Hawaii

HONOLULU (AP) — The U.S. government on Friday dropped its appeals of a Hawaii order requiring it to remove fuel from a massive military fuel storage facility that leaked petroleum into the Navy’s water system at Pearl Harbor last year.

Attorneys for the U.S. Department of Defense notified the state and federal courts of its decision. The move comes more than a month after Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the military would permanently shut down the tanks and drain all of their fuel.

HONOLULU (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met his Japanese and South Korean counterparts Saturday in Hawaii to discuss the threat posed by nuclear-armed North Korea after Pyongyang began the year with a series of missile tests.

Blinken said at a news conference after the meeting that North Korea was “in a phase of provocation” and the three countries condemned the recent missile launches.

HONOLULU (AP) — The Navy believes that contaminated tap water that went to Hawaii military households came from a one-time spill of jet fuel last month and was not caused by a leak from aging underground fuel storage tanks above an aquifer, a top Navy official told state lawmakers on Friday.

COCONUT ISLAND, Hawaii (AP) — On a moonless summer night in Hawaii, krill, fish and crabs swirl through a beam of light as two researchers peer into the water above a vibrant reef.

Minutes later, like clockwork, they see eggs and sperm from spawning coral drifting past their boat. They scoop up the fishy-smelling blobs and put them in test tubes.

In this Darwinian experiment, the scientists are trying to speed up coral’s evolutionary clock to breed “super corals” that can better withstand the impacts of global warming.

HONOLULU (AP) — From the empty shores of Oahu’s Waikiki Beach to the snowy summit of the Big Island’s highest peak, an unusually strong winter storm is clobbering the Hawaiian Islands and raising the threat of dangerous flash floods, landslides and crashing tree limbs.

The strong storm over the nation’s only island state left eloping couples without weddings and tourists stuck indoors. It also threatened the state’s infrastructure with a deluge of rain and wind.

HONOLULU (AP) — Ten years after a federal agent shot and killed a man during an altercation in a Hawaii fast-food restaurant, Honolulu’s prosecuting attorney announced Monday his office will not seek a third trial in the case.

U.S. State Department Special Agent Christopher Deedy was in Honolulu helping with security for the 2011 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit when he fatally shot Kollin Elderts in a McDonald’s. Deedy was off-duty and bar-hopping with friends when the altercation occurred during his first night in Waikiki.

HONOLULU (AP) — In Singapore, in between a foreign policy speech and a roundtable talk about supply chain issues, Vice President Kamala Harris stopped to smell the flowers.

Specifically, she checked out an orchid that the country named after her — a light fuschia hybrid named Papilionanda Kamala Harris — a diplomatic honor also bestowed on former President Barack Obama and then-Vice President Joe Biden during past visits to the country.

HONOLULU (AP) — Geologists on Tuesday said they had detected a swarm of earthquakes at Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano, though it is not erupting.

The quakes began overnight and continued into the morning, The Hawaiian Volcano Observatory said.

More than 140 earthquakes were recorded as of 4:30 a.m. The largest was magnitude 3.3. Most were less than magnitude 1.

WAIMEA, Hawaii (AP) — A metal roof sits atop the burned remains of a homestead on the once-lush slopes of Hawaii’s Mauna Kea — a dormant volcano and the state’s tallest peak — charred cars and motorcycles strewn about as wind-whipped sand and ash blast the scorched landscape.

Generations of Kumu Micah Kamohoalii’s family have lived on these lands reserved for Native Hawaiians, and his cousin owns this house destroyed by the state’s largest-ever wildfire.

HONOLULU (AP) — Two pilots told air traffic controllers that their engine had cut out and they needed help moments before crashing their cargo plane into the Pacific Ocean off Hawaii on Friday.

“It doesn’t look good out here,” one of the pilots said before the Boeing 737 broke apart as it entered the water.

Both pilots, the only people aboard, were seriously injured but survived the crash. An hour later, rescuers found the two clinging to packages and parts of the plane in about 150 feet (46 meters) of water several miles off Oahu, authorities said.