Hawaii

When: Saturday, 10:30 p.m. Where: Aloha Stadium, Honolulu. TV: ESPNU.

HONOLULU — Hawaii's athletic department is scrapping a plan to drop the word "Rainbow" from its men's teams' nicknames. The university announced Tuesday it is changing its football, baseball and other men's team nicknames to the Rainbow Warriors — a name previously used by the football team but dropped in 2000. The changes take effect July 1. All Hawaii's women's teams will continue to be known as the Rainbow Wahine. "Wahine" means "woman" in Hawaiian. The change...

HONOLULU -- Continental Airlines has announced it will expand its Hawaii service, beginning in March. The carrier's new service between Honolulu International Airport and John Wayne Airport in Orange County, Calif., will initially operate four times a week. Continental is also adding a new daily flight from Maui's Kahului Airport to Los Angeles International Airport. Meanwhile, the airline says it will also offer a second daily flight between Honolulu and Los Angeles.

It's a bright Sunday morning and Gloria Borland is rushing her 10-year-old to hula class at Halau O 'Aulani, a Hawaiian cultural school in Arlington . Musicians in Tiki shirts and Tevas set up their steel guitars, and students with plastic frangipani flowers in their hair pull on yellow cotton skirts. Borland's daughter skips over to join a circle of dancers as her mother collapses into a chair, her arms filled with notes on President Obama's formative years in Hawaii and several biographies stuffed with crinkled Post-it notes...

PALM BEACH, Fla., Oct. 20 -- Sen. Barack Obama will leave the campaign trail for two days later this week, heading for Hawaii to visit his gravely ill grandmother. Obama communications director Robert Gibbs told reporters Monday that Obama is canceling campaign events in Iowa and Wisconsin. He will leave for Hawaii on Thursday afternoon after an event in Indianapolis, then return to the campaign Saturday. Madelyn Dunham "has always been one of the most important people in [Obama's]

HONOLULU — President Obama came to a veterans cemetery here on Sunday to honor the late Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, less as the nation's top politician and more as a native son of Hawaii paying tribute to his roots. The president had already formally memorialized Inouye (D-Hawaii), who died last week at age 88 after 50 years in the Senate, on Friday at the National Cathedral in Washington. But on Sunday, sitting between first lady Michelle Obama and Inouye's wife, Irene, Obama did not speak.

Saturday was a tense day in and around the Pacific Ocean. There was a wave on the loose. It was reputed to travel at the speed of a jet airplane. Beyond that, this tsunami was a mystery. No one knew precisely how big it would be when it came ashore. So went a very long day, full of anxious waiting and much staring at a sea that did little to signal its intentions. The sirens sounded at dawn in Hawaii, where more than 144,000 were told to head to higher ground. Tsunami warnings were posted from Panama to...

Democrat Barack Obama swept through Virginia yesterday trying to overturn nearly half a century of presidential history, continuing a march through red-state America before taking an unprecedented break from the campaign trail to visit the ailing grandmother who helped raise him. With an ear-splitting rally in the Richmond coliseum and a late-afternoon speech at a chilly park in Leesburg, Obama promised to deliver the Commonwealth in the Democratic...

Who: Gabriele Sarais, 30; his wife, Laura D'Andrea, 32; and their 14-month-old son, Francesco, natives of Italy now living in London Where: Hawaii, specifically the Big Island Why: To experience an island that offers both mountains and beaches When: Late April, early May for about nine nights Budget: $4,000, excluding international flight "We are after an exotic destination in a place that is not too wild...

HONOLULU -- China's Hainan Airlines has received approval to begin service from Beijing to Hawaii. The U.S. Department of Transportation approved the flights, which initially will be once-a-week. The trips probably will not begin until early next year. The airline, which is privately owned, already flies four times a week from China to Seattle. State tourism officials are lauding the approval. They hope the flights will bring more visitors to Hawaii, where tourism has fallen sharply in the last year...

HONOLULU — A plan by California and Canadian universities to build the world's largest telescope at the summit of Hawaii's Mauna Kea volcano won approval from the state Board of Land and Natural Resources on Friday. The decision clears the way for the group managing the Thirty Meter Telescope project to negotiate a sublease for land with the University of Hawaii. The telescope would be able to observe planets that orbit stars other than the sun and enable astronomers to watch new planets and stars...

Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie (D) selected Lt. Gov. Brian Schatz on Wednesday to fill the vacancy created by the death last week of veteran U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D). With the "fiscal cliff" five days away and critical decisions facing the Senate, the White House said Schatz would fly to Washington on Wednesday evening with President Obama. Schatz said he would be in place to be sworn in Thursday. Abercrombie chose Schatz, 40, a former state Democratic Party chairman and state lawmaker,...

HONOLULU — President Obama came to a veterans cemetery here on Sunday to honor the late Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, less as the nation's top politician and more as a native son of Hawaii paying tribute to his roots. The president had already formally memorialized Inouye (D-Hawaii), who died last week at age 88 after 50 years in the Senate, on Friday at the National Cathedral in Washington. But on Sunday, sitting between first lady Michelle Obama and Inouye's wife, Irene, Obama did not speak.

Sen. Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii, a highly decorated World War II combat veteran who used his status as one of the most powerful Democrats in Washington and the second-longest-serving senator in history to send billions of dollars to his home islands, died Monday at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda. He was 88. Peter Boyland, a spokesman for the senator, said the cause was respiratory complications. Since 2010, Sen. Inouye had been the Senate's president pro tempore, which put...

Congress will become a shade more religiously diverse this January, after Tuesday's (Nov. 6) election of the first Hindu representative and first Buddhist senator. Tulsi Gabbard , a Democrat from Hawaii, will become the first Hindu-American congresswoman, after defeating her Republican rival on Tuesday. Ami Bera, a California doctor who was raised Hindu but now identifies as a Unitarian Universalist, according to the Hindu American Foundation, narrowly leads the race for California's 7th congressional...

Here is a summary of the election results in Hawaii: (View full map) President Hawaii, the Pacific Island state where Barack Obama was born gave him its four electoral votes. Few if any political forecasters believed that there was much possibility of any other outcome. In 2008 the Obama-Biden ticket amassed 72 percent of Hawaii's votes. Senate Almost as soon as the polls closed, the Associated Press announced Democrat Mazie K. Hirono as...

Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) indicated that he will resign his seat to focus full time on his run for governor in 2010, a move almost certain to set off a special election next year. "I cannot claim the governorship should be a cornerstone of our democracy and not make the campaign for it the center of all my efforts," Abercrombie said in a statement on his campaign Web site. "My choice is to devote all of my time, all my energy, and my complete commitment to working side-by-side with you -- for all Hawaii.

In the first inventory of minerals on another planet, NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has found soil that bears a striking resemblance to weathered, volcanic sand in Hawaii, scientists said last week. The rover uses an X-ray imager to reveal the atomic structures of crystals in the Martian soil, the first time the technology, known as X-ray diffraction, has been used to analyze soil beyond Earth. Curiosity found that the Martian sand grains have crystals similar to basaltic soils found in volcanic regions on Earth,...