A new state championship banner will be hung in the Unalaska High School gym, and it will be the first time a girls sports team is featured on the gym wall as a state champion. The Unalaska Raiders girls volleyball team defeated the Susitna Valley Rams three matches to zero on Saturday, claiming their victory as the 2A Alaska State champions. They returned to Unalaska Monday, parading across the island in a procession of fire trucks, an ambulance and a local police squad car, showing off their trophy.

For decades, King Cove’s roughly 800 residents have called for a road they say could save lives in emergencies. Neither city has a hospital, so residents rely on medical evacuations to reach Anchorage for urgent medical care. The Biden administration last week endorsed the proposal, recommending a land exchange with King Cove’s Native corporation so the road can be built. But that road would go through a federally protected wilderness area. While residents argue it’s a matter of life and death, environmental advocates say the road could threaten vital wildlife habitat — and set a dangerous precedent.

The Associated Press announced Wednesday that Trump, a Republican, has taken Alaska and its three electoral votes. The majority of Unalaskans voted in his favor. He received about 55% of the vote Tuesday. Some questioned ballots still need to be accounted for, but not enough to turn the island’s presidential choice blue.

The Bering Sea’s biggest and most lucrative crab fisheries opened last week, and so far, fishing is looking good.“Fishing has been very good for the [Bristol Bay red king crab] fleet this season and the crab delivered so far has been of high quality — new shell, large size, good meat-fill,” said Alaska Department of Fish and Game Area Management Biologist Ethan Nichols.

Charges against the young man involved in a fatal 2019 Unalaska car crash have been reduced, more than four years after he was originally indicted.Dustin Ruckman, who is now 23 years old, was originally charged in 2020 with two counts of manslaughter, two counts of criminally negligent homicide and one count of reckless driving. He now faces just two counts of criminally negligent homicide.

Alaska processor Trident Seafoods announced Monday that it probably won’t be processing crab in the Pribilof Island community of St. Paul this season. That comes after the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s decision to reopen the snow crab or opilio fishery after a two-year closure. The state’s announcement on Friday surprised many fishermen. It was also a surprise to Trident.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced Friday afternoon that Bering Sea fishermen will be allowed to harvest a total of about 4.7 million pounds of opilio, also known as snow crab, for the first time in two years. According to Fish and Game, estimates of total mature male biomass are above the threshold required to open the fishery.

The U.S. Coast Guard spotted four foreign military vessels in the Bering Sea Saturday. Coast Guard officials say the joint patrol between Russian and Chinese ships shows their “increased interest in the Arctic.”

Bishop Nestor of Alaska and the Aleutians commissioned the two-story Victorian home in 1882. On an ill-fated Alaska voyage, however, before he was ever able to sleep in the house, Nestor fell overboard and drowned. No bishop has ever stayed in the house...until now.

There will be no jury selection next week in the criminal trial involving a fatal 2019 Unalaska car crash. It is the fourth time jury selection has been moved, one of many delays in the roughly five-year case.