These two stories were written by students taking Reporting 101 at the Sitka Fine Arts Camp for high school teens.

Thursday is Alaska's 99th annual Flag Day, which celebrates the first raising of the Alaska territorial flag — later adopted as Alaska's state flag — on July 9, 1927.

Carcasses of two rare Ziphius cavirostris, or goose-beaked whales, were discovered June 5 on two Southeast Alaska beaches, one near Yakutat and the other near Sitka at Fred's Creek cabin on Kruzof Island.