The retired frigate USS Thach will be sunk during Rim of the Pacific war games in July from fire including the first Harpoon missile shot from a littoral combat ship, a type of U.S. warship being deployed regularly to Singapore and the volatile South China Sea.

The Navy originally wanted 52 of the now controversial littoral combat ships, which were touted for their speed and shallow draft for operations in near-shore environments against pirates, mines and diesel submarines.

With the rise of China, however, concerns were raised about the ships’ armor and lethality, and the Pentagon reduced the total and is seeking a more robust frigate as a replacement.

While in Hawaii, the littoral combat ship USS Coronado will test the greater lethality of a Harpoon missile, which has the capability of destroying enemy ships 100 miles away, the Navy said. The Navy is seeking to arm all of its LCSs with over-the-horizon missiles.

Most folks have heard that Hawaii is a state, one of the United States of America. Most people, including those who live in Hawaii, accept that statement as a fact.

But the reality is that in a world in which nations are as bound by the rule of laws as are the citizens of nations (if not more so), the truth is quite different!

The truth is that each and every step along Hawaii's path from sovereign and independent nation, to annexed territory, to state, was done in violation of laws and treaties then in effect, without regard to the wishes of the Hawaiian people. Many people, including President Grover Cleveland, opposed the annexation of Hawaii.

The Honolulu rail project may cost as much as $7.967 billion to build and likely won’t be completed until April 2024, the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation acknowledged Wednesday.

The new cost estimate came two days after the Federal Transit Administration sent a letter to HART and Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell criticizing the lack of cost containment on the project, which was originally priced at about $5.2 billion.

Hawaii has the 10th-worst economy of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, according to a new WalletHub report.

WalletHub’s analysts compared the economic performance of various metrics in each state and Washington, D.C., across three key dimensions: economic activity, economic health and innovation potential.

Brazil, Denmark, Germany and Italy will take part for the first time in the biennial RIMPAC, which is slated to begin June 30 and end Aug. 4, the Navy said Tuesday. China, which joined the exercise in 2014, will also participate.

This year's U.S. Pacific Fleet-hosted drills -- which will focus on disaster relief, maritime security, sea control and complex warfighting -- will include 45 ships, five submarines, more than 200 aircraft and 25,000 personnel.

Participating nations include Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Colombia, France, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, South Korea, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Tonga and the United Kingdom.

Honolulu responded to what the governor called a state of emergency, passing tough criminal laws aimed at ridding sidewalks, streets and parks of homeless people.

At $2.9 billion this extra cost is nearly $3,000 for every man, woman and child in Honolulu. It is more than $8,500 per household.

We the residents of Maui and the state of Hawai'i, ask Maui County and the State of Hawaii to stop the use of Round Up and Neonicotinoids immediately and permanently.

The long term and often excessive use of the herbicide Roundup Pro, and other glyphosate based herbicides to control weeds in our city parks and roadways unnecessarily expose children, adults, and wildlife to a toxic stew of chemicals.

This poison is being sprayed all over our roadways, city parks, and next to schools. And with no warning, signs, or mandated limitations around application? This must stop. There are better ways to keep up our parks, roadways and playgrounds without spraying toxins that harm our children!

A mega-tsunami in Hawaii generated by an Aleutian Islands earthquake with a magnitude of 9.0 or higher would affect more than 300,000 people, the state estimates, and cause some $40 billion in damage.

But how probable is an event like that?

A team of University of Hawaii at Manoa researchers spent five years trying to answer that question, and here's what they concluded: There's a 9 percent chance of Hawaii suffering a direct hit from such a mega-tsunami in the next 50 years.

In other words, rare but possible.

Hawaii lawmakers set aside more money to tackle the highest rate of homelessness in the nation — a crisis that has left families with children living on sidewalks alongside the beaches of paradise.

The Legislature allocated $12 million in new funding during the session ending Thursday. It will go toward social services and clearing out homeless encampments.

The amount surpassed Gov. David Ige's funding request and added to the more than $15 million the state already spends annually to address the problem.

In declaring martial law, all forms of civilian law were suspended. An entire new system of justice and order was instituted and controlled at the absolute discretion of Lt. Gen. Short — the newly declared “Military Governor” of the islands.

The transfer of power meant that all civilian courts would be closed, and all government functions — federal, territorial, and municipal — would be placed under military control. The U.S. Constitution was suspended and civilians no longer guaranteed any individual rights or protections from the government. Civilians had no freedom of speech, self-defense, assembly, or protections from from unreasonable search and seizures, inter alia.

Though overshadowed by unrest in the Middle East, the pivot remains very much underway. Already the US has expanded and established new military exercises and agreements with Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines, and other parts of Southeast Asia – as well as Myanmar, Bangladesh, India, Mongolia, and even China.

The linchpin of this military realignment is my home state of Hawaii, which has hosted the headquarters of the US Pacific Command, or USPACOM, for almost 70 years.

Beyond Scrutiny

Based on the island of Oahu, USPACOM claims the Asia-Pacific as its “area of responsibility.” Home to 36 nations – and more than half the world’s population – the region stretches, in the words of top military brass, “from Bollywood to Hollywood and penguins to polar bears.”

Hillary supporter tries to throw away Bernie ballots, gets kicked out.

Workers left without a job when the state's last sugar plantation closes this year will be able to get financial help.

Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar Co. employees who lose their jobs will be able to get money through a federal program to help replace lost wages, U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, announced Monday.

About 675 Maui residents work for Hawaii's last sugar plantation, which plans to end sugar operations by the end of 2016. Under the federal program, workers could receive up to $2,000 a month for a year while they're retrained for a new job. That's in addition to state benefits and job training.

Residents of the Hawaiian Islands just breathed a sigh of relief – literally, as the deadline passed for Hawaii’s House Judiciary Committee to hear House Bill 849, relating to Right to Farm, that would force residents to succumb to pesticide spraying without any say. All the while, companies like Monsanto, Dow, Syngenta, and BASF use Hawaii land as a testing ground for GM crops.

On Tuesday, March 8, a partial solar eclipse will be visible in Hawaii. It starts at 4:33 p.m. and ends at 6:33 p.m.

At the peak of the eclipse, at 5:37 p.m. Hawai`i Standard Time, 70 percent of the sun will be blocked by the moon.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii warned this week that bills being pushed by Hawaii’s Maui County Mayor Alan Arakawa (R) would punish homeless people for “the basic life functions of sleeping and going to the bathroom.”

In an email on Friday, ACLU of Hawaii legal director Daniel Gluck told The Maui News that his group “strongly opposed” several bills being offered to prevent homeless people from sleeping on sidewalks or going to the bathroom in public areas.

Many tourists from the US and around the world visit Hawaii for its beautiful islands and its beaches covered with white sand. It is known for its food and traditional luau celebrations, its native people and its culture. When you vacation in Hawaii it offers surfing, snorkeling, scuba diving, fishing, hiking and many other activities. It has been the 50th State of the United States since August 21st, 1959. Since statehood, tourism has been the main industry followed by Education, Government and the Military. However, Hawaii was a country whose government of Queen Lili’uokalani was overthrown more than 120 years ago on January 17th, 1893, when Hawaii was actually known as the Kingdom of Hawaii. It is a part of history that needs to be told.

There is still time to organize and invite supporters to attend the Sunday events!

Our Honolulu poll observers will be having a meeting this Saturday, March 5th, at the Honolulu Coffee house on Oahu. We will be sending more information to our poll observers via email.

We are continuing to call supporters. However, we still need poll observers at all locations on the big island and more on Maui in town.

If you’re interested in making calls, let us know by responding to this email! You can also sign up to volunteer for Hawaii on the Donald J. Trump website.

You can make a huge difference by putting out a little effort. Vote Tuesday and help us call others and encourage them to vote in the days before Election Day. We will call those who have been identified as Trump supporters and remind them to go to the polls! To find your voting location, click here.

Despite not being in the headlines, Mauna Loa continues to be in a state of unrest based on seismic and deformation monitoring data.

The USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory’s improved seismic network began to detect increasingly frequent, small earthquakes on Mauna Loa as early as 2013. Renewed inflation of the volcano was detected by HVO’s GPS network and also with Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) in 2014. Based on the elevated rates of earthquakes and persistent inflation, the Volcano Alert Level for Mauna Loa was elevated from Normal to Advisory on September 15, 2015.

According to the USGS Alert-Notification System for Volcanic Activity, an Advisory level indicates that the volcano is showing signs of unrest above known background levels, but does not mean that an eruption certain. Another period of Mauna Loa unrest in 2004–2005 included inflation and anomalous seismicity, but did not result in an eruption.

In Hawaii, that force has been on display all week, thanks to a pair of gigantic, back-to-back swells, which generated waves large enough to overtake beach parks, wash across roadways and damage oceanfront properties.

When 2016 began with North Korea declaring it had detonated a hydrogen bomb, its fourth nuclear test, the U.S. military had already tested a land-based Aegis Ashore missile defense system in Hawaii — Lockheed Martin’s version of the short-to-intermediate-range ballistic missile defense (BMD) system used on Aegis Navy destroyers.

Now, as tension mounts after Pyongyang’s satellite launch on Feb. 7, media reports suggest the Pentagon is mulling making the Aegis Ashore test facility operational at the Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF) at the Barking Sands naval base on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.

A Navy spokesman said, “There are no plans for an operational site of Aegis Ashore at PMRF. It was constructed as a test and training site only.” But Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., the commander of U.S. Pacific Command, has publicly stated that he believes the Aegis Ashore test facility should be considered as an operational site.

Let the voters decide. Pledge to support the candidate who gets the most pledged delegate votes at the Democratic National Convention.

From 1995 to 2004, Christine Sheppard used Roundup on her commercial coffee farm in Hawaii. In 2003 she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and was forced to sell her farm to pay for expensive cancer treatments.

Still alive, Christine and her husband Kenneth are now going after Monsanto Co., accusing the agribusiness of falsely concealing the risks of glyphosate that ultimately led to her cancer. The civil suit states that Monsanto "knew or had reason to know that its Roundup products were defective and were inherently dangerous and unsafe when used in the manner instructed and provided by defendant. ...

"Monsanto assured the public that Roundup was harmless. In order to prove this, Monsanto championed falsified data and attacked legitimate studies that revealed its dangers. Monsanto led a prolonged campaign of misinformation to convince government agencies, farmers and the general public that Roundup was safe."

A private helicopter carrying five people crashed into Pearl Harbor in Hawaii's Oahu on Thursday. One of the passengers, a 16-year-old boy, was rushed to hospital in a critical condition.

The huge waves that hit Hawaii during the weather phenomena known as El Niño (El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO)) excite surfers and, on the odd occasion, rock art enthusiasts too. They know that when the waves are tall enough, there is a chance to catch a glimpse of some centuries-old petroglyphs. The window of opportunity is often short, this time it was only a day, but the appeal is all the greater for the intermittent peeps at the past.

The mayor of Hawaii's Big Island declared a state of emergency on Monday amid the state's largest outbreak of dengue fever since the 1940s.

The mosquito-borne Zika virus could hit Hawaii especially hard if it arrives in the Aloha State, according to an expert from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

While a widespread outbreak of Zika in the Hawaiian islands remains unlikely at the moment, the state is at higher risk because of its tropical climate and large number of foreign travelers. And many experts are voicing serious concerns about the state's ability to handle such an event, should it occur.

Hawaii is already battling its largest outbreak of dengue fever since the 1940s, a disease that is carried by the same species of mosquito that carries Zika.

In a December assessment of Hawaii's response to the current dengue outbreak, Lyle Petersen, director of the CDC’s Division of Vector-Borne Diseases, said there are "critical deficiencies" within the Hawaii Department of Health that should be "urgently addressed."

Five vaccine bills with mandates have been introduced this year in the Hawaiian House Senate. Three are already being heard in Senate Committees this coming week.

Whether you agree with vaccinations or not, it should be our right as parents to choose what we think is right for the health of our children.”Our religious and spiritual practices are a human right. HI entered legislation today to require immunization with no religious exemption for public school students.” Dr. Patricia McLean.

The indigenous peoples of Alaska and Hawaii appealed to the international community through the United Nations with a request to ensure their right to self-determination. The letter was circulated in Geneva.

Well folks, it turns out that Michelle Obama is showing her true narcissistic tendencies just as her husband does. As she continues her lavish Hawaiian vacation on the tax payer’s dime, Hawaii natives are ready for the mooch to return to D.C.

As she carelessly contributes to the, already abysmal, nation’s debt, it looks like she has been taking some time to spend with her celebrity friends. The entitled FLOTUS has been making frequent visits to Oprah Winfrey’s, “palatial 12-bedroom Maui estate.”

During that time, Secret Service has been shutting down almost all access around her making day-to-day- life for residents, literally impossible. Beyond this, as she thoughtlessly carries about her leisurely activities, she seems oblivious that her time there is hindering others from their own recreational activities—Secret Service has been shutting down local hiking trails.

A new report ranking all 50 states based on residents' sense of well-being puts Hawaii at No. 1, followed by Alaska, which held the top spot last year.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-01-hawaii-alaska.html#jCp

During their six-month deployment at Wheeler, 16th CAB aircrews will not only take part in several exercises, including Lightning Force and RIMPAC (Rim of the Pacific), but will also fill the void of attack/reconnaissance coverage for the 25th Infantry Division after the retirement of the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior.

It took Kumar seven months to collect honey samples from around the island. She had help from beekeepers Jimmy Trujillo and Doug Gates, who helped her network with other beekeepers to gather samples. She gathered a total of 36 samples.

After getting samples, she sent them to a lab in Honolulu and a lab in Germany.

“We wanted to compare the results that were gathered from two different methods to see if they were similar,” Kumar said.

Both lab tests yielded the same results — the area around Kupua and Kapena had the highest levels of glyphosate.

“It’s concerning because pesticides shouldn’t be in honey, and now beekeepers have to question whether or not their honey is safe to sell,” Trujillo said.

High dosages of glyphosate can cause cancer and miscarriages, according to motherearthnews.com.

The new finding may explain why some bee colonies are dying, Trujillo added.

The US is talking about transforming the Aegis missile defense test site in Hawaii into a combat-ready facility to defend against ballistic missile attacks, after North Korea conducted their fourth nuclear test earlier this month.

Monster waves are crashing off Hawaii, with eager surfers waxing up their boards to take advantage of the biggest swells of the season.

Huge waves, some believed to be as high as 12 meters (40 feet), have been spotted off the coast of the North Pacific Ocean islands in recent days.

Just days after the Center for Disease Control recommended travel warnings to pregnant women headed to Latin America, the Hawaiian Department of Health has confirmed a Zika “virus infection in a baby recently born with microcephaly in a hospital on Oahu.”

The release stressed that this case wasn’t acquired in the United States: the mother was pregnant in Brazil in May 2015, when the virus was transmitted. Neither the infant or the mother are contagious.

Now and then giant ocean creatures wash up on beaches in a horrible mess. At Kalaeloa Airport on Oahu (Hawaii) a similar but aerial creature has washed up in an airport hangar. It’s the Solar Impulse 2, a solar-powered plane with a wingspan nearly as long as an Airbus A380’s. But it weighs rather less than a Toyota Land Cruiser and has so far cost its sponsors about $US250 million.

Coast Guard officials told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser they received a distress call at 10:38 p.m. from the Marines that two of its CH-53 Super Stallion helicopters, each with six Marines on board, had crashed off Oahu. Debris from the crash was sighted 2.5 miles off Haleiwa shortly after midnight, they said. CNN, citing a Coast Guard spokeswoman, reported that search crews spotted an empty life raft and flames on the water.

The reported collision between two Marine Corps choppers carrying six crew members each happened just before midnight local time, Coast Guard spokeswoman Sara Mooers said on Friday.

The helicopters belonged to the Marine Corps Air Station at Kaneohe Bay, she said, adding that Coast Guard crews have spotted a debris field about 2.5 miles (four kilometers) off the north shore of Oahu but no people.

Hawaiian man has filed a lawsuit against a Honolulu police officer, and the city that employs him, after the cop savagely beat him for praying next to a sun-bathing Hawaiian monk seal on the beach.

The direct indebtedness of US states (excluding revenue bonds) is $500 billion. However, bonds are just one part of the picture: states have another trillion in future obligations related to pension and retiree healthcare. In the summer of 2014, we conducted a deep-dive analysis of US states, incorporating bonds, pension obligations and retiree healthcare obligations. After reviewing over 300 Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports from different states, we pulled together an assessment of each state’s total debt service relative to its tax collections, incorporating the need to pay down underfunded pension and retiree healthcare obligations.

While there are five states with significant challenges (Illinois, Connecticut, Hawaii, New Jersey, and Kentucky) , the majority of states have debt service-to-revenue ratios that are more manageable.

But deep in Kalihi Valley, the backyard illegal aerial show began just after sundown Thursday. And marked police cars could be seen darting back and forth as the fireworks lit up the sky.

"I heard some mortars followed by sirens. Someone set up a 12-round mortar system and you hear all the sirens going off driving up in the valley trying to find out who it was," said Kalihi resident Dylan Richards.

The Secret Service quickly intervened and said the pilot of the small, quadcopter-style drone was "completely unaware" that Obama's motorcade would be traveling through the area on Oahu.

The man "immediately complied with law enforcement requests to cease and desist," the statement added. No charges were filed and the motorcade did not stop or slow down because of the incident.

On Saturday, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton again justified the 2011 U.S. policy of regime change in Libya, citing, at least in part, the fact that dictator Moammar Gadhafi had killed Americans.

“We have to continue to do what is necessary when someone like Gadhafi, a despot with American blood on his hands, is overturned,” Clinton said during the weekend’s Democratic presidential debate in Manchester, New Hampshire. “But I’ll tell you what would have happened if we had not joined with our European partners and our Arab partners to assist the people in Libya, you would be looking at Syria.”

But early in the administration, Clinton had championed an allegiance with the Libyan regime under Gadhafi, during a time when some of the major U.S. corporations doing business in Libya were also donating heavy sums to the Clinton Foundation.

Since 2009, Hawaii’s politicos have sought to name two schools, an abandoned lot, a scenic overlook and two state holidays after Obama. An effort to put the 1960s-era cinder-block apartment building — where he lived — on the National Historic registry also fell short.

United States President Barack Obama's 16-day Christmas getaway in Hawaii will bring the cost of his family's personal travel during his time in office to more than $US70 million ($98 million), according to a new study.

Hot off the presses – Mayor Kenoi on the Big Island, in Hawaii, recently signed Bill 113 into law, prohibiting GMOs. The bill prohibits biotech companies from operating on the island, and stops farmers from growing new GM crops. This is a historical moment for Hawaii, a place which has been called ‘ground zero for GMOs.’

Judicial Watch tracks costs related to presidential trips, including what it costs to operate Air Force One.

Three trips earlier this year – a Palm Springs golf trip in June, a trip to New York in July and a visit to Martha's Vineyard in August – cost the U.S. $3.1 million in travel expenses alone. It costs about $206,000 per hour to operate the president's private plane.

Last year's Obama family Christmas trip cost $3.7 million in flight expenses alone, with 17.8 hours in the air round-trip. Housing and security costs are on top of that amount but not all that information is released to the public.

Those expenses don't sit well with everyone.

On October 7, 1940, Lieutenant Commander Arthur McCollum of the Office of Naval Intelligence submitted a memo to Navy Captains Walter Anderson and Dudley Knox (whose endorsement is included in the following scans). Captains Anderson and Knox were two of President Roosevelt's most trusted military advisors.

The memo, scanned below, detailed an 8 step plan to provoke Japan into attacking the United States. President Roosevelt, over the course of 1941, implemented all 8 of the recommendations contained in the McCollum memo. Following the eighth provocation, Japan attacked. The public was told that it was a complete surprise, an "intelligence failure", and America entered World War Two.

A team of archaeologists has released images and video of a US Navy plane which sank during the opening minutes of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Some 27 Catalina PBY "flying boats" stationed at Kaneohe Bay were destroyed, while another six were damaged.

The Supreme Court has indefinitely stopped Native Hawaiians from moving forward with a unique and controversial election that they are hoping to use to form their own government.

The high court on Wednesday extended a temporary stay issued by Justice Anthony Kennedy on Friday, granting an injunction requested by a group of Native Hawaiians and non-Hawaiians challenging the election.

Senior American journalist William Blum has reported: “In 1956 and 1958, declassified documents have revealed that the US army loosed swarms of specially bred mosquitoes in Georgia and Florida to see whether disease carrying insects could be weapons in a biological war. The mosquitoes bred for the tests were of Aedes Aegypti type, the precise carrier of dengue fever as well as other diseases. In 1967, it was reported by Science magazine that at the US Government Centre in Fort Detrick, Maryland, dengue fever was amongst those diseases that are at least the object of considerable research and that appear to be among those regarded as potential biological warfare agents.”