WorkForce Job Fair set for Wednesday

More than 130 employers will be looking to hire workers Wednesday at the WorkForce Job Fair at Neal Blaisdell Center. The event will be held from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Admission is $3 general and $1 for students with school ID, seniors 55 and older and military with ID. There will be 20-minute briefings from featured companies throughout the day.

Hawaiian Airlines, Maui Divers Jewelry, Bank of Hawaii and Big City Diner will be among those companies looking to fill vacancies. Free professional head shots will be provided for job seekers that can be used on their LinkedIn profile pages.

To preregister for the job fair, go to www.success-hi.com.

Panda Restaurant leaders donate $100K

Panda Restaurant Group has given $108,786 to the Kapiolani Children’s Miracle Network in support of Kapiolani Medical Center for Women & Children, Hawaii’s only Children’s Miracle Network Hospital. The donation was given at the end of Panda’s biennial Leaders Conference, which this year was held at Hilton Hawaiian Village. All the donation will stay in Hawaii to support critically ill children.

The gifts were raised via personal outreach to each conference attendee as Kapiolani patient families and staff manned the popular Panda Cares giving booth, offering limited-edition Panda gifts and an exclusive signature kukui nut lei. Every other year, Panda Restaurant Group assembles more than 1,500 managers from around the nation at its Leaders Conference.

State seeks marketers for China, Taiwan

The Hawaii Tourism Authority has issued two Requests for Proposals (RFP) for tourism destination marketing management services in China and Taiwan. The HTA will consider applicant qualifications, experience, sales and marketing approach and price.

The new contracts under the RFPs will replace the current contract that ends on Dec. 31. The HTA plans to award the new contracts in August 2013, which will run for two years from Jan. 1, 2014 through Dec. 31, 2015, followed by as many as three one-year contract renewal options that may be exercised at HTA’s sole discretion.

Written submittals are due no later than June 19 at 4:30 p.m. Hawaii time. The RFPs are available at the HTA office at the Hawai‘i Convention Center, first level at 1801 Kalakaua Ave., or online at www.hawaiitourismauthority.org. For more information, call Doug Murdock at 973-2255 or e-mail him at doug@gohta.net.

GM data center forecast to shrink recalls

WARREN, MICH. » General Motors Co. says a new supercomputing data center and a fledgling shift to bring software development in-house should help it limit the size of future safety recalls.

The Detroit automaker, which formally opened the giant data storage center in suburban Warren, Mich., on Monday, said the changes are examples of how it is moving faster to cut costs and serve its customers better by bringing more computer technology inside the company. In the past, GM’s regional operations tracked problems by themselves, sometimes without communicating with other regions, even though many of its cars are sold worldwide. Engineers in one region would check a problem part, but it wasn’t studied worldwide, at least not at the early stages.

Now, with new software developed by GM’s so-called innovation centers, problems are spotted quickly when they crop up across the globe, and they’re assigned to the right engineer who can work with parts makers to fix the problem faster, GM Chief Information Officer Randy Mott said.

Bloomberg leaks clients’ private messages

LOS ANGELES » Financial data and news service Bloomberg LP moved to repair damage to its reputation Monday as a published report said that more than 10,000 of its clients’ private messages containing sensitive pricing data had been leaked online.

The report came the same day Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief Matthew Winkler apologized for the news service’s practice of allowing its journalists to access data about how clients used the company’s financial data services.

Reporters have had access to the data, Winkler said, since the 1990s, but it was revoked last month after investment bank Goldman Sachs complained.

Bloomberg’s data services provide financial-market information and news, an instant messaging program and trading platforms to users. The services are widely used in the financial industry and beyond. The news organization was founded by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 1981.

Starbucks in Myanmar?

BANGKOK >> Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said Monday the coffee chain’s first stores in India and Vietnam have been received positively and that it might be time to give Myanmar a shot “in the next couple of years.” Starbucks opened its first Vietnamese store in February and its first store in India last year.

ON THE MOVE

Hawaii radio personality Rick Thomas has been appointed program director of stations in Los Angeles, the No. 2 radio market in the U.S., according to an internal station announcement.

Honolulu is the 64th-largest radio market in the U.S., while Los Angeles is second only to New York City.

Thomas, currently Ohana Broadcast Co. director of programming and “Quiet Storm” evening show host on KUMU-FM 94.7, will begin a new job June 17 as program director for radio station KRTH-FM 101.1 or “K-Earth” and sister-station KTWV-FM 94.7 “The Wave” in Los Angeles.

Thomas, who goes by “Rico” on the air, also has worked in San Francisco, Sacramento and San Diego.

Aston Hotels and Resorts has hired Joy Uchida as its property controller. She was previously a corporate director of financial systems at Outrigger Hotels Hawaii.