Alaska Air launches San Diego-Lihue flights

Alaska Airlines flights between San Diego and Lihue started Friday and will operate daily through Aug. 26.

Service will drop to four times a week after Aug. 26, according to a statement from the airline.

One flight will leave San Diego at 10 a.m. and arrive on Kauai at 1:10 p.m.; another will leave Kauai at 11:10 a.m. and arrive in San Diego at 7:30 p.m.

When the four-flights-per-week schedule begins, flights will leave San Diego on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays and will leave Kauai on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays.

Maui pair among 100 auto skills finalists

Mitchell Borge and Lawrence Paet of Maui High School will be at Ford World Headquarters in Dearborn, Mich., on Tuesday to compete in the 2013 Ford/AAA Student Auto Skills National Finals.

Borge and Paet, students of instructor Shannon Rowe, will compete for a share of $11 million in scholarships and prizes; the first-place student auto skills title; and the chance to "job shadow" Wood Bros. Racing’s 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion team and 2011 Daytona 500 winner Trevor Bayne leading up to and during the Coke Zero 400 in Daytona Beach, Fla., in July.

The pair, named Hawaii state champions in April, will again be challenged to perfectly repair a "bugged" vehicle in the fastest time, as well as to turn in the best score on a written test. They are among 100 students competing at the national level from states across America.

Maui High students have been to the nationals at least 17 times, have placed in the top-10 for the past decade and won national titles in 1995 and 2000.

Walmart plans $15B in stock buybacks

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. » Walmart’s biggest news at its annual meeting Friday was that the world’s largest retailer will repurchase up to $15 billion of its shares at a time when the behemoth faces increased scrutiny from investors about its business overseas.

The buyback replaces the current $15 billion share repurchase program that Walmart began in 2011. About $712 million is left under that program, according to the company.

The program comes as Walmart encounters concerns over how it handled bribery allegations that surfaced last year at its Mexican unit. The company also is being pressured to increase its oversight of factories abroad following a building collapse in April in Bangladesh that killed more than 1,100 garment workers. Walmart wasn’t using any of the factories in the building at the time of the collapse, but it is the second-largest retail buyer of clothing in Bangladesh.

Toyota targets younger buyers with Corolla

DETROIT » Toyota is giving the Corolla a sportier look and more gadgets, an acknowledgement by the world’s biggest automaker that the under-50 crowd wants more than just reliability in a compact car.

The world’s largest automaker rolled out the 2014 version of America’s top-selling compact Thursday night at a splashy event in Santa Monica, Calif., hoping to shed the old version’s no-frills image and attract new, younger buyers.

The 2014 model, which goes on sale in September, is longer and sits lower, with an athletic look that’s much closer to a sports car than the econobox it replaces. It also gets a new transmission, suspension and interior that Toyota says will make the car quieter and more luxurious, with better handling than the current version. It’s the 11th generation of a car that Toyota has been selling worldwide since 1966.

Consumer borrowing rose $11.1B in April

WASHINGTON » Americans borrowed more in April to attend college and buy cars and spent a little more with their credit cards than in the previous month.

The Federal Reserve said Friday that consumer borrowing rose $11.1 billion in April from March to a seasonally adjusted $2.82 trillion. That’s the 20th straight monthly gain and another record level.

Nearly all of the gain came from a category that includes auto and student loans, which increased $10.4 billion to $1.97 trillion.

TiVo settles lawsuits over DVR technology

NEW YORK » TiVo settled patent disputes with Cisco, Motorola Mobility and Time Warner Cable, averting a trial that was to begin next week and bringing to a close a string of long-running legal squabbles over its pioneering digital video recorder technology.

The terms fell well short of what most TiVo investors expected, however, and shares of TiVo plunged 19 percent Friday. Under the agreement TiVo will get a lump-sum payment of $490 million from Google Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc. Cisco will be responsible for $294 million of that, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

Chinese taste for baccarat drives boom

In the nearly three dozen casinos in Macau, the world’s biggest gambling market, there’s only one game that matters: baccarat.

Almost all of Macau’s $38 billion in gambling revenue last year — six times more than the Las Vegas Strip — came from the card game, much of it from Chinese high rollers betting borrowed money and dwarfing the takings from slots, blackjack or roulette. Wherever you go in the former Portuguese colony, you’ll see chain-smoking Chinese gamblers crowded around baccarat tables as players peel back their cards, hoping their luck will give them a good hand.

ON THE MOVE 

Hawaiian Airlines has appointed Jun Tsu­ruta to senior director of maintenance procurement. He has more than 25 years of experience in airline operations, MRO (maintenance, repair and operations) and procurement, including serving as senior procurement project manager at Gulfstream Aerospace.

Atlantis Adventures has appointed Jun Krook as sales manager. She has more than 10 years of marketing, sales, client service and operations experience, including serving in managerial positions for Satura Cakes, which was highlighted by the opening of two new stores in California and three new stores in Hawaii.

Kahala Senior Living Community has named three new members of its board of directors: 

» Kenneth Miller has 17 years of financial-sector experience and is senior vice president and chief investment strategist at First Hawaiian Bank.

» Steve Robertson is executive vice president and chief information officer of Hawaii Pacific Health. He was previously a Navy nuclear submarine officer for six years.

» Dr. Shari Kogan is medical director of geriatric services at the Queen’s Medical Center as well as a clinical associate professor of geriatric medicine at the John A. Burns School of Medicine.