of America's first climate change refugees. — bbc.co.uk

Russia appears to be edging closer to giving the go-ahead for an underwater tunnel which could one day allow vacationers in Alaska to take a day trip to Siberia in Russia. — independent.co.uk