HellsBelle

Under the city’s law, Airbnb and other short-term rental platforms, as well as operators of rental units, are required to register with the city. Booking platforms must tell the city which properties have been rented, allowing the city to check if those units are legal. Companies can be fined up to $10,000 a day, per unit, if they receive a fee to book an unregistered short-term rental.

But in the four and a half years since the law took effect, Honolulu’s Department of Planning and Permitting has never cited Airbnb, Vrbo or any other rental platform for doing business with illegal rentals, city officials told Civil Beat.

Meanwhile, the number of illegal rentals dwarfs legal ones. Inside Airbnb, an organization that works to combat the negative effects of short-term rentals, says the site has about 7,900 listings on Oʻahu. The city says there are just 2,100 legal short-term rentals here.

Mexico’s security chief confirmed Tuesday that 17 family members of cartel leaders crossed into the U.S. last week as part of a deal between a son of the former head of the Sinaloa Cartel and the Trump administration.

Mexican Security Secretary Omar García Harfuch confirmed a report by independent journalist Luis Chaparro that family members of Ovidio Guzman Lopez, who was extradited to the United States in 2023, had entered the U.S.

Guzmán Lopez is one of the brothers left running a faction of the Sinaloa Cartel after notorious capo Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán was imprisoned in the U.S. Video showed the family members walking across the border from Tijuana with their suitcases to waiting U.S. agents.

A rock climber who fell hundreds of feet descending a steep gully in Washington’s North Cascades mountains survived the fall that killed his three companions, hiked to his car in the dark and then drove to a pay phone to call for help, authorities said Tuesday.

The surviving climber, Anton Tselykh, 38, extricated himself from a tangle of ropes, helmets and other equipment after the fall Saturday evening. Despite suffering internal bleeding and head trauma, Tselykh eventually, over at least a dozen hours, made the trek to the pay phone, Okanogan County Undersheriff Dave Yarnell said.

The climbers who were killed were Vishnu Irigireddy, 48, Tim Nguyen, 63, Oleksander Martynenko, 36, Okanogan County Coroner Dave Rodriguez said.

New York City will no longer fully control its jail system, including the long-troubled Rikers Island complex, after a federal judge found the city had failed to stem spiraling dysfunction and brutality against those in custody.

Instead, U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain said she would appoint an outside manager to “take all necessary steps” toward restoring order inside the jails and bringing the city into compliance with previous court orders.

The official, known as a “remediation manager,” will report directly to the court. While the city’s corrections commissioner will remain responsible for much of the day-to-day operations of the jail system, the remediation manager will have broad powers to address long-standing safety problems, including authority over hiring and promotions, staff deployment and disciplinary action regarding the use of force.

No evidence has been seen that a genocide is occurring in Gaza or that women and children were targeted by the IDF, UK government lawyers have claimed, as a high court case opened into the handling of arms exports controls to Israel.

They also suggested there was no obligation placed on the UK to make other states comply with international humanitarian law but only to ensure that no breach occured within its jurisdiction.

The government is seeking to defend itself in a judicial review brought over allegations that it acted unlawfully in continuing to sell F-35 parts and components to a global pool, even though some of those components might be used by Israel in Gaza in a way that the government regards as a breach of international law.

Much of the case will turn on the extent to which international law places obligations in domestic law.

American-owned Quest Diagnostics purchased LifeLabs in August 2024 from OMERS, a jointly owned pension fund company, for $1.35 billion. LifeLabs’ B.C. workers, who have been without a contract since last April, have been on strike since Feb. 16.

Ayendri Riddell, director of policy and campaigns with the BC Health Coalition, or BCHC, says the fact that such a large part of Canada’s health infrastructure is owned by a massive foreign company is cause for concern.

“As a company they’re not accountable to the Canadian workforce or to our health-care system and our patients,” she says. “It doesn’t seem like their striking conditions are having much of an impact on Quest.”

According to Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who describes herself as a Canadian patriot, she’s enabling a separation referendum out here in Wild Rose Country only to keep a separatist party from becoming as successful as the Bloc Québécois.

“We do not want a permanent feature of Alberta politics to be parties that send representatives to Ottawa whose sole purpose is to break up the country,” Smith said last week in the legislature in response to a question by Opposition leader Christina Gray.

The Canadian Press interpreted this and similar statements the premier made to mean Smith was prepared to roll the dice on a separation referendum “in part to avert the emergence of a political rival.”

As Albertans have come to know, Smith has a casual relationship with the truth, so it’s not always easy to be certain what she has in mind when she blurts out stuff like this. In this case, though, it seems more likely she was trying to frame her party’s legislative effort to make a separation referendum easier for a “citizen” group to get on a ballot as a way to prevent a separation movement from growing in Alberta.

An Israeli air strike on the emergency department of Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza has killed a well-known Palestinian photojournalist, medical sources and eyewitnesses say.

Hassan Aslih, who was being treated for injuries from a previous Israeli strike, was targeted in what witnesses described as a drone attack on the hospital's surgical wing.

A doctor there confirmed that Aslih had been at the hospital for nearly a month after surviving an air strike on the same facility in April.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement it had attacked Nasser Hospital in what it said was "a targeted attack on key terrorists", but did not name Aslih.

The UK’s largest Pride organisers have suspended political party participation in their events in “unequivocal solidarity” with the transgender community.

In a joint statement, the organisers of Pride events in Birmingham, Brighton, London and Manchester said the move was a “direct call for accountability and a refusal to platform those who have not protected our rights” after the UK supreme court ruling last month.

The highest court in the UK ruled that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 refer only to a biological woman and to biological sex. Five judges ruled unanimously that the legal definition of a woman in the act did not include transgender women who hold gender recognition certificates.

More than 200 marine species, including deepwater sharks, leafy sea dragons and octopuses, have been killed by a toxic algal bloom that has been affecting South Australia’s coastline since March.

Nearly half (47%) of the dead species were ray-finned fish and a quarter (26%) were sharks and rays, according to OzFish analysis of 1,400 citizen scientist reports.

Cephalopods – such as squid, cuttlefish and octopuses – accounted for 7%, while decapods – crabs, lobsters and prawns – made up 6% of species reported dead or washed up on beaches.

The OzFish South Australian project manager, Brad Martin, said the harmful bloom – of Karenia mikimotoi algae – was like a toxic blanket that smothered marine life.

Starch-based bioplastic that is said to be biodegradable and sustainable is potentially as toxic as petroleum-based plastic, and can cause similar health problems, new peer-reviewed research finds.

Bioplastics have been heralded as the future of plastic because it breaks down quicker than petroleum-based plastic, and is often made from plant-based material such as corn starch, rice starch or sugar.

The material is often used in fast fashion clothing, wet wipes, straws, cutlery and a range of other products. The new research found damage to organs, changes to the metabolism, gut microbe imbalances that can lead to cardiovascular disease, and changes to glucose levels, among other health issues.

The authors say their study is the first to confirm “adverse effects of long-term exposure” in mice.

Study ... https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jafc.4c10855

A Paris court on Tuesday found actor Gerard Depardieu guilty of sexually assaulting two women on a film set and handed him an 18-month suspended sentence, with the judge saying he appeared not to have grasped the "traumatic" impact of his behaviour.

In the highest-profile #MeToo case to come before judges in France, Depardieu repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. His lawyer said he would appeal the court's decision.