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IF in fact one could actually die of a broken heart (figuratively speaking), I don’t think I would have made it past the Summer of 1990 — teenage sweetheart problems at the end of my Junior and beginning of my Senior years in high school.  Of course, my heart was much stronger then, younger and wit…

IT is three o’clock in the morning in Honolulu as I sit at the computer drinking coffee and reading the news of the world on my laptop.  I have crossed five time zones to get here, so my body thinks it is mid-morning.  I am destined for the Solomon Islands where I will participate in an ambitious e…

TWENTY-FIVE years ago, the newly sworn in administration was struggling to pay the government’s gargantuan obligations amid a severe economic downturn. The administration said it had to cut costs, starting with the government’s single largest expenditure: personnel. A government-wide personnel audi…

NOT so long ago, the South China Sea situation seemed to be “quiet.” There were also many other hot spots in the world, so the public paid little attention to the South China Sea. The Russia-Ukraine conflict has a profound impact on Southeast Asian countries, especially those directly involved in t…

THIS harrowing account comes from the memoir of Captain Kenneth Ainslie, who was tasked with towing four old ships across the Pacific in 1947.  With no surgeon aboard his small ocean tugboat, he had to take matters into his own hands. “Two days earlier one of the firemen had come to me with an inju…

TWENTY-FIVE years ago, the CNMI was struggling to make sense of the sudden economic downturn caused by the Asian currency crisis. The financial contagion was global in scope and had weakened the CNMI’s two major tourism markets, Japan and South Korea. There was also a newly elected CNMI administrat…