Kaua‘i News

U.S. Reps. Ed Case and Jill Tokuda as well as U.S. Sens. Mazie Hirono and Brian Schatz were sworn in Friday and will again represent Hawaiʻi for the next two years in the 119th Congress.

Hawaiian Volcano Observatory reported lava fountaining and flow activity within Halemaʻumaʻu Crater ceased at about 8:40 p.m. Friday. Lava continued to slowly move, with crustal overturns expected in the hours following the pause in eruptive activity.

Staff from several state and federal agencies, with assistance from others, are working to tow the whale remains offhsore, as requested by Native Hawaiian cultural practitioners.

Phase 1 seed funding totaling $400,000 from the Hawaiʻi Film and Creative Industries Development Fund will be used to support local filmmakers, media makers and content creators with the goal of growing Hawai‘i-made media content to be licensed and distributed worldwide.

Firefighters responded to the conflagration at the Kai Olino affordable housing project shortly after midnight on Wednesday.

Aria Labrador entered the world on the night of Jan. 1.

The nurses at Wilcox Medical Center have been fighting for safer nurse-to-patient staffing to deliver good care for patients, said Rosalee Agas-Yuu, president of the Hawaiʻi Nurses Association.

Hawai‘i joins 12 other states leading the way with expanded continuous Medicaid coverage for children, alongside Colorado, Kansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah and Washington.

In 2025, Mālama Kauaʻi plans to grow farm-to-school efforts, keep food distribution programs operating and develop programming to provide land access to beginning farmers.

The Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation reported a 10% increase in traffic fatalities in 2024 with 51 from the City and County of Honolulu, 29 from Hawaiʻi Island, 14 from Maui County and 8 from Kauaʻi County.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture will host 3 workshops to help Kauaʻi farmers and producers improve their operations, reduce production costs and conserve natural resources.

There were 770,940 visitors to the Hawaiian Islands in November of this year, which is an increase of 5.3% compared to the same month in 2023.

Additional islands will likely be added to the advisory.

Gov. Josh Green signed an executive order protecting primary caregivers cultivating cannabis for patients within the bounds of the law that exists as of Dec. 31, 2024.

Short, intermittent full closures may be required to remove the larger pieces of debris.

The newsite posted nearly 1,500 stories this year, many of which involved people with connection to the university system making headlines, including Miss Aloha Hula winners, a Waiākea High Schoo grad, an auditioner on ‘The Voice’ and someone who once had a date with Marcia Brady.

According to University of Hawai‘i, six ʻalae ʻula (Hawaiian moorhen) chicks hatched in the loʻi in December. The parents had shown up a couple of months earlier.

The Hawai‘i Nurses Association, which represents the Wilcox nurses, began negotiations with Wilcox Medical Center on May 6. Their contract expired on Aug. 31.

Hawaiian Volcano Observatory reported the earthquake was part of the ongoing swarm of deep seismicity that has been happening beneath the area of the Kaʻū community since 2019. It had no apparent impact on either Kīlauea of Mauna Loa volcanoes.

Hawai‘i Emergency Management Agency officials also noted in their announcement that a test of the live audio broadcast segment of the Emergency Alert System will accompany the sounding test of the sirens at roughly the same time, in cooperation with the Hawai‘i broadcast industry.