miss hawaii usa 2010

Miss Kona Coffee 2010 Wikolia Enos takes the crown from last year's pageant queen Kuulika Karratti. (Hawaii 24/7 photo special by Brad Ballesteros)

Karin Stanton/Hawaii 24/7 Contributing Editor

The Big Island has some new royalty. The Miss Kona Coffee and Miss Aloha Hawaii titles were up for grabs Saturday night at the Kona Coffee Cultural Festival’s perennial favorite scholarship pageant.

A sold-out crowd of 600 stayed until the very end to see Wikolia Enos and Mahealani Nakaahiki awarded the crowns at Hapuna Beach Prince Hotel.

Ten contestants were judged in five areas: a private interview, talent, evening wear, bathing suit and an on-stage interview.

Each also touted a platform of ideals and causes they support.

In addition to the wearing the crown for a year, Miss Kona Coffee also received a $2,000 academic scholarship, a host of prizes, and will represent the festival, Kona coffee and Hawaii on a five-day promotional tour of Japan courtesy of Ueshima Coffee Corp. Read more.

Special Hurricane Ida Update

Hurricane Ida continues to churn towards the Gulf Coast as a category two. All eyes have been on an approaching trough which will eventually turn the tropical cyclone eastward. Timing is everything with this system and the current thinking is that Ida will make a landfall along the Gulf Coast. Hurricane warnings are now up from Destin, FL eastward to Indian Pass. Hurricane wind warnings are also in place along the Alabama Gulf Coast. Tropical Storm wind warnings are in place for Choctaw and Wilcox counties southward.

Weather conditions over West Central Alabama will go downhill quickly over the next 12 hours. Look for winds overnight averaging 15-25 mph. There may be wind gusts in excess of 30 mph as Ida passes to our southeast. Heavy rain will also be associated with this system overnight and tomorrow. Be sure to stay with WVUA for continuing coverage and will also continue to post frequent updates on the blog as Ida approaches. Stay tuned! Read more

Lopez Tonight

It's almost impossible to do anything new with the late-night talk show. Many have talked about doing something different with the format, but most have just abandoned innovation in favor of shows that don't really change up the central format all that much or died quick deaths. The last show to really mix up what was going on was Late Night with David Letterman, and that was almost 30 years ago (good Lord). And even that show was basically a regular old late-night talk show with a huge dollop of irony tossed on to appeal to the kids. How long has it been since a show other than something trying to be a Dick Cavett-esque throwback did anything other than opening monologue into skit into first celebrity interview into second celebrity interview into musical guest? I guess The Jay Leno Show plays around with the format, but calling that an innovator seems false.

So the best way to innovate within a late night hour is via tone. Letterman added the irony. Conan O'Brien turned things toward the absurd. And now George Lopez has turned Lopez Tonight into the Crash of late-night talk shows, a show almost singularly obsessed both with the fact that everybody's different and that they're all, also, just the same. If the premiere of the series had the usual technical snafus (at one point, Lopez and Kobe Bryant sounded as if they were talking to us from the bottom of a well) and lame bits that all debuting late-night talk shows have, it also had a tone that seems hell-bent on deliberately avoiding the sort of audience late-night talk shows usually chase. It'd be refreshing if so much of Lopez's humor weren't so hackneyed. Read more

RTFM: Jailbroken iPhones get iRickrolled due to weak SSH access

There is a good deal of hype over the “iPhone Virus” that hit jailbroken iPhones in various parts of Australia. The problem is that the ones affected by the “ikee iPhone Worm” have only themselves to blame. This is why playing with technology can be a double edged sword. Recently, we talked to Ash, the ikee creator, and got his views on things.

The ikee Worm story starts early Friday morning local time for those in Sydney (GMT +10). Written in C, the ikee project started out as a lesson in learning more about the iPhone platform, with a special focus on compiling and writing applications under Linux, Ash told The Tech Herald in his interview.

The ikee Worm has quickly become one of Australia’s most talked about iPhone modifications online. The first sign someone has been hit by it is the stunning picture of Web meme and 80’s icon Rick Astley. Essentially, the iPhones were all Rickrolled in record time. Ash said that he has no way to know how many were hit by ikee, but he can guess that its more than the initial 100 that were directly infected from his iPhone.

The news spread like wildfire, thanks to coverage from Sophos and Mashable, as well as the rapid fire conversations on Twitter over the weekend. Users who have jailbroken iPhones or iPod Touch devices and an active SSH daemon running with root/alpine access are the only ones vulnerable to ikee. It’s important to note that ikee only targets jailbroken devices.

[Note: There are very few reports of iPod Touch devices being hit. Mostly this has affected iPhone users. I wanted to clear that up. -Steve]

The Worm will scan the 3G IP range the device is on, and depending on what it discovers, will attempt infect other devices. What it is looking for are SSH Daemons, which it will attempt to connect to. Once infected, the Worm will disable SSH, alter the background of the device to Astley’s image, and leave the comment, “ikee is never going to give you up.” If the network you’re on uses NAT (Network Address Translation), then you are safe most reports confirm.Read more

Joe Cada Becomes Youngest World Series of Poker Champion at 21

By Erik Matuszewski

Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Joe Cada became the youngest champion at the World Series of Poker’s richest event, as the 21-year-old community college dropout emerged from a field of almost 6,500 to claim the $8.55 million top prize in Las Vegas.

Cada beat out 46-year-old Darvin Moon, a self-employed logger from Maryland, in a head-to-head showdown to capture the No-Limit Texas Hold ‘Em world championship. The victory comes a year after Denmark’s Peter Eastgate won the event at 22.

An all-in by Cada with a pair of nines was called by Moon, who had a queen and jack. Two sevens, an eight, a two and king were drawn, improving neither player’s hand and giving Cada the title.

Cada started playing poker online at age 16 and left Macomb Community College in Michigan to become a professional gambler. This was his first time playing in the main event, the richest of more than 50 tournaments on a circuit founded in the 1970s. Read more

Hurricane Ida Weakens; Area Schools Close

NEW ORLEANS --

A weakened Hurricane Ida moved through the Gulf of Mexico early Monday, forecast to skirt the mouth of the Mississippi River before making landfall in Florida on Tuesday.A hurricane watch and tropical storm warning is in effect from Grand Isle, La., to Pascagoula, Miss., as the Category 1 storm headed toward the Gulf Coast. The storm was downgraded overnight, with maximum sustained winds now at 80 mph.Read more

The Berlin Wall: Timeline

THE SCENE IS SET: 1945- 1961

May 1945: The final major offensive of the Second World War sees the Soviet Army capture Berlin. With the end of the War on May 8th, Berlin is split into four sectors; The British, American and French in the West of the city and the Soviet in the East.

October 29, 1946: Travel restrictions are introduced for movement between the Soviet and Western administered sectors in Germany. A travel document known as an Interzonenpass is required to cross between them.

June 24, 1948: The Soviets block rail and road access to Berlin in an effort to force the Allies to use supplies from the Russian held sector of the city, which would give them de-facto control over the whole of Berlin. In response the Allies begin the Berlin Airlift to keep the city supplied with food and fuel.

May 12, 1949: By the following spring, more supplies are reaching Berlin than when the traditional routes were open, and the Soviets end the blockade as it becomes clear that their strategy is failing. The airlift ends almost five months later.

October 7, 1949: The German Democratic Republic (GDR) is declared in East Berlin, formalising the separation that had been established in the aftermath of the war.

May 26, 1952: The border between East and West Germany is closed every where apart from Berlin, where a crossing remains open.Read more