Twilio founder Jeff Lawson and, probably, the new owner of The Onion.
Steve Jennings / Getty Images
Satirical news website The Onion was sold to a company called Global Tetrahedron.
Global Tetrahedron is also the name of a fictional evil megacorporation in a long-running Onion gag.
But it's a real company, and Twilio founder Jeff Lawson appears to be behind it.
Jeff Lawson, the founder of cloud computing company Twilio, appears to have purchased the satirical news website The Onion from G/O Media.
A trust linked to Lawson is behind a San Francisco-based company called Global Tetrahedron, which shares the name of a fictional evil megacorporation in a long-running Onion gag, business records show.
G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller confirmed the sale of The Onion to Global Tetrahedron in an email Thursday to staff, first reported by New York Times journalist Katie Robertson.
"This company is made up of four digital media veterans with a profound love for The Onion and comedy based content," Spanfeller wrote. "The site's new owners have agreed to keep The Onion's entire staff intact and in Chicago, something we insisted be part of the deal."
Lawson resigned as Twilio's CEO in January following a year of deep layoffs and pressure from activist investors.
When asked whether he had purchased The Onion, Lawson played coy. "What's The Onion?" he replied. Then, "What's a Tetrahedron?"
Business Insider was unsure how to respond to these questions.
"Am I talking to Twilio founder Jeff Lawson or am I just taking crazy pills today?" Business Insider's reporter replied. Lawson did not respond.
The cofounders of crypto mixer Samourai Wallet were charged with money laundering.
The service anonymized hundreds of millions of dollars for dark web criminals, prosecutors said.
Samourai's cofounders invited the laundering, prosecutors allege.
The cofounders of a cryptocurrency mixing service called Samourai Wallet — which rendered crypto transactions anonymous — have been arrested and charged with money laundering, according to an indictment unsealed Wednesday.
Prosecutors for the Southern District of New York claimed the crypto mixer made $2 billion worth of transactions untraceable, and that its founders — Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill — knew criminals were using the service to launder funds.
Rodriguez and Hill were charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business.
The Samourai Wallet website has been seized. Rodriguez and Hill were arrested Wednesday, and the US will seek Hill's extradition from Portugal to stand trial, according to a press release.
About $100 million of the transactions executed by Samourai Wallet originated from "illegal darkweb markets, such as Silk Road and Hydra Market" — as well as various online schemes and other illegal activities, prosecutors alleged in the indictment.
And Rodriguez and Hill were well aware, the prosecutors said. They "openly invited users to launder criminal proceeds" publicly on X, in DMs, and in marketing materials passed to potential investors, according to the indictment.
Rodriguez was Samourai's CEO, and Hill was its CTO. They founded the company in 2015, according to the indictment, and the app has been downloaded over 100,000 times. All told, it netted them $4.5 million in transaction fees, according to the indictment.
"The FBI is committed to exposing covert financial schemes and ensuring no one can hide behind a screen to perpetuate financial wrongdoing," FBI Assistant Director James Smith said in a statement.
Lawyers haven't been listed for either Rodriguez or Hill and an attorney who has represented their company in the past did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment. If convicted, they each face a maximum of 25 years in prison.
Then-President Donald Trump speaks to supporters at the Ellipse in Washington, DC.
Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images
Trump's lawyers say a president can get away with crimes if Congress doesn't find out about it while they're in office.
If a president leaves before Congress can impeach and convict, they're home free, Trump's lawyers say.
The Constitution's framers "assumed the risk of under-enforcement," his lawyer told the Supreme Court.
As the saying goes: It's not the crime; it's the cover-up.
If former President Donald Trump gets his way, a good cover-up will be enough.
In arguments before the US Supreme Court Thursday, Trump's lawyer, John Sauer, said a former president can escape criminal culpability so long as they keep their conduct secret from Congress and don't get impeached.
Trump has asked the court to formally recognize sweeping legal immunity for presidents, with his lawyers arguing that impeachment and conviction would be the "gateway" for any potential criminal prosecution.
In oral arguments Thursday, Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked what would happen if potential criminal conduct wasn't discovered until after a president already left office.
"What if the criminal conduct isn't discovered until after the president is out of office, so there was no opportunity for impeachment?" she asked.
Sauer said the framers of the US Constitution "assumed the risk of under-enforcement" with the system they devised, which Sauer argues requires impeachment first.
"The separation of powers prevents us from righting every wrong, but it does so that we do not lose liberty," Sauer said, quoting the late conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
Trump was impeached — for the second time — by the US House of Representatives in the final days of his presidency over his attempts to subvert the election.
The US Senate held a trial in February, after he had already left office, and did not reach the two-thirds majority needed to convict him. No US President has ever been convicted after an impeachment.
Smith didn't bring his indictment against Trump until the summer of 2023 — more than two years after Trump left office.
While some of the conduct described in the indictment refers to Trump's open attempts to pressure members of Congress not to certify now-President Joe Biden's win, other elements of the indictment refer to details that were not fully known during his presidency.
Donald Trump appears unlikely to get the sweeping presidential immunity he wants.
But a majority of Supreme Court justices appear ready to hand the former president an immediate victory.
The justices appear likely to further delay a trial on Trump's efforts to overturn the election.
Donald Trump might not get the sweeping immunity he wants.
Still, the Supreme Court justices do not appear likely to dismiss the former president's claims quickly, raising the likelihood that Trump may not face trial for trying to overturn the 2020 election before November.
During arguments Thursday, Justices repeatedly underlined the historic weight of the case before them.
But for Trump the most immediate effect is that the significant issues at play will likely cause the criminal case against him to be delayed until after he wins or loses his next election.
Special counsel Jack Smith wanted justices to quickly deal with Trump's claims and then move the case to trial, which was originally scheduled to begin last month.
A back-and-forth in oral arguments underlined that enough justices would rather kick the case back to a lower court level to determine which of Trump's acts, as alleged in the indictment, are officially related to his job.
"I think you've acknowledged in response to others' questions that some of the acts in the indictment are private, and your view is that some are official," Justice Brett Kavanaugh told Sauer. "Is it your position then that that analysis of which is which should be undertaken, in the first instance, by either the DC circuit or the District Court?"
As Kavanaugh suggested, further arguments over the official and private line between Trump's actions could fall to US District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, in DC, who could be charged to hear and rule on the case.
A delay of this kind would make it almost impossible for Smith to try Trump before the November election. If Trump were to beat President Joe Biden, it's not hard to see how Trump would use his presidential powers to wiggle out of the case.
Smith's prosecution of Trump is the main avenue for the former president to face repercussions for his actions to overturn the 2020 election.
John Sauer, Trump's lawyer, argued that a former president should hold absolute immunity for actions that might only be tangentially related to a president's actual job. He drew his arguments from an earlier Supreme Court case that mapped the line for presidential immunity in civil matters.
The Supreme Court weighs Trump's immunity claim.
Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Some of the court's conservative justices, especially Justice Samuel Alito, seemed especially sympathetic to Sauer's related point that there should be an extremely high bar for a court or prosecutor to question, after the fact, whether a president was truly doing their job when they ran afoul of the law.
Not every justice appeared as sold as Alito.
But even Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who appeared skeptical of some of Sauer's other arguments, suggested that Smith's team may have to alter the current indictment against Trump significantly if they want to proceed with the case quickly.
Barrett indicated the special counsel could focus solely on actions that Trump was doing outside his job.
Michael Dreeben, who argued on behalf of Smith's team, seemed hesitant to agree to such a fix.
"There's really an integrated conspiracy here that had different components, as alleged in the indictment — working with private lawyers to achieve the goals of the fraud, and as I said before, the petitioner reaching for his official powers to try to make his conspiracies more likely to succeed," Dreeben said in response. "We would like to present that as an integrated picture to the jury so that it sees the sequence and the gravity of the conduct and why each step occurred."
Barrett and other justices pressed both Sauer and Dreeben to go line-by-line through some of Trump's conduct as outlined in the indictment.
It is possible that the Supreme Court could rule that a more detailed review of Trump's conduct is best left to a lower court.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson offered what was almost a last-minute plea to her colleagues, questioning whether the case before them is really the one they want to use to draw a definitive line for every future president on what exactly is an "official act" in the scope of their job.
"If we see the question presented as broader than that, and we do say, 'let's engage in the core official versus not core and try to figure out the line,' is this the right vehicle to hammer out that test?" Jackson asked.
But Jackson's colleagues seem unlikely to be receptive to such a view based on Thursday's arguments, and recent history.
In June 2022, Chief Justice John Roberts admonished the court's other conservative justices for not limiting their decision in Dobbs v. Jackon to just the facts of the abortion rights case before the court. Justice Alito led a 5-4 majority that explicitly overturned Roe v. Wade. Conservative justices expressed similar concerns about Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges that found there is a nationwide right to same-sex marriage.
Throughout history, justices have reached for more sweeping language than the facts of the case before them.
Multiple conservative justices, including Alito and Kavanaugh, stressed they were concerned about more than just Trump's conduct as alleged in the indictment.
"I appreciate that, but you also understand that we're writing a rule for the ages," Justice Neil Gorsuch told Dreeben at one point.
Trump would benefit from waiting for such a rule.
Because it would take so long to craft such a standard and then figure out how it applies to him, Trump could effectively avoid prosecution for any post-2020 election offenses at the federal level.
Scientists collect organic material from a dead porpoise on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, during a bird flu outbreak in São José do Norte, Brazil.
Diego Vara/Reuters
The H5N1 bird flu virus is spreading through US cattle herds for the first time.
The mammal-to-mammal transmission has scientists worried the virus could mutate to spread between humans.
Former surgeon general Jerome Adams fears the US is making the mistakes of 2020 all over again.
Bird flu is flying wild. In recent months the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus has been spreading through US cattle herds for the first time ever.
The cow-to-cow transmission is the latest escalation in a global outbreak that began when the virus reemerged in Europe in 2020. It has since killed tens of millions of birds and more than 40,000 sea lions and seals in South America.
World Health Organization chief scientist Jeremy Farrar called this an "animal pandemic" on April 18.
Genetic fragments of the virus, discovered in grocery store milk on Tuesday, suggest the cattle outbreak is more widespread than officials believed, The Washington Post reported.
Experts told the Post that drinking pasteurized milk is probably still safe. Pasteurization deactivates pathogens, probably including H5N1, according to the Food and Drug Administration. However, no studies have specifically tested whether pasteurizing milk deactivates H5N1. According to the New York Times, the FDA is testing that now.
A cow looks up from its feed at the Johann Dairy farm in Fresno, California.
Nathan Frandino/Reuters
One human in Texas has tested positive for the virus after exposure to dairy cattle. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that person's only symptom was eye redness.
There has been no known human-to-human transmission. Still, future mutation could allow the virus to spread more easily to and between humans — a possibility of "great concern" to Farrar.
Bill Powers with his flock of white turkeys, kept under shelter to prevent exposure to bird flu, in Townsend, Delaware.
Nathan Howard/Getty Images
Dr. Jerome Adams, a former surgeon general and the director of health equity at Purdue University, is getting deja vu.
"If it keeps spreading in animals, then it is eventually going to cause problems for humans, either because we don't have food because they've got to start exterminating flocks, or because it starts to make a jump in humans," Adams, who served under former President Donald Trump and was on the administration's initial COVID-19 task force, told Business Insider. "The more it replicates, the more chances it has to mutate."
Though he agrees with the CDC's assessment that the current risk to humans is low, Adams fears the US is repeating many mistakes it made in the early days of COVID-19.
Weak messaging with no clear leaders
Who is in charge of an animal pandemic in the US? The CDC? The US Department of Agriculture? The FDA?
The answer is, sort of, all of them. That decentralized responsibility could be behind the lack of widespread, clear public messaging so far.
For example, Adams says he hasn't changed anything about his diet, since pasteurization and proper cooking procedures should kill any live virus present. But he isn't sure everyone is getting the message.
He compared it to the development of COVID-19 vaccines, when people distrusted a process they didn't understand.
A grocery store employee stocks cartons of eggs at a market in Sonoma County, California, where avian flu infections shut down a cluster of egg farms in recent months.
Terry Chea/AP Photo
"The public needs good consistent communication from the White House, from the USDA, helping reassure them what the process is to keep them safe," Adams said.
Rather than consumers, the people most at risk are agricultural workers or anyone with close or prolonged exposure to chickens or cattle. It's those groups who need strong, targeted guidance right now, Adams said.
Only testing the sick
So far, the USDA has only been testing cattle herds when an animal appears sick. That means asymptomatic spread could be flying under the radar.
"An animal can't tell you, 'Hey, I feel a little under the weather today.' So they're literally waiting until an animal is collapsing or showing fatigue or showing severe symptoms," Adams said. "We need a testing strategy that is proactive and allows true surveillance, and not reactive."
The USDA took a step forward on Wednesday, ordering that all lactating dairy cows must be tested for H5N1 before they're moved across state lines and that all positive test results must be reported.
New York Times columnist Zeynep Tufekci reported that same day that, until now, the USDA has not been keeping track of positive test results in cattle.
Election distraction
Former President Donald Trump, at a press conference after leaving the second day of his defamation trial involving E. Jean Carroll.
Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images
In late 2019 and early 2020, the big news story was the impeachment, and later acquittal, of President Trump. Now a different Trump trial is dominating the news.
And, as in 2020, this is an election year.
"The Biden administration, particularly the White House, has been incredibly quiet on this bird flu situation. Why? To me, it looks like they very much don't want to scare the public and spook the economy in an election year," Adams said.
Business vs. public health
Just like the lockdowns of COVID-19 were devastating for the restaurant and hospitality industries, a crackdown on avian flu can be devastating to the chicken industry.
The treatment for a bird flu outbreak is to kill all the chickens. Even before that, just testing the flock can slow down production.
"We're seeing the same tension between business interests and public health interests," Adams said.
What's more, many of the workers who handle chickens and cattle are undocumented immigrants. That can make them and their bosses hesitant to call in authorities over diseased animals.
Many vulnerable groups were hesitant to report illness in the early COVID days, too, including migrant workers and people who didn't have sick leave from work.
"My concern is we keep making the same mistakes over and over again," Adams said. "Because we keep focusing on the wrong things instead of focusing on the root causes."
The first-quarter GDP report surprised investors with disappointing growth, while consumer prices kept rising.
The provides the backdrop for stagflation, which can't be combated with rate cuts.
The 1970s offer a warning of what could happen if inflation spirals out of control.
The latest GDP and inflation readings were what investors were least eager to see, and could hint at serious trouble ahead.
"This was a worst of both worlds report – slower than expected growth, higher than expected inflation," wrote David Donabedian, chief investment officer of CIBC Private Wealth US.
First-quarter growth fell well behind estimates, rising at an annualized rate of 1.6%, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Not only is that far under forecasts of 2.5%, but it also fails to live up to the 3.4% increase achieved in the fourth quarter.
While such a cooldown would usually bolster calls for interest rates to start easing, the report noted a hotter-than-expected rise in consumer prices as well. That puts serious limits on the Federal Reserve's ability to take action, as the central bank has made clear it needs inflation to climb lower before any rate cuts can happen. Stocks — which have long priced in those cuts — sold off sharply.
It's also bad news for the economy, as sputtering growth and higher prices are the key ingredients for stagflation, which is characterized by economic listlessness and stubbornly elevated inflation over a prolonged period. Such a scenario that can be even harder to combat than a recession, because of the dynamic outlined above: the Fed's hands are largely tied.
America's last dalliance with stagflation came in the 1970s. The precedent can offer a glimpse into how the US economic picture could unfold, and makes it clear why economists are desperate to avoid a re-run.
Early that decade, geopolitical disagreement prompted the OPEC coalition to restrict crude exports to the US, and energy prices rocketed in response. With additional help from high government spending and the dollar's de-coupling from gold, inflation surged into double digits, while the economy tumbled.
The period was so tumultuous that it undid long-standing macroeconomic theories, and required the Fed to step up its role in the economy. In order to finally reign things in, then-Fed Chairman Paul Volcker was forced to raise interest rates a staggering 20%, calming price highs but throwing the US into a deep recession.
It's for this reason current analysts shudder at comparisons to the period 50 years ago, and why stagflationary forecasts bear weight.
JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon is among those who have recently made allusions to the stagflationary 1970s, warning that markets have become too cheerful about the state of the economy.
But stagflation remains a long shot. Despite sticky-high inflation, markets continue to price in at least one rate cut this year. Further, Barclays analysts led by Pooja Sriram pointed out after the GDP report that final sales to domestic purchasers rose by enough to suggest "demand conditions remain strong."
Friday's personal consumption expenditures report — viewed as the Fed's main inflation bellwether — will offer investors a clearer picture of where inflation is headed. If it goes higher, the Fed will have little choice but to become more tighten policy, according to Donabedian.
"We are not far from all rate cuts being backed out of investor expectations. It forces Chair Powell into a hawkish tone for next week's FOMC meeting," he said.
"My life's purpose has changed, and I realize more clearly my life's mission to continue to shine a bright light on mental health and wellness," Simpkins wrote in the memoir.
Simpkins also discusses her daughter's struggle with high-functioning depression. The term, which is not an official medical diagnosis, describes depression among people who maintain, or even appear to thrive in, happy-looking, productive lives, experts told Business Insider.
Kryst died on January 30, 2022. She was 30 years old.
Benjamin Askinas/The Miss Universe Organization
"Although successful and oftentimes leaders in their fields, these individuals are conducting their lives much like running a race with a weight belt carrying 100 extra pounds," John Huber, a psychologist at Mainstream Mental Health, told Healthline.
Kryst was an attorney, reporter, and Miss USA titleholder
Kryst won the Miss USA title in 2019 while representing North Carolina, and made the top 10 at Miss Universe that same year. She was also a complex-litigation attorney and worked as a host for Extra TV.
In a statement sent to BI after Kryst's death, Simpkins said that while her daughter's "life on this earth was short, it was filled with many beautiful memories."
"We miss her laugh, her words of wisdom, her sense of humor, and mostly her hugs," she said. "We miss all of it, we miss all of her. Cheslie — to the world, you were a ball of sunshine wrapped in smiles."
Simpkins added that she "talked, FaceTimed, or texted" her daughter "all day, every day."
Miss USA Cheslie Kryst competed in the 2019 Miss Universe pageant.
Miss Universe
"You were more than a daughter — you were my very best friend," Simpkins said. "Talking with you was one of the best parts of my day. Your smile and laugh were infectious. I love you baby girl with all my heart. I miss you desperately. I know one day we'll be together again. Until then, rest easy and in peace."
Kryst worked pro bono with clients serving long sentences for low-level drug offenses. She helped free one client who had been sentenced to life in prison. She also spent years raising funds for the nonprofits Dress for Success and Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, and also used her platform to support Black Lives Matter.
In 2019, Kryst was part of a historic moment when Miss Universe, Miss USA, Miss Teen USA, and Miss America all went to women of color. She told Business Insider at the time that being part of such a group was "surreal."
"I just think this is an important moment," she said. "And maybe people can carry this inspiration into other areas of their lives."
People in tech and entertainment may be vulnerable to high-functioning depression
About 8.4% of Americans 18 and over experience major depressive disorder any given year, the Anxiety and Depression Association of America reports. It's more common in women than men, and the medium age of onset is 32.5.
Dr. Mimi Winsberg, a psychiatrist and chief medical officer of Brightside, told BI that clinicians think of depression on a spectrum from mild to severe, and also consider patients' level of functioning. Can they get out of bed? Go to work? Engage socially?
"More often than not, severity correlates with a lower level of functioning, but some people can experience severe depression, even suicidal ideation, but continue to be high functioning in their outwardly facing lives," she said.
Winsberg lives in San Francisco and has worked as Facebook's on-site psychiatrist. She says that high performers in the tech and entertainment industries may be compelled to hide their internal pain due to the "pressure to keep up public appearances, or an environment that does not culturally sanction depression or where lower levels of functioning are less acceptable."
Getting help can be challenging since it "can involve acknowledging vulnerability and slowing down," Winsberg said.
If you suspect a loved one is struggling — unstable moods, sleep, relationships, and substance abuse can be clues, though not always — encourage them to get care, Winsberg said.
"Good treatments are available, even online and from the comfort of your home," she added.
Anne Reynolds (right) bought a property in Hawaii and later found a home was built on it.
Courtesy of Anne Reynolds.
Anne Reynolds purchased a vacant lot in Hawaii in 2018 from a tax auction.
A developer in Hawaii accidentally built a house on it instead of the neighboring lot.
She wants the house to be removed and the flora and fauna to be restored. Instead she got sued.
Annaleine "Anne" Reynolds had big plans for a vacant lot she purchased in 2018. Unfortunately, she was beaten to the punch when a developer built a house in it.
Reynolds bought a one-acre plot of land in Hawaiian Paradise Park, a nearly 15,000-person subdivision on Hawaii's Big Island, for $22,500 at a tax auction. Now, a house — worth just over $500,000, according to Trulia — sits vacant on the land.
"It was so sad — I cried when I saw it," Reynolds told Business Insider. "It didn't look like that when I bought it."
Reynolds, who lives in California, had grand visions for the land and was disturbed when she found out that those plans are going to have to wait a little longer while everything gets sorted out in court.
But she's in court as a defendant.
"It feels like I did something wrong," she said.
According to documents verified by BI, Reynolds is being sued by the developer, Keaau Development Partnership LLC, on accusations of unjust enrichment and constructive trust.
Now she's fighting in court not only to maintain possession of her land, but also remove the house that sits on it and restore the flora and fauna.
How a mistake like this happened
Originally, Reynolds had plans to build a home for her two children on the property and also save space to host women's retreats.
Reynolds is an energy healer and a relationship coach, and for her, the perfect plot of land was more than just the view or the peace she felt from hearing the waves crashing.
Reynolds' lot is just two miles from the beach.
Doug Keown/Getty Images
"It needs to align with me with my zodiac sign, basically," she said. "Also, the position of the land in relation to the stars and north, south, east, and west coordinates, the sun rising and setting — all these things go into consideration."
Others view these one-acre plots differently.
Dana Kenny, principal broker of Savio Realty Ltd., has been selling property in Hawaii for over 40 years. He told BI that in Paradise Park, unless you're next to the ocean or the highway, every parcel looks indistinguishable.
"There are 8,000 one-acre lots in Paradise Park," Kenny said. "If I blindfolded you, and I drove you to Paradise Park and I put you on a street in front of a lot — I'll give you $10,000 if you could figure out where you were."
An aerial view of Hawaiian Paradise Park's residential area.
Westend61/Getty Images
That may be how a mistake like this one happened.
Keaau Development Partnership could not be reached for comment, however, according to a court document prepared by the developer's lawyer, Peter Olson, the untouched plots in Paradise Park are identified by telephone poles. There are two lots between each telephone pole, and the wrong one was picked.
"The mistake was an accident and not intentional," the document reads. "It was discovered after construction was complete and during the process of selling."
The document also states that Keaau Development Partnership offered Reynolds an exchange of lots: She gets the undeveloped lot next door, and they keep the one with the already built house on it.
She said no.
"The land was special to her," James DiPasquale, Reynolds' attorney, told BI. "Its placement was special to her, and she simply wants it back."
A complete restoration would take a great deal of time and money
In a motion for preliminary injunction and temporary restraining order filed by DiPasquale, Reynolds requested that the already built home be removed, and that the land be restored to its "natural state prior to the wrongful construction."
That's easier said than done, according to Kenny.
"So you want me to tear the house down — so I tear the house down," he explained, theoretically. "Then I've got to rip up the slab. There's a water catchment system with a foundation for it — I've got to rip that up. Then I've got to dig into the ground and pull up the septic tank system and the leach field that was installed."
"I've got to remove the cinder that was laid out on top of the ground down to where the lot was bulldozed to the actual rock on the bottom," Kenny continued. "Then I've got to undo the bulldozer job. Now that's impossible, but let's say she says that's okay. She wants me to put the foliage and fauna back. Well, this is a one-acre lot. It's 135 feet wide, 325 feet deep. Where were the trees?"
Kenny estimates a project like that would cost close to $1 million to execute. The home only cost about $300,000 to build, but, as it stands now, Reynolds is footing the bill for the property taxes — since she owns it.
Property records show that the taxes on the lot grew from $299.20 in 2018, the year Reynolds purchased the property, to $2,019.60 in 2023. Taxes on the neighboring, undeveloped lot were $654.50 in 2023.
Reynolds just wants her land back
While not intentional, DiPasquale believes that this mistake could set a harmful precedent for matters like this in the future.
"Do I think that we're going to have a situation where developers start bullying and basically seeing random swaths of land and say, 'Hey, listen, I'm going to go ahead and try and develop it,' I doubt that's going to necessarily happen," he said. "But I think a more common violation would be something along the lines of encroachment, or basically claiming that they were unaware of where their boundary lines fell — they built well over into another property and they're basically just saying it was an accident."
Reynolds remembers the lush greens, beautiful flowers, and the proud Ohia Lehua trees that have since been removed from her land. Still, she's hopeful that one day they'll return as they once were.
"It felt like when you go into a sanctuary — it was really gorgeous and I could really feel the land it was just calling out to me," she said. "I know that for Hawaiians the land is sacred — there's a sanctity to the land, and it must be revered and respected. We showed the same reverence and respect for the land."
A UK warship on Wednesday destroyed a Houthi ballistic missile likely targeting a commercial ship.
It marked the Royal Navy's first such kill since the Gulf War, according to a report.
A 1991 engagement marked the first time ship-launched anti-air missiles successfully destroyed an enemy missile in naval combat.
A UK warship on Wednesday shot down a ballistic missile fired by the Houthis in Yemen, marking the Royal Navy's first such kill since the Gulf War more than 30 years ago.
The HMS Diamond, a Type 45 destroyer, used its advanced Sea Viper missile interceptors to down the deadly Houthi threat while the warship was protecting a commercial ship in the Gulf of Aden, according to a new report.
US Central Command, or CENTCOM, said on Wednesday that a coalition vessel had "successfully engaged" an anti-ship ballistic missile over the Gulf of Aden earlier in the day, marking the first confirmed Houthi attack in over a week.
The missile was likely targeting the MV Yorktown, a US-flagged, owned, and operated merchant vessel with American and Greek crew members aboard, CENTCOM noted in a statement. There was no reported damage or injuries, it added.
A view shows HMS Diamond in the Red Sea on Operation Prosperity Guardian, in this handout image taken on January 6, 2024.
Chris Sellars/Handout via REUTERS
The coalition vessel has since been identified as the Diamond by The Times, which reported new details of the engagement on Thursday. Grant Shapps, the UK defense secretary, confirmed the incident and told the outlet that it was the first time a missile was intercepted in combat by a Royal Navy warship since 1991.
During the Gulf War, the Type 42 destroyer HMS Gloucester used Sea Dart missiles to destroy an Iraqi silkworm anti-ship missile that was targeting an American warship. That engagement marked the first time anti-air missiles successfully destroyed an enemy missile threat during a battle at sea.
It is not immediately clear what type of missile the Houthis used on Wednesday. The rebels are confirmed to have employed a variety of missiles and drones of Iranian origin since they started attacking ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden last year.
The UK Ministry of Defense did not immediately respond to Business Insider's queries on the engagement.
The Diamond first deployed to the region in December as part of a US Navy-led task force that has been squaring off against relentless Houthi threats off the coast of Yemen. The warship spent several weeks back home earlier this year to receive maintenance and additional supplies, but it has since returned to the region.
The HMS Diamond, a UK warship, responds to a Houthi attack on Jan. 9, 2023.
Royal Navy
During these deployments, the Diamond has used its Sea Viper missiles and 30mm gun to destroy a handful of Houthi drones on multiple occasions. Several other European warships have also destroyed Houthi threats in the air, alongside American vessels.
Meanwhile, shortly after the Diamond's engagement on Wednesday, which ended a period of relative calm in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden that lasted a little more than a week, US forces destroyed four drones over Yemen.
CENTCOM said it was determined that the Houthi anti-ship ballistic missile and drones presented "an imminent threat to US, coalition, and merchant vessels in the region."
"These actions are taken to protect freedom of navigation and make international waters safer and more secure for US, coalition, and merchant vessels," CENTCOM added.
Excavators demolished the home on Hummock Pond Road this week after a series of storms severely eroded the property. The town had approved its demolition last month.
Sternlicht, who Forbes reports is worth $3.8 billion, originally purchased 289 Hummock Pond Road for $610,000 in 2010 in a foreclosure sale, according to property records. The home changed hands between two Sternlicht-linked trusts in 2016, the year he got divorced, for $1.6 million. Then, in 2019, he purchased 287 Hummock Pond Road for $1.3 million.
In 2020, hurricanes eroded the properties, and the town ordered one of the two homes on the land demolished, according toa Vanity Fair story published at the time. The other home was moved onto steel girders, where it sat until it was razed this week.
A representative for Sternlicht told Business Insider the house was to be demolished but did not provide further comment.
The Nantucket Current reported that there was nowhere else on the lot, which is surrounded by water, to move the home after so much of the land was swept away by rising sea levels. Shelly Lockwood, a real-estate agent on Nantucket, told Business Insider that the land was too unstable to hold the equipment needed to move the house elsewhere on the island and that, due to strict zoning rules, it's unlikely Sternlicht will be allowed to rebuild on the property.
The tony island of Nantucket is a favorite among billionaires like former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Blackstone leader Steve Schwarzman. Sternlicht's neighbor is James Pallota, the investor and former Celtics minority owner. Pallota also owns a nearly 3-acre lot further inland with an assessed value of about $7 million.
But property values on what was once some of the most valuable spits of coastal properties are now falling because of the erosion caused by storms and rising sea levels.
"It's crazy," Lockwood said about the properties. "They are dropping into the ocean."
On nearby Sheep Pond Road, a home that was once listed for $2.3 million in September ended up selling for $600,000 in February.
"I'd like to think that it'll be there for a while, but I was definitely aware of the risk of any particular storm causing a problem in the future," the owner, Brendan Maddigan, told The Boston Globe.
Another home on that street had its price cut in half, from $3 million to $1.5 million, after three months on the market.
"Prices are going to have to start dropping. It's becoming more and more obvious that there is no value there. You are taking a big risk," Lockwood said. "If your portfolio can stand the loss, then have fun and enjoy the beachfront home — just don't expect it to be here next year."
Nantucket real-estate attorney Steven Cohen counts at least "five or six hot spots" for erosion around the island that threaten existing structures, including the local airport. He estimates one or two homes every year have to be moved or demolished because of the phenomenon, which threatens nearly every aspect of life on the island.
"Erosion takes out houses, roads, infrastructure, sewer beds, even airport runways," he told Business Insider. "The town is trying to figure out what to do."
Despite the island's propensity for natural destruction, the town has strict rules regarding what structures owners can take down.
Many homeowners on Nantucket who want to rebuild can't just knock down the homes on their properties. Instead, they must move them. Some offer up the structures for free to those willing to take them off their lots.
The "demolition delay" rule, as it's known, was initially implemented for environmental reasons, Cohen said. Island officials were concerned about an overflow of materials clogging local dumps.
Under the rule, owners who want to tear down an existing home must advertise it in the local paper for 30 days. They are not required to offer the house for free, but in practice, many owners offer it for free to incentivize its removal.
Though it began with green aspirations, the rule has become a cornerstone of affordable housing on the island. Families with access to land but without the means to afford astronomical building costs often snap up the homes. Many structures are also bought by the nonprofit Housing Nantucket, which converts them into income-restricted rentals for the island's year-round workforce.
But when owners who experience heavy erosion wait too long, the land around the homes can no longer support removal — as was the case for Sternlicht.
"The owners didn't do anything fast enough — they've known these houses are going in the drink," Lockwood said. "It was at a point of no return."
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