Local News

The three men appearing before Circuit Judge Edward Kubo Jr. had served in the Army, Marine Corps and Coast Guard, but now they were trying to make amends for felony convictions ranging from burglary and drug abuse to making threats with a knife while intoxicated at home.

The sting of a minimum-wage increase on Hawaii businesses may be salved by a reduction in the unemployment insurance tax.

Less than 1.5 million tons of debris from the 2011 Japanese tsunami is still adrift in the Pacific, Japa­nese government officials said Saturday at a symposium in Honolulu with state and federal officials.

Several public middle and high schools are "significantly far" from meeting a state mandate to lengthen their school day, education officials told lawmakers last week.

About 20 public school teachers staged a sit-in Saturday at Washington Place to call attention to their lack of a negotiated contract and to underscore how much work they do on personal time.

Two educators from the Plowshares Institute who have helped communities deal with polarizing issues such as police brutality and sex education recently brought their brand of mediation to Windward Oahu, and won some converts.

Two Navy sailors will be interred March 8 at Arlington National Cemetery — 150 years after they went down with their ship, the famed Civil War ironclad Monitor.

It remains a mystery to many people why our Honolulu Harbor waterfront isn't more robust from a commercial point of view. The Aloha Tower Marketplace is a notorious example.

Lofty talk of libraries and books leads us off as we "flASHback" on the week's news that amused and confused:

Each Sunday, the Star-Advertiser publishes Oahu vital statistics for marriage licenses, civil unions and birth certificates filed with the state Department of Health's Vital Statistics System.

The last time the nation's tax code was overhauled, in 1986, Congress tried to end a big corporate giveaway.

LOS ANGELES » Near the middle of "Oz the Great and Powerful," James Franco, who plays the title character, surveys his bewildering surroundings and mutters "Are you kidding me?"

NEW YORK » Three police officers knocked on the apartment door of a 15-year-old boy. He had already been on both sides of a police blotter: shot and stabbed, but also arrested for robbery.

A vehicle struck and seriously injured two men having a dispute in the middle of Kalanianaole Highway near Sea Life Park early Saturday morning, the city's Emergency Medical Services Department reported.

High surf and waves to last until evening • Search ends for Kauai man • Car topples from highway

Gov. Neil Abercrombie announced Friday the state will assess its budget needs in the wake of impending federal funding cuts and said a $25 million contingency fund included in his budget proposal to the Legislature will be sufficient — for now — to accommodate most of the cuts.

A freak wind blew the roof off a carport in Manoa late Thursday night.

Days before Shendon Chandler-Taniguchi fatally stabbed a neighbor and was shot and killed by police in a residential area in Waimea on Kauai in 2011, he had been released by a state judge from a hospital after undergoing psychiatric evaluation, Kauai police said last week.

A state jury found two California men accused of installing credit card "skimming" devices in gasoline pumps on Oahu to steal more than $150,000 from the cardholders' accounts guilty Friday of identity theft and being accomplices to identity theft.

State senators advanced a bill Friday that would create a Public-Private Partnership Authority that would promote development projects, but were cautious about giving the new authority any powers that resemble the beleaguered Public Land Development Corp.