A new Alaska Native Language Council has the potential to bring threatened languages back from the brink of extinction, say experts in the field.

"Our hope is that we can really create living languages, and advocate for the importance of the languages," said Lance Twitchell, an assistant professor of Alaska Native languages at the University of Alaska Southeast.

Alaska's Native languages are in various states of decline, with only about 200 fluent Tlingit speakers left, while there are more than 10,000 speakers of Central Yup'ik.

JUNEAU — Anchorage Rep. Sharon Cissna, a Democrat, announced Wednesday in Juneau that she’ll be challenging longtime U.S. Republican Rep. Don Young in his latest bid for re-election.

Cissna has represented Anchorage in the Legislature for 14 years and was a legislative aide before that. But her main claim to fame these days is from standing up to what she considered overly intrusive Transportation Security Administration searches.

In his first-ever overseas trip in 5 1/2 years in statewide office, Gov. Sean Parnell said he was able to advocate for Alaska's interests in Europe and elsewhere, as well as learn more about how linked his state was to other parts of the world.

Speaking to the Juneau World Affairs Council on Monday, Parnell said the United Kingdom's upscale supermarket chain Waitrose buys 250 metric tons of Alaska seafood a year.

"They have a large focus on sustainable, they are sensitized to overfishing," he said.

Explosive growth in Alaska's health care costs, recently about 9 percent a year, are threatening to cripple future state budgets, but officials are hoping some new strategies can bring those increases down.

"If we could get our cost curve down from 9 percent to 2 percent, that would be almost miraculous," said Mike Barnhill, deputy commissioner of the Department of Administration.

Barnhill's department, which oversees health care coverage for most state employees and retirees, is looking to beef up state "wellness" programs.