Along with 59 other children, seven-year-old Nikolas Mercardo learned to use paper punches and decorative scissors, how to crop photographs, use accents and borders, how to mat the photos and journal on pages at a keiki scrapbooking class held at Craft Supply in Pearl Highlands.

One of the Hawaii football team's most experienced defensive players could be out of the Warriors lineup for a while. Defensive end/tackle Mel Purcell was to undergo an MRI to determine how much damage his knee took during a play late in the first quarter of UH's 46-14 loss at Louisiana Tech on Saturday.

Aloha Airlines, taking a painful step to emerge from reorganization, has asked the federal Bankruptcy Court for approval to terminate pensions for approximately 3,000 employees and retirees. The carrier, which included the action in a recent filing as part of its plan to emerge from bankruptcy, also said it will pay its unsecured creditors less than 5 cents on the dollar. Aloha said it owes about $60 million to more than 250 creditors.

HAWAII has begun preparing for a possible avian influenza virus pandemic but the state may be vulnerable because of a serious federal lapse. Deplorable delays in placing orders for the drug of choice for prevention or treatment of the pandemic flu could put millions of Americans at risk while pills protect people in other countries.