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Dominated by Republican lawmakers, Mississippi nevertheless has moved forward aggressively to implement a key part of the law: health insurance exchanges. Reacting to last week's Supreme Court's decision, Mississippi officials say they may not expand Medicaid to cover more poor residents, even though the federal government is offering to pay most of the cost.

Mississippi is one of 34 states that has let the federal government run its health insurance exchange. It has had the same glitches and long wait times as other states. Despite the trouble, people are slowly signing up.

Alaska radio and television were blanketed at 10 a.m. Wednesday with the nation's first test of the Emergency Action Notification system, designed to alert citizens across the country in case of a national emergency. The test was of a national public warning system that would allow the president to address the country.

Mississippi is the most obese state in the nation. That's not something top-ranking state officials like to boast about, so they've decided to take matters into their own hands. A group of state lawmakers has begun an effort to shed hundreds of pounds. It's hoped their weight loss will spur others on.

BP is moving ahead with an offshore drilling project in Alaska's Arctic Ocean. The project pushes the boundaries of standard practice in the industry. Critics are concerned about the possibility of another spill like the one in Gulf.

Getting people screened for colon cancer is a challenge, especially in rural Alaska. So doctors are developing DNA-based tests to catch colon cancer early and less invasively. They hope the new tests will eventually replace or reduce colonoscopies.

Biologist Scott Hatch says the seabirds on an island in Alaska's Prince William Sound show a surprising amount of flexibility in how they respond to the changing environment. Well-fed kittiwakes produced more offspring, while those that didn't breed lived longer.

Minimum-wage workers in Missouri now make $12 an hour. While Missouri and other other states have raised worker pay, the Kansas minimum wage has stayed at the federal level of $7.25 per hour.

Some believe the magazine left off pop music's greatest singer. A group of Celine Dion fans were so angry that they drove six hours from Montreal to Manhattan to protest.

A federal report released Wednesday finds that most of the oil in the Gulf of Mexico poses little additional risk to people and the environment. It's a view not necessarily shared by people living in the affected area.