500 Thai workers benefit from multimillion dollar EEOC settlement with Hawaii...
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – HONOLULU – Five hundred laborers brought to Hawaii from Thailand over four years beginning in 2003 by the Beverly Hills-based farm labor contractor, Global Horizons, Inc. to work...
View ArticleVeterans Affairs audit exposes Hawaii’s ‘infuritating’ wait list
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – HONOLULU — Veterans seeking care at the VA Medical Center here in Hawaii wait an average of 145 days. Maybe more striking, some 64,000 veterans enrolled in the system for at least...
View ArticleObama administration hearings in Hawaii incite racial disputes
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – HONOLULU – A proposal by the Obama administration to create a new relationship with ethnic Hawaiians backfired on the administration Monday as native Hawaiians rallied in force...
View ArticleExperts fear Hawaii’s new voter registration law heightens fraud risk
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – HONOLULU — Hawaii has the lowest voter turnout in the nation, with just 44 percent of eligible Hawaii voters taking part in the 2012 election. Lawmakers hope a new law signed by...
View ArticleUnfunded liabilities leave HI taxpayers ‘drowning in debt,’ fiscal watchdog says
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – HONOLULU — Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s administration is touting fiscal prudence, announcing the state deposited $100 million to the Hawaii Employer-Union Health Benefits Trust Fund in...
View ArticleRise in human trafficking impacts Hawaii
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – HONOLULU — Americans celebrated independence, liberty and freedom on Fourth of July, but a new report from the U.S. State Department shows there are plenty of people in this...
View ArticleAloha! Hawaii legislator wants taxpayers to fund airline tickets for homeless
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – HONOLULU – Homeless from Hawaii, Micronesia, American Samoa, Thailand and the U.S. mainland are finding nooks in parks, on beaches, aside drainage ditches, in front of small...
View ArticleHawaii’s highest-in-the-nation energy costs stay intact by politics, monopoly
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – HONOLULU — If residents of Hawaii are going to have affordable electricity, the state needs to break up Hawaiian Electric Industries Inc., the parent of the Hawaiian Electric Co.,...
View ArticleQuarter of Hawaii’s population now on Medicaid
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – HONOLULU — New statistics released by the state Department of Human Services show about a quarter of Hawaii’s population relies on Medicaid. Of Hawaii’s 1.3 million people, some...
View ArticleHawaii’s dominant shipping carrier to pay $9 million to settle federal...
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – HONOLULU — Matson Navigation Co. Inc., Hawaii’s largest cargo container shipping company, will pay $9.95 million as part of a settlement agreement with the U.S. Department of...
View ArticleAbsentee ballot fraud incident has Kauai police, elections officials on alert
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – KAUAI — Kauai resident Brent Woods ordered an absentee ballot for Hawaii’s Aug. 9 primary election, but never received the ballot. So when he got a call from the Kauai County...
View ArticleFeds fly immigrant minors to Hawaii on taxpayer dime
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – HONOLULU — Although 2,500 miles from the continental United States, Hawaii has joined the list of states temporarily housing unaccompanied minors from Central America who have...
View ArticleHas Hawaii’s governor lost his mojo?
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – HONOLULU — Just months after becoming governor in 2010, Neil Abercrombie was ranked by Public Policy Polling as the nation’s most unpopular governor. In the past three years, his...
View ArticleIs Abercrombie using human misery to gain political favor?
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – When Superstorm Sandy slammed into the East Coast just says before the 2012 Presidential election, President Barack Obama, was a major part of the news cycle and it was much more...
View ArticleAlleged Honolulu Teen Bank Robbers Picture Themselves with Cash on Facebook
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – HONOLULU – Probably the first rule of committing armed robbery, don’t post yourself with the cash you stole on your social media account. But that’s exactly what Marcus Kalani...
View ArticleHawaii’s remote Puna area will play big role in picking next U.S. senator
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – HONOLULU — Puna, a district on the island Big Island of Hawaii, is described by the Lonely Planet travel blog as “a new, eclectic population of mainland retirees, nouveau hippies,...
View ArticleFirst of trio of credit union thieves sentenced in Honolulu U.S. District Court
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – HONOLULU – The financial safeguards at the OTS Employees Federal Credit Union were so weak, three of its four employees, including the chief executive officer, were stealing from...
View ArticleMolokai ex con who used investors’ money for virtual games, girls, sentenced...
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – HONOLULU – David “Kawika” Buchanan lived a life of fantasy. That is until his virtual house of cards came crashing down in U.S. District Court Monday, Aug. 25, when he was...
View Article9-11 Victims, We Must Never Forget, Including Those With Hawaii Ties
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – September 11, 2014 marks the 13th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, and the sacrifice and bravery of those aboard United Airlines Flight...
View ArticleFormer Portlock madam wants drug charges against her dismissed
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – HONOLULU – The attorney for 33-year-old Malia Arciero, a madam who operated her business out of the elite Oahu neighborhood Portlock for about a decade, has filed a motion to drug...
View ArticleFired chief procurement officer blows whistle on Hawaii DOE procurement troubles
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – HONOLULU— The former chief procurement officer for the Hawaii Department of Education has filed a whistleblower lawsuit in Oahu’s 1st Circuit Court. Andrell Aoki is an experienced...
View ArticleCachola fined a record $50,000 for City Ethics Violations
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – HONOLULU – State House Majority Whip Romy Cachola, a Democrat from Kalihi, has been fined $50,000 by the Honolulu Ethics Commission for alleged ethics violations after settling his...
View ArticleHawaii students get gift cards to participate in sex education program
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – HONOLULU – The University of Hawaii Center on Disability Studies gives gift cards to middle school students who participate in a controversial sex education program. The gift...
View ArticlePflueger sends inflammatory letter to victim of Kauai dam breach
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – KILAUEA, KAUAI – Just hours before Jimmy Pflueger is sentenced on a “Reckless Endangering” felony charge brought against him by the state after his Ka Loko Dam breached on March...
View ArticlePflueger sentenced in Kauai dam breach tragedy that killed 7 people
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – LIHUE, KAUAI – More than eight years after the Ka Loko Dam breached on Kauai’s North Shore killing 7 people and an unborn child, James Pflueger, the man the state said was...
View ArticleNo consequences for key politician in Kauai dam breach tragedy
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – KILAUEA, KAUAI – Retired Auto Dealer Jimmy Pflueger was sentenced to 7 months in prison Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2014. He pleaded “no contest” to a Reckless Endangering charge filed...
View ArticleMatson to pay $1 million for Honolulu molasses spill under plea agreement
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – HONOLULU — Matson Terminals Inc., the company responsible for spilling 220,000 gallons of molasses into Honolulu Harbor in September 2013, has pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor...
View ArticleFBI Sting Nabs Alleged Honolulu Investment Scammer
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – HONOLULU – Curtis Wayne Ross promised the manager of Little Angels he’d invest the charity’s $15 million, generating a 50 percent to 70 percent return within 120 days through a...
View ArticleHawaii doctor accused of fraud, elderly and child abuse, under investigation...
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – HONOLULU – A well-known doctor who lost his medical license in California in Nov. 2013 for “unprofessional conduct, gross negligence, repeated negligent acts, making false...
View ArticleHawaii’s billions in unfunded retirement liabilities part of national trend
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – HONOLULU — A new report from State Budget Solutions, a national nonprofit organization focusing on states’ fiscal responsibility, warns it’s time for newly elected state officials...
View ArticleUniversity of Hawaii won’t talk about sex education program
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – HONOLULU – Hawaii State Rep. Bob McDermott is slamming the University of Hawaii over its refusal to disclose data collected from middle school students during a controversial sex...
View ArticleSix weeks behind bars for seven lives? Pflueger released from prison months...
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – HONOLULU – James Pflueger’s Oct. 15 sentencing in Kauai’s 5th circuit court caused a great stir in the islands after he was given just seven months in prison on a reckless...
View ArticleMan gets 33 months in prison after threatening to decapitate congresswoman
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN- HONOLULU -Threatening to decapitate a congresswoman has landed a former Hawaii resident in federal prison. Aniruddha Sherbow, 44, was sentenced Monday to 33 months in federal prison...
View ArticleUniversity of Hawaii athletics must tackle fiscal woes
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – HONOLULU — The University of Hawaii Athletic Department has faced a series of fiscal and staffing troubles in recent months, leading legislators, administrators and regents to...
View ArticleU.S. should respond aggressively to cyber attack, expert says
HONOLULU — The attack on Sony Pictures and threats to the movie industry cannot be tolerated, one of the nation’s leading security experts says. Lynn Mattice is president and CEO of the National...
View ArticleFBI: Investment Scams on the Rise in Hawaii
By Malia Zimmerman – HONOLULU – Curtis Wayne Ross was indicted this fall for allegedly defrauding three victims of $186,000, and he was re-indicted after being caught red handed in an FBI sting...
View ArticleObama’s Hawaii vacation is over, now it’s time for taxpayers to pay massive tab
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – HONOLULU – President Barack Obama and his family just spent their Christmas and New Year’s holidays in Kailua. Now it’s time for taxpayers to pick up the tab. While the Obamas and...
View ArticleFormer Portlock madam convicted on federal drug charges
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – HONOLULU – The former Porlock madam who said she ran an elite prostitution business for 10 years servicing celebrities, politicians and law enforcement, has been convicted on...
View ArticleHawaii financial advisor who targeted elderly sentenced to federal prison
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – HONOLULU – Kevin Alan Loux, owner of the Loux Financial Group, was sentenced to 46 months in federal prison and 5 years of supervised yesterday despite a tearful plea for mercy to...
View ArticleHawaii Obamacare exchange projected to be financially viable — in 2022
By Malia Zimmerman | Watchdog.org HONOLULU — Hawaii’s Obamacare exchange, Hawaii Health Connector, has been under fire for being the most costly in the nation, and a new report from the Hawaii Commerce...
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