Attorneys involved in an ongoing court case over 83 priceless Hawaiian cultural objects were told to keep mum about any developments toward resolving the dispute following a 90-minute closed-door conference yesterday with U.S. Magistrate Kevin Chang.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge David Ezra gave the parties until yesterday to come up with a game plan for proceeding with a mediation process.
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A status conference before Ezra is slated for Tuesday morning.

Last week, the judge said that if the parties make strides with mediation, Hui Malama leader Edward Halealoha Ayau may at some point be eligible for home confinement. Ayau has been held in the Federal Detention Center near Honolulu International Airport since Dec. 27, when Ezra found him in contempt of court for not complying with a federal order to divulge the exact location of the objects.

A federal judge selected two engineering firms yesterday to study whether it would be safe to unearth a set of Hawaiian artifacts buried in a Big Island cave complex by a Hawaiian group.
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Chief U.S. District Judge David Ezra picked Englekirk & Sabol Consulting Structural Engineers Inc. and Geolabs Inc. to determine what would be the safest way to enter the caves and retrieve the artifacts, according to a court order.