Newswatch
Thanks, Tom Cox, we owe you one.
You and and all those other believers at the Department of Land and Natural Resources who refused to let the Grande Dame of Diamond Head Crater, a casualty of those humongous winds on Honolulu Marathon weekend, succumb to the chain saw.
Cox, a park caretaker, was making his rounds Dec. 9, when he spotted the huge old keawe near the foot of Diamond Head Trail uprooted and sprawled on the ground.
"I had a sick feeling when I saw it," he said. "That's really the center of the park. It was sad to think about losing that tree."
With the help of city workers, state parks officials hoisted the 70-year-old tree back into the ground and hope it will take root in coming months.
State public-school teachers and university professors, who are demanding pay raises and threatening to strike, would be stripped of the right to walk off the job, if Gov. Ben Cayetano had his way.
The educators would be subject to binding arbitration like other government workers.
Yet, Cayetano conceded yesterday, he is not completely happy with the arbitration process. Arbitrators can order the state to give a pay raise to a bargaining unit without having to take into account how that award might impact the state's financial plan or negotiations with other workers.
But Cayetano noted the administration isn't compelled to accept an arbitration decree.
The commission yesterday voted 6-0 agreeing with Deputy Corporation Counsel Thomas Rack's recommendation. In 1995, of the nearly 100 requests for legal representation from police officers before the commission, only four were denied, Rack said.
Federal prosecutors allege that Joseph Alejado, 27, beat Sam L. Tupuola at the Pearl City substation and then tried to persuade two other officers not to reveal the assault to federal officials.
A man with a dark hooded sweat shirt covering his face pointed a handgun and demanded money from a female manager, 60, and another employee, 19, of the Makaha Drive-In as they were locking up at 10 p.m.
The victim, 30, was in the parking lot with three other males just before 6:30 a.m. when he and the suspect began scuffling, police said.
When the suspect fell to the ground, the victim allegedly began kicking him.
The suspect pulled out a knife and allegedly stabbed the victim in the thigh. He then grabbed a vial of pills and $100 the victim dropped and fled, police said. The suspect was caught nearby. He suffered cuts to his hand and was treated at Queen's Hospital.
The officer and a 15-year-old Kailua boy he was transporting to Los Angeles were being driven to the juvenile detention home here after being turned away at the Honolulu Airport.
They were Koko Head-bound on the H-1 near Middle Street when the youth jumped out of the moving car. The officer grabbed the boy just as he went out the door, and both fell onto the roadway.