Jet Fuel at $4.43 and a Cannery Hiring in Pago Pago

Last quarter, Alaska Air Group reported a net loss of $76 million against a profit of $172 million a year earlier. The group paid $4.43 a gallon for jet fuel between April and June, an 85% increase on 2025. That increase added about $600 million in costs. Airlines paid the higher price after war in Iran and closures of the Strait of Hormuz constrained fuel supplies. Revenue rose 10% to $4.07 billion. Chief executive Ben Minicucci said the group returned to profit in June.

Rainstorms in Hawaiʻi in March depressed spring-break trips and took about 3 points off the group's unit revenue for the quarter. The company expects a Hawaiʻi drag of 2 to 3 points on unit revenue in the third quarter. Alaska retired the HA code of Hawaiian Airlines in April 2026. The 2 carriers switched to a shared passenger service system for reservations and customer service. Alaska planners also retuned the network toward Seattle. Nearly all of the group's third-quarter capacity growth comes from long-haul international flying out of that city.

Hawaiian Electric Industries saw its net income rise to $123 million in the second quarter of 2026 from $26 million a year earlier. The figure includes a non-cash gain from remeasuring the Maui wildfire settlement liability. Core net income fell to $22 million from $35 million. The company listed higher fuel prices among the costs of the quarter and expects a penalty of about $3.7 million under its Fuel Cost Risk Sharing mechanism. Its utility is pursuing a $170 million rate increase. The utility filed an update to its grid plan in June and named affordability among its aims.

There was a 15.2% rise in Matson's China container volume in the second quarter of 2026. Matson measured it against a 2025 quarter hit by the tariffs imposed that April. The carrier said the US-China trade and economic deal of October 30, 2025 reduced uncertainty over tariffs and port entry fees. Matson's net income rose to $129.4 million from $94.7 million on revenue of $969.4 million. Higher fuel-related costs raised its vessel expenses over the quarter.

In the island trades, Hawaiʻi container volume dropped 1.1% in the second quarter. First-quarter volume in the state had fallen 5.6%. The company cited higher energy-related inflation in the state and expects full-year Hawaiʻi volume to approach the 2025 level. Containers from Micronesia, the South Pacific islands and Okinawa fell 11.4%. Guam volume rose 4.4%. Matson expects the economy of Guam to remain stable in the near term.

The Guam Visitors Bureau counted 44,256 arrivals in July, a fall of 37% on July 2025. April arrivals had dropped 28% to 36,818. Régine Biscoe Lee, the bureau's president, tied the Korean losses to affordability and higher airfares. Travelers from Japan faced higher costs and disruption after Typhoon Sinlaku. Fiscal year-to-date arrivals totaled about 628,000, a 2% drop on the prior year. The Northern Mariana Islands recorded 3,277 arrivals in April against 11,880 a year earlier. A mid-April typhoon had halted international night flights at the Saipan airport.

To Korea the bureau gave its largest marketing budget, $4,166,120 for the fiscal year to April 30. The Korean figure is 49% higher than a year earlier. Total marketing expenses for the period came to $7,589,301 against $6,071,731. Revenue from sources including the Airline Incentive Fund rose 65%. From September 1 to December 31, passengers using Starlink Wi-Fi on 89 Korean Air aircraft see a 30-second Guam video. The bureau expects about 1.6 million travelers to watch the pitch.

The 2020 Census counted 10,500 people identifying as Chuukese alone across the United States, a 296.2% increase on 2010. The Census Bureau called it the fastest growth among the 31 detailed Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander groups. Samoans formed the second-largest group. The census counted 256,997 people identifying as Samoan alone or in combination. The Census Bureau reported Chamorro losses in its 2 counts, 19.9% for Chamorro alone and 2.6% for Chamorro alone or in combination. The Chamorro alone count came to 70,704.

In American Sāmoa the 2020 census counted 49,710 residents. Among speakers of a language other than English, 90.9% spoke Samoan and 45.4% spoke English very well. Half of the territory's homes reported an income below $28,352 for 2019. More than two-fifths of residents were born outside the territory. Most came from independent Samoa. Census data put 54.6% of the people assessed below the poverty level on their 2019 income.

The StarKist cannery at Pago Pago opened its 2026 season with a target of 450 metric tons of tuna a day, a 10-ton increase on 2025. The company expected a workforce of about 1,700 to grow to 2,000 within a week, most of them from neighboring Samoa. StarKist completed the purchase of the Samoa Tuna Processors plant at Atuʻu on January 27, 2026 and plans a pet food line there. Cannery president Injoo Ha met the prime minister of Samoa to recruit at least 300 more workers.

In 2008, Google added Filipino and Indonesian to its Translate service. When it added Malay in August 2009, the company warned that output in its newest languages remained rough. Google engineers put CHamorro, Chuukese and Marshallese into the service in June 2024, among 110 languages built with the PaLM 2 model. The company says it gives priority to the variety of a language most commonly used online. Huri Translations sets a Samoan version of a Social Security direct-deposit notice from Google Translate beside its own engine's draft and a version signed off by a Samoan linguist.

Huri translators put a customer brochure and its covering letter into CHamorro for a corporate client in Hagåtña. The reviewer struck a phrase about the client's website added by the translator. The word for hardship appeared in 2 forms, one in the letter and another in the brochure. The term for the client's support services also changed between the 2 documents. A customer comparing the letter with the brochure would find 2 names for the program. The reviewer aligned the brochure terms with the letter.

The narrator in the video at the top of this page speaks Samoan through our Text-To-Speech AiVoice models built by Huri Translations. Our company also built other Pacific Island language voices, including Hawaiian, Tahitian, Rapa Nui, Rarotongan, Tongan, Fijian, Marshallese, Palauan, Chuukese, CHamorro and Carolinian.