Hawaii to boost hotel tax to fund climate change measures
The US state of Hawaii has decided to raise the tax on hotel and other accommodation stays to fund climate change measures.
Hawaii Governor Josh Green signed the legislation on Tuesday.
Starting in January next year, the state's Transient Accommodation Tax will be raised from the current 10.25 percent to 11 percent.
The estimated additional annual revenue of 100 million dollars will be used for measures such as mitigating the impact of wildfire-causing droughts and protecting shores.
Hawaii is reportedly the first US state to introduce a "green fee."
Governor Green said, "Hawaii is doing what other states and other nations are going to have to do."
He added that as climate change continues to affect the planet, "there will be no way to deal with these crises without some forward-thinking mechanism."
The Associated Press noted that when combined with other state and county taxes, travelers to Hawaii will have to pay a nearly 19 percent levy on their accommodations.
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Japan Times
9 hours ago
- Japan Times
On the Trump campaign trail, Elon Musk juggled drugs and family drama
As Elon Musk became one of Donald Trump's closest allies last year, leading raucous rallies and donating about $275 million to help him win the U.S. presidency, he was also using drugs far more intensely than previously known, according to people familiar with his activities. Musk's drug consumption went well beyond occasional use. He told people he was taking so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that it was affecting his bladder, a known effect of chronic use. He took ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms. And he traveled with a daily medication box that held about 20 pills, including ones with the markings of the stimulant Adderall, according to a photo of the box and people who have seen it. It is unclear whether Musk, 53, was taking drugs when he became a fixture at the White House this year and was handed the power to slash the federal bureaucracy. But he has exhibited erratic behavior, insulting Cabinet members, gesturing like a Nazi and garbling his answers in a staged interview. At the same time, Musk's family life has grown increasingly tumultuous as he has negotiated overlapping romantic relationships and private legal battles involving his growing brood of children, according to documents and interviews. On Wednesday evening, Musk announced that he was ending his stint with the government, after lamenting how much time he had spent on politics instead of his businesses. Musk and his lawyer did not respond to requests for comment this week about his drug use and personal life. He has previously said he was prescribed ketamine for depression, taking it about every two weeks. And he told his biographer, "I really don't like doing illegal drugs.' The White House declined to comment on Musk's drug use. At a news conference with Trump on Friday afternoon, Musk was asked about The New York Times' coverage. He questioned the newspaper's credibility and told the reporter to "move on.' As a large government contractor, Musk's aerospace firm, SpaceX, must maintain a drug-free workforce and administers random drug tests to its employees. But Musk has received advance warning of the tests, according to people close to the process. SpaceX did not respond to questions about those warnings. Musk, who joined the president's inner circle after making a vast fortune on cars, satellites and rocket ships, has long been known for grandiose statements and a mercurial personality. Supporters see him as an eccentric genius whose slash-and-burn management style is key to his success. But last year, as he jumped into the political arena, some people who knew him worried about his frequent drug use, mood swings and fixation on having more children. This account of his behavior is based on private messages obtained by The New York Times as well as interviews with more than a dozen people who have known or worked with him. This year, some of his longtime friends have renounced him, pointing to some of his public conduct. "Elon has pushed the boundaries of his bad behavior more and more,' said Philip Low, a neuroscientist and onetime friend of Musk's who criticized him for his Nazi-like gesture at a rally. And some women are challenging Musk for control of their children. One of his former partners, Claire Boucher, the musician known as Grimes, has been fighting with Musk over their 5-year-old son, known as X. Musk is extremely attached to the boy, taking him to the Oval Office and high-profile gatherings that are broadcast around the world. Boucher has privately complained that the appearances violate a custody settlement in which she and Musk agreed to try to keep their children out of the public eye, according to people familiar with her concerns and the provision, which has not been previously reported. She has told people that she worries about the boy's safety, and that frequent travel and sleep deprivation are harming his health. Another mother, the right-leaning writer Ashley St. Clair, revealed in February that she had a secret relationship with Musk and had given birth to his 14th known child. Musk offered her a large settlement to keep his paternity concealed, but she refused. He sought a gag order in New York to force St. Clair to stop speaking publicly, she said in an interview. A ketamine habit Musk has described some of his mental health issues in interviews and on social media, saying in one post that he has felt "great highs, terrible lows and unrelenting stress.' He has denounced traditional therapy and antidepressants. He plays video games for hours on end. He struggles with binge eating, according to people familiar with his habits, and takes weight-loss medication. And he posts day and night on his social media platform, X. Musk has a history of recreational drug use, The Wall Street Journal reported last year. Some board members at Tesla, his electric vehicle company, have worried about his use of drugs, including Ambien, a sleep medication. U.S. President Donald Trump and Elon Musk during a news briefing at the White House on Feb. 11. | Eric Lee / The New York Times In an interview in March 2024, journalist Don Lemon pressed him on his drug use. Musk said he took only "a small amount' of ketamine, about once every two weeks, as a prescribed treatment for negative moods. "If you've used too much ketamine, you can't really get work done, and I have a lot of work,' he said. He had actually developed a far more serious habit, The New York Times found. Musk had been using ketamine often, sometimes daily, and mixing it with other drugs, according to people familiar with his consumption. The line between medical use and recreation was blurry, troubling some people close to him. He also took ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms at private gatherings across the United States and in at least one other country, according to those who attended the events. The Food and Drug Administration has formally approved the use of ketamine only as an anesthetic in medical procedures. Doctors with a special license may prescribe it for psychiatric disorders like depression. But the agency has warned about its risks, which came into sharp relief after the death of actor Matthew Perry. The drug has psychedelic properties and can cause dissociation from reality. Chronic use can lead to addiction and problems with bladder pain and control. By the spring of last year, Musk was ramping up criticism of President Joe Biden, particularly his policies on illegal immigration and diversity initiatives. Musk was also facing federal investigations into his businesses. Regulators were looking into crashes of Tesla's self-driving cars and allegations of racism at its factories, among other complaints. "There are at least half a dozen initiatives of significance to take me down,' he wrote in a text message to someone close to him last May. "The Biden administration views me as the #2 threat after Trump.' "I can't be president, but I can help Trump defeat Biden and I will,' he added. He publicly endorsed Trump in July. Around that time, Musk told people that his ketamine use was causing bladder issues, according to people familiar with the conversations. On Oct. 5, he appeared with Trump at a rally for the first time, bouncing up and down around the candidate. That evening, Musk shared his excitement with a person close to him. "I'm feeling more optimistic after tonight,' he wrote in a text message. "Tomorrow we unleash the anomaly in the matrix.' "This is not something on the chessboard, so they will be quite surprised,' Musk added about an hour later. "'Lasers' from space.' After Trump won, Musk rented a cottage at Mar-a-Lago, the president-elect's Florida resort, to assist with the transition. Musk attended personnel meetings and sat in on phone calls with foreign leaders. And he crafted plans to overhaul the federal government under the new Department of Government Efficiency. Family secrets Musk has also been juggling the messy consequences of his efforts to produce more babies. By 2022, Musk, who has married and divorced three times, had fathered six children in his first marriage (including one who died in infancy), as well as two with Boucher. She told people she believed they were in a monogamous relationship and building a family together. But while a surrogate was pregnant with their third child, Boucher was furious to discover that Musk had recently fathered twins with Shivon Zilis, an executive at his brain implant company, Neuralink, according to people familiar with the situation. Musk was by then sounding an alarm that the world's declining birth rates would lead to the end of civilization, publicly encouraging people to have children and donating $10 million to a research initiative on population growth. Privately, he was spending time with Simone and Malcolm Collins, prominent figures in the emerging pronatalist movement, and urging his wealthy friends to have as many children as possible. He believed the world needed more intelligent people, according to people aware of the conversations. Collins declined to comment on his relationship with Musk, but said, "Elon is one of the people taking this cause seriously.' Even as Musk fathered more children, he favored his son X. By the fall of 2022, during a period when he and Boucher were broken up, he began traveling with the boy for days at a time, often without providing advance notice, according to people familiar with his actions. Boucher reconciled with Musk, only to get another unpleasant surprise. In August 2023, she learned that Zilis was expecting a third child with Musk via surrogacy and was pregnant with their fourth. Boucher and Musk began a contentious custody battle, during which Musk kept X for months. They eventually signed the joint custody agreement that specified keeping their children out of the spotlight. By mid-2023, unknown to either Boucher or Zilis, Musk had started a romantic relationship with St. Clair, the writer, who lives in New York City. St. Clair said in an interview that at first, Musk told her he wasn't dating anyone else. But when she was about six months pregnant, he acknowledged that he was romantically involved with Zilis, who went on to become a more visible fixture in Musk's life. St. Clair said that Musk told her he had fathered children around the world, including one with a Japanese pop star. He said he would be willing to give his sperm to anyone who wanted to have a child. "He made it seem like it was just his altruism and he generally believed these people should just have children,' St. Clair said. St. Clair said that when she was in a delivery room giving birth in September, Musk told her over disappearing Signal messages that he wanted to keep his paternity and their relationship quiet. Elon Musk jumps in the air during a rally for Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Oct. 5 last year. | Doug Mills / The New York Times On election night, St. Clair and Musk both went to Mar-a-Lago to celebrate Trump's victory. But she had to pretend that she hardly knew him, she said. He offered her $15 million and $100,000 a month until their son turned 21, in exchange for her silence, according to documents reviewed by the Times and first reported by the Journal. But she did not want her son's paternity to be hidden. After she went public in February, ahead of a tabloid story, she sued Musk to acknowledge paternity and, later, to get emergency child support. Musk sought a gag order, claiming that any publicity involving the child, or comments by St. Clair on her experience, would be a security risk for the boy. 'No sympathy for this behavior' Some of Musk's onetime friends have aired concerns about what they considered toxic public behavior. In a January newsletter explaining why their friendship had ended, Sam Harris, a public intellectual, wrote that Musk had used his social media platform to defame people and promote lies. "There is something seriously wrong with his moral compass, if not his perception of reality,' Harris wrote. Later that month, at a Trump inauguration event, Musk thumped his chest and thrust his hand diagonally upward, resembling a fascist salute. "My heart goes out to you,' he told the crowd. "It is thanks to you that the future of civilization is assured.' Musk dismissed the resulting public outcry, saying he had made a "positive gesture.' Low, who is chief executive of NeuroVigil, a neurotechnology company, was outraged by the performance. He wrote Musk a sharp email, shared with the Times, cursing him "for giving the Nazi salute.' When Musk didn't respond to the message, Low posted his concerns on social media. "I have no sympathy for this behavior,' he wrote on Facebook, referring to the gesture as well as other behaviors. "At some point, after having repeatedly confronted it in private, I believe the ethical thing to do is to speak out, forcefully and unapologetically.' The next month, Musk once again found himself under scrutiny, this time for an appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington. As he walked onto the stage, he was handed a chain saw from one of his political allies, Javier Milei, the president of Argentina. "This is the chain saw for bureaucracy!' Musk shouted to the cheering crowd. Some conference organizers told the Times that they did not notice anything out of the ordinary about his behavior behind the scenes. But during an onstage interview, he spoke in disjointed bouts of stuttering and laughing, with sunglasses on. Clips of it went viral as many viewers speculated about possible drug use. This article originally appeared in The New York Times © 2025 The New York Times Company
Japan Times
10 hours ago
- Japan Times
Musk vows to stay Trump's 'friend' in bizarre black-eyed farewell
Billionaire Elon Musk bade farewell to Donald Trump in an extraordinary Oval Office appearance Friday, sporting a black eye, brushing aside drug abuse claims and vowing to stay a "friend and adviser" to the U.S. president. As the world's richest person bowed out of his role as Trump's cost-cutter-in-chief, the Republican hailed Musk's "incredible service" and handed him a golden key to the White House. But Trump insisted that Musk was "really not leaving" after a turbulent four months in which his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cut tens of thousands of jobs, shuttered whole agencies and slashed foreign aid. "He's going to be back and forth," said Trump, showering praise on the tech tycoon for what he called the "most sweeping and consequential government reform program in generations." South-African born Musk, wearing a black T-shirt with the word "Dogefather" in white lettering and a black DOGE baseball cap, said many of the $1 trillion savings he promised would take time to bear fruit. "I look forward to continuing to be a friend and adviser to the president," he said. But many people were more interested in the livid black bruise around Musk's right eye. Speculation about the cause was further fueled by accusations in the New York Times on Friday that Musk used so much of the drug ketamine on the 2024 campaign trail that he developed bladder problems. The SpaceX and Tesla magnate said that his son was to blame for the injury. "I was just horsing around with lil' X, and I said, 'go ahead punch me in the face,'" the 53-year-old Musk said. "And he did. Turns out even a 5-year-old punching you in the face actually is..." he added, before tailing off. Musk, however, dodged a question about the drug allegations. The New York Times said Musk, the biggest donor to Trump's 2024 election campaign, also took ecstasy and psychoactive mushrooms and traveled with a pill box last year. Musk, who has long railed against the news media and championed his X social media platform as an alternative, took aim at the paper instead. "Is that the same publication that got a Pulitzer Prize for false reporting on the Russiagate?" said Musk, referring to claims that Trump's 2016 election campaign colluded with Moscow. "Let's move on. Okay. Next question." Later in the day, when a reporter asked Trump if he was "aware of Elon Musk's regular drug use," Trump simply responded: "I wasn't." "I think Elon is a fantastic guy," he added. The White House had earlier played down the report. "The drugs that we're concerned about are the drugs running across the southern border" from Mexico, said Trump's Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, whose wife works for Musk. Musk has previously admitted to taking ketamine, saying he was prescribed it to treat a "negative frame of mind" and suggesting his use of drugs benefited his work. The latest in a series of made-for-TV Oval Office events was aimed at putting a positive spin on Musk's departure. Musk is leaving Trump's administration under a cloud, after admitting disillusionment with his role and criticizing the Republican president's spending plans. It was a far cry from his first few weeks as Trump's chainsaw-brandishing sidekick. At one time Musk was almost inseparable from Trump, glued to his side on Air Force One, Marine One, in the White House and at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. The right-wing magnate's DOGE led an ideologically-driven rampage through the federal government, with its young "tech bros" slashing tens of thousands of jobs. But DOGE's achievements fell far short of Musk's original goal of saving $2 trillion. The White House says DOGE has made $170 billion in savings so far. The independent "Doge Tracker" site has counted just $12 billion while the Atlantic magazine put it far lower, at $2 billion. Musk's "move fast and break things" mantra was also at odds with some of his Cabinet colleagues, and he said earlier this week that he was "disappointed" in Trump's planned mega tax and spending bill as it undermined DOGE's cuts. Musk's companies, meanwhile, have suffered. Tesla shareholders called for him to return to work as sales slumped and protests targeted the electric vehicle-maker, while SpaceX had a series of fiery rocket failures.
NHK
11 hours ago
- NHK
US defense chief calls for cooperation to boost deterrence against China
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has called on US allies in Asia to boost defense spending and strengthen cooperation to enhance deterrence against China. Hegseth delivered a speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on Saturday, the second day of the security forum. Regarding Taiwan, which is facing increasing pressure from China, Hegseth said, "China has demonstrated that it wants to fundamentally alter the region's status quo." He repeatedly criticized China by name. He also said, "any attempt by Communist China to conquer Taiwan by force would result in devastating consequences for the Indo-Pacific and the world." Hegseth said the United States does not seek conflict with China. However, he said the US cannot look away and it cannot ignore it, and that China's behavior must be taken as a "wake-up call".
