Hyder, Alaska  - You down a shot and it feels as though your throat is on fire. Then the bartender tips the dregs onto the bar and ignites them, producing a blue flame.

With a roguish smile, he declares: "Welcome to Hyder, Alaska. You've been Hyderized." The fiery welcome drink is 75-per-cent grain alcohol by volume (150 proof), for which Hyder is (in)famous.

Juneau (Alaska, US), July 26 : Alaska Governor Sarah Palin will step down Sunday, almost a year after hogging the national limelight as Republican presidential nominee John McCain''s running mate.

Palin had announced her decision to step down from the post 18 months ahead of schedule on July 3, and this set rumor mills into overdrive with speculation that she was preparing the ground for a 2012 presidential bid against Democrat incumbent Barack Obama.

Washington, March 24 : Redoubt Volcano in Alaska, has roared into activity overnight with a series of eruptions that blew ash as high as 9.5 miles (15 kilometers) into the sky, with scientists saying that more such explosions are due.

According to a report in National Geographic News, the Redoubt Volcano eruption has already sparked earthquake swarms and mudflows, and more are expected-along with perhaps a new lava dome.

San Francisco  - The Mt Redoubt volcano in Alaska erupted for the first time since 1989 sending a huge plume of ash over the Arctic region, the Alaska Volcano Observatory said Monday.

Geologist Tina Neal said that five separate eruptions began late Sunday night with each lasting 10 to 20 minutes. The plume reached an altitude of more than 20,000 metres, but was drifting north, away from the city of Anchorage about 160 kilometres to the southwest. However, it forced the cancellation of at least 19 Alaska Airlines flights.

Juneau (Alaska, US), Feb. 19 : Alaska Governor and former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin has been asked by officials to pay back taxes to the Internal Revenue Service. She reportedly owes taxes on more than 17,000 dollars in per-diem expenses.

State employees who live more than 50 miles away from Alaska''s capital, Juneau, are entitled to state aid in the form of per-diem payments. Juneau is approximately 600 miles from Palin''s home town of Wasilla, making the governor eligible for the payments.

Juneau (Alaska, US), Dec. 16 : Alaska Governor Sarah Palin said Monday that she is "suspicious" of a fire that destroyed her church over the weekend in her hometown Wasilla.

"It became pretty obvious near the very beginning of this whole episode that this was suspicious because there were just too many things taking place that evening," Palin told Fox News host Greta Van Susteren on her show "On the Record."

Wasilla (Alaska, US), Dec. 15 : A church that was once visited vy Alaska Governor and 2008 Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin was badly damaged by a fire late Friday night and early Saturday morning.

According to the local television station 2News KTUU, the blaze at the Wasilla Bible Church broke out as a group of women were making crafts inside.

Palin''s spokesperson, Bill McAllister, issued a statement on her behalf after she visited the church on Saturday.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Dec. 5 -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin says she will not release a transcript of her testimony in an ethics probe into her dismissal of Alaska's top law enforcement officer.

At issue was whether the former Republican vice presidential nominee violated state ethics laws when she fired Walt Monegan, the state's public safety commissioner, for his refusal to fire her ex-brother-in-law from the state police, the Anchorage Daily News reported Friday.

FAIRBANKS, Alaska, Dec. 5  -- An Australian man who went unprepared into Alaska's wilderness has drawn the ire of some locals after his $93,000 rescue.

Dave Roberts, 54 was attempting to trek through the Brooks Range wilderness. Local residents warned him against heading into the isolated area, the Fairbanks Daily News reported.

He was picked up last Saturday by a seven-member rescue team after he set off a long-distance distress call Friday amid his worries about frostbite and fatigue.

Jamie Klaes, manager of the Bettles Lodge, where the Alaska Air National Guard paid for Robert's room after his rescue, said he was unimpressed.

"It felt like he was being rewarded for stupidity," Klaes said.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Dec. 4  -- A pair of would-be mugging victims at a hotel in Anchorage, Alaska, fought back and knocked their attacker unconscious, police say.

Investigators said Terry Butler confronted Kyle Dickerson-Lockwood and Benjamin Galdo early Monday as they were unlocking their room on the sixth floor of the Sheraton Hotel, the Anchorage Daily News reported.

Butler ordered the two men to go inside the room and pointed a pistol at Galdo's head, the victims told police. They said Galdo slapped the gun away and told the attacker that they did not have any money.

Washington - Veteran Alaskan Republican Senator Ted Stevens narrowly lost his bid for re-election, increasing the Democrats' majority in the US upper house, US media reported late Tuesday.

Stevens, 85, the longest-serving Republican in the Senate, will be replaced by the mayor of Anchorage, Democrat Mark Begich, 46.

As Alaska's division of elections counted the last absentee ballots from the November 4 election, Begich was ahead by 3,724 votes, an insurmountable lead with only a few thousand absentee ballots left to be counted, reported Alaska's KIMO TV news.

Miami, Nov 14 : Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has said that carefree spending cost the Republicans the polls, but the party has been loyal to core issues that will win back voters.

The Washington Times quoted Palin as saying that the Republicans remain strong on national defense, social issues and free markets.

Washington - As Republican presidential candidate John McCain arrived at the Albright United Methodist Church in Phoenix, Arizona Tuesday to vote, scores of supporters cheered: "Go, John, go."

McCain was with his wife Cindy. In a break from tradition, he planned two final rallies on voting day - at an airplane hangar in Grand Junction, Colorado and later in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Both states went with President George W Bush in 2004, but polls have indicated that they are now leaning toward Obama.

Alaska Senator Republican Ted Stevens, convicted of seven felonies, is being persistently pressurized by fellow Republicans to step down from the Senate. John McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, have wasted no time in separating their campaign from the “corruption and insider dealing that has become so pervasive in the nation's capital.”

Washington, Oct 2: People who know Sarah Palin, and have watched her swift rise from small-town mayor to Alaska Governor to history-making vice presidential nominee, say she needs to be herself in her debate Thursday with her Democrat rival Joe Biden even if it means slipping up or appearing to fall out of step with John McCain's campaign.

“What I would tell her is ... Let Sarah be Sarah,” FOX News quoted Palin’s former pollster David Dittman, as saying.

Anchorage (Alaska, US), Sept. 30 : The small town common folk tag that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has been touting across the American political landscape while introducing her family, is not true.

A check of the financial records shows the Palins live anything but a common life when compared with their fellow residents of their hometown of Wasilla.

Their combined income of nearly a quarter-million dollars last year was five times the median household income for Wasilla''s 7,000 residents.

Anchorage (Alaska), Sept. 18 : Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s private e-mail account has been hacked, and is being widely read on a website going by the name of gawker. com.

A Fox News report said that the web site has published family photos and snapshots of e-mail exchanges the Alaska governor had with her colleagues.

Gawker says the-email account has since been shut down, but it will leave the images up on its site for all to see.

Anchorage (Alaska), Sept. 17: Sarah Palin’s husband Todd Palin is also referred to as “Alaska’s First Dude”, and in his first major TV interview, he told FOX News that his wife is destined for higher positions.

Todd said that Sarah’s nomination as Republican vice-presidential nominee did not come as a “huge surprise” to him, as he believed her sudden ascent from first-term Alaska governor to history-making vice presidential nominee had always been a “possibility”.

He also talked about snowmobile racing, hockey, fishing, moose hunting and working on the Alaska oil fields.

Anchorage (Alaska), Sept. 15 : Alaska Governor and Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin first gripped a gun at the age of eight and made her first kill at ten.

The moose hunting mum-of-five grew up shooting animals and skinning them on the spot before hauling the meat home for the family freezer.

Juneau (Alaska), Sept. 8 : Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin is reported to have used Alaska Government funds for a round-trip visit to attend the June 8 graduation of the Master''s Commission program at the Wasilla Assembly of God, the church where she was baptized at age 12.

The records show Palin flew from State capital Juneau on June 7 and returned on June 9.