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ASD Staff

Hawai'i Skies

Today's Hawai‘i Skies was captured by Scott Dillon at Diamond Head Beach. "

Another beautiful sunrise taken while visiting last January."

To submit your Hawai'i Skies photo, visit us 

For the latest news of Hawai‘i, sign up 

Scott 2

<title>Hawaiʻi Skies: Another one</title>

Today's Hawai‘i Skies was captured by Scott Dillon at Diamond Head Beach.

Hawaiʻi Skies: Another one

Today&#039;s Hawai‘i Skies was captured by Scott Dillon at Diamond Head Beach. &quot;Another beautiful sunrise taken while visiting last January.&quot; To submit your Hawai&#039;i Skies photo, visit us online or email: general@alohastatedaily.com For the latest news of Hawai‘i, sign up here for our free Daily Edition newsletter.

Letters to the Editor

Mahalo nui for your cogent and insightful articles; hopefully, your thoughts will land on someone's fertile ground and take root.

Like you, I bemoan our increasingly steep slide into societal suicide, which now begins in elementary school indoctrination and cripples further independent critical thinking.

[{"type":"text","text":"Kaleo Elia, Lāʻie "}]

Tree on fertile soil in Hana Maui

<title>Letter to the Editor: Reader thanks ASD opinion columnist Sterling Higa for ʻike</title>

A reader from Lāʻie writes in to Aloha State Daily to thank Higa, who has opined on the stateʻs "increasingly steep slide into societal suicide."

Letter to the Editor: Reader thanks ASD opinion columnist Sterling Higa for ʻike

Stephanie Salmons Headshot

Stephanie Salmons

Real Estate

It’s the end of an era in Ward Village, Howard Hughes’ 60-acre master-planned community located between Downtown and Waikīkī, as developers move forward with plans to bring more residences to the community.

Ward Centre, which opened in 1982 and served the community for more than four decades, officially closed its doors to the public on June 30. Although a timeline has not yet been finalized, sources say that demolition and redevelopment work at the site is expected to begin in the third quarter of the year.

The demolition will clear the way for two luxury towers planned at the site: 

“We have a fond aloha for Ward Centre and its important role in the history of our neighborhood,” Doug Johnstone, president of Hawai‘i Region and national condominium development at Howard Hughes Communities, said in a statement provided to Aloha State Daily. “As plans move forward for redevelopment on the site, we look forward to announcing details about the next phase, which will deliver additional retail, open space and a new public park, as well as hundreds of new homes, further enhancing the connected, walkable neighborhood experience at Ward Village while reflecting its long-term vision as a master-planned community.”

Three of the center’s tenants are relocating within Ward Village: Johnny’s Island Dog Spa and Sweat + Soul are moving to 320 Ward Ave., while Kamitoku Ramen is moving to the former Scratch Kitchen space in South Shore Market. You can read more about Kamitoku Ramen 

which closed its Ward Centre and downtown Honolulu locations — 

As previously reported, Ward Village sold out its first eight mixed-use residential towers: Waiea, Anaha, Ae‘o, Ke Kilohana, ‘A‘ali‘i, Kō‘ula, Victoria Place and Ulana Ward Village.

In addition to ‘Ilima and Melia, new residential buildings in development or under construction include Kalae and The Launiu Ward Village.

, bringing another another 546 studio, one-, two- and three-bedroom homes and more than 30,000 square feet of retail and dining space to Kaka‘ako. It was 97% pre-sold when it was completed, the developer said at that time. 

Ward Village marked a record year in 2025, with momentum driven by the launch of Melia Ward Village and ‘Ilima Ward Village earlier in the year.

In Hawai‘i last year, Howard Hughes contracted to sell 287 condos, which accounted for roughly $1.6 billion in future revenue, according to 

Of those, 220 units at Melia and ‘Ilima, and 63 units at The Launiu were contracted, the report, published earlier this year, noted. At year-end, the predevelopment condos of Melia and ‘Ilima were 60% pre-sold and The Launiu was 71% pre-sold. Meanwhile, Kalae was 93% sold.

By the end of 2025, Melia and ‘Ilima were about 60% pre-sold.

The 33-story ‘Ilima will have 148 homes while Melia, its 35-story companion, will offer 221 residences. Together, the projects will add about 20,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial and retail space, along with a public park.

Ward Village also hit a number of other milestones in 2025.

 of last year and the makai phase of Victoria Ward Park 

The Launiu, Ward Village’s 11th residential tower, broke ground 

Ward centre 0714126

<title>Ward Centre closed; looming demolition will make way for new Ward Village towers</title>

Although a timeline has not yet been finalized, sources say that demolition and redevelopment work at the site is expected to begin later this year.

Ward Centre closed; looming demolition will make way for new Ward Village towers

Kam Napier Headshot

A. Kam Napier

Columnists

Government & Politics

You wouldn’t know it from local media, or even from much of the mainstream Mainland news, but Dr. Anthony Fauci is back in the spotlight, six years after his Icarus flight into the sun of international media attention during Covid-19.

 at the Honolulu Star-Advertiser about Anthony Fauci is from April 3, 2020. It’s an Associated Press wire story, “

Dr. Fauci’s face will soon be on a bobblehead

How appropriate. It would hilariously ironic, if it weren’t for the needless panic and suffering that man caused as he reveled in his Covid-era fame.

In April, Hawaiʻi News Now did carry an AP story earlier this year, “

Former Fauci adviser indicted for allegedly concealing communications related to COVID-19 research

.” It was a small glimpse into an overdue reckoning.

The last article on Fauci at Hawai‘i Public Radio was from Jan. 23, 2021, “

The gist of that piece is that Fauci was thrilled to be working for former President Joe Biden — as well he should be, since Biden, or his autopen, would go on to 

The text of the pardon itself reads: “For any offenses against the United States which he may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014, through the date of this pardon arising from or in any manner related to his service as Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force or the White House Covid-19 Response Team, or as Chief Medical Advisor to the President.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Why would he need such a thing?"}]

We might soon find out. On Wednesday, July 29, Sen. Rand Paul will be grilling Fauci in front of Congress. In advance of that hearing, Paul has been publishing online thousands of pages of Fauci’s own diaries and notes, all kept in his government files. Read them all 

This is what local and national media, once so eager to lionize Fauci, now seem to be working so hard to ignore.

I looked at the Star-Advertiser, as well as Honolulu Civil Beat, and 

, to see if anyone locally was covering, or even picking up from Mainland sources, the news coming out about Fauci’s diaries.

[{"type":"text","text":"Nothing, at least as of Tuesday."}]

Maybe you loved the man. Maybe you bought the Fauci candle and hung on his every word. Prepare to be disappointed.

Maybe you loathed the man on sight, with his suspicious eagerness to be the ringleader of a calamity circus.

[{"type":"text","text":"You were right. Fauci’s own words prove it."}]

For a summation of the diary, it’s hard top the highlights published this week at 

, which doubted the Covid lockdown madness from the get-go — and was demonetized and censored for not going along with the groupthink.

In March 2020, went on TV, gave the day’s death toll of 9,800. Then he wrote in his diary, “It is not hyperbole to say that today I am the most famous and talked about person in the country and one of the most recognizable persons in the world.”

I could go on and on with examples from the diary of Fauci loving his fame, because Fauci himself sure did. But I’ll just let that one ghoulish example stand for them all.

Publicly, Fauci claimed he never advised lockdowns. His diaries tell us he bragged to himself about convincing New York and California leaders to close schools and businesses. In the climate of fear of the time, policymakers marched like lemmings off the lockdown cliff to do likewise.

[{"type":"text","text":"As for that fear, it was needlessly stoke by Fauci himself."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"And he was lying."}]

He told us, via the media, the Covid fatality rate was 2 to 2.5% — that’s 10 times higher than the typical death rate of the average flu season. One might panic over such a thing. Except, the real rate, as he noted privately, was “

.” That’s double the fatality rate of the flu, but it isn’t 10 times the rate, and we might have asked better questions about a more targeted approach to Covid if he had been honest.

When other experts criticized the lockdown strategy as doing more than harm good, Fauci worked with the government and social media companies to silence them. In crisis, we need more communication and more questions, not fewer. Fauci would not be questioned at all.

Publicly, Fauci touted mask-wearing as the key to safety and a “return to normalcy.” Privately he knew there was no evidence to support that.

While we were being told we couldn’t so much as take a walk alone in a park, Fauci was having dinner with CNN’s Jake Tapper, at Tapper's house.

Remember when it was forbidden, even considered racist, to suggest that Covid-19 was the result of Chinese lab leak? The only acceptable belief was accidental transmission from animals to humans in a Wuhan wet market.

Well, the overwhelming consensus of a team of international experts was that there was no way this virus was entirely natural, parts of had to be inserted. Fauci knew this because he assembled the experts and summarized their consensus in his diary — in January, 2020. Yes, that early.

What Sen. Paul has been chasing, and will likely grill Fauci about in these hearings, is what role Fauci himself and the U.S. government played in funding gain-of-function research on viruses overseas after such work had been banned at home. As the Senator notes, no pardon from Biden protects Fauci from the consequences of lying now.

We’ll see what he has to say for himself, but I expect a lot of memory lapses. “During a seven-hour deposition in December 2022, Fauci failed to recall pertinent information about his role in the federal government’s Covid weaponization 

And it also notes: “While regular Americans struggled to make ends meet and keep their small businesses afloat amid lockdowns, the bureaucrat made 

I think the man ought to be in prison. I fear the worst he’ll experience is a few more hours of pretending he can’t recall how he earned so many of our tax dollars.

In his monstrous and ego-driven campaign to milk Covid for all it was worth, Fauci had plenty of accomplices. Mini-Faucis ruled from coast to coast, basking in the glow of the local TV studio lights, not least of all here in the Islands, pushing maximum panic and maximum lockdowns. Gov. Josh Green likely owes his current job to being Hawai‘i’s Mini-Fauci.

My own industry played a huge role in amplifying both fear and the overreaction, so I’m not surprised they aren’t rushing to confront the ugly truth behind the St. Fauci narrative.

It was ugly, and we’ll be dealing with the fallout for years to come. Maybe you had a loved one die pathetically alone in a hospital as a result of insane visitation policies. Maybe your kid still struggles from lost schooling. Maybe your business never quite recovered, or you’re running a new one now because lockdowns killed your old one. 

We’re all certainly paying for the billions in fraudulent Covid-relief payments made as the Feds shoveled money at Americans to buy their patience with the lockdowns. We’re certainly all paying the price in inflation as the Biden administration borrowed trillions for that relief, inflation that peaked at 19% during his term, permanently resetting prices.

I’m stumped at how to quantify the psychic pain that came from learning just how many of our friends, family members, neighbors and colleagues turned out to be East German at heart — eager secret policemen, dropping a dime on curfew violators, wishing death upon the unmasked or the unvaccinated. There’s a thing you can’t unsee once you’ve seen it, and one can't help but wonder, did that part of them ever really go away or are they just waiting for the next excuse to go after people they don't like?

No one, anywhere, who brought all this about has ever been held to account.

[{"type":"text","text":"Fauci would be a good start. "}]

 Wow, that was fast. The hearing has already ended — with 

 repeatedly and refusing to answer questions, despite his presidential pardon. Paul has stated that this is illegal and there will be repercussions. We'll see.

A. Kam Napier is editor in chief of Aloha State Daily. His opinions in Pipikaula Corner are his own and not reflective of the ASD team.

Getty Images 2155919948

<title>Pipikaula Corner: Fauci revealed as fear-mongering, fame-loving fraud</title>

It's not getting much media attention, but the private diaries of Dr. Anthony Fauci have been published online by Sen. Rand Paul in advance of his hearings this week into Fauci and Covid-19. What they reveal across thousands of pages is man in love with the adulation he received, who privately knew that many of things he said publicly about the pandemic were wild exaggerations.

Pipikaula Corner: Fauci revealed as fear-mongering, fame-loving fraud

Higa headshot white shirt square

Sterling Higa

On Monday morning, while ballots printed with Tommy Waters’ name lay on kitchen tables across East Honolulu, Judge James Ashford ruled that Waters may not run for the seat on offer.

It is the third time in 12 years that a judge has been asked to weigh in on the council election in District 4.

Trevor Ozawa beat Waters by 41 votes in 2014. Waters challenged the result without success. When Ozawa won reelection by 22 votes in 2018, Waters sued again. That time, courts ordered a do-over election, which Waters won in 2019 by a thousand votes.

This time, Ozawa has sued before votes are counted. Courts ruled Waters ineligible to run because he has already served two consecutive terms in office. Waters has said he plans to appeal.

Each man has thrown challenge flags, and the referee wears a robe and holds a gavel.

Anyone tempted to despair over this should read a short book. The 

 is a campaign manual attributed to Quintus Cicero, written for his brother Marcus.

Marcus, better known as Cicero, was then running for consul, the highest elected office. He was a lawyer from a family of no great name, with a thin military record. In Rome, that was rather like running for lifeguard without knowing how to swim.

But Marcus was a gifted speaker and lawyer, and he had a sound strategy.

Roman consuls were most often generals, and Roman campaigns could become wars. Office was won by canvassing, favors, and patronage, and sometimes by violence. The most famous campaign rally of the age was Caesar walking an army across the Rubicon.

Quintus’s advice, in Philip Freeman’s 

, has a familiar ring: promise everything to everybody, don’t leave town, learn your opponents’ weaknesses, flatter the voters shamelessly, give people hope.

Cicero had to climb a series of offices to the highest post. The ladder of offices survives here in a gentler form. A Kawakami may climb from council chamber to State House to mayor’s office on his way, perhaps, to Washington Place — without anyone bleeding.

In Honolulu the ambitious fight with briefs and motions, and the only suffering is that we have to read about it. We have become lawful to the point of banality, and the banality is the blessing.

The law that keeps the knives sheathed exacts a fee, and the fee is paid in technicalities. A society that settles its quarrels in courtrooms must sit through the arguments, the opinions, and the appeals.

In 1992, Honolulu voters amended their charter so that no council member could serve more than two consecutive four-year terms. The intent isn’t hard to read. Voters did not want anyone holding a seat for more than eight years in a row. They certainly did not want someone serving 12 years in a row.

Waters’ attorneys reply that he has not yet served two four-year terms. “It is undisputed factually that Mr. Waters has not yet been elected to serve two ‘four-year terms,’” they wrote last month, “as he has served one four-year term and one partial term that lasted three years, seven months, and twenty-five days.” The term was short, of course, because of the lawsuit Waters filed over the 2018 count.

The arithmetic is sound, and it proves nothing. A man who eats 11 and a half of a dozen donuts has not, strictly speaking, eaten a dozen.

Everyone in Honolulu knows what the voters meant, and Waters knows it best of all, because these voters are the people he has spent nearly eight years serving.

In the court of common sense, Waters would be laughed out. But in the court of law, he is owed an appeal. This is the tedium we accept in exchange for peace — better than Rome, certainly, but a citizen may be forgiven for checking his watch.

Of course, we do the same. When the technicality favors us, we praise the letter of the law and call it our right. When it favors the other fellow, we discover the spirit of the law and call him a scoundrel.

Both Ozawa and Waters are lawyers, and they know the difference between the letter and the spirit. Lofty notions tend to sink when a job is on the line.

An elected official ought to fight for the people to the full extent of the law; that is the job. There is a difference, though, between fighting for the people within the law and fighting the people with it.

Waters has spent nearly eight years styling himself a servant of the public — the empty homes tax, relief on vehicle weight taxes — and there is no reason to doubt he means it. The temptation to squeeze the last drop from a legal text is not a mark of unusual wickedness. It is what nearly anyone would feel when a career seems to hinge on a legal opinion.

Waters claims that the voters of District 4 should have a chance to decide. He’s right, and they will. But the voters in his district are not the only ones who matter. As chair of the Honolulu City Council, Waters has a duty to uphold the city charter.

We call our elected officials public servants for a reason. Councilmembers serve the people, and Honolulu’s voters gave their instruction in 1992. They said that our servants on the council should not serve for more than eight years in a row, and a servant of the people honors the people’s word by putting his own interest beneath it — which means stepping aside.

Quintus’s ultimate piece of advice to his brother was to give people hope.

Waters can spend the coming months giving Honolulu litigation instead, or he can give the people something rarer than a successful appeal: a politician who honors their will.

For the latest news of Hawai‘i, sign up 

55384730060 7356afa03d k 16x9

<title>Tommy Waters term limits ruling: Why the Council Chair should step aside</title>

A judge ruled Monday that Tommy Waters has already served his two terms — while voters were filling out ballots bearing his name. ASD opinion columnist Sterling Higa on the difference between fighting for the people within the law and fighting the people with it.

Tommy Waters term limits ruling: Why the Council Chair should step aside

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta Headshot

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta

Food & Dining

 — an acai bowl shop that opened recently in Wahiawā, next to Teapresso — came naturally for business owner Keoni Ahlo. The acai bowl shop took the place of Ahlo’s former gelato shop, called Mia Bella.

The gelato shop opened about five years ago, according to Ahlo, who says it was named after his dog, Miya, who died in 2020.

“I used ‘Mia’ (for the gelato shop) because it was Italian,” Ahlo explains. “When we changed (concepts), I said, ‘Let’s go back to the original name that we wanted, which was Miya. It’s still perpetuating her legacy, as far as our family member that was with us for 16 years.”

Ahlo decided to change his business from a gelato shop to an acai bowl cafe once the gelato machine broke down.

“We always wanted to do it (have acai), but we never felt like there was a good time to do it,” he says. “When the machine broke, it was time to re-invent. I pre-packed the gelato that was left, and we sold all that pre-packed. Then I started designing the front of the store.”

The biz is known for its build-your-own acai bowls. Miya Bowls’ acai is unique because it’s not blended, according to Ahlo.

“We’re getting a more concentrated fruit base, which to me, has more flavor,” he says. “Because we’re not blending it, it doesn’t melt as fast. The texture and mouthfeel is more enjoyable.

“Acai is a subjective thing because every shop does theirs differently,” he adds.

Customers can choose from bases like acai, Blue Majik, coconut, guava, lilikoʻi, mango, pitaya, ube and vanilla soy. The Blue Majik has quickly become a customer favorite, according to Ahlo.

“It’s pineapple and coconut,” he says. “The blue is not food coloring; it’s blue spirulina.”

Choose from small ($12.99) or large ($14.99) bowl sizes. Customers can get up to three flavors per bowl, according to Ahlo.

Fruit toppings include strawberries, bananas, pineapple and blueberries. Some toppings — like honey, granola, shredded coconut, chia seeds and peanut butter — are free. Others, like cacao nibs, toasted coconut and almond butter, have an additional charge.

Miya Bowls is open daily from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Free customer parking is available.

“I just love that everybody is so happy when they come in,” Ahlo says. “They’re so excited to get acai bowls. It’s just a fun feeling to do something for the community that they appreciate and enjoy. I’m always trying to bring stuff into 

Miya Bowls owner 072126

<title>Miya Bowls is a new acai bowl shop in Wahiawā</title>

The shop — located next to Teapresso — opened recently in the space of Mia Bella gelato shop. Miya Bowls offers build-your-own acai bowls with a variety of bases, ranging from acai and pitaya to mango, coconut, guava and lilikoʻi.

Miya Bowls is a new acai bowl shop in Wahiawā

Square Mike Brestovansky Headshot RGZ3736 Large

Michael Brestovansky

Crime & Courts

A Waialua man was convicted Monday of funneling funds to Iran in defiance of U.S. sanctions.

Between 2016 and 2022, Arash Einolghozati, 37, made dozens of online transfers, sending money and cryptocurrency to people in Iran, without a license from the U.S. Department of the Treasury authorizing him to do so.

The Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations prohibit any person in the U.S. from transporting any goods or services, including funds, to Iran or anyone within Iran. Nonetheless, according to an FBI investigation, Einolghozati conspired with several others to do exactly that.

An FBI investigator reported that Einolghozati immigrated to the U.S. from Iran and became a lawful permanent resident here around April 2016. Since his arrival, Einolghozati resided in part in Hawai‘i.

Einolghozati reportedly communicated via email with two other people — an American and a Canadian citizen — in 2017, discussing the transfer of funds to unspecified people in Iran. In that conversation, Einolghozati reportedly stated he wanted to move up to $90,000 to the country.

Then, in 2017, Einolghozati used the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase to transfer cryptocurrencies valued at about $18,000 to a user the FBI investigator believed was an Iranian citizen.

In 2020, Einolghozati then made 72 separate transactions which transferred about $108,000 in cryptocurrency to another Iranian Coinbase user.

The FBI investigator also noted several other miscellaneous Coinbase transactions Einolghozati made between 2020 and 2021 to various users, including one series of 19 payments totaling nearly $36,000 to one user, who, the investigator believed, transferred the money to different Iranian cryptocurrency exchanges.

An affidavit by the FBI investigator claimed that the FBI interviewed Einolghozati in October of 2024. During the interview, Einolghozati reportedly claimed he never knowingly sent any cryptocurrency to Iranian exchanges; he claimed his transactions were sent to repay a lost bet to one friend, to pay for another friend’s wife’s education, or to make crypto investments, not knowing the end recipients were in Iran.

However, the FBI investigator noted, these claims were contradicted by Einolghozati’s online conversations: one such conversation began with Einolghozati asking (in translated Farsi) “Can I send you dollars in some way and you give it to someone in Iran?”

Einolghozati was charged in 2024 with violating the Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations. On July 13, he pled guilty. He faces a maximum possible sentence of 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $1 million, and will be sentenced on Oct. 29.

Hawaiʻi Skies: Another one

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Hawaiʻi Skies: Another one

Authors

ASD Staff

Reporter

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