SUMMARY: Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) says border security can be done in many different ways, but President Trump has “chosen the cruelest way to do it.” Hirono, the only immigrant currently serving in the Senate, talks with Lisa Desjardins about what Congress should do, her own family’s story of separation, as well as her reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the President’s travel ban.
SUMMARY: Hawaii emergency crews continue to battle lava flow and hazardous sulfur dioxide fumes, four days after the Kilauea volcano erupted on the big island. The slow-moving lava has destroyed 35 structures so far, including at least 26 homes; no fatalities have been reported. Amna Nawaz talks with Michael Garcia of the University of Hawaii.
SUMMARY: In some parts of Hawaii, where many homeowners have installed rooftop panels to capitalize on federal and state tax credits for using solar energy, the local utility company has slowed down approvals of new solar systems, saying that abundant users may threaten the safety and reliability of the power grid. As the popularity of rooftop solar spreads, many Americans could soon enter the same gridlock. NewsHour special correspondent Mike Taibbi reports.
MIKE TAIBBI (NewsHour): They’re everywhere on Oahu; on the roofs of businesses, libraries, and one house after another.
The amount of rooftop solar now accounts for 12 percent of the electric utility’s users. That’s more than 20 times the national average. It’s by far the highest penetration of individual rooftop solar in the country.
But in this tropical state, where the combination of sky-high energy prices, abundant sunshine, and federal and state tax credits makes going solar a no-brainer, the very popularity of these panels has become a problem.
MIKE TAIBBI: So we drive up and you have these lovely solar panels on your roof. How’s that workin' out for you?
CARLTON HO: It’s not!
MIKE TAIBBI: Not working out because by the time aircraft mechanic Carlton Ho joined the rooftop solar parade in September 2013, there were so many people in his area that had installed panels that the local utility company told him ‘don’t turn on that switch yet.’
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): There are moments when the power of nature and the elements and the destruction they can cause simply capture everyone’s attention and make you wonder about your place in the universe.
This week, the lava flow on Hawaii’s Big Island that’s forced people to abandon homes and a sunspot the size of planet Jupiter are providing such a moment.
Hari Sreenivasan has a look at the scientific phenomena behind all this.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): The National Guard itself began trying to help Hawaiians today. The lava that began flowing this summer from the volcano on Mount Kilauea is endangering a small community of about 950 residents.
It may be moving slowly, at speeds of just five to 10 miles an hour, but there’s been no way to stop it. And now it’s started to burn homeowners’ property there.
At the same time, a whole different set of fiery images from space may also be in your daily news feed. It’s the largest sunspot in more than two decades. Federal officials have warned frequently about the possibility that solar flares could potentially disrupt navigation systems and radio frequencies.
Science correspondent Miles O’Brien is with us again tonight.
So, Miles, let’s start with this planet first.
When we think of lava, we think of huge explosions and volcanoes like Mount Saint Helens or other places, but that’s not what we’re talking about here.
MILES O’BRIEN (NewsHour): No. No.
With Mount Saint Helens, the more recent volcano eruption in Japan, what we had was called a pyroclastic flow. And that’s like a — think of it as a steam-heated hurricane. It can travel at — in excess of 100 miles per hour, carry boulders with it, and can catch people off guard, as we saw most recently in Japan.
This is the other side of the equation for volcanoes, these oozy lava volcanoes that you see in Hawaii which have been erupting sort of in sort of slow motion. And they move and the fissures crack and lava appears in different places. And what we’re seeing here now is, of course, as the lava changes its pattern, the patterns of human settlement have changed as well.
There are more people living there. And that’s where the collision is right here.
SUMMARY: We report from Hawaii, where a battle has erupted in Kauai between residents concerned about public health and large companies developing genetically modified seeds.
MEGAN THOMPSON: The Hawaiian island of Kauai is known as the garden isle, luring hundreds of thousands of tourists to its lush northern shores. But fewer make it down to the drier southwest side, home to many native Hawaiians, who’ve lived here for generations…and where farming has always been a way of life.
Today these fields are home to large biotech companies developing Hawaii’s biggest agricultural product: seeds. Genetically modified (GMO) seeds, mostly corn, to be shipped back and grown on the mainland.
SUMMARY: Since the state of Hawaii was admitted to the union in 1959, Daniel Inouye represented its constituents. A senator for nearly 50 years, Inouye died at the age of 88. Jeffrey Brown reports on the life and legacy of statesman, remembered as a life-long civil servant, World War II hero and consensus builder in Congress.
JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): The late Senator Daniel Inouye was remembered today for his heroism in war, soft-spoken dignity in office and decades of service. The Hawaii Democrat died Monday.
Jeffrey Brown has this look back at his life.
JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): Daniel Inouye's desk in the U.S. Senate chamber sat empty today, save for a bouquet of white roses and black shroud. And in his office, colleagues, friends and admirers filled a book of condolences.
Nearing his 50th year in the Upper Chamber, Inouye had represented the state of Hawaii in Congress from the moment it was admitted to the union in 1959.
SEN. HARRY REID, D-Nev.: Our friend, Dan Inouye, just died.
JEFFREY BROWN: His passing was announced last night to a stunned Senate chamber by Majority Leader Harry Reid.
HARRY REID: His service in the Senate will be with the greats of this body.
SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL, R-Ky.: An iconic political figure of his beloved Hawaii and the only original member of a congressional delegation still serving in Congress.
On Dec. 7, 1941, when Japanese planes attacked Pearl Harbor, I was working as a reporter for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. After a week of war, I wrote a story directed at Hawaii’s women; I thought it would be useful for them to know what I had seen. It might help prepare them for what lay ahead. But my editors thought the graphic content would be too upsetting for readers and decided not to run my article. It appears here for the first time.
For seven ghastly, confused days, we have been at war. To the women of Hawaii, it has meant a total disruption of home life, a sudden acclimation to blackout nights, terrifying rumors, fear of the unknown as planes drone overhead and lorries shriek through the streets.
The seven days may stretch to seven years, and the women of Hawaii will have to accept a new routine of living. It is time, now, after the initial confusion and terror have subsided, to sum up the events of the past week, to make plans for the future.
It would be well, perhaps, to review the events of the past seven days and not minimize the horror, to better prepare for what may come again.
I have a story to tell, as a reporter, that I think the women of Hawaii should hear. I tell it because I think it may help other women in the struggle, so they will not take the past events lightly.
I reported for work immediately on Sunday morning when the first news — Oahu is being attacked — crackled over the radio, sandwiched in a church program.
Like the rest of Hawaii, I refused to believe it. All along the sunny road to town were people just coming out of church, dogs lazy in the driveways, mynas in noisy convention.
Then, from the neighborhood called Punchbowl, I saw a formation of black planes diving straight into the ocean off Pearl Harbor. The blue sky was punctured with anti-aircraft smoke puffs. Suddenly, there was a sharp whistling sound, almost over my shoulder, and below, down on School Street. I saw a rooftop fly into the air like a pasteboard movie set.
For the first time, I felt that numb terror that all of London has known for months. It is the terror of not being able to do anything but fall on your stomach and hope the bomb won’t land on you. It’s the helplessness and terror of sudden visions of a ripping sensation in your back, shrapnel coursing through your chest, total blackness, maybe death.
The vision of death became reality when I was assigned to cover the emergency room of the hospital.
The first victims of the Japanese-American war were brought there on that bright Sunday morning.
Bombs were still dropping over the city as ambulances screamed off into the heart of the destruction. The drivers were blood-sodden when they returned, with stories of streets ripped up, houses burned, twisted shrapnel and charred bodies of children.
In the morgue, the bodies were laid on slabs in the grotesque positions in which they had died. Fear contorted their faces. Their clothes were blue-black from incendiary bombs. One little girl in a red sweater, barefoot, still clutched a piece of jump-rope in her hand.
Firefighters from the Hickam Air Force Base carried the victims in. The men had a red T marked on their foreheads, mute testimony of the efficiency of first-aiders in giving tetanus shots to ward off lockjaw. The body of a man with a monogrammed shirt, H.A.D., was marked DOA (dead on arrival), trundled off to make room for victims who were still breathing.
There was blood and the fear of death — and death itself — in the emergency room as doctors calmly continued to treat the victims of this new war. Interns were taping up windows to prevent them from crashing into the emergency area as bombs fell and the dead and wounded continued to arrive. I had never known that blood could be so bright red.
Returning to the city, I felt a mounting sense of fear as Honolulu began to realize that more was in the air than an Army alert.
I went to a bombed store on King Street, where I often, in times past, stopped for a Coke at the cool drug counter.
Seven little stores, including my drugstore, had nearly completely burned down. Charred, ripply walls, as high as the first story, alone remained to give any hint of where the store had been. At the smashed soda fountain was a half-eaten chocolate sundae. Scorched bonbons were scattered on the sidewalk. There were odd pieces lying in the wreckage, half-burned Christmas cards, on one, the words “Hark the Herald” still visible. There were twisted bedsprings, half-burned mattresses, cans of food, a child’s blackened bicycle, a lunch box, a green raveled sweater, a Bang-Up comic book, ripped awnings.
I ran out of notepaper and reached down and picked up a charred batch of writing paper, still wet from a fire hose. There was, too, the irony of Christmas tinsel, cellophane, decorations. A burned doll, with moving eyes, singed curls and straw bonnet, like a miniature corpse, lay in the wreckage.
That Sunday after dusk there was the all-night horror of attack in the dark. Sirens shrieking, sharp, crackling police reports and the tension of a city wrapped in fear.
Then, in the nightmare of Monday and Tuesday, there was the struggle to keep normal when planes zoomed overhead and guns cracked out at an unseen enemy. There was blackout and suspicion riding the back of wild rumors:Parachutists in the hills! Poison in your food! Starvation and death were all that was left in a tourist bureau paradise.
I talked with evacuees. From Hickam, a nurse who had dropped to the floor in the hospital kitchen as machine gun bullets dotted a neat row of holes directly above her; from Schofield, a woman who wanted me to send word to her sweetheart “somewhere in Honolulu” that she was still alive; from Pearl Harbor, a nurse who wanted scraps of paper and pencil stubs to give to the boys in the hospital who had last messages they wanted sent home; a little girl named Theda who had a big doll named Nancy and who told me in a quiet voice that “Daddy was killed at Hickam.”
At the of?ce there were frantic calls from all sorts of women — housewives, stenographers, debutantes — wanting to know what they could do during the day, when husbands and brothers were away and there was nothing left but to listen to the radio and imagine that all hell had broken out on another part of the island.
It was then that I realized how important women can be in a war-torn world.
There is a job for every woman in Hawaii to do.
I discovered that when I visited the Red Cross centers, canteens, evacuee districts, the motor corps headquarters.
There is great organization in Honolulu, mapped out thoughtfully and competently by women who have had experience in World War I, who have looked ahead and foreseen the carnage of the past seven days and planned.
California researchers have discovered that there may be a silver lining to an invasive and toxic seaweed that is killing some of Hawaii's coral reefs: It seems the seaweed contains compounds that could treat human diseases.
"I think this finding is a nice illustration of how we need to look more deeply in our environment, because even nuisance pests, as it turns out, are not just pests," said William Gerwick, a researcher at UC San Diego and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. "It's a long road to go from this early-stage discovery to application in the clinic, but it's the only road if we want new and more efficacious medicines."
The study appears in today's issue of the journal Chemistry & Biology.
The seaweed, a tiny photosynthetic organism known as a cyanobacterium, was identified in 2008 on coral reefs near the Pu’uhonua o Honaunau National Historical Park, off Hawaii’s Kona coast.
Researchers say it is native to Hawaii and generally inconspicuous. Indeed, they think a little of it is always around Kona's reefs.
It was first noticed during a routine survey of the coral, said Jennifer Smith, a co-author of the study and researcher at Scripps. “It was clearly smothering the corals at one of the most popular dive sites in Hawaii.”
Research on marine cyanobacteria shows that climate change can accelerate the organism's growth. It thrives in environmentally stressful conditions, such as UV exposure, high solar radiation and temperatures, and scarce or overly rich nutrients.
And on the reefs of Kona, the cyanobacteria was thriving. According to the researchers, the bloom was growing and suffocating the coral below.
Lena Gerwick, another co-author, said she and her team were unsure of the exact reason for the recent blooms, but they suspect runoff from nearby coffee plantations could be a factor.
In any case, the scientists took some of it home to find out more about it in their lab.
Lena Gerwick said the fact that it was overtaking the coral indicated that it had ecological advantages over the coral. And there were two theories put forward. The first was that the cyanobacteria was killing a beneficial film of bacteria that usually covers the coral and protects it from disease and pathogens. The second theory was that cyanobacteria was inhibiting the coral's immune system, making it susceptible to attack.
When they got into their La Jolla lab, they found the cyanobacteria generates compounds known as honaucins, which have both the bacteria-killing and anti-inflammation properties they had predicted.
Lena Gerwick said the researchers have now shown that the cyanobacteria can be used as an effective topical anti-inflammatory ointment for mice. And they hope that the combined activity – anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties – can be used to fight diseases such as cystic fibrosis.
"It's a long shot, but that's just the kind of thing we work for," she said.
