Honolulu Civil Beat

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Sister-city partnerships should be more than photo ops. They need to be sustained, nurtured and aimed at measurable public benefits. For decades, Hawaiʻi has used partnerships with sister cities and sister states to celebrate culture and build international goodwill. These partnerships have helped connect residents and institutions across borders while opening practical opportunities for mutual development, while strengthening the state’s place in the Asia Pacific.

A Hawaiʻi Department of Law Enforcement official identified tech companies that impressed him at conferences about policing and surveillance. He later got a job with one of them. The state Department of Law Enforcement has sent Brandon Asuka to more law enforcement conferences in the last two years than most state workers will go to in a lifetime. A homeland security meeting in Washington, D.C. A counter-terrorism conference in Dublin, Ireland. The World Police Summit in Dubai.

Using sea level rise exposure for justification, two resolutions before the council could help more units avoid being phased out for long-term housing. Maui County Council members are taking up legislation Thursday that would add hundreds of condo units to the list of properties that could apply for special hotel use zoning to avoid the planned phase-out of several thousand vacation rentals over the next five years.

Agribusiness Development Corp. Executive Director Wendy Gady resigned days after the agency’s board celebrated progress. Wendy Gady has stepped down from her role as executive director of the Agribusiness Development Corp., an influential state agency charged with overseeing the acquisition and rehabilitation of the Wahiawā Dam and tens of millions of dollars in other agricultural initiatives. Gady submitted her resignation on Aug.

After a cholera outbreak, it took 100 years to make it legal to sell unregulated and hand-pounded kalo again. In 1911, a government looked at a food its people had pounded by hand for a thousand years and decided it was a public health threat. There had been a cholera outbreak in Tokyo that winter. That was all it took. Investigators blamed the mochi shops. The wooden mallets. The stone mortars. Porous surfaces. You cannot sterilize wood. You cannot inspect a stone.

A multi-story apartment building for seniors was hit by flooding that wiped out its only elevator. There is no timeline for when it will be back in operation. As Hurricane Lala slams remote parts of the Hawaiian Islands, its impact is still being felt closer to home. At least one senior housing apartment complex in Honolulu is still without elevator service due to damage from flooding generated by Lala in mid-August, leaving many low-income residents struggling to complete normal daily tasks.

They allege an unkempt stream and inadequate drainage from Lake Wilson caused the flooding of their homes. Twenty North Shore residents on Wednesday sued the City and County of Honolulu and the previous owners of Lake Wilson and the Wahiawā Dam for negligence over flood damage to their homes during the Kona lows in March.

Broken fences, destroyed roads, new gulches, dead cattle and lost land may soon be the price to pay for greener grass as climate change aggravates extreme weather events. Kealia Galimba disappears amid thousands of acres of thriving guinea grass while seeking the optimum vantage point over the long drought-stricken Ka‘ū district. She wanted to catch a glimpse of the distant, fog-shrouded flanks of Mauna Loa and their telltale sign of the past week’s devastating storms.

The power isn’t just going out more frequently. It’s staying out for longer. No, it’s not just your imagination. Hawaiʻi has been experiencing more frequent power outages in recent years. On Oʻahu, the average resident experienced about twice as many outages in 2024 as they did the year before the Maui fires, according to a Civil Beat analysis of federal data, although preliminary 2025 numbers show a slight improvement.