The HNN streaming app makes it easy to watch TV even without cable or an antenna. Just go to your Roku, Amazon Fire, or Apple TV menu and search Hawaii News Now. Download it for free and enjoy news, original documentaries, and local high school sports. You can even binge watch seasons of your favorite local shows like Kitchen Scraps and Hi Now Daily. Watch live or whenever it's convenient for you. The HNN streaming app. The easiest way to watch local TV with no fees, no subscriptions. Just great local content. This is Hawaii News Now Sunrise at 7. A fast moving brush fire forces families out of their homes in Waikoloa Village. This morning, what's next as the flames reignite calls for a second way out? A simple donation this weekend could make a big difference for local students. We'll show you how one community effort is helping classrooms get ready for the new school year. Let's take a live look outside. Actually, you know what? Hi, good morning. I'm Billy V. And I'm Jonathan Masaki, sitting here for Annalise Burgos. Good to be here, Billy. Thank you very much. Good to have you here. 7 o'clock. Let's go ahead on the Saturday morning and go ahead and show you what we are watching for you. First of all, a live look outside. This is out towards the White and I Mountain Range. Really nice as we take a look across Juanolulu Harbor. What you see right there, that's pretty much what everybody's going to have for the majority of the weekend. And sunshine with some windward amount of clouds drifting leeward at time. Let's go ahead and show you right now current conditions. 75 degrees outside in Lihue. They've got some showers. 79, the warm spot here in Honolulu. 77, it's overcast this morning with some peekaboo sunshine where the winds are calm. 701, oh, let's give you your first alert traffic. No stalls, no accidents, no slowdowns on your major thoroughfares. Right now on the flow map, it's all green just the way we like it on a Saturday morning. Waikoloa Village is waking up a little easier this morning after yesterday's brush fire forced dozens of residents to evacuate. The fire is now 50% contained and while crews remain on scene, the place is reigniting concerns over the community's limited evacuation routes. The fire broke out just before 4.30 Friday afternoon on the south side of Waikoloa Road, prompting evacuation orders for residents in apartment buildings 4 and 5. Those orders were lifted later in the evening after firefighters stopped the fire's forward progress. The Brash Fire has burned about 200 acres with no homes lost and no injuries that have been reported. No concern right now. We got really fortunate. the good weather conditions, fast actions. Our crews were on scene in just a few minutes, working really hard to make a really, really good stop. Really grateful for the work of the dozers. Firefighters remained on the scene overnight to strengthen containment lines and to watch for hot spots. Even with the immediate threat reduced, many residents say the fire exposed a familiar concern, having only one main road in and out of Waikawa Village during an emergency. It's just such a difficult place for people to live, especially in these kind of conditions when the winds kick up that just isn't equipped to handle a high-speed quick evacuation. For me, here we go again. Every couple of years, we have the same thing where there's some wildfire driven by wind and we start packing things up and trying to figure out if we can get out of it. real good reason for a second road in and out of Waikoloa Village. Fire crews remain on the scene this morning. They're continuing to mop up operations and they're working to increase containment. Waikoloa Road between Paniolo Avenue and Highway 190 remains closed. This is that section between Paniolo Avenue and Queen Ka'ahumanu Highway. Now that section is open to local traffic only. Once again, that's the upper side of the Waikoloa area up near the upper road. Officials say there is no imminent threat to homes. Hundreds of native Hawaiian families could soon be one step closer to home ownership on Hawaii Island. The Department of Hawaiian Homelands is preparing to award 400 residential leases in East Hawaii. Ben Gutierrez reports. This 334-acre undeveloped parcel of land near Hilo is about to serve a different purpose. It's the future site of the Panaeva Homestead, where the Department of Hawaiian Homelands will offer residential leases on Saturday. We haven't made awards for the Hilo area in over two decades. So this is new, involves 400 new homestead lease awards in the Panaeba area. The department will offer 200 leases this weekend and the other 200 next month. It's been a long time coming for tens of thousands of Native Hawaiians who've been waiting for lands they'd been promised under the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act. which was signed into law 105 years ago this month. It's a statement that the state of Hawaii is finally taking serious their commitment as to the promise that it made in order to get statehood, that it would take care of the native Hawaiians. Brittany Kalua is one of the lucky ones who will be getting one of the lots. Obviously super excited because it allows me to be able to keep me and my future generations here in Hawaii. In the next few weeks the DHHL will be making 815 more lease awards for three different sites on O So we going to be making awards 400 in Ewa Beach which is a new recently acquired land base that we have We're also going to revisit Waimanalo, which is a wonderful place to live. The Department of Hawaiian Homelands is also getting ready to offer units in its first ever high-rise called Keolahoe, built on the old Bolodrome site in Mo'ili'ili. Watson says applications are being accepted for the 278 units at Keola Ho. He says the DHHL is on pace to offer 3,000 leases in the coming year, but there are still 29,000 on the waiting list. I think because of our past record, a lot of people were turned off by the program, felt a lot of frustration and anger. been waiting in some cases prior to statehood. We see an alarming rate of, you know, Hawaiians moving outside of Hawaii. So, you know, this is just another opportunity to keep Hawaiians in Hawaii because what would Hawaii be without Hawaiians? The DHHL says the first person whose name will be called for a Panaeba Homestead lot Saturday has been on the list since August 1972. Ben Gutierrez, Hawaii News Now. An emergency crews rescued a driver trapped inside a crashed vehicle early this morning in Pearl City. A 53-year-old man is recovering after the pickup truck he was driving flipped over in Aiea early this morning. It happened around 2.15 near the section of Wanolua Road and Ho'omalu Street. Honolulu EMS says the man was able to get out of the truck and suffered only minor injuries. He was taken to the hospital in stable condition. The cause of the crash is under investigation. A Mapuna Puna used car dealership is waking up to some good news after recovering five of six vehicles stolen during a break-in earlier this week. City Auto Sales says Honolulu police recovered four vehicles in Pearl City, while a community member spotted a stolen Toyota Tacoma abandoned along Ford Weaver Road in Ewa. One vehicle, a grade 2019 Chevy Colorado, is still missing. It felt like a relief. It felt like, you know, it's day and night, the difference. The dealership says investigators monitored the abandoned Tacoma for several hours, hoping the suspects would return, but no one showed up. When employees recovered the truck, they found additional stolen keys and vehicle titles inside. Managers now say they're less certain the break-in was an inside job than they were earlier in the week. Live look outside. A little bit of color there. and a little bit of spattering. This is from Kilauea. This is live. Of course, lava fountaining possible according to USGS, or I should say the Volcanoes National Park, between today and Tuesday. So we could see some increased activity. But right now, we're just seeing some bubbling over the top over at Kilauea. And next episode, once again, could be if the current conditions continue between today and Tuesday. Let's take a look at your first alert weather. Here's what we've got right now for you. East northeasterly winds 14 miles per hour. Nice outside. You can see a lot of blue sky. We'll have some windward and mocha clouds and maybe a few sprinkles. Those sprinkles would be of the light variety because the winds will keep those showers moving along. But we'll see some nice temperatures 79 degrees as we go throughout the day today. We'll get some cloudy periods, overcast skies, peekaboo sunshine as we go into the early evening. And then we'll have once again overcast skies and some shower activity as we go to the overnight and early morning hours. Let's get you back to Jonathan. Thanks, Billy B. It's 7.08. And up next on Sunrise, there's going to be a whole lot of ink at the Blaisdell Exhibition Hall this weekend. We'll have more on the Pacific Ink and Art Expo. Plus, a special guest tattoo artist joins us to talk about her art and the expo when Sunrise continues. The HNN streaming app makes it easy to watch TV even without cable or an antenna. Just go to your Roku, Amazon Fire, or Apple TV menu and search Hawaii News now. Download it for free and enjoy news, original documentaries, and local high school sports. You can even binge watch seasons of your favorite local shows like Kitchen Scraps and Hi Now Daily. Watch live or whenever it's convenient for you. The HNN streaming app, the easiest way to watch local TV with no fees, no subscriptions. Just great local content. This is Hawaii News Now Sunrise. I recently moved to California just three months ago. I relocated to Sacramento, so I'm feeling that out. What brings you to Hawaii? I mean, of course, the Expo, but what do you want Hawaii people to know? Oh, my goodness. Well, of course, I come every year to the Hawaii Tattoo Expo. I believe this is the 11th year, so I've been coming back for a long time, and I'm super excited to come back every year. You know, it's more than a tattoo convention. It feels like a family reunion. I heard them giving a speech yesterday at the convention THIS IS A FAMILY REUNION FOR US IT IS FOR ME TOO TO COME BACK HERE EVERY SINGLE YEAR AND SEE ALL THE AMAZING TATTOO ARTISTS YOU KNOW NOT JUST FROM HAWAII, BUT FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD CONGREGATE HERE, HUNDREDS OF THEM. AND IT'S REALLY AMAZING TO BE A PART OF THAT, YEAH. YOU KNOW, SPEAKING OF ARTWORK, I WAS LOOKING ONLINE AND LOOKING AT ALL THE BEAUTIFUL THINGS YOU DO. THANK YOU. ONE OF YOUR NICHES, I THINK, IS THE FACT THAT YOU DO A LOT OF animal pet portraits. Yes, yes, yes. I do a lot of pet portraits, you know, and I understand. I love my pets, too. I've had a lot of pets throughout my life. Dogs, cats, birds, fish, lizards, you name it. Turtles. I've had it all. So I totally relate to people's love to their pets. And yeah, I do a lot of pet portraits. A lot of dogs, a lot of cats, but I love any type of animal for sure. You know, for somebody who hasn't been to the expo here. You haven't been? No, where have you been? What would you tell them? What? Oh, if anybody hasn't come. Okay, so, I mean, it's just a really amazing experience. Whether you are a tattoo aficionado and you know a lot about tattooing, whether you know nothing about tattooing, it's a great place to come and learn, you know, because you're going to come and see, as I said, hundreds. It's a big expo. There's hundreds of tattoo artists. They're in booths, you know, so you can walk up to their booth. You can experience their artwork. You can see them tattooing right there in front of you. So if you haven't seen that done before, you can check that out. Every artist has a very distinct and different style. So you get to experience all different styles of tattooing, whether it be color, black and gray, traditional realism. And if you don't know what the styles are, you can come there to learn, right? That's simplistic. Yeah. And then the artists also sell a lot of artwork. I brought some of my artwork here just to show, we don't just do tattooing there. A lot of the artists are painters or sculptors, they make other artwork and you can purchase that artwork or even just come to view it. So, yeah. Talk for a couple of moments about, you know, you've seen traditional Hawaiian or Polynesian tattoo, right? I have at the expo. Yes, they usually do that there. And it's pretty cool. I haven't done it. I do electric tattooing and I've seen it. And it's amazing, really, truly. Okay. Oh, so you've seen the traditional style. Yeah, I've seen it at the convention. You know what they do display at the convention. They do a lot of cultural displays at the convention as well. So that's really cool for those of us that come in, you know, from outside of Hawaii to experience that as well. You know, it feels very special. And I know we're wrapping up with a few more seconds here. Tell us again, the show is taking place today through tomorrow. Yes, it's Friday, Saturday, Sunday at the Neil Blaisdell Center. Yes, it's going to be all day. I believe it opens at noon today. And I think we close at midnight. So we're going to be there all day. We'll be there tomorrow, too. So please come out, check out the Expo. We would love to see you there. All right. Megan Massacre here from New York and also from Sacramento. Yes, both, I guess. Okay, there you go. Hey, if you want more information, we've got it also on our website at hawaiianewsnow.com. Thank you. Thanks, Megan. Thank you for having me. That was fun. Yeah. All right, we're going to take a break. Let's go ahead and take a live look outside right now. And this is over, let's see. I think this is Kahala on the island of Oahu. Okay, yeah, I see that. Okay. Nice on a Saturday morning. You're watching Sunrise on Hawaii News Now. The HNN Streaming App makes it easy to watch TV even without cable or an antenna. Just go to your Roku, Amazon Fire, or Apple TV menu and search Hawaii News now. Download it for free and enjoy news, original documentaries, and local high school sports. You can even binge watch seasons of your favorite local shows like Kitchen Scraps and Hi Now Daily. Watch live or whenever it's convenient for you. The HNN Streaming App, the easiest way to watch local TV with no fees, no subscriptions. It's just great local content. Now, first alert weather with Billy V. So if you are on this Saturday morning wanting to know where would be a good place to go take the little kids or the small animals, here's a good place to go, the North Shore, because the waves are small. That's pipeline right now in the live look. Let's go ahead and bring you back here into the studio where we can show you where the wave heights are going to be. Flat to two over on the North Shore, mostly on the flat side. West side's got one to three, but this is going to pick up a little bit. Two to four by this afternoon. Two to four here on the town spots. Three to five. That's going to make some of the surfers happy there. And it's really nice conditions. The surfers are probably wishing there was a little bit less wind, but the winds are going to be, you know, solid. The easterly east side, four to six, rough and choppy there. That's because those trade winds will stay with us as we go through today, tomorrow, into next week. As a matter of fact, Monday, Tuesday. So regular trade wind weather with those winds between 15 to 25 miles per hour. Some nice conditions. So if you get a chance to go outside, the only thing we remind you, summertime, make sure you stay hydrated. Make sure you put on that sunscreen and reapply. Let's go and take you out into the traffic right now. First alert traffic. We showed you that things are looking good right now on the flow map. And as we take you over to the windward side of Oahu, we can take you down Kahekile Highway. It's green. We took a look from Waimanalo all the way to Heaia. No problems right now as you go on the H3 freeway, especially on the town sides. Well, either way. Also over on the Like Like Highway. And as you're going into downtown Honolulu on the Pali Highway, once again, the traffic is looking nice. Let's get you back to Jonathan Masaki. Mahalo Nui, Billy. A Hawaii man is facing federal charges after prosecutors say he used cryptocurrency to violate U.S. sanctions against Iran. LYNN KAWANO EXPLAINS HOW INVESTIGATORS SAY THE ALLEGED SCHEME WORKED COURT DOCUMENTS SAY THE TRANSFERS HAPPENED OVER SEVERAL YEARS AND ALLEGE HE SKIRTED TRADITIONAL BANKING CHANNELS FEDERAL PROSECUTORS SAY ARASH Court documents say the transfers happened over several years and allege he skirted traditional banking channels Federal prosecutors say Arash Ainoglzadi a green card resident in Hawaii had been working to send money to Iran since March 2020 Filings include conversations with others. One person asks if it is illegal to send cryptocurrency. Another person replies that crypto is not traceable. Aino Guzadi suggests Coinbase, a U.S.-based digital currency exchange app. The court records say he then used a Coinbase account to make 72 transactions, totaling about $109,000. The records show he also used other electronic money companies, including PayPal, to send more money. Aino Guzadi is charged with violating sanctions rules, which have been in place since 1995. The allegation is that the person evaded the sanctions by going through non-traditional banking methods which are required under the sanctions. One, they take it very seriously once it reaches a certain level. And then two, in this case, we're at war with Iran. Ainul Guzadi was arrested in Waialua in 2024, but the 37-year-old is out on a $50,000 bond. The court records show he claimed the money was going to family members in Iran, but no one was named specifically in the complaints. If you're able to send that kind of money back home and to support your extended family, that's great. It helps the family back in their home country. Most people, they're sending money back to countries that aren't sanctioned. Aino Guzadi was initially charged via complaint in 2024, but new documents filed this month show he is charged by information, which indicates he is working with the feds. It appears that he's cooperating and that will make a huge difference in his ultimate sentence if he is able to give the government good information about how these currency markets work and how other people may be abusing the system. He faces up to 20 years in prison and deportation if convicted. His next court appearance is set for Monday at 10 a.m. I'm Lynn Kawano, Hawaii News Now. It's 722, and if you're looking for a way to help clean up the environment, we've got the perfect suggestion for you. We'll have details on a beach cleanup taking place today in Waimanalo. Stay with us for that and more when Sunrise continues on Hawaii News Now. By the way, we're also showing you some live video of the farm fair taking place just outside of Wahiawa at the Whitmore Village. We'll have more on that coming up, so stay with us here on Sunrise. Or whenever it's convenient for you. The HNN streaming app. The easiest way to watch local TV with no fees, no subscriptions. Just great local content. This is Hawaii News Now Sunrise. 726, welcome back. Now, if you're looking for a way to give back to the community and spend time outdoors today, here's an opportunity to help keep Hawaii's beaches clean. The Waikiki Aquarium is hosting a plastic-free July beach cleanup today from 9 to 11 a.m. at Sherwood Beach in Waimanalo. Buckets and cleanup tools will be provided, but participants are encouraged to bring a reusable water bottle and real safe sunscreen. The registration is required, and you can find out more information on our As Seen on Sunrise page at hawainewsnow.com. That's nice. If you're doing some back-to-school shopping this weekend, consider picking up an extra item for a local student. The 6th Annual Castle Complex School Supply Drive. That's happening today from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tomorrow, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., this is going to be at Windward Mall. Organizers are collecting backpacks, notebooks, pencils, crayons, slippers, and other school supplies to help students and teachers across the Castle Complex. Always good to help out, right? It is. It's cool going back. Especially Fitz with the cakey. Hey, let's take a live look outside, or excuse me, we'll take a look at the weather first, and this is what you can expect today. Take a look at the current conditions right now. Let's see here, 77 in Hilo, 80 degrees the hot spot right now. Huddle is 79, take a live look outside. This is over at the Farm Fair. Oh, by the way, Whitmore Village is where they're doing this, right? All set up, ready to go. Yeah, so if you want to move over there to the Farm Fair, you can. You're watching Sunrise on Hawaii News Now. The HNN Streaming App. way to watch local TV with no fees, no subscriptions. Just great local content.
