Hasta La Gadget!

LG isn’t one to shy from reusing a hit brand for devices that almost have little to do with the original. We’ve seen that in the various models bearing the G3 and G4 names, though, curiously, not the G5, which turned out to be a flop. So the rumors that there would be an LG G6 mini isn’t exactly shocking. … Continue reading

HONOLULU ― Remote, undeveloped coastlines on the Hawaiian islands are renowned for their natural beauty. But Kamilo Point, a far-flung beach in the rural Ka’u district of the Big Island, is not. 

On the island’s southeastern side, Kamilo Point looks like a wasteland, despite its tide pools and pockets of lava rock. The ocean’s currents and powerful trade winds deposit thousands of pounds of man-made trash on this beach each year. 

One look, and it’s no wonder how this became known as one of the dirtiest beaches in the world. Some call it Plastic Beach.

People have found hair brushes, cigarette lighters, shards of plastic, water bottles, fishing net, straws, broken detergent bottles and discarded trash with labels in various languages, including Japanese and Russian.

It’s a graveyard for the world’s junk and a stark reminder that plastic can never really be thrown away.

In one weekend alone this April, the Hawaii Wildlife Fund (HWF) collected and hauled away 15,000 pounds of trash, nylon nets and fishing line from Kamilo Beach. The beach was visibly cleaner afterward, as it is usually after HWF’s regular cleanups, but it was unclear how long it would stay like that.

So where is all this trash coming from?

The Big Island’s southeastern shore is relatively close to the eastern Pacific garbage patch, which is part of the massive convergence of marine litter known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The easternmost concentration of trash is midway between the California coast and the eastern shores of Hawaii.

These so-called patches of trash are a result of oceanic and atmospheric pressures that push free-floating items in the ocean ― sea life, pollution, tiny pieces of plastic ― into one general area. However, it does not converge into a floating island of trash, like some people have come to believe.

Instead, it is like a soup of pollution, peppered with an infinitesimal amount of microplastics (plastic debris smaller than 1/4 inch) that float freely on the surface, according to Carey Morishige, formerly of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Debris Program.

These soupy areas have a higher concentration of plastic and trash than other parts of the ocean ― and debris from the patch in the Pacific often gets dumped across the Hawaiian archipelago.

But the Big Island sees the worst of it.

As the most easterly Hawaiian island, the Big Island’s Kamilo Point and the larger Ka’u coast have always acted as the perfect colander for items drifting across the ocean.

“Kamilo itself means ‘whirling, swirling, twisting currents,” Lamson told HuffPost, referencing the area’s consistent onshore winds.

Local organizations, including HWF, have cleaned these coastal trash magnets for decades. But, like clockwork, mounds of trash find their way to the shore.

“The Hawaiian archipelago acts like a sieve, collecting debris that was floating around the Pacific Ocean and accumulating it along our shores,” Megan Lamson, a survey diver for the state’s Division of Aquatic Resources, told The Huffington Post. 

Lamson has participated in HWF’s Kamilo Beach cleanups for years.

Native Hawaiians once used the beach to collect large driftwood, which traveled to Kamilo from the American Pacific Northwest, to make dugout canoes. Today, old toothbrushes, shards of plastic and mounds of rope and fishing line pile up on the shore instead.

Trash has accumulated on Kamilo’s beaches as early as the mid 1980s, as seen in the photo below, which was taken between 1984 and 1987 by HWF volunteer and Big Island resident Noni Sanford.

Before plastics were prominent on the Ka’u coast, Sanford would collect driftwood at Kamilo Beach for her father’s artwork. In 2006, she’d collect washed-up trash to create artwork of her own.

“If you were to dig up the sand through the rocks and sift through it with your hands, you’ll find more plastic than sand,” Alison Teal, a local sustainability activist, told HuffPost. “It’s so sad to see it covered in everything you can imagine.”

In December 2016, Plastic Change International, a Denmark-based plastic pollution advocacy group, visited Kamilo to demonstrate how dire the area’s pollution problem is. The video they created below sheds light on how easy it is to find microplastics in the ocean, especially on the shores of Kamilo.

It’s not clear if beach cleanups are enough to keep Kamilo Beach free from the trash that winds up on its shores, but organizations are trying to be innovative with the debris.

Last week, the Hawaii Wildlife Fund sent discarded nylon fishing nets found at Kamilo to the island of Oahu to be converted into energy as part of NOAA’s Net-to-Energy program. The nets will be cut into smaller pieces and burned as fuel at a power plant in Kapolei, according to the Hawaii Tribune-Herald.

Lamson, who volunteers part time as HWF’s Big Island director, thinks that Kamilo’s pollution problem can be handled only at a global level.

“The solution is not to encourage more people to come to Kamilo to clean up,” she told HuffPost. “The solution will come with [humans] reducing our dependence to plastics, especially single-use items that we can do without.”

And with an estimated 8 million metric tons of discarded plastics turning up in the ocean every year, Lamson says, humans are the only ones who can stop it from pouring into the sea.

“Ultimately, marine debris and plastic pollution are both people problems,” she said. “It was created by people and can be solved by people.”

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In two weeks, HTC will try to squeeze out as much as it can from its new “U” brand by revealing what is now believed to be called the HTC U. The Taiwanese manufacturer has made it now secret by now that “squeezing” is going to be its headlining feature. But what about the rest of the smartphone? How will … Continue reading

Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein finds little to trust in President Donald Trump.

“He has lied as no president of the United States in my lifetime has, day in and day out,” Bernstein said during a panel discussion on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” Sunday. 

Despite the Trump administration’s attacks on the press, Bernstein said the media’s job was to find the “best obtainable version of the truth.”

“What is news is that we have a president of the United States who is not attempting to bring the country together, but rather keeps playing to his base” and “whipping the flames” of America’s divide, Bernstein said.

He also repeated the advice to journalists that he offered at the White House Correspondents Dinner: “Follow the money, yes, but follow the lies as well.” 

Watch more of the discussion below:

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— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

A birthday party at a San Diego apartment complex swimming pool ended in a hail of bullets on Sunday night after a gunman opened fire on the crowd, witnesses said. 

According to police, at least one person was killed and seven others were wounded, “several” of them critically. Details about the victims have not yet been released.

Around 6 p.m., panicked 9-1-1 calls about the attack sent police to the La Jolla Crossroads apartment complex in the University City area.

A police helicopter flew over the complex and spotted the gunman, who appeared to be reloading, San Diego Police Chief Shelley Zimmerman said at a press conference. The first three officers to arrive on scene ordered the suspect to drop the weapon. When he allegedly aimed the weapon at them, the police shot and killed him.

The suspect’s identity has not yet been released. Zimmerman described him as a white male, wearing brown shorts and armed with a gun.

At the time of this writing, investigators haven’t determined a motive for the shooting.

About 30 people were at the pool when the shooting occurred. One witness, a resident of the complex, said the gunman was chillingly cool. He spotted the shooter from a window of the complex clubhouse.

“We could see the shooter sitting there with a beer in one hand and the gun in the other,” the witness told Fox 5. “He was pretty relaxed, pretty relaxed.”

The witness went on to describe the scene: “Two people already lying on the ground, one was trying to crawl to the other one to help.”

Shahrayar Jeff told the San Diego Union-Tribune that his 8-year-old granddaughter was at the pool and saw the gunman drinking beer “and shooting.” 

It was “very cold blooded,” Jeff added. 

One unidentified witness told the newspaper that the shooting occurred at his best friend’s birthday party. He said he was returning from the bathroom when the gunfire began. His best friend was among those shot, the witness said.

“Our hearts go out to all the victims, their families and anyone who witnessed this tragic event,” Zimmerman said at the press conference.

Police are asking for public’s help in solving this case. Anyone with information about the shooting are urged to contact authorities.

This is a developing story. More to come…

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