Regional

After a two-and-a-half week closure, Unalaska’s Museum of the Aleutians reopened to the public today.

On Wednesday, the museum’s board of directors voted to reinstate executive director Zoya Johnson from paid administrative leave. Johnson also sits on the Unalaska City Council.

The board put Johnson on leave and closed the museum after a 19th-century Russian Orthodox bible and two other items from the museum’s collection were found in her house in September. The items had apparently been there since 2009.

City and tribal-government employees on Alaska's St. Paul Island get Oct. 28 off each year for a holiday you might not have heard of: St. Paul Aleut Independence Day.

It marks the day in 1983 when Saint Paul islanders gained their freedom from the federal government. Various U.S. agencies had been running the island's fur seal harvest and economy for decades, leaving the locals as little more than wards of the state.

The Alaska Department of Transportation is proposing changes in ferry service to Unalaska/Dutch Harbor for the 2016 sailing season.

On Tuesday the state agency released its draft Alaska Marine Highway System (AMHS) sailing schedule for next year. If approved as is, the ferry Tustumena will sail to Unalaska once in June and once in September. In May, July and August, the ferry will make the run from Kodiak to Unalaska twice a month.

For the first time in five years, helicopters and cowboys are rounding up cattle by the hundreds on Umnak and Unalaska islands.  The Bering Pacific Ranches at Fort Glenn on Umnak Island are herding their tundra-roaming cattle to take them to market.

Alaska agriculture officials say the Bering Pacific is the state's biggest cattle operation. It's also the only one with cowboys herding by helicopter.