The Coast Guard is gearing up for a busy Arctic drilling season this summer – and for the protesters that are expected to accompany it. 

The Coast Guard will send its newest national security cutter – the 420 foot Bertholf – to the Arctic for this summer’s open water season.  That’s in addition to a buoy tender and two helicopters. The Guard is preparing for more traffic and anticipated offshore oil drilling through their Arctic Shield effort.    If Shell moves ahead with exploratory drilling this summer, the company expects to have 22 vessels in the region and 6 aircraft. They plan fly more than 300 trips from land to the drilling rigs to ferry 400 employees around. 

If you’re a TelAlaska customer who’s been having trouble with the internet this week, you’re not alone.  Company spokesperson Celine Kaplan says the company has been doing upgrades to its network that are affecting internet services. Kaplan says information about the upgrades is proprietary, but added that it’s related to several new internet packages the company will be rolling out in the near future.  She couldn’t provide a definitive timeline for completion of the maintenance work, although she did say that it shouldn’t be affecting cellular service or cable television.

Two men have been charged with homicide, after allegedly beating a co-worker to death.

Denison Soria, age 41, and Leonardo Bongolto, Jr., age 45, were arraigned at the Unalaska courthouse this morning, and both face charges of murder in the first degree. The pair allegedly attacked Jonathan Adams, a 55-year-old Washington man and fellow Bering Fisheries employee, on Tuesday night outside of a company building on Gillman Road. Police received a phone call that a fight was occurring at about 11:30pm and responded immediately, but Adams had already sustained fatal injuries and emergency medical services were unable to resuscitate him.

What seemed like a routine budget amendment at Tuesday night's City Council meeting ended up resulting in a lengthy discussion about scrap metal disposal.  The amendment proposed transferring $60,000 from the general fund into a scrap metal removal fund.  In a memorandum to Council, City Manager Chris Hladick explained that the money would be used to pay a contractor to remove scrap metal from the landfill and the rest of the island this summer.  

The City of Unalaska has agreed to settle a lawsuit with the Environmental Protection Agency over thousands of Clean Water Act violations by the City’s wastewater treatment plant. 

"This is one of those times that David actually beat Goliath,"  Unalaska Mayor Shirley Marquardt said at Tuesday night's City Council meeting.  The Council voted unanimously at the meeting to sign a $340,000 settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice.  That’s much less than the $150 million dollar fine the EPA had originally sought.

A man was beaten to death last night outside an industrial building along Gilmann Road.

Details are scarce, but a man reportedly suffered fatal injuries after being assaulted by multiple attackers near the Pacific Stevedoring dispatch office and the Bering Fisheries galley. Police received a phone call that a fight was occurring at about 11:30pm. Officers and emergency medical services responded immediately, but the victim was unconscious at that point and could not be revived.

Last year, Alaska’s congressional delegation fought hard to keep the Essential Air Service program alive. They argued that without it, over 40 Alaskan communities could lose the planes that connect them to the rest of the state. Ultimately, the program was saved and its funding was even bumped up to $143 million.

But as KUCB’s Alexandra Gutierrez reports, the Department of Transportation is still trying to rein in program costs, and the City of Adak may see air travel to the community change as a result.

City Council will take up a variety of budgetary issues at tonight’s meeting.  The biggest money decision will be whether to accept a $4 million grant from the State of Alaska for construction of the new wastewater treatment plant.  On the expenditures side, Council will consider whether to grant construction contracts totaling a half a million dollars to a single firm and whether to fund a $50,000 power supply study. 

Bystanders disarmed a man brandishing a gun at the Harborview Bar in Unalaska Monday night.

David Bravo had threatened to “kill everyone he could find” after being thrown out of the bar earlier in the evening.  Sergeant Roger Bacon says fisherman Sione Muliaga overheard the threats and waited outside the bar for Bravo to return.

“But he hid from him, because he was afraid of what he might do and when he was hiding behind the pillar there he saw him come back out of the Unisea Inn after about two minutes.  And [then Muliaga] confronted him and said ‘what’s going on?’ At which point Mr. Bravo said ‘I’m going back into the bar’.  Sione told him that wasn’t a good idea, that they wouldn’t let him back in, at which point Mr. Bravo brandished his 9mm and cycled around, at which point Mr. Sione disarmed him.”