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Airbnb is suing the City of New Orleans for requiring the company and short-term rental platforms ensure properties they market are in compliance with city laws.“What we’re looking at now due to Airbnb’s lawsuit is that they do not want to be regulated,” City Council President J.P. Morrell said in a late afternoon Tuesday statement.Airbnb said its lawsuit comes “after exhausting all available paths toward sensible solutions.”For years, New Orleans leaders have struggled with how to manage the influx of illegal short-term rentals catering to the millions of visitors who flock to The Big Easy annually while managing a lack of affordable housing.A federal court struck down a 2019 New Orleans policy barring short-term rentals at properties owned by out-of-state residents. The city responded by adopting new regulations in 2023 mandating Airbnb owners live on site and limiting short-term rentals to one per block, but enforcing these rules proved difficult and illegal properties were easily able to resurface on Airbnb, city leaders say. A federal appeals court is currently reviewing these policies.Last year, the city council adopted regulations set to go into effect in June requiring Airbnb and other companies verify that all New Orleans properties listed on their platform have permits from the city. Morrell called the policy a “game-changer” that would “gut the ability to illegally list fake permits and Airbnbs.”Airbnb said it should not be tasked with implementing the city’s policies. The company has pushed back against other cities’ efforts to regulate it, including suing New York and San Francisco. Airbnb decries the city’s regulatory ‘regime’ In its lawsuit filed in federal court last week, Airbnb said it has no responsibility for the actions of its hosts, citing the same law that protects social media companies from liability for users’ posts. And the company denied that it had any obligation to verify listings were in compliance with city regulations, which it described as a “highly punitive enforcement regime.”“It is the government’s job to enforce its laws, not Airbnb’s,” the lawsuit said. It described the city’s regulationsincluding in some cases requiring a lottery for permitsas a violation of homeowners’ rights.Airbnb also protested having to turn over “confidential, sensitive, and private data” such as taxes and fees it collected and the number of bookings per property in monthly reports submitted to the city.A “typical host” in New Orleans earned $16,000 in 2023 and “hosting strengthens local economies and contributes to the cultural richness New Orleans is known for,” the lawsuit states. An abundance of illegal Airbnb listings There are currently about 1,350 non-commercial short-term rental properties with legal licenses, according to City of New Orleans data.But there are more than 7,000 active Airbnb listings in New Orleans revealing thousands of illegal short-term rentals, said Angela Owczarek, an affordable housing advocate with the Jane Place Neighborhood Sustainability Initiative.New Orleans is experiencing an affordable housing crisis mirroring many cities around the country, said Monique Blossom, director of policy at the Louisiana Fair Housing Action Center.The city had a deficit of 47,000 housing units that someone making at or below the city’s median income could afford, according to a 2022 report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition. The city has a population of less than 400,000 residents based on U.S. Census data.“Airbnbs and short-term rentals play into that, taking residential units off the market and saving them for tourists instead of having them available for the families that want to live and work in New Orleans or who are already here,” Blossom said.Airbnb said in a statement that the city’s short-term rental regulations do not address the issues underlying its housing challenges, such as high insurance costs.Morrell, the city council president, suggested the lawsuit meant the city should ban Airbnb. “If we cannot regulate short term rentals, there will not be any,” he said.Another councilmember, Oliver Thomas, said the city should first wait to see how pending litigation plays out. Other councilmembers and a City spokesperson did not provide comment. Skyrocketing costs for some Airbnb owners Airbnb’s lawsuit includes several other plaintiffs who are short-term rental property owners in New Orleans, including longtime Airbnb hosts Bret Bodin, 64, and Brad Newell, 47, who bought a home together in the historic Treme neighborhood in 2013.Renting out the property’s attached guesthouse and loft on Airbnb appealed to them because they could still have friends and family visit, Newell said.With skyrocketing insurance, utilities, and inflation, the couple have become more dependent on Airbnb and say they struggled because the city’s regulations limited them to only renting out one of their guest spaces.“What started off as kind of side-income turned into essential income,” Newell said. “We’re all getting hit with unexpected rising costs, and we’re just trying to keep up.” Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Brook on the social platform X: @jack_brook96. Jack Brook, Associated Press/Report for America
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The U.S. Justice Department’s senior ethics official resigned on Tuesday, after President Donald Trump’s administration pulled him off his duties and assigned him to a new sanctuary cities working group, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters. The official, Bradley Weinsheimer, decided to accept the government’s deferred resignation offer rather than accept the reassignment, the latest in a string of nonpolitical career Justice Department officials who have resisted efforts that they say politicize investigations. Dozens of career Justice Department officialswho normally remain in office from one administration to the nextin cities including Washington and New York have been fired, reassigned or quit since Trump took office on January 20, after he vowed to rapidly shake up a department that he says was used against him during his years out of power. Last week, seven people resigned in protest, including two top officials who oversee the most politically sensitive investigations, after acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove ordered them to drop criminal corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Weinsheimer, a 34-year department veteran who was named to his current role as associate deputy attorney general during Trump’s first term, provided ethics counsel to department officials related to conflicts of interest, including on decisions related to when they should be recused from working on particular cases. He also reviewed disciplinary recommendations by the Office of Professional Responsibility, which investigates attorney misconduct, and referrals for discipline or prosecution from the Office of the Inspector General. Weinsheimer did not return a request for comment. When Reuters tried to reach him in the evening on Tuesday, his government email responded with an auto-generated message saying he was “on administrative leave pursuant to the deferred resignation program.” On January 27, around the same time Weinsheimer was reassigned, Bove delegated all ethics-related decisions to two political appointees. One of them, Kendra Wharton, previously worked alongside Bove and Todd Blanche, the president’s nominee to serve as deputy attorney general, to help defend Trump against criminal charges in New York alleging he falsified records to cover up hush money paid to a porn star. The other, Bove’s chief of staff Jordan Fox, graduated law school in 2021, according to her LinkedIn profile. “Bradley is the senior career ethics official at the Justice Department and provides advice to people across the country and in the building on really important and weighty matters,” said Joyce Vance, the former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, noting that the job he performed was apolitical. She said the reassignment of ethical decision-making to two political appointees is troubling, adding: “This is evidence that the Justice Department is being weaponized.” Chad Gilmartin, a spokesman for the Justice Department, rejected any criticism of the move by Bove to delegate the ethics decision-making to Wharton and Fox. “Kendra has a decade of experience as a criminal defense lawyer, which is exactly the mindset we want in such a role,” he said. He added that Fox “is a highly respected attorney.” Attorney General Pam Bondi, Blanche and Bove, who will serve as principal associate deputy attorney general once Blanche is confirmed by the U.S. Senate, all previously served as defense attorneys for Trump. The White House has previously argued that the Department of Justice was weaponized against Trump when it pursued charges against him for retaining classified documents and subverting the 2020 election. The department dropped both cases after Trump won the November 2024 election, citing a longstanding policy against prosecuting a sitting president. On Bondi’s first day as Attorney General, she issued a directive creating a new “weaponization working group” that would be tasked with reviewing two criminal cases brought against Trump by former Special Counsel Jack Smith for retaining classified documents and trying to subvert the 2020 presidential election, as well as Trump’s conviction in New York. Sarah N. Lynch, Reuters
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E-Commerce
Ever wondered what it would be like to wake up in Pompei on eruption day? How about how it would have felt to be a passenger on the Titanic? Now you dont need to. A new TikTok trend lets you travel back in time via artificial intelligence and experience the POV of someone living though that time period. From waking up as a caveman in 40 B.C. to being the last person on earth in 2087, many of the most viral videos have been posted by creator @timetravellerpov. The inspiration behind my videos is the desire to bring history to life in a way that feels immersive, @timetravellerpov tells Fast Company over email. Each one is designed to transport viewers into different eras, myths, and alternate realitiesmaking them feel like theyve stepped into another world. While the account posted its first video just at the start of this year, it has quickly grown to over 329,000 followers with over 5.7 million likes. @timetravellerpov POV: You wake up as the last person on Earth in 2087 #history #historytok #ai #apocalypse original sound – Time Traveller POV One viral example drops you in 1351 London during the Black Plague. The clip begins in bed before the POV takes you for a walk through the muddy streets. Here, everyone is sick and hungry. All you have left is a crust of bread, which you give to a beggar child. You visit your sick mother in the quarantine zone and try not to catch the deadly disease. Spoiler alert: It doesnt end well. @timetravellerpov POV: You wake up in 1351 During the Black Plague #history #historytok #ai original sound – Time Traveller POV Each video takes @timetravellerpov around four hours to bring to life. You can tell the content is AI because, obviously, cameras didnt exist in the 14th Century. However, the content is realistic enough to receive over 18.6 million views and thousands of comments. Shoutout to the camera man, one person wrote. The only right way to use ai, another added. I just died in pompeii now Im here give me a break, a third commented. I believe my videos have resonated with so many people because they tap into nostalgia, curiosity, and the desire to explore places and moments we could never otherwise experience, says @timetravellerpov. For me, its all about creating that wow momentwhere someone watches and says, I feel like Im actually there. While the Black Plague might not be everyones first choice of time period to travel back to, the trend has since taken an even darker turn. Other POV videos posted by different creators include being a student during COVID-19, a worker in the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001, or living through President John F. Kennedys assassination. But the trend isnt just for experiencing the darkest days in history. For those wishing to travel back to happier times, one of @timetravellerpovs videos lets viewers experience a day in the life of a child living in England in the 2000s. Here, the POV takes you under a parachute in the school playground and on a trip to the now-defunct video store Blockbuster. @timetravellerpov POV: You wake up as an English Kid in the 2000s #history #historytok #ai #nostalgia #nostalgic #CapCut original sound – Time Traveller POV I know this is AI, but damn that felt real, one viewer commented under the video. Nah this is too sad, take me back to Pompeii, added another.
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