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Back in action

After a two-year hiatus on the Mainland due to the pandemic, the annual Maui Jim Maui Invitational men’s college basketball tournament returns to Lahaina Civic Center this week. Starting Monday, the focus of the college basketball world will be centered on the little cracker box gym that has earned a reputation as the sport’s preseason mecca. Headlined by five teams in The Associated Press Top 25, eight squads will play 12 games over three days. Every tilt will be aired live on one of the ESPN channels. It has not always been this way. The brainchild of Mark Rolfing in ...

Silver linings in election

Some setbacks count almost as good news. Clearly, the Democrats have lost ground in the midterms. While the Democrats have control of the Senate, the Republicans won the House. They will use control to mire the administration in legislative deadlock and committee investigations. High-profile Democrats such as Stacey Abrams in Georgia and Beto O’Rourke in Texas were also easily defeated. But this was “definitely not a Republican wave, that is for darn sure,” the senator Lindsey Graham acknowledged as early results came in on Tuesday night. The sense of the GOP falling short is not ...

Humanitarian crisis in Haiti

Haiti is in the throes of one of the most dire emergencies in its crisis-prone recent history, one increasingly likely to wash up on U.S. shores in the form of desperate migrants. Its government, which is integral to the problem, last month requested international military intervention, and United Nations Secretary General António Guterres agreed that “armed action” is urgently required. In response, the United States, Canada and other key powers have dithered — even as the Biden administration is reported to be preparing to house waves of Haitian refugees at the U.S. military ...

Words into action

After making homelessness a key talking point leading up to Tuesday’s general election, Hawaii’s incoming governor, Josh Green, and Maui County’s next mayor, Richard Bissen, will try to put their words into action come January. We wish them success. Homelessness is a complex challenge on a global level. Many smart people on Maui have worked through the years to develop solutions, to find ways to get people into housing. Compassionate folks have dedicated countless hours providing our homeless with everything from food and wound care to assistance with paperwork and job ...

Taking the job market pulse

The Labor Department reported last week that the economy created 261,000 new jobs in October, which beat Wall Street’s expectations. Upward revisions for September added to the evidence that the job market is holding up despite rising interest rates. But hold the confetti. The labor market also showed the beginning of some cracks, as the unemployment rate rose to 3.7 percent from 3.5 percent and 328,000 fewer people were employed. The labor participation rate fell for the second month in a row, and unemployment ticked up for nearly every demographic group except teenagers. This ...

Don’t forget flu prevention

With so much attention over the past two and a half years on COVID-19 and the importance of taking steps to minimize its spread and the harm it can do to people who are infected, there’s been less focus on another infectious disease that can cause major problems for communities. Influenza, however, is still a public health concern. And unlike the past two falls and winters when there were varying levels of COVID-19 restrictions in places that had the secondary impact of limiting flu transmission, there’s few if any measures such as indoor masking or social distancing in place ...