Local News

Project Prevention, a national organization that pays drug addicts and alcoholics $300 cash to get sterilized or use long-term birth control, will be in Honolulu for the first time today, tomorrow and Thursday in an ongoing effort to eradicate substance-exposed births.

Detective Paul Nagata Jr.'s father played a cop on the original "Hawaii Five-0." Now Paul Jr. is anxiously awaiting word whether he'll be able to carry on from Paul Sr., a retired Honolulu police sergeant, by landing a part in a pilot of the upcoming CBS-TV remake of the iconic series.

Big Island residents experienced a good shaking from an earthquake yesterday, but no tsunami was generated from it.

Maui police detectives are investigating an $8.5 million house fire in an exclusive area overlooking Honolua Bay that may have been motivated by a hate crime.

The body recovered on Saturday from the water just off Marine Corps Base Hawaii in Kaneohe has been identified as a 29-year-old Navy sailor from Kentucky.

The huge earthquake that slammed the west coast of Chile on Feb. 27 moved the city of Concepcion 10 feet to the west, according to a team of scientists including University of Hawaii researchers.

A Tripler Army Medical Center neurologist filed a federal lawsuit yesterday complaining that "a pattern of harassment, retaliation and violations of his constitutional rights" led to his premature resignation last year.

QUESTION: I am sure that I will be owing state taxes this year, so I want to know, can I wait until July to pay? I figure if the governor can make the taxpayers wait until August for a refund, then they should be able to wait until July for my payment.

PUERTOLLANO, Spain » Two years ago, this gritty mining city underwent a brief, 21st-century gold rush. Long famous for coal, Puertollano discovered another energy source it had overlooked: the relentless, scorching sun.

KABUL, Afghanistan » Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates met here on Monday with President Hamid Karzai and Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal to review plans for a major U.S.-led offensive in the city of Kandahar, the spiritual heart and birthplace of the Taliban, an operation McChrystal indicated could get under way this summer.

A state senator wants to ban shark fins in Hawaii, not just for conservation reasons, but because the animal is considered a native Hawaiian deity. But some ethnic Chinese in Hawaii are upset by the proposal because it would outlaw shark fin soup, a Chinese delicacy.

If the vision of father and son farmers Christian and James Twigg-Smith becomes reality, acres of now-fallow sugar cane land will be growing crops again. But rather than producing food, the land would be used to grow fuel oil.

Laura Souza was expecting her first baby last fall when Kaiser Permanente Hawaii rolled out a new program offering trained midwives as an option to doctors for labor and delivery.

Marine scientists in Hawaii are equipping Hawaiian monk seals with a cell phone-like device to track where the seals have been and what they have been doing.

A public debate between three candidates vying for the 1st Congressional District seat recently vacated by Neil Abercrombie will be held next Monday.

A study of plastic debris floating in the Pacific between Hawaii and California shows researchers have been sharply understating the amount of trash there. Giora Proskurowski, an oceanography faculty scientist with the Sea Education Association, said winds push plastic from the ocean surface down into the upper ocean.

While reading about Midway's Bonin petrels, I learned that these seabirds eat fish, squid, marine insects and crustaceans. The marine insect part puzzled me. In all my time at sea, I've seen only one insect, and that one I brought with me.