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For the first time ever, the United States is deploying a solid-state laser weapon. The Laser Weapon System (LaWS) successfully destroyed a drone in flight during a test run and will head to the Persian Gulf aboard the USS Ponce as part of what the military is calling an “at-sea demonstration.”

For the first time in four decades of polling, a majority of Americans support legalizing the use of marijuana.

While rhythm can often be hard enough to find among humans, finding it in the animal kingdom has been even more rare.

Earlier yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved legislation banning assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips.

The most aggressive attempts to change federal gun law since 1994, when Congress passed a ban on assault-style weapons, come up for key votes today.

There were 198,000 jobs added to private employers’ payrolls in February, according to the latest ADP National Employment Report — a privately produced snapshot of the employment picture that’s sometimes a signal of what the Bureau of Labor Statistics will say when it releases its data from the same month.

January 15 marks the beginning of the Alaska Legislature for this session.  Gavel Alaska will provide “Gavel to Gavel” coverage of the proceedings on 360 North Television and 360north.org.  Before our lawmakers convene, 360north.org and gavelalaska.org will provide a new web interface for getting information, watching meetings and finding proceedings of interest to you in our media archives.  The sites will combine in early January to give you a “one stop” web location for information about Alaska and our government.  Watch for the soon coming changes on gavelalaska.org and 360north.org.  And, join us to watch the first day of the legislative session and the events that surround a new year of coverage of Alaska government.