Free Republic

Two native Hawaiian men were sentenced to prison terms for a federal hate crime in the brutal beating of a white man who was trying to move into their remote Maui village. A jury in November found that Kaulana Alo-Kaonohi and Levi Aki Jr. attacked Christopher Kunzelman because of his race — punching, kicking and beating him with a shovel in 2014, when he tried to move into their neighborhood of Kahakuloa.

It’s the first Hawaii hate crime case brought by the feds in 20 years, but U.S. Attorney Kenji Price is hoping to send a strong message about victimizing others because of their race or color. In 2013, Chris Kunzelman and his wife bought a house in Maui’s remote Kahakuloa village despite being warned that neighborhood residents “do not like white people.” Every time a non-Native Hawaiian had tried to view the house, Hawaiian residents from the deeply rooted village of approximately 150 people harassed and threatened them, scaring other potential buyers of the foreclosed property away, according to court documents....

Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan have almost doubled the size of their estate in Hawaii, purchasing a neighboring 600 acre plot for $53 million in a move likely to further enrage his island critics. The Facebook founder, who began buying up chunks of the island in September 2014, added the additional land on March 19, according to Pacific Business News. Kauai is the fourth largest of Hawaii's eight main islands, and home to 67,000 people.

Three Israeli surfers went to the aid of eight children struggling in the waters off Hawaii on Saturday, Channel 2 television reported, after huge waves began surging toward the coast. The three - Tzvika Elias, Yair Naftali and Gabi Liptz - were hailed as heroes by the children’s parents. “We had gone to a remote beach half an hour from Honolulu,” 30-year-old Elias, who lives in New York, told Channel 2. “The waves there were high, huge breakers about four meters high, and as the minutes past, the waves got stronger and even higher.” Elias and his friends then saw...