Unalaska, AK – A 28-year-old man was arrested Saturday night on numerous charges after allegedly crashing an SUV, badly damaging a building at UniSea and fleeing from Public Safety Department officers on foot.

Jimmy Sakar is charged with first degree vehicle theft, reckless endangerment, driving under the influence and several lesser offenses. Public safety received a call about an SUV being driven erratically at about 11:30 p.m. and swerving through the bridge construction site without stopping for construction crew members. An officer stopped the vehicle, which Sakar allegedly was driving. But when the officer got out of his own vehicle to speak with him, Sakar sped away at twice the speed limit, according to the police report.

Unalaska, AK – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service research vessel Tiglax is on its way to Avatanak Island, where researchers will gauge whether the agency's fox-eradication project there is having its intended effect.

Biologists onboard the Tiglax, which stopped in Dutch Harbor today, will be taking the first bird survey of Avatanak since the fox eradication.

Foxes are not native to most of the Aleutians, and have had a devastating impact on local bird populations since they were first introduced by Russian colonists in the 19th Century. The USFWS and the Qawalangin Tribe of Unalaska spent 2003 and 2004 trapping and shooting the foxes on Avatanak.

Unalaska, AK – American fisheries regulators say they were aware that a seafood-carrying ship that recently stopped in Dutch Harbor had been blacklisted in Europe for illegal fishing, but allowed the vessel to pick up its legal cargo of Alaska pollock there anyway. The tramper Polestar is still in the Moroccan port of Agadir, where it was detained on May 24 at the request of European authorities. In Unalaska, KIAL's Charles Homans reports.

Unalaska, AK – Three months after the Teamsters unsuccessfully tried to unionize them, employees at two local fuel providers will vote on whether they want to organize under a different union.

Later this month, elections will be held at North Pacific Fuel and Delta Western Fuels, in which employees will decide whether they want to join the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. Six Delta Western employees in Dutch Harbor are eligible for membership.

Unalaska, AK – Seafood.com reports this morning that a tramper that loaded pollock from Trident Seafoods in Dutch Harbor last month has been detained in Morocco as a pirate vessel. The incident that could have implications for Alaska pollock's certification as sustainable seafood. In Unalaska, KIAL's Charles Homans reports.

Unalaska, AK – The Aleutian Pribilof Island Community Development Association is paying out its first annual dividend to its member communities this month under a new money-management strategy the association began seven years ago.

The $600,000 dividend has been divided among the association's six member communities. The payments are calculated based on the size of the community, ranging from about $70,000 for Nikolski to about $130,000 for Saint George.

Unalaska, AK – Sunday and today mark the 65th anniversary of the Japanese bombing of Dutch Harbor, the incident that transformed what was then a tiny island community of a few hundred people into a flashpoint in the biggest geopolitical conflict of the 20th Century.

Governor Sarah Palin ordered flags lowered to half-staff across the state on Sunday to commemorate the World War II bombing, in which about 50 American soldiers were killed. In Unalaska, local historian and high school history teacher Jeff Dickrell will be giving a talk and slideshow on the bombing tonight. He'll be showing unpublished photos he's recently found in the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and telling the stories he's gathered from veterans.

Unalaska, AK – The organization Friends of Alaska National Wildlife Refuges has received a grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to geld, or neuter, the six stallions in Unalaska's wild horse herd.

It's an effort to rein in the growth of the local population. The wild horses are a beloved fixture in Unalaska, but they're also a headache for the FWS, which manages most of the land on the island that doesn't belong to the Ounalashka Corporation. The herd has doubled in size over the past decade, from eight to 16 horses. More and more frequently, the horses are moving beyond their usual territory near Summer Bay and Morris Cove onto federally managed land.

Unalaska, AK – Starting this week, drivers in Unalaska can say goodbye to their normal route to and from the Unalaska end of the South Channel bridge for at least a year. A detour opened on Tuesday to divert traffic around the area of the road where blasting work is being done, and will remain in place through the end of next summer.

DOT project manager Shaun Combs said that a subcontractor is coming in to pave the detour in about three weeks.