Unalaska, AK – A man who was arrested in October after allegedly fracturing another man's skull in a bar fight was in court today over bribery charges stemming from the incident.

According to court documents, Joshua Trueblood called one of the witnesses of the October 22 beating 16 days after the incident, and tried to convince her to change her story. Trueblood told the witness he was facing 10 years in jail, and when she still refused, he offered her $500 to change her testimony, according to police reports. The witness reported the call to Public Safety officers. She called Trueblood back with officers recording the conversation, a call in which Trueblood gave her instructions on how to get the money, according to the report.

Unalaska, AK – Unalaska lost power for about an hour this morning following a mishap at the powerhouse at 10:20 a.m. City Manager Chris Hladick said that the outage occurred following a scheduled outage for the APL dock facility on East Point. When utilities personnel tried to reconnect, the entire system was knocked offline and the powerhouse lost power as well.

Hladick said no equipment failed in the incident. It took the powerhouse a little less than an hour to get power back on line on the Dutch Harbor side of town, and about an hour to get the Unalaska side up and running again.

Unalaska, AK – Two people are dead following the crash of a Pen Air airplane on the Alaska Peninsula near Port Heiden on Thursday. The Coast Guard received a signal from the plane's emergency beacon at about 6:30 p.m., and was notified by Pen Air half an hour later that the flight was overdue. The names of the dead are being withheld pending notification of their families.

Coast Guard aircraft and helicopter searched for the plane with the assistance of another Pen Air plane. They found the wreck at about 11 p.m. There were no survivors.

Unalaska, AK – The 4,700 Mazda vehicles that were trapped for a month on the car carrier Cougar Ace are being scrapped, the company announced today. Mazda said in September that the vehicles would be sold as used cars, even though most of them survived the shipping debacle unscathed. But the company said today that it had reconsidered "after thorough testing by engineers from our North American and Japanese R&D centers."

Akutan, AK – The far-flung communities of the Aleutians may not be on many people's holiday itineraries, but Santa Claus makes a point of visiting them each year. Every year the Unalaska chapter of the Lions Club puts St. Nick on a plane to villages from Cold Bay to Adak, with gifts for the about 150 kids who live there. KIAL's Charles Homans accompanied Santa Claus on his visit to the island community of Akutan on Friday.

Unalaska, AK – The far-flung communities of the Aleutians may not be on many people's holiday itineraries, but Santa Claus makes a point of visiting them each year. Every year the Unalaska chapter of the Lions Club puts St. Nick on a plane to villages from Cold Bay to Adak, with gifts for the about 150 kids who live there. KIAL's Charles Homans accompanied Santa Claus on his visit to the island community of Akutan on Friday.

Unalaska, AK – Jobs in Alaska's fishing industry have stabilized in recent years, and some fisheries like king salmon have seen a boom in employment. But fishing job numbers are still far below what they were six years ago, and some sectors of the fishing economy are trending downwards. Those are the findings of an economic survey published this month by the state Department of Labor, in which economists looked at fishing job trends from 2000 to 2005. KIAL's Charles Homans has the story.

Unalaska, AK – The future of Unalaska's powerhouse, geothermal resources and how much you pay for electricity each month will all be on the table at a special City Council work session Thursday night.

The council will open up for public comment a plan to replace the powerhouse's current array of diesel generators will more efficient models that have been purchased and currently are in storage in Finland. The city recently obtained the permit it had sought from the state for the new engines, which city officials estimate will run as much as 30 percent more efficiently then the current system.

Unalaska, AK – The North Pacific Fishery Management Council agreed yesterday to decrease its 2007 quota for pollock, Alaska's largest commercial fishery. 2007's total allowable catch for the fish will be 1.394 million metric tons, a 5.8 percent reduction from this year's quota. The cut wasn't unexpected--last year's pollock quota was the highest ever for the fishery, and the council's groundfish planning team had suggested an even greater reduction at its November meeting.