Maui hotel workers demonstrate for worker safety, reopening
WAILUKU, Maui — Hotel workers in Maui demonstrated during the weekend, calling on state legislators and tourism industry officials to reopen Hawaii to visitors while protecting employees.
About 200 union members and supporters in 70 vehicles rode through Lahaina and Kaanapali during the event Saturday.
Participants expressed concerns about health care coverage, adequate testing for COVID-19 and the availability of personal protective equipment.
The caravan was organized by the Unite Here Local 5 hotel workers union. About 9,500 of the 12,000 hospitality, health care and food service workers represented by Local 5 are unemployed because of the tourism collapse caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Maintaining health insurance for workers is the union’s top priority, Local 5 Key Leader Erin Kelley said, describing lost coverage as dangerous for workers, their families and the community.
Pompeo to meet with top Chinese official
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is making a brief trip to Hawaii for closed-door talks with a senior Chinese official, as relations between the two nations have plummeted because of numerous disputes.
The State Department said Pompeo and his deputy, Stephen Biegun, left Tuesday for Hawaii but offered no additional detail about his plans. People familiar with the trip said Pompeo and Biegun will meet today with a Chinese delegation led by Yang Jiechi, the Chinese Communist Party’s top foreign affairs official.
The private discussions are set to take place at Hickam Air Force Base in Honolulu and will cover the wide range of issues that set the world’s two largest economies on a collision path, according to the people familiar with the trip, who were not authorized to discuss it publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Washington and Beijing are at odds over trade, China’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, human rights, the status of Hong Kong and increasing Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea.
Police: Man to be charged with murder in mother-of-2 death
MERIDEN, Conn. — A Connecticut man accused of strangling his ex-girlfriend days before she was found dead near his workplace will be charged with murder, police announced Tuesday.
Meriden police said they secured an arrest warrant for Jason Watson in connection with the killing of Perrie Mason, a 31-year-old mother of two from Meriden, Conn., whose body was found in Waterbury, Conn., last August.
Mason grew up in Kalihi, Oahu, and moved to Connecticut in 2018.
Watson, 39, is already detained on more than $2 million bail, charged with strangulation and assault in connection with an Aug. 15 attack when police say he choked Mason to unconsciousness a few days after they broke up. He pleaded not guilty to those charges.
Watson is scheduled to be arraigned on the murder charge today. He will plead not guilty to the murder charge at some point in the future, said his lawyer, Dean Popkin.
