Tag: Hawaii

Paris Baguette in my opinion is not a bad bakery, but it is not a great one either and they are going to be up against some big competition in the Hawaiian market:

SPC Group opened Hawaii’s first branch of Paris Baguette, the company said Monday.

The first outlet of the Korean bakery franchise in the idyllic island state that attracts around 10 million global tourists annually is located in Honolulu’s popular Bishop Street.

Since SPC Group entered the Chinese market in 2004, it has opened over 550 stores in 10 foreign countries, including the United States, France, Britain, Canada, Singapore, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

This ROK Naval taskforce is getting some good training all across the Pacific to include at Hawaii:

The Republic of Korea navy’s cruise training task group arrived Friday at Pearl Harbor for five days of classes and cultural events for sailors and the South Korean navy’s future leaders.

Among the 460 members of the training group are 164 midshipmen from the Republic of Korea naval academy sailing aboard the ROKS Hansando, a newly built training ship.

Joined by the combat support ship ROKS Daecheong, this is the first training cruise for the Hansando after commissioning last year.

Before arriving in Hawaii the training group made stops in Vietnam, Malaysia, India, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand and Fiji. The group’s final port of call in its 110-day voyage will be in Guam before returning home to South Korea.

“It’s a meaningful opportunity where our midshipmen can experience and have an opportunity to learn the Indo-Pacific strategy that the Korean government has put out recently,” said Rear Adm. Kang Dong-goo, commander of the cruise training group.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

I wonder if this soldier was trying to take a selfie before he fell in?:

A soldier survived a 70-foot fall onto a ledge inside Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano this week after hopping a railing to get a better look at the crater.
The 32-year-old Schofield Barracks soldier was on the Big Island as part of a training mission, Army officials told Hawaii News Now. He climbed over a permanent metal railing at the Steaming Bluff overlook to get closer to the edge of a 300-foot cliff and fell at about 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, according to a statement from Hawaii National Park.

Onlookers alerted the park staff right away, and about two and a half hours later the injured man was found on a narrow ledge about 70 feet from the cliff edge. Ropes and a litter were used to rescue him, according to the park. He was airlifted to the hospital in critical condition, but was upgraded to stable on Thursday, according to NPR.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but having been to Kilauea multiple times, I can say it takes a special kind of stupid to fall into this crater.

This was some smart thinking by this 9 year old Korean boy on vacation in Hawaii with his parents when he was kidnapped as part of a car theft:

A 9-year-old boy from South Korea and witnesses helped lead Honolulu police to the man who allegedly stole a car with the child inside in Kailua late Thursday morning.

Police said officers arrested a 35-year-old Enchanted Lake man on suspicion of kidnapping, auto theft, theft of property and two warrants after he allegedly stole a rental car with the boy inside.

Police gave the following account of the incident: The boy’s parents, visiting from Korea, left the child inside the car with the air conditioning on, and stopped near the Kailua boat ramp to take pictures of the scenery. At 11:23 a.m. near 729 Mokulua Drive, the suspect jumped into the car and drove off with the boy inside. The boy, who speaks English, asked the man to drop him off at Kalapawai Market and the suspect complied.

The child was able to give officers the car’s license plate number and a description of the vehicle, police said.

Witnesses called 911 and police located the car, which had collided with another vehicle at the intersection of Kamehameha Highway and Mokulele Drive in Kaneohe.

Police said the driver got out and ran on foot, but officers captured him a short distance away. The suspect had personal property from the vehicle on his person, police said.

The suspect was taken to Castle Medical Center with minor cuts to his hand received in the accident. He was later taken to the Kaneohe station for booking.  [Star Advertiser]

Condolences to this man’s family after he was randomly murdered by someone with a long criminal history and yet is still not in jail.  This attack at least should lock him up for a long time:

A Korean man has died after a mysterious street attack in Waikiki, Hawaii, local media reported.

Kim Pil-sung, 29, lost consciousness after allegedly being punched and kicked by Cesarin Perez, 34, outside a bar early on Feb. 20. Kim was taken to a hospital but died on March 1.

Perez was caught Thursday and charged on suspicion of second-degree murder. He has pleaded not guilty to manslaughter. His bail is $500,000.

Why Perez allegedly attacked Kim is unclear because there were no specific ties between the two. The suspect had been convicted multiple times of prostitution and drug use charges, among others, according to local media.

An autopsy determined Kim died from injuries to his brain from blunt-force trauma.  [Korea Times]

Here is a strange sexual assault story involving a Japanese woman running a boarding house in Hawaii:

A Manoa woman who recruited exchange students from Japan raped one of her clients as many as 10 times while he was bedridden with an injury, police allege in court documents.

Police said she also threatened the victim, a 16-year-old Japanese national, if he went to authorities, saying she’d accuse him of rape if he reported her.

The suspect has been identified as 36-year-old Rika Shimizu.

She’s been indicted on five counts of second-degree sex assault and four counts of fourth-degree sex assault. She remains in custody on $600,000 bail.  [Hawaii News Now]

You can read more at the link.

The defense ministers of South Korea and the United States are shown in this picture, provided by Seoul’s defense ministry, on Jan. 27, 2018, walking to the venue for a summit, in the U.S. Pacific Command in Honolulu, Hawaii. (Yonhap)

I can only imagine what the Family Readiness Group (FRG) meetings would have looked like if this soldier’s gangster husband showed up to them:

U.S. Magistrate Judge Kevin Chang denied bail Wednesday for the accused pimp who federal prosecutors describe as violent and intimidating.

Isaiah McCoy is charged with sex trafficking by force.

Wearing a white, inmate jumpsuit and a belly chain, McCoy did not speak in court, allowing his assistant federal public defender Max Mizono to argue that McCoy is not a danger to the community or a flight risk.

McCoy’s wife, Army Sgt. Tawana Roberts, also remains at the federal detention center. Her bond hearing is scheduled for Jan. 24.

The couple was arrested on Jan. 3 by police in an undercover prostitution sting at a Waikiki hotel.

One of the pieces of evidence being used against the couple, a Facebook Live video posted two months ago, in which Roberts and McCoy are in a hot tub.

McCoy jokingly asks as he grabs his wife, “How much is this going to cost me?”

Roberts responds: “You already know the going rate for me … five stacks.” That’s slang for $5,000.

But, according to HPD documents obtained by Hawaii News Now, Roberts agreed to take $500 from an undercover officer in exchange for sex acts.

The day after the two were arrested by HPD, a federal grand jury indicted them in the expansive human trafficking case.

McCoy has been in Hawaii less than a year after he was released from Delaware’s death row.

He married Roberts a few months ago. She is a food service specialist at Schofield Barracks.

McCoy is not allowed on post because of prior convictions for burglary, robbery and drug crimes.  [Hawaii News Now]

You can read more at the link, but this McCoy character is quite the walking crime spree.  His wife is not much better considering she was arrested working as a prostitute over in Waikiki.

On sale here in Honolulu pic.twitter.com/ZMwkjZnkdj

— Alastair Gale (@AlastairGale) January 15, 2018

Here is the aftermath from the mass panic caused on Hawaii from a fake North Korea missile attack notice sent to everyone’s smartphones:

The false emergency alert apparently happened because “the wrong button was pushed,” Hawaii House Speaker Scott Saiki said in a statement.

“This system we have been told to rely upon failed and failed miserably today,” Saiki said. “I am deeply troubled by this misstep that could have had dire consequences.”

He added, “Apparently, the wrong button was pushed and it took over 30 minutes for a correction to be announced. Parents and children panicked during those 30 minutes.”

The emergency alert was sent to people’s mobile phones in Hawaii starting at about 8:07 a.m. local time with the startling words all in caps, “Ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii. Seek immediate shelter. This is not a drill.”

Shortly after, a spokesman for the U.S. Pacific Command, Dave Benham, told ABC News in a statement that no ballistic missile threat to Hawaii was detected.

“Earlier message was sent in error. State of Hawaii will send out a correction message as soon as possible,” Benham said.  (…….)

Gov. David Ige said at a press conference Saturday afternoon that the error happened during a routine procedure that occurs as workers are changing shifts.

“An error was made in emergency management which allowed this false alarm to be sent,” Ige said. “It was a procedure that occurs at the change of shift, enabling [us] to make sure that the system is working, and an employee pushed the wrong button.”  [Good Morning America]

You can read more at the link, but you would think sending out an alert like this would not be as simple as clicking a mouse button to prevent a mistake like this from happening.  Additionally the fact that it took so long to send a correction message shows whoever was coming on and off shift were not even aware of the error they made while everyone else in Hawaii was in a mass panic:

“We grabbed all the food and water we had, the kids grabbed their stuffed animals and we headed to the lobby,” Mulder said. “Kids crying everywhere, no one knew what was happening. We made our way to an internal bathroom and huddled there with some other people. It was probably 30 minutes between the alert and when we knew it was a false alarm.”

One video making the rounds on social media showed children being lowered into a storm drain for safety.  [Fortune]

It is not good with the emergency management team for the State of Hawaii doesn’t even know there is an emergency going on to fix their error until 38 minutes after the fact.  And if anyone was wondering, it did not take very long for Democrats to blame President Trump for this:

Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, one of the first to confirm that the missile alert was false, later said on CNN that Trump was “taking too long” to deal with tensions surrounding North Korea, which contributed to dialing up the panic from Saturday’s incident.

“You’d be angry just like I am,” said Gabbard, a Democrat and a member of the House Armed Services Committee.  [Fortune]

As if North Korea did not make threats against Hawaii when Barack Obama was President.

Probably the worst thing about this is now people are not going to trust the warnings they receive from the State of Hawaii anymore because of this incompetence.