The suspect in a Pearl City shooting Saturday is in police custody.

Thirty-three-year-old Air Force Tech Sgt. Claude Custard turned himself in to the Honolulu Police Department Saturday night, according to a police spokeswoman. He was being held Sunday morning at police headquarters on South Beretania Street.

Custard was arrested as the suspect in a 2 am shooting that sent one man to the hospital in critical condition, according to local news reports. The shooting took place outside the Princess Palace strip club in the Pearl City Business Plaza. Sergeant Kim Buffett of CrimeStoppers Honolulu told local TV stations Custard shot at two people following an argument, but only hit one.

The HPD spokeswoman said Custard faces two counts of attempted second-degree murder. Charges were pending Sunday morning.

Custard is a Tech Sergeant stationed at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, according to a base spokeswoman. The incident is outside the base's jurisdiction. She said Custard has a lawyer.

Honolulu police and CrimeStoppers are asking witnesses to come forward. The CrimeStoppers hotline is 955-8300. The HPD tip line is 225-5473.

(Aileen Humphreys / HPR News)

Maui residents and visitors have a unique chance to help the environment this week. It's part of an effort to preserve 100,000 acres of native forest.

For 20 years, the East Maui Watershed Partnership has been working to preserve the native forest it says is critical to providing clean water for the island.

This week the group that includes big government partners and land owners is inviting new partners in to help communicate its message.

Artists will be invited to hike deep into the native forest to sit, sketch and watch.

That’s the partnership’s Allison Wiest. She will lead a three-mile hike tomorrow through The Nature Conservancy’s Waikamoi Preserve.

It’s one of four hikes meant to inspire people to create art about Maui’s native species.

It’s all leading up to the partnership’s annual juried art exhibit and sale at Viewpoints Gallery.

Entries are due in November.

(Aileen Humphreys / HPR News)

MORE INFORMATION:

East Maui Watershed Partnership

As we near the end of the summer tourism season, indicators show visitor spending is strong but that there’s a nagging dip in visitor arrivals. 

The figures aren't yet in for July, but the Hawaii Tourism Authority reports visitor spending was up 13 percent in June to a billion dollars. Overall visitor arrivals were down three percent.

Carl Bonham of the University of Hawaii's Economic Research Organization says visitor spending is the most important indicator in tourism.

But he says continuing uncertainty in the U.S. economy may cause a decline in mainland visitors to persist through fall.

HTA reports West Coast arrivals were down 3.4 percent in June … after 15 months of increases. Arrivals from the East Coast were down 6.9 percent, the biggest drop since early 2010. 

Meanwhile, Japanese arrivals continue to be affected by the earthquake and tsunami disasters and Bonham says the numbers may never fully recover. Arrivals in June were down 16 percent from a year earlier.

An indicator to watch as the summer continues is visitors from Canada. In June, those arrivals were up … nearly 20 percent from a year earlier.

Bonham calls Canadians the “energizer bunny” of visitors.

(Aileen Humphreys / HPR News)

A Honolulu company is helping with the continuing cleanup from the nuclear disaster that struck northern Japan.

CBI Polymers has produced a gel that cleans contaminated vehicles and says it will be used by the Japanese military.

The blue gel is sprayed or painted onto a surface and absorbs contaminated particles. It can then be peeled off and thrown away.

Company CEO Galen Ho told HPR’s Bytemarks Café that working with a country facing nuclear cleanup is not just about selling a product.

“DeconGel” was tested this weekend to clean up a kindergarten playground in Fukushima. A public health professor monitoring the results told the AP a trial run showed the gel was 90 percent effective.

(Aileen Humphreys / HPR News)

This fall, Hawaii will gain a science museum that’s also a technology exposition … and a local job fair.

It’s called “SEE-IT” – or Science and Engineering Exposition and Innovative Technologies – and it opens at the Hawaii Convention Center in November,  in time for APEC.

The exhibit’s three founding members – an academic, a former defense executive and a tech entrepreneur – say they want Hawaii students to pursue careers in science and technology, then stay put.

That’s Peter Crouch, dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. His co-founders are Galen Ho, a former executive at BAE Systems, and Henk Rogers of Blue Planet Foundation. 

The exhibit will be at the Convention Center for 18 months, then move to a permanent location. It will feature 18 Hawaii-based companies, from Williams Aerospace  – with a full-scale UAV – unmanned aerial vehicle – to Avatar Reality – exhibiting a “virtual world” entertainment system.

For more, visit the exhibit Web site at see-it-hawaii.org

Scientists have discovered one of the oldest objects in the universe.

It’s what they call a black hole. They found it using two telescopes on Mauna Kea.

The light detected in Hawaii left the black hole 13 billion years ago, says Gemini Observatory scientist Paul Hirst.

He says the discovery provides information about the early universe, even back to its creation, the so-called “big bang.”

Hirst says the discovery was a team effort. First, a British telescope on Mauna Kea detected something promising. The data was then passed along to a team using the Gemini North telescope, its neighbor on Mauna Kea.

Getting just two hours of “telescope time” on Gemini North to confirm the discovery was an undertaking. Hirst says “telescope time” is competitive and scientists must write a proposal about why they should be allotted time.

When the team got its two hours – one night several months ago – the significance of the data coming in was immediately apparent to astronomers on night watch at the telescope.

The discovery by 17 black hole researchers was published Thursday in the science journal Nature.

(Aileen Humphreys / HPR News)