Briefs of News in Your Hawaii
By Star-Bulletin Staff
By Star-Bulletin Staff
Hawaii Attorney General Margery Bronster emerged from a White House meeting with President Bill Clinton yesterday vowing to crack down on illegal tobacco sales to minors.
She says the state will redouble its efforts after the anti-smoking pep talk attended by attorney generals from across the nation.
The impending crackdown on teen-age smoking comes as Hawaii's Legislature is considering an unprecedented wave of anti-smoking proposals.
Hawaii also is seriously considering joining other states in a lawsuit against tobacco companies to recover costs from treating smoking-related ailments.
"Residential suburbs won't work where they overlook a farming community that works from sunrise to sunset seven days a week," said Lillie C. Wong, president of the Kamilonui Farmers Cooperative.
"Farmers use tractors, trucks, heavy equipment. They use chemicals, they kick up lots of dirt."
Wong was one of 25 people at a public information meeting last night in which the city Planning Department sought concerns to be addressed in an "environmental impact report."
The report is the first step in a consent decree approved by the City Council last year to avert $100 million in lawsuits brought by the Bishop Estate, Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Co., and Maunalua Associates, formerly Hawaii Kai Development.
Among other concerns raised last night:
Senate President Norman Mizuguchi has re-referred two House bills to the Senate Agriculture, Labor & Employment and Ways and Means committees. The committees will have until April 4 to hear the bills.
"It really affords us two more weeks to look at the issue," said Sen. Brian Kanno, chairman of the Labor Committee.
Without the new referrals, the Senate would have had to hear the bills by last Friday or the measures would have been dead.
The bills include a Cayetano administration plan to create a mutual insurance fund for employers placed in the costly assigned-risk pool.
Another proposal aims to cut red tape by establishing a workers comp benefits facilitator within the state labor department.
Mangan, who specializes in how magmas cool and crystallize, first visited Hawaii in 1984 to study the crystallization of lava at Kilauea Iki, still cooling since its 1959 eruption. She returned as a staff geologist at the observatory in 1990-94.
Mangan replaced observatory Scientist-in-Charge David Clague on March 1. Clague, who has held the post since 1991, is resigning from the U.S. Geological Survey which runs the observatory to join a private research institution.
For expanded versions of these and other stories, see today's Honolulu Star-Bulletin.
Deputy Glenn Ferreira, who is assigned to the Honolulu office, was vacationing in Kona over the weekend when he recognized James Patrick Coughlin III, 24, and Carrie M. Napier, 20, from photographs he had received from the Northern District of Georgia.
Coughlin and Napier fled Georgia after being indicted in November 1995 on charges of growing 1,700 marijuana plants in an indoor operation.
They were arraigned yesterday before Magistrate Francis Yamashita and will be sent back to Georgia to face trial.
The pair was allegedly found to be growing marijuana last December in Kona.
Coughlin, however, fled before being captured and Napier slipped through the system by providing false identification information.
Her name was withheld pending notification of her next of kin.
The driver of the truck in the 10:45 a.m. accident was a 30-year-old Hilo man, police said.
An autopsy will be done and a standard negligent homicide investigation is being conducted, they said.
Police said the truck was pulling out of a private driveway when it struck the woman.
The death is the ninth traffic fatality of the year on the Big Island compared with four at this time last year.
- Waipahu woman held in stabbing of another woman
- Parolee arrested in robbing Waianae restaurant