Jim Paulin

Two teen girls died and the driver survived as a pickup rolled about 900 feet down to the rocky coast of the Bering Sea.

In a fast-moving chain of events, an Unalaska City Council member resigned and a new one was appointed in less than a week. On Tuesday, May 24, Zoya Johnson announced her resignation, effective the next day. Applications for a replacement were accepted until Friday of that week, and on Saturday, May 28, at a special … Continue reading Former Aleutians museum director resigns from Unalaska City Council

PenAir's Saab 2000 aircraft, which will go into regular service between Anchorage and Dutch Harbor later this month, are larger and faster than the planes they'll be replacing.

The Museum of the Aleutians is again open to the public, at least a little bit, on Saturdays, as it works to recover from a scandal involving a rare Russian Bible.

An Unalaska fifth-grade teacher who hopes to start a craft beer brewery there next year just got a big financial boost from two regional organizations.

The cash, motorcycles, snowmachines and other property seized from Stephen A. Rosa as part of a 2013 drug bust added a big boost to the budget of the Unalaska Department of Public Safety.

Unalaska Bay was completely shut down to trawlers by state regulators last week after a long campaign by the Unalaska Native Fisheries Association, representing local small boats.

By a 4-3 vote, with Mayor Shirley Marquardt as tie-breaker, Unalaska City Council passed an ordinance banning commercial marijuana sales in the Aleutian city -- despite analysis showing it would generate $240,000 in taxes and a promise from activists to overturn the ban by referendum.

By a narrow 4-3 vote and with the mayor breaking the tie, the Unalaska City Council last week took its first step towards banning local sales and commercial growing, testing, and manufacturing of marijuana products.

In a ripple effect of the Russian Bible controversy, an Aleutian archaeologist is worried about the future of the Museum of the Aleutians, although a museum official expects to see it re-opened next month.

A group of eight caribou were spotted by helicopter in September, including a newborn calf -- which means the animals probably didn’t swim over from Adak, and a cull effort earlier in the year by federal gunman was incomplete.

Zoya Johnson resigned last week as executive director of the Museum of the Aleutians in Unalaska at a meeting during which rare books from the museum found in her home dominated the agenda.

A humpback whale entangled in fishing gear in Unalaska Bay ended up giving its body to art and science last week. It was towed toward town with a skiff by Qawalangin Tribe members, who plan to salvage the baleen for art projects.

The herring fishing is a little slow, but the humpback whale watching was awesome, said biologist Charles Russell. “I’ve never seen that many whales concentrated in one area. It looked like a couple of hundred whales.”

Shell's efforts to drill exploratory oil wells in the Chukchi Sea came under fire last week in Dutch Harbor, where some of the company's Arctic fleet is currently anchored. Some of the criticism comes from residents, unhappy about the local impacts of the oil company's Arctic operations.