Unalaska, AK – Four crew members are dead and a fifth is missing after a fishing trawler sank in the Bering Sea on Sunday.

The boat's owner, the Fishing Company of Alaska, has identified the dead as captain Eric Peter Jacobsen, chief engineer Daniel Cook, mate David Silveira and crewman Byron Carrillo. As of early this morning, the Coast Guard was still searching for a fifth crew member, whose name hasn't been released yet.

Unalaska, AK – A Coast Guard cutter and two helicopters are searching for the final missing crew member from the fishing vessel Alaska Ranger, which sunk yesterday morning in the Bering Sea west of Unalaska Island.

The Coast Guard has identified the missing man as Satoshi Konno, a Japanese national who was the fish master onboard the Alaska Ranger.

Coast Guard officials were meeting in Unalaska this morning to plan the investigation into the ship's sinking, the cause of which remains unclear. Half of the ship's crew arrived in Dutch Harbor early this morning on the Alaska Ranger's sister ship, the Alaska Warrior.

Unalaska, AK – Four people are dead and a fifth is missing after the crew of the trawler Alaska Ranger was forced to abandon ship early this morning.

As of 1:30 p.m., the Coast Guard was unable to confirm whether the 184-foot ship, which is owned by the Fishing Company of Alaska, was still afloat, and few details are available on the cause of the incident. According to the Coast Guard, the ship lost control of its rudder and began taking on water at about 2:50 a.m. this morning, 120 miles west of Unalaska. The identities of the dead crew members have not been released.

Unalaska, AK – An early tallying of the damage from the 2004 Selendang Ayu oil spill suggests that sea birds were the hardest hit among the animals living in the affected areas of Unalaska Island.

A preliminary assessment of damages from the spill was released earlier this week by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the other state and federal agencies involved in recovery work. The document looks at the impacts on the whole ecosystem of Unalaska Island's western coast, from marine invertebrates to salmon streams to sea otters. The assessment says that at least 41 species of birds were injured by the oil spill, and appear to have been affected worse than the marine mammals, fish and vegetation in the area.

Unalaska, AK – Alaska's overall exports totaled $3.9 billion in 2007, according to figures released by the governor's office Thursday. As usual, more than half of those exports were from the seafood industry, which sent nearly $2 billion worth of its products to customers in other countries. What's new is who's buying all of that fish--for the first time, China is now the second-largest importer of Alaskan seafood, and Americans might actually be eating more of it than anyone else. KIAL's Charles Homans explains.

Unalaska, AK – Longtime Unalaska resident and local leader Walter Dyakanoff, who passed away on March 5, is receiving two posthumous honors for his life and work in Unalaska.

Superintendent John Conwell says the school board is planning to pass a resolution in memory of Dyakanoff's service to the community at this evening's meeting.

The state Legislature also passed a resolution in memory of Dyakanoff, which was sponsored by District 37 representative Bryce Edgmon.

Unalaska, AK – Staff from the state Department of Environmental Conservation were in town today meeting with local industry representatives about shipping safety issues.

DEC Emergency Response Program Manager Leslie Pearson said that the meetings were about dealing with the "residual lessons learned" from the 2004 Selendang Ayu wreck. In the morning, she and the agency's other representatives met with local processing plant executives to look at how those plants would be able to cope with an oil spill in Unalaska Bay.

Unalaska, AK – A protest by members of the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 302 brought Unalaska's city services to a near-standstill today.

Virtually all unionized city employees called in sick following a meeting of Local 302 members at the Grand Aleutian Hotel Monday evening. Only a handful of Title 3, or non-union executive, employees were working in otherwise deserted city offices today. City roads crews were nowhere to be seen, and the landfill, water and sewer plants and the powerhouse were staffed with just one person apiece. The library was closed all day, although the rest of the Parks, Culture & Recreation Department facilities weren't. The city landfill was closed to commercial users, but was accepting residential waste.

Unalaska, AK – In two weeks, the Unalaska Trial Court is moving into a new building downtown.

The new space at 204 West Broadway is across the street from the current 205 West Broadway offices. Court Clerk Jane Pearson said the new building offers a number of advantages over the old one.

"There's a larger lobby area, the courtroom itself is bigger, the jury deliberation room is bigger," she said. "Plus we have two new attorney conference rooms, which we don't have here."