SEATTLE (AP) _ Winners of the 2012 Society of Professional Journalists Northwest Excellence in Journalism contest were announced Saturday night. The annual contest is held by Region 10 of SPJ to honor journalism in Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana.

SEATTLE (AP) _ Winners of the 2012 Society of Professional Journalists Northwest Excellence in Journalism contest were announced Saturday night. The annual contest is held by Region 10 of SPJ to honor journalism in Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana.

The company responsible for busing children to school in Fairbanks had a lax approach to safety before employees came forward with complaints, according to review done on behalf of the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District.

Alaska's remote Pavlof Volcano was shooting lava hundreds of feet into the air, but its ash plume was thinning Saturday and no longer making it dangerous for airplanes to fly nearby.

Alaska's remote Pavlof Volcano has been shooting lava hundreds of feet into the air, but its ash plume is thinning and is no longer making it dangerous for airplanes to fly nearby.

A former Alaska State Trooper criticized the company that oversees student transportation for the Fairbanks North Star Borough District, saying the firm had a lax approach to bus safety before public complaints.

Alaska State Troopers are investigating the death of a toddler who died several days after being involved in an ATV crash.

Alaska gold miners and refineries remain optimistic despite dropping gold prices.

Copper River salmon has arrived in Anchorage stores and restaurants.

Copper River salmon has arrived in Anchorage stores and restaurants.

This time of year across the country, gyms and auditoriums fill with robed students, "Class of 2013" balloons and the strains of "Pomp and Circumstance." In Anchorage -- home to the highest concentration, per capita, of Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders on the mainland -- another unique graduation tradition has taken hold among people from all backgrounds: the graduation lei. Draping a graduate's neck with bands of candy and flowers has become as expected in many families here as watching a graduate fling a mortarboard cap into the air.

Permafrost will prevent the construction of a Fairbanks veterans cemetery at a site off Gold Mine Trail, but there are still plans to have the project out to bid this year, with construction starting as early as 2014.

Kodiak postmaster William Kersch will soon call a new island home.

After 34 years of working at Ketchikan's Gateway Center for Human Services, including 10 years as medical director, Wandal William Winn is calling it a day.

Joan Naviyuk Kane feels the pull of an ancestral place where she's never been, a crumbling ghost village built on stilts across the rocky face of a remote western Alaska island.

An anthropologist seeking a job as archaeology curator at the University of Alaska Museum of the North will speak at a public seminar on prehistoric subsistence next week.

One of Alaska's most restless volcanoes shot an ash cloud 15,000 feet into the air Friday in an ongoing eruption that is visible for miles when the weather allows.

The Juneau Empire has a new publisher.

The five West Coast states affected by debris from the 2011 tsunami in Japan are about to receive an initial $250,000 each from a $5 million gift from Japan for cleanup.

Unusual snow and cold this spring has delayed the opening of the scenic Denali Highway.