---

BACK TO TOP
|

HAWAII

AKAL Security buys Hawaii Kai building

AKAL Security Inc. has purchased the Koko Head Plaza, a small commercial office complex in Hawaii Kai, for an undisclosed amount.

The building was designed by William Stimmel & Associates in 1972 and was used by Grant Construction as its headquarters for the development of Mariner's Cove, Mariner's Ridge and Kalama Valley in Hawaii Kai.

AKAL Security plans to upgrade the three-story, 13,500-square-foot property for its own use. Current tenants include the East Honolulu Pet Hospital, East Honolulu Yoga Center, Hawaii Fishing News and Century Small Business Solutions.

Taylor named to retail association

Bob Taylor, president and chief executive of Maui Divers of Hawaii Ltd., has been elected chairman of trade association Retail Merchants of Hawaii.

Taylor has been part of the management of Maui Divers for the past 25 years and was named CEO in 1999. He also serves on the boards of the Hawaii Visitors & Convention Bureau, the Waikiki Improvement Association and the ESOP Association of Hawaii.

Local 5 parent in union merger

Union delegates voted in Chicago Thursday to approve the merger of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union and the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees.

The merger creates a union representing 445,000 members including workers employed at hotels, restaurants, casinos, apparel and textile companies, industrial laundries and light manufacturing plants.

The new union will be called UNITE HERE. While the merger will bring no immediate change for hotel workers at Hawaii's Local 5, members hope the union will gain power in Hawaii's hotels by assisting in the organization of non-union laundry workers, said Eric Gill, Local 5 financial secretary-treasurer.

NATION

Alleged hacker works at Microsoft

SEATTLE >> A man accused of hacking into search engine company Alta Vista's computer systems about two years ago now works at Microsoft Corp., the company said yesterday.

Laurent Chavet, 29, was arrested by FBI agents a week ago in Redmond, Wash., acting on a warrant issued in San Francisco. The U.S. attorney's office for the Northern District of California alleges that Chavet hacked into Alta Vista's computer system to obtain software blueprints called source code and recklessly caused damage to Alta Vista's computers.

Microsoft spokeswoman Tami Begasse said yesterday that Chavet, who lives in suburban Kirkland, is an employee of Microsoft. She declined to comment further on Chavet, citing a company policy not to discuss personnel matters.

But in general, she said: "We're confident in our policies and procedures we have in place to protect our code and to ensure that employees do not bring third party code into the work place."

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, citing anonymous sources, reported for yesterday's editions that Chavet had been working on Microsoft's MSN Search effort.

GE earnings beat expectations

General Electric Co.'s second-quarter earnings rose 3 percent, narrowly beating Wall Street expectations as revenue climbed 11 percent, the company said yesterday.

Chairman and Chief Executive Jeff Immelt said orders were strong and added, "this is the best economy we've seen in years." The industrial, financial services and media conglomerate said it earned $3.9 billion, or 38 cents a share, in the three months ended June 30, up from $3.8 billion, or 38 cents a share, a year ago.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson First Call expected earnings of 37 cents a share.

WORLD

Editor of Russian Forbes edition shot to death

MOSCOW >> The American editor of Forbes Magazine's Russian edition and author of a book about tycoon Boris Berezovsky was shot to death late yesterday, the magazine said.

Paul Klebnikov, 41, was hit four times outside the magazine's office and died in a rescue-squad vehicle, Russian news reports said. The radio station Ekho Moskvy said shells of two different caliber were found at the scene, indicating at least two assailants.

Police could not be reached for comment, but the killing was confirmed in a statement by Forbes publisher Steve Forbes.

"Paul was a superb reporter -- courageous, dedicated, ever-curious," the statement said. "He knew Russia well. It was a country he deeply loved."

Alexander Gordeyev, editor of the Russian edition of Newsweek magazine, which has offices in the same building, said he came to Klebnikov's side as he lay outside the building.

He was still conscious and able to speak, "but he couldn't say anything about what could have been the cause of the attack," Gordeyev told the Associated Press.

The Interfax news agency quoted Leonid Bershidsky, the publisher of Russian Forbes and Newsweek, as saying that Klebnikov recently "had not dug up anything sensitive."

Russia presses $3.4B tax battle against oil giant

MOSCOW >> Russian authorities made further piecemeal moves yesterday to enforce a $3.4 billion tax claim against the Russian oil giant Yukos, but they also took steps not to disrupt its production of crude oil.

Court bailiffs removed computer servers from the offices of Yukos' registrar, M-Reestr, Yukos representatives said, as investigators sought information on Yukos' three largest oil production subsidiaries: Yuganskneftegas, Yukos' largest such company, based in western Siberia; Tomskneft, which also operates in western Siberia; and Samaraneftegas, the smallest of the three, based in Samara southeast of Moscow. But bailiffs still have not made any moves to sell Yukos' biggest assets, like the three large production subsidiaries.

The legal battle against Yukos, which many argue represents a Kremlin attempt to crush the political ambitions of its main owner, Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, has led to worries that the company, one of Russia's most profitable, could be driven into bankruptcy. Khodorkovsky's criminal trial resumes on Monday, and this past week he offered his 44 percent stake to the Yukos board to use for payment of the pending tax claim.

China's red-hot economy cools slightly

HONG KONG >> The odds of an imminent interest rate increase in China fell yesterday, as Beijing announced that industrial production grew at a slightly slower clip in June. At the same time, the expected rate of inflation was said to be below the central bank's threshold for tightening monetary policy.

The National Bureau of Statistics announced yesterday that industrial output rose 16.2 percent in June compared with a year earlier. That fevered pace, however, was less than the 17.5 percent growth recorded in May and considerably below the 23.2 percent peak in February.

Yesterday, the China Daily published excerpts from a high-level government report concluding that recent administrative measures had slowed growth in an economy that has shown signs of overheating and rising inflation.