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This California handyman found a creative way to force out squatters — but it’s a dangerous tactic. Here are 3 ways to invest in real estate without putting your safety at risk

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This California handyman found a creative way to force out squatters — but it's a dangerous tactic. Here are 3 ways to invest in real estate without putting your safety at risk
This California handyman found a creative way to force out squatters — but it’s a dangerous tactic. Here are 3 ways to invest in real estate without putting your safety at risk

When United Handyman Association founder Flash Shelton found squatters in his mother’s home, the only way he could get rid of her unwanted guests — after local police said they couldn’t help — was to out-squat the squatters.

“I called local law enforcement and as soon as they saw there was furniture in the house, they said I had a squatter situation, they had basically no jurisdiction and they couldn’t do anything,” Shelton told Fox Business’ Stuart Varney. “So, I dissected the laws over a weekend and basically figured out that until there’s civil action, the squatters didn’t have any rights, so if I could switch places with them and become the squatter myself, I would assume those squatter rights.”

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He had his mom write up a lease for him and got it notarized, he staked out the home early one morning, waiting for the squatters to leave. When they did eventually leave, Shelton entered the property, put up cameras and waited for them to return.

Shelton’s scheme worked and the squatters left — but not without putting him in a potentially dangerous situation.

Dealing with squatters, or even tenants, can get complicated and costly. Thankfully, there are safer and easier ways to make your mark in real estate.

Squatter rights

It is never advisable to take the law into your own hands, especially in a heated situation like an eviction. That’s why Shelton is now working as an advocate to give property owners more more rights in these situations.

A squatter is someone who inhabits a piece of land or a building that they have no legal right to occupy — and without paying rent.

According to the American Apartment Owners Association (AAOA), most states have laws that give squatters rights to inhabit a property “in the event that the lawful owner does not evict or take action against,” them and they differ from state to state. Those laws typically only apply if the squatter has been illegitimately occupying a space for a specific period of time — after which, they will have gained “adverse possession,” and local law enforcement will not be of much help.

Squatters should not be confused with trespassers. A blog post on the AAOA site explains: “A trespasser breaks into the property through an illegal entry and doesn’t have utilities, furniture or any form of a prior lease. Due to this, trespassers can be removed for violation of local loitering or trespassing laws.”

“I feel bad I can’t help everyone,” said Shelton in the FOX Business interview, who is now running a service to help other property owners deal with squatters. “I’m trying to change the laws.”

If the risk of serial squatters and the other trials and tribulations of being a landlord don’t appeal to you, here are three ways you can invest in real estate without all the hassle.

REITs

Investing in a real estate investment trust (REIT) is a way to profit from the real estate market without having to buy a house or worry about screening tenants, fixing damages, chasing down late payments or even facing trespassers.

REITs are publicly traded companies that own income-producing real estate like apartment buildings, shopping centers and office towers. They collect rent from tenants and pass that rent to shareholders in the form of regular dividend payments.

Essentially, REITs are giant landlords. To qualify as an REIT, a company must pay out at least 90% of its taxable income to shareholders as dividends each year, in addition to other requirements. In exchange, they pay little to no income tax at the corporate level.

Generally, REITs are described as high-return investments that provide solid dividends and the potential for moderate, long-term capital appreciation.

Also, as REITs are publicly traded, you can buy or sell shares any time and your investment can be as little or as large as you want — unlike buying a house, which usually requires a hefty down payment followed by a mortgage.

Read more: This janitor in Vermont built an $8M fortune without anyone around him knowing. Here are the 2 simple techniques that made Ronald Read rich — and can do the same for you

Real estate ETFs

Another easy way to invest in real estate without having to pick and choose which stocks to buy and sell, is through exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

And as the name suggests, ETFs trade on major exchanges, making them convenient to buy and sell. Some ETFs passively track an index, while others are actively managed. They all charge a fee — referred to as the management expense ratio — in exchange for managing the fund.

The Vanguard Real Estate ETF (VNQ), for example, provides investors with broad exposure to U.S. REITs. The fund currently holds 164 stocks with total net assets of $64.2 billion. Over the past 10 years, VNQ’s net asset value (NAV) has grown 6.25%. Its management expense ratio is 0.12%.

Another example is the Real Estate Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLRE), which aims to replicate the real estate sector of the S&P 500 Index. It currently has 31 holdings and an expense ratio of 0.10%. Since the fund’s inception in October 2015, XLRE’s NAV has grown 6.73%.

Both of these ETFs pay quarterly distributions.

Crowdfunding platforms

Through a crowdfunding platform, you can buy a percentage of physical real estate — from rental properties to commercial properties. You can even buy a stake in digital real estate.

If you’re an experienced investor looking to up your stake in real estate, there are also options for accredited investors that often have higher minimum investments that can reach tens of thousands of dollars or more.

If you’re not an accredited investor, many platforms let you invest smaller sums, even as low as $100.

These online platforms make real estate investing more accessible by simplifying the process and lowering the barrier to entry.

Sponsors of crowdfunded real estate deals usually charge fees to investors — typically in the range of 0.5% to 2.5% of whatever you’ve invested.

What to read next

This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind.

As Abortion Laws Drive Obstetricians From Red States, Maternity Care Suffers

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One by one, doctors who handle high-risk pregnancies are disappearing from Idaho — part of a wave of obstetricians fleeing restrictive abortion laws and a hostile state legislature. Dr. Caitlin Gustafson, a family doctor who also delivers babies in the tiny mountain town of McCall, is among those left behind, facing a lonely and uncertain future.

When caring for patients with pregnancy complications, Dr. Gustafson seeks counsel from maternal-fetal medicine specialists in Boise, the state capital two hours away. But two of the experts she relied on as backup have packed up their young families and moved away, one to Minnesota and the other to Colorado.

All told, more than a dozen labor and delivery doctors — including five of Idaho’s nine longtime maternal-fetal experts — will have either left or retired by the end of this year. Dr. Gustafson says the departures have made a bad situation worse, depriving both patients and doctors of moral support and medical advice.

“I wanted to work in a small family town and deliver babies,” she said. “I was living my dream — until all of this.”

Idaho’s obstetrics exodus is not happening in isolation. Across the country, in red states like Texas, Oklahoma and Tennessee, obstetricians — including highly skilled doctors who specialize in handling complex and risky pregnancies — are leaving their practices. Some newly minted doctors are avoiding states like Idaho.

The departures may result in new maternity care deserts, or areas that lack any maternity care, and they are placing strains on physicians like Dr. Gustafson who are left behind. The effects are particularly pronounced in rural areas, where many hospitals are shuttering obstetrics units for economic reasons. Restrictive abortion laws, experts say, are making that problem much worse.

“This isn’t an issue about abortion,” said Dr. Stella Dantas, the president-elect of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. “This is an issue about access to comprehensive obstetric and gynecologic care. When you restrict access to care that is based in science, that everybody should have access to — that has a ripple effect.”

Idaho doctors operate under a web of abortion laws, including a 2020 “trigger law” that went into effect after the Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to abortion by overturning Roe v. Wade last year. Together, they create one of the strictest abortion bans in the nation. Doctors who primarily provide abortion care are not the only medical professionals affected; the laws are also impinging on doctors whose primary work is to care for expectant mothers and babies, and who may be called upon to terminate a pregnancy for complications or other reasons.

Idaho bars abortion at any point in a pregnancy with just two exceptions: when it is necessary to save the life of the mother and in certain cases of rape or incest, though the victim must provide a police report. A temporary order issued by a federal judge also permits abortion in some circumstances when a woman’s health is at risk. Doctors convicted of violating the ban face two to five years in prison.

Dr. Gustafson, 51, has so far decided to stick it out in Idaho. She has been practicing in the state for 20 years, 17 of them in McCall, a stunning lakeside town of about 3,700 people.

She sees patients at the Payette Lakes Medical Clinic, a low-slung building that evokes the feeling of a mountain lodge, tucked into a grove of tall spruces and pines. It is affiliated with St. Luke’s Health System, the largest health system in the state.

On a recent morning, she was awakened at 5 a.m. by a call from a hospital nurse. A pregnant woman, two months shy of her due date, had a ruptured membrane. In common parlance, the patient’s water had broken, putting the mother and baby at risk for preterm delivery and other complications.

Dr. Gustafson threw on her light blue scrubs and her pink Crocs and rushed to the hospital to arrange for a helicopter to take the woman to Boise. She called the maternal-fetal specialty practice at St. Luke’s Boise Medical Center, the group she has worked with for years. She did not know the doctor who was to receive the patient. He had been in Idaho for only one week.

“Welcome to Idaho,” she told him.

In rural states, strong medical networks are critical to patients’ well-being. Doctors are not interchangeable widgets; they build up experience and a comfort level in working with one another and within their health care systems. Ordinarily, Dr. Gustafson might have found herself talking to Dr. Kylie Cooper or Dr. Lauren Miller on that day.

But Dr. Cooper left St. Luke’s in April for Minnesota. After “many agonizing months of discussion,” she said, she concluded that “the risk was too big for me and my family.”

Dr. Miller, who had founded the Idaho Coalition for Safe Reproductive Health Care, an advocacy group, moved to Colorado. It is one thing to pay for medical malpractice insurance, she said, but quite another to worry about criminal prosecution.

“I was always one of those people who had been super calm in emergencies,” Dr. Miller said. “But I was finding that I felt very anxious being on the labor unit, just not knowing if somebody else was going to second-guess my decision. That’s not how you want to go to work every day.”

The vacancies have been tough to fill. Dr. James Souza, the chief physician executive for St. Luke’s Health System, said the state’s laws had “had a profound chilling effect on recruitment and retention.” He is relying in part on temporary, roving doctors known as locums — short for the Latin phrase locum tenens, which means to stand in place of.

He likens labor and delivery care to a pyramid, supported by nurses, midwives and doctors, with maternal-fetal specialists at its apex. He worries the system will collapse.

“The loss of the top of a clinical pyramid means the pyramid falls apart,” Dr. Souza said.

Some smaller hospitals in Idaho have been unable to withstand the strain. Two closed their labor and delivery units this year; one of them, Bonner General Health, a 25-bed hospital in Sandpoint, in northern Idaho, cited the state’s “legal and political climate” and the departure of “highly respected, talented physicians” as factors that contributed to its decision.

Other states are also seeing obstetricians leave. In Oklahoma, where more than half of the state’s counties are considered maternity care deserts, three-quarters of obstetrician-gynecologists who responded to a recent survey said they were either planning to leave, considering leaving or would leave if they could, said Dr. Angela Hawkins, the chair of the Oklahoma section of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

The previous chair, Dr. Kate Arnold, and her wife, also an obstetrician, moved to Washington, D.C., after the Supreme Court overturned Roe in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. “Before the change in political climate, we had no plans on leaving,” Dr. Arnold said.

In Tennessee, where one-third of counties are considered maternity care deserts, Dr. Leilah Zahedi-Spung, a maternal-fetal specialist, decided to move to Colorado not long after the Dobbs ruling. She grew up in the South and felt guilty about leaving, she said.

Tennessee’s abortion ban, which was softened slightly this year, initially required an “affirmative defense,” meaning that doctors faced the burden of proving that an abortion they had performed was medically necessary — akin to the way a defendant in a homicide case might have to prove he or she acted in self-defense. Dr. Zahedi-Spung felt as if she had “quite the target on my back,” she said — so much so that she hired her own criminal defense lawyer.

“The majority of patients who came to me had highly wanted, highly desired pregnancies,” she said. “They had names, they had baby showers, they had nurseries. And I told them something awful about their pregnancy that made sure they were never going to take home that child — or that they would be sacrificing their lives to do that. I sent everybody out of state. I was unwilling to put myself at risk.”

Perhaps nowhere has the departure of obstetricians been as pronounced as in Idaho, where Dr. Gustafson has been helping to lead an organized — but only minimally successful — effort to change the state’s abortion laws, which have convinced her that state legislators do not care what doctors think. “Many of us feel like our opinion is being discounted,” she said.

Dr. Gustafson worked one day a month at a Planned Parenthood clinic in a Boise suburb until Idaho imposed its near-total abortion ban; she now has a similar arrangement with Planned Parenthood in Oregon, where some Idahoans travel for abortion care. She has been a plaintiff in several lawsuits challenging Idaho’s abortion policies. Earlier this year, she spoke at an abortion rights rally in front of the State Capitol.

In interviews, two Republican state lawmakers — Representatives Megan Blanksma, the House majority leader, and John Vander Woude, the chair of the House Health and Welfare Committee — said they were trying to address doctors’ concerns. Mr. Vander Woude acknowledged that Idaho’s trigger law, written before Roe fell, had affected everyday medical practice in a way that lawmakers had not anticipated.

“We never looked that close, and what exactly that bill said and how it was written and language that was in it,” he said. “We did that thinking Roe v. Wade was never going to get overturned. And then when it got overturned, we said, ‘OK, now we have to take a really close look at the definitions.’”

Mr. Vander Woude also dismissed doctors’ fears that they would be prosecuted, and he expressed doubt that obstetricians were really leaving the state. “I don’t see any doctor ever getting prosecuted,” he said, adding, “Show me the doctors that have left.”

During its 2023 session, the Legislature clarified that terminating an ectopic pregnancy or a molar pregnancy, a rare complication, would not be defined as abortion — a move that codified an Idaho Supreme Court ruling. Lawmakers also eliminated an affirmative defense provision.

But lawmakers refused to extend the tenure of the state’s Maternal Mortality Review Committee, an expert panel on which Dr. Gustafson served that investigated pregnancy-related deaths. The Idaho Freedom Foundation, a conservative group, testified against it and later called it an “unnecessary waste of tax dollars” — even though the annual cost, about $15,000, was picked up by the federal government.

That was a bridge too far for Dr. Amelia Huntsberger, the Idaho obstetrician who helped lead a push to create the panel in 2019. She recently moved to Oregon. “Idaho calls itself a quote ‘pro-life state,’ but the Idaho Legislature doesn’t care about the death of moms,” she said.

Most significantly, the Legislature rejected a top priority of Dr. Gustafson and others in her field: amending state law so that doctors would be able to perform abortions when the health — not just the life — of the mother is at risk. It was almost too much for Dr. Gustafson. She loves living in Idaho, she said. But when asked if she had thought about leaving, her answer was quick: “Every day.”

Carlos Alcaraz and Other Top Tennis Pros Rely On Drop Shots

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I thought I had seen it all on a tennis court until I watched Carlos Alcaraz at the U.S. Open on Monday.

No, I’m not talking about the speed and punch of his forehand. I’m talking about his audacious creativity: As Alcaraz worked his way into the net early in the match, Matteo Arnaldi lifted a lob over the Spaniard’s head. Alcaraz stopped, whirled his back to the net, jumped, and reached high to pull off a rare backhand overhead, which most pros attempt to hit with as powerful a snap as they can muster.

Alcaraz is not most pros. Instead of a snap, he purposefully deadened his stroke, sending the ball scooting off lightly and with a curve so it landed not far from the net.

A backhand, overhead drop shot winner in front of a packed house at Arthur Ashe Stadium? Who does that?

It was a small moment amid his 6-3, 6-3, 6-4 win, but it was beautiful, jaw-dropping and telling all at once.

In this, the age of power tennis — all those buff-bodied players, every racket now rebar stiff — Alcaraz is among the players resurrecting the softest, slowest change-of-pace stroke of them all: the drop shot, a.k.a. the marshmallow, a.k.a. the dropper.

Today’s players hit consistently harder than ever, as those who watched Alcaraz Monday would attest. But to win big — as in, emerging-victorious-at-Flushing-Meadows big — nuance is critical.

Increasingly, tennis’s top players are deploying drop shots, which until recently had fallen out of favor.

“Oh yes, we’re seeing it more now,” said Jose Higueras, who coached Michael Chang, Jim Courier and Roger Federer to major titles, as we watched a match from the stands lining Court 11 last week. He added: “You have to use the whole court, every part of it. These soft little shots do that. People think it’s defensive, but it’s actually very offensive.”

The dropper is the equivalent of a changeup pitch in baseball. It’s about disguise and surprise. Its finest practitioners — think Alcaraz, Novak Djokovic and Ons Jabeur in the women’s game — usually wind up as if they are about to hit a pounding groundstroke or a volley aimed at the baseline.

But that’s a ruse. The ball does not catapult off their strings. It pops off meekly, with a gentle lift that bends briefly before beginning a raindrop descent over the net.

Drop shots ask questions. “Hey, you, camping out there on the baseline, waiting for another two-handed backhand ripper. Did you expect me?”

“Can you change directions, churn out a sprint and catch me before I bounce twice?”

There was a time in the professional ranks — think of the era after John McEnroe’s dominance, all the way through the power game of the 1990s and early 2000s — when tennis’s marshmallow was an afterthought. When players did pull it out, they stuck to the percentages, seldom hitting it from the baseline or on big, high-tension points.

Change came as pro tennis’s top players increasingly drew from Europe, and particularly Spain, where they had grown up playing on clay, a surface that rewards a deft touch.

Rafael Nadal fully embraced the drop shot. Andy Murray, who trained in Spain as a junior, became a master.

But it was Higueras getting through to Federer that broke the dam. In 2008, when Federer hired the Spaniard to help take his game to a new level, Higueras immediately noticed that his new pupil rarely used the dropper, preferring to rely on his big forehand.

Higueras argued that adding softness to the mix would bring a finishing spice to Federer’s already stunning game. Mixing in more drop shots would force the competition to defend shots in front of the baseline — no more camping out at a distance.

Federer went on to win seven major titles after Higueras’s fix, including, in 2009, his only French Open.

After Federer adopted the changeup, a cascade of players on the men’s and women’s tours followed suit. Every year since, the drop shot’s use seems increasingly part of the game.

“There are players that use it out of desperation,” Grigor Dimitrov, the Bulgarian ATP Tour veteran, said last week. “There are players using it to change the rhythm. There are players using it to get a free point and players using it to get to the net.”

So, have we reached peak drop shot?

“I think we’re going to be seeing it more,” he said.

He’s not the only one. Martina Navratilova predicted that more pros would follow Alcaraz’s lead. “I think he will have an effect on the game,” she said in March, “in players really seeing, ‘I just cannot hit amazing forehands and backhands, I have to be an all-court player, I have to have the touch, I have to be brave, etc.’”

In every match, the No. 1-ranked Alcaraz will consistently wind up for a forehand, see his opponent bracing behind the baseline for a Mach 10 ball, and then, at the last nanosecond, slow his swing, cup the ball gently, and send it plopping across the net with the speed of a wayward butterfly.

Alcaraz has thrown the percentage playbook out the window. He will hit drop shots at any turn, whether he is stationed near the baseline or at the net, whether a match is in its early-stage lull or at its tensest moments.

When asked about the shot, Alcaraz recalled the joy of hitting it and befuddling his opponent. What goes through his mind after hitting the perfect dropper?

“It’s a great feeling,” he said, smiling broadly. “I mean, I feel like I’m going to do another one!”

What to Know About New Airbnb Regulations in NYC

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New York City officials on Tuesday are expected to start enforcing strict new regulations that limit residents’ ability to rent out homes through platforms like Airbnb.

The move is expected to lead to the removal of thousands of listings from the platforms. It is the latest and potentially most consequential development in the yearslong feud between big cities and the home-sharing companies.

The city argues that the proliferation of short-term rentals through Airbnb and other platforms has pushed up rents and helped fuel New York City’s housing shortage.

Airbnb has said the new rules amount to a “de facto ban” on the platform, and other critics say the city is bending to the lobbying of the hotel industry and locking out cheaper options for visitors.

For years, the city has maintained that existing laws preclude people from renting out homes to guests for less than 30 days, unless the host is present during the stay. The city also asserts that no more than two guests are allowed to stay at a time, and that they must have ready access to the entire home.

But there continue to be numerous listings for rentals of whole apartments and homes, and the city has argued companies like Airbnb are not policing their platforms aggressively enough to root out violators.

A city official claimed in a July court filing that more than half of Airbnb’s $85 million net revenue in 2022 from short-term rentals in New York City came from activity that is illegal. Airbnb disputes the figure.

The new regulations, which the city will begin enforcing on Tuesday after a series of court challenges, require hosts to register with the city to be allowed to rent on a short-term basis.

In order to collect fees associated with the short-term stays, Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com and other companies must check that a host’s registration application has been approved.

Starting Tuesday, hosts who violate the rules could face fines of up to $5,000 for repeat offenders, and platforms could be fined up to $1,500 for transactions involving illegal rentals.

City officials estimated there were roughly 10,800 Airbnb listings as of March 2023 that were illegal short-term rentals. They have argued that renting those homes to tourists and visitors instead of New Yorkers exacerbates the city’s acute housing shortage and makes it even more expensive to live here.

Residents who live in buildings with short-term rentals have complained that transient guests bring a greater risk of crime, excessive noise and cleanliness problems.

Christian Klossner, the executive director of the Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement, said the new rules would create a “clear path for hosts who follow the city’s longstanding laws.”

There is also the influence of the hotel industry, a competitor of platforms like Airbnb. The Hotel Trades Council, a powerful force in local politics and ally of Mayor Eric Adams, has long fought the expansion of the platforms.

Airbnb says short-term home rentals help the city’s tourism economy, especially in parts of the city where there are few hotels.

The company has fought the new rules in court, arguing that city code should allow “unhosted” rentals in some one- and two-family homes, and that New York City’s interpretation of its own laws is “unreasonable.”

Airbnb has also contended that the registration system is unnecessarily complex. Its lawsuit was dismissed last month.

“The city is sending a clear message to millions of potential visitors who will now have fewer accommodation options when they visit New York City: you are not welcome,” said Theo Yedinsky, Global Policy Director for Airbnb.

There will be far fewer Airbnb listings available.

Any short-term rentals through platforms like Airbnb for units that are not classified as “hotels,” and have not been registered with the city, will probably no longer be available. Airbnb said some listings would be automatically converted to long-term rentals and others would be deactivated.

Airbnb estimated last month that there were nearly 15,000 hosts that have active listings for short-term rentals in homes across the city. As of Aug. 28, the city had received about 3,250 registration applications. Only 257 had been approved.

Airbnb said that since mid-August, it has prevented people from booking short-term reservations in New York City for after Sept. 5.

Neither Airbnb nor the city could provide updated data on the number of listings expected to be taken down.

AirDNA, a rental analytics company, estimated that of the roughly 13,500 active listings for entire apartments and homes on Airbnb as of July, about 6,000 appeared to be for units classified as hotels or offered long-term rentals, leaving about 7,500 listings that could be affected by the new rules.

If you have booked an Airbnb for less than 30 days after Tuesday, a few things could happen.

If the stay involves a check-in before Dec. 1, the reservation will not be canceled.

But reservations for after Dec. 2 will be canceled and refunded, according to the company. Airbnb did not say how many such reservations there were.

The city said it would not remove guests from illegal short-term rentals unless there were health or safety hazards in the apartment.

ElmonX Unveils ‘Moona Lisa’: A Digital Collection by World-Famous Street Artist Nick Walker

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London, United Kingdom, September 5th, 2023, ElmonX is making waves in the NFT sector once more, drawing the attention of enthusiasts with the exciting announcement of the upcoming release of the extraordinary Nick Walker.

Nick Walker, born in 1969, is a pioneering street artist who emerged from Bristol’s graffiti scene in the 1980s. His dynamic art combines stencil, graffiti, and fine art, captivating viewers with narratives of urban life. Nick’s iconic symbols have cemented his legacy in street art. His work continues to evolve, staying innovative, and inspiring emerging artists.

In 2006, his “Moona Lisa” piece sold for £54,000, ten times its estimated value. Nick’s LA and London shows regularly sell out, with collectors waiting over 24 hours to secure his latest prints.

ElmonX, the digital collectibles platform, has unveiled an exclusive collaboration to launch two unique drops by the renowned artist Nick Walker.

The release will be highly exclusive, with each of the two collectibles limited to just 330 and 150 editions. They will be priced at £80.00 and £40.00, respectively, and can be purchased using credit card or ETH.

Below is a brief description of the Moona Lisa drop by Nick Walker:

‘I became a little obsessed with subverting the image of Mona Lisa. Figured I’d got one more in me and the idea came whilst driving home. It was one of those stop-the-car moments. I just realized that, if you gave Mona another ‘o’ it would be ‘Moona’ and this could be the reason for the famous smile. She was in fact deciding to stand up and reveal her derrière to the world.’ Nick Walker.

Collectors can purchase these officially licensed digital collectibles on Saturday, 9th Sept 9AM PT exclusively through ElmonX.com.

ElmonX Mona Lisa holders will receive private sale access on Thursday, 7th Sept 9AM PT to Friday, 8th Sept 9AM PT.

About ElmonX:

ElmonX, previously known as Vtail, specializes in the creation of licensed NFT (non-fungible token) art. Their team of skilled artists and designers create pieces that are not only visually stunning, but also technologically advanced. By utilizing blockchain technology, ElmonX is able to offer next-generation collectibles and artifacts that are aesthetically pleasing and verified through a unique and transparent way for art collectors to invest in and showcase their collections.

The company’s focus on art, next-gen collectibles and artifacts reflects their dedication to staying at the forefront of the art world and their commitment to pushing boundaries and breaking new ground. ElmonX’s NFT art represents a new era in art collecting. As blockchain technology continues to gain traction, the demand for digital assets and collectibles is on the rise. By creating licensed NFT art, ElmonX offers collectors a new way to appreciate and showcase their love of art. Whether you’re a seasoned art collector or a newcomer to the world of NFTs, ElmonX’s pieces are sure to captivate and inspire.

About ElmonX:

ElmonX seamlessly integrates with an unalterable and highly secure distributed database of digital assets. By leveraging decentralized and immutable blockchain systems, ElmonX ensures transparent tracking of product origins and traceability across the entire supply chain. Collectors can utilize augmented reality to visualize and engage with the NFTs, adjusting the scale of the assets to perfectly suit their surroundings.

The ElmonX mobile apps are now available in beta, allowing collectors to reserve their username and join the waitlist. With a particular emphasis on licensed products, ElmonX aims to enhance the NFT collecting experience, particularly in the realm of art, through various offerings such as digital products, animation, and immersive experiences.

ElmonX will plant a tree for every sale made. They can be viewed their virtual forest here: https://ecologi.com/ElmonX

To stay up to date, follow ElmonX on social media: https://linktr.ee/elmonx

For complete information, visit: https://elmonx.com/

Media Contact:

ElmonX
Attn: Media Relations
London, UK
support@elmonx.com

elmonX

North Korea Finds New Leverage in the Ukraine War

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For Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, a rare trip to Russia this month to discuss military aid for President Vladimir V. Putin’s Ukraine war effort could provide two things the North has wanted for a long time: technical help with its weapons programs, and to finally be needed by an important neighbor.

North Korea has not been used to getting a lot of attention other than global condemnation for its nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile tests. But Russia’s urgency to make new gains in the war is offering Mr. Kim a bit of the geopolitical spotlight — and a new way to both irk the United States and draw closer to Moscow and Beijing.

Though Russia has long been a crucial ally for the isolated North, relations between the two countries have at times grown tense since the disintegration of the Soviet Union. And Russia accounts for very little of the economic trade that North Korea needs; China alone provides nearly all of that.

Now, common interests and worldview are bringing the neighbors closer.

The White House has repeatedly warned that North Korea was starting to ship artillery shells and rockets to Russia and negotiating for more arms deals. And Western officials’ claims this week that Mr. Kim will travel to Russia soon indicate that they fear the process is moving forward with more intent.

For its part, North Korea faces critical technological hurdles in its nuclear and missile programs, as well as dire economic need, and Russia could help more on those fronts.

“It’s a win-win situation for both sides,” said Lee Byong-chul, a North Korea expert at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies at Kyungnam University in Seoul.

One question hanging over such a deal is just how much North Korean aid could move Russia’s war effort forward, especially given the North’s economic difficulties and chronic food shortages. In recent weeks, Mr. Kim has visited a series of munitions factories, exhorting the officials there to step up production, according to state media.

But Mr. Lee said the North may have a large surplus of ammunition already available, as it has not fought a war since the Korean War armistice in 1953. And with armaments largely based on Soviet weapons systems, North Korean munitions are widely compatible with Russia’s arsenal.

“It’s shocking news for the U.S. and countries in Europe hoping for an early end to the war in Ukraine,” Mr. Lee said. “North Korean munitions can add fuel to the fire.”

A deal with Russia could also further raise tensions around the Korean Peninsula, helping North Korea advance its nuclear weapons program and pushing both South Korea and Japan to strengthen their own military cooperation with the United States, analysts say.

“Kim is looking for technological shortcuts for his military satellite and missile programs that have been frustrated by economic sanctions,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul. He added that increased military exchanges between Russia and North Korea “would undermine peace and security in Europe and Asia, and demonstrate Moscow and Pyongyang’s willingness to blatantly enable each other’s violations of international law.”

Mr. Kim’s potential trip to Russia would be the first since he made an initial official visit there by armored train in 2019.

Since taking power in 2011, the North Korean leader has sought parallel goals: building a nuclear arsenal and reviving his country’s decrepit economy. He first focused on his weapons programs, conducting four underground nuclear tests and launching ICBMs. He tried to use his country’s growing military threat as leverage to force Washington to ease sanctions so he could improve its economy.

That hope evaporated with the collapse of his diplomacy with Mr. Trump in 2019. And Mr. Kim has since struggled to chart a new course. Soon, he bet his luck on a changing world order he termed a “neo-Cold War,” seeking to align his country more closely with Beijing and Moscow against the “unipolar” world order dominated by the United States.

His strategy has already reaped benefits, allowing his country to conduct a series of ICBM and other missile tests with impunity despite resolutions by the United Nations Security Council. Though the North has traditionally offered Russia and China at least as much trouble as comradeship, both countries wielded their veto power at the Council when the United States and its allies tried to adopt new penalties against the North in recent months.

Both Russia and China sent high-ranking officials — Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu came from Russia, and the Communist Party Politburo member Li Hongzhong from China — to Pyongyang in July. In a scene symbolic of deepening ties among the countries, the two officials joined Mr. Kim on a balcony as North Korea held a military parade.

The parade was to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of the Korean War, celebrated in North Korea as “Victory Day.” The Korea conflict was the last war in which the three nations fought together against the United States and its allies. And by bringing them together again, Mr. Kim sought to evoke an intensifying trilateral alliance to counter the three-way partnership among Washington, Tokyo and Seoul, analysts said.

“Kim Jong-un is jumping on the ‘new Cold War’ bandwagon,” said Sung Ki-young, an analyst at the Institute for National Security Strategy, a think tank affiliated with South Korea’s National Intelligence Service. “There is no better time for him to elevate his relevance by aligning closely with Russia.”

During his trip, Mr. Shoigu suggested joint military drills with North Korea and China to counter trilateral military cooperation in the region by the United States, South Korea and Japan, according to South Korean lawmakers who were briefed by the South’s National Intelligence Service on Monday.

And in August, Mr. Kim and Mr. Putin exchanged letters pleading to expand “bilateral cooperation in all fields” and build “a longstanding strategic relationship in conformity with the demand of the new era,” according to state media.

Moscow currently offers little in economic aid or trade to the North: North Korea only imported 5,380 tons of corn and flour from Russia in the first five months of this year, compared with 102,000 tons of rice imported from China, according to South Korean government economists.

But Russia has crucial technologies that could help advance North Korea’s weapons programs. Although North Korea has launched multiple ICBMs since 2017, Western experts still doubt that the country has all the technology needed to make its nuclear warheads small and light enough to traverse an intercontinental range.

North Korea has also twice attempted to launch its first military spy satellite into orbit since March, but both attempts failed. The country is also trying to build its first ballistic missile submarine and is believed to face technical hurdles there as well.

“I don’t think that any economic assistance from Russia could be more than symbolic,” Mr. Sung said. “But North Korea needs technological help from Russia. North Korea’s five major weapons projects are all based on original Russian technology.”

Los desafíos de la covid persistente para los adultos mayores

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Pregúntale a Patricia Anderson cómo está, y quizá no obtendrás una respuesta rutinaria. “Hoy trabajo y estoy bien”, dijo un martes reciente. “El sábado y el domingo estuve postrada en cama. La covid prolongada es una montaña rusa”.

Antes de la pandemia, Anderson practicaba artes marciales y no tenía auto, sino que caminaba y tomaba autobuses en la zona de Ann Arbor, Míchigan, donde trabaja como bibliotecaria médica. Justo antes de contraer COVID-19 en marzo de 2020, había acumulado —sí, lleva la cuenta— 11.409 pasos en un día.

El virus le causó escalofríos extremos, dificultad para respirar, un trastorno del sistema nervioso y tal deterioro cognitivo que, durante meses, Anderson fue incapaz de leer un libro.

“Estuve muy enferma durante mucho tiempo y nunca mejoré”, afirmó. Algunos días, el cansancio reducía su número de pasos a tres dígitos. Los intentos de rehabilitación trajeron avances, y luego recaídas.

Las decenas de síntomas conocidos de manera colectiva como covid prolongada, o pos-covid, pueden dejar fuera de juego a cualquiera que haya sido infectado. Pero afectan sobre todo a algunos pacientes de edad avanzada, que pueden ser más propensos a ciertas formas de la enfermedad.

Alrededor del 11 por ciento de los adultos estadounidenses ha desarrollado covid prolongada después de una infección, informaron los Centros para el Control y la Prevención de Enfermedades (CDC, por su sigla en inglés) el mes pasado, por debajo del casi 19 por ciento registrado entre junio de 2022 y junio de 2023. La cifra sugiere que algunos adultos dejan atrás el síndrome a medida que pasa el tiempo.

Las personas mayores de 60 años en realidad tienen tasas más bajas de covid prolongada en general que aquellos de entre 30 y 59 años. Esto podría reflejar tasas de vacunación y refuerzo más elevadas entre los estadounidenses de más edad, o un comportamiento más precavido, como usar cubrebocas y evitar aglomeraciones.

“También puede haber factores biológicos que aún no comprendemos”, aseguró Akiko Iwasaki, inmunóloga e investigadora de la Facultad de Medicina de Yale. Aunque el conocimiento que hay de la covid prolongada ha aumentado, añadió, aún queda mucho por saber sobre la enfermedad.

Solo recientemente Anderson, de 66 años, ha recuperado la mayor parte de sus funciones cognitivas y algunas físicas; ahora puede dar entre 3000 y 4000 pasos diarios. Pero usa un cubrebocas N95 siempre que sale y un bastón con asiento plegable para sentarse, de modo que “si voy de compras y me quedo sin fuerzas a mitad del pasillo, puedo descansar”.

Y se preocupa. Su jefe le ha permitido seguir trabajando a distancia, pero ¿y si la biblioteca empieza a exigirle más de su actual jornada semanal de manera presencial? “No puedo jubilarme”, señaló. “Me da mucho miedo”.

Según los CDC, la covid prolongada comienza cuando los síntomas persisten un mes o más después de la infección. Pero la Organización Mundial de la Salud la define como “la continuación o el desarrollo de nuevos síntomas” tres meses después de la infección inicial, los cuales duran al menos dos meses sin ninguna otra explicación.

La extensa lista de síntomas de la covid prolongada incluye dificultades respiratorias, enfermedades cardiovasculares y metabólicas, enfermedad renal, trastornos gastrointestinales, pérdida cognitiva, fatiga, dolor y debilidad muscular y problemas de salud mental.

“Casi no hay sistema orgánico al que no afecte la covid prolongada”, explicó Ziyad Al-Aly, investigador clínico de salud pública de la Facultad de Medicina de la Universidad de Washington y autor principal de un estudio reciente que demuestra que estos síntomas pueden persistir durante dos años.

“Puede afectar a casi todo el mundo, desde niños hasta adultos mayores, a lo largo de toda la vida”, afirmó.

Aunque es más probable que la covid prolongada afecte a personas que enferman gravemente de covid y requieren hospitalización —y los síntomas de la covid prolongada duran más en esos pacientes—, también puede aparecer tras infecciones leves. Puede aparecer tras el primer brote de covid, o tras el segundo o el cuarto.

Aunque, en general, las personas mayores no son más propensas a padecer covid prolongada, la investigación de Al-Aly, realizada a partir de grandes bases de datos del Departamento de Asuntos de los Veteranos, muestra que tienen más riesgo de padecer cuatro grupos concretos de síntomas:

  • Problemas cardiovasculares, como cardiopatías, infartos y arritmias como la fibrilación auricular.

  • Problemas gastrointestinales, como diarrea y estreñimiento, pancreatitis y enfermedades hepáticas.

Jane Wolgemuth contrajo COVID-19 en junio de 2022, junto con su marido. “Él lo superó en dos días”, recordó. “Yo estuve en cama una semana”.

Ambos se sintieron mejor tras tomar el antiviral oral Paxlovid. Sin embargo, meses después, Wolgemuth, de 69 años, empleada jubilada de un banco de Monument, Colorado, empezó a notar problemas cognitivos, sobre todo al conducir.

“No reaccionaba con la rapidez suficiente”, relató. “La niebla cerebral se estaba apoderando de mí”.

Las personas mayores pueden confundir la covid prolongada con otras afecciones comunes a la edad avanzada. “Pueden pensar: ‘Tal vez solo estoy envejeciendo o necesito ajustar mi medicación para la presión arterial’”, dijo Mónica Verduzco-Gutiérrez, catedrática de medicina de rehabilitación en el Centro de Ciencias de la Salud de la Universidad de Texas en San Antonio. Es coautora de las directrices de la Academia Americana de Medicina Física y Rehabilitación para el tratamiento de la covid prolongada.

La covid prolongada también puede agravar los problemas de salud que ya padecen muchas personas mayores. “Si tenían un deterioro cognitivo leve, ¿pasan a la demencia? Lo he visto”, aseguró Verduzco-Gutiérrez. Una afección cardiaca leve puede agravarse, reducir la movilidad de una persona mayor y aumentar el riesgo de caídas.

“La mejor manera del mundo de prevenir la covid prolongada es prevenir la covid”, afirmó Al-Aly. A medida que aumentan las tasas de infección en todo el país, usar cubrebocas de nuevo en lugares cerrados y comer al aire libre en restaurantes puede ayudar a reducir el contagio.

“Definitivamente, hay que vacunarse”, señaló. “La vacunación y los refuerzos reducen, pero no eliminan, el riesgo de covid prolongada”, entre un 15 y un 50 por ciento, según los estudios.

“Hazte la prueba para asegurarte de que se trata de covid, luego llama a un proveedor lo antes posible y comprueba si eres apto para recibir Paxlovid”, dijo. El tratamiento antivírico también reduce el riesgo de contraer la covid prolongada en aproximadamente un 20 por ciento para las personas de 60 años, y en un 34 por ciento para las mayores de 70.

Dado que aún no hay estudios longitudinales todavía, no está claro si las personas mayores se recuperan más lentamente de la covid prolongada. Pacientes como Anderson y Wolgemuth han probado toda una serie de tratamientos: suplementos, electrolitos, prendas de compresión y diversos regímenes de fisioterapia. “Pero no disponemos de un medicamento que haya demostrado revertirla”, concluyó Iwasaki.

Ciertos enfoques de rehabilitación han demostrado ser efectivos, señaló Verduzco-Gutiérrez, pero no hay suficientes programas o clínicas con experiencia en covid prolongada. Algunos médicos descartan los síntomas prolongados, según informaron los pacientes.

Eso los deja, en gran medida, buscando soluciones por su cuenta.

“Se están organizando juntos para abogar por la investigación y encontrar tratamientos”, dijo Iwasaki, comparando a los pacientes con covid prolongada con los activistas contra el sida de la década de 1980. Codirige el estudio LISTEN de Yale, que trabaja con pacientes con covid prolongada para comprender mejor sus condiciones.

El gobierno de Joe Biden anunció recientemente una nueva oficina federal para liderar investigaciones sobre la covid prolongada y están comenzando más ensayos clínicos. Sin embargo, por ahora, muchos pacientes dependen de grupos como Long Covid Support y Covid-19 Longhauler Advocacy Project, y participan en Patient-Led Research Collaborative.

Sheila McGrath, de 71 años, que vive en Herndon, Virginia, se recuperó de su primera infección por covid en febrero de 2020, pero ha sufrido desde su segundo episodio cinco meses después. Aunque su salud ha mejorado, “no he vuelto a ser la misma de antes”, dijo.

Ahora ella y Anderson son copresentadoras de un chat en línea de apoyo a covid prolongada. “A menudo alguien termina llorando”, dijo McGrath. “Están muy frustrados porque no los escuchan, no los validan, les dicen que es psicosomático y les niegan el tratamiento. Ninguno de nosotros quiere estar enfermo”.

Putin and Erdogan Meet, Showcasing Cooperation but Little Progress on Grain Deal

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Rustem Umerov, whom President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine named as next minister of defense, will be overseeing the Ukrainian army as it is engaged in some of the fiercest fighting of the war with Russia. But his background is not military.

Instead, the appointment of Mr. Umerov, a former telecommunications executive, underscores another side of Ukraine’s war effort: managing a sprawling military budget.

In announcing his decision on Sunday, Mr. Zelensky was brief and did not elaborate on his choice. “Mr. Umerov,” he said, “does not need any additional introductions.”

But Ukraine now spends about half of its national budget on security and defense, and Western allies have raised worries about money being siphoned off in corruption. The shake-up at the Defense Ministry follows a series of revelations of mismanaged contracts for weapons and basic supplies such as food and winter coats.

Mr. Umerov, 41, a member of the Crimean Tatar ethnic group who is set to be Ukraine’s first Muslim government minister, founded an investment firm before running for Parliament in 2019. In Parliament, he led a commission with oversight over Ukraine’s use of foreign aid and, last summer, led a separate committee monitoring foreign weapons donations.

Anticorruption groups saw as a welcome and overdue step Mr. Zelensky’s appointment of a minister with financial and anticorruption credentials to strengthen the army by plugging leaks in military spending.

For the past year, Mr. Umerov has been the chairman of Ukraine’s State Property Fund, which is responsible for the privatization of state assets. In the first quarter of 2023, the fund reported its highest proceeds in 10 years, bringing in roughly $24 million from auctioning off state assets, including the Ust-Dunaisk commercial seaport in the Odesa region.

Mr. Umerov’s deputy at the property fund, Oleksandr Fedorishyn, said in an interview that financial management, more than military expertise, was needed at the ministry, and that Mr. Umerov’s “deep experience” in accounting and finance would help the war effort.

He will most likely pursue changes to make contracting more transparent at the ministry, similar to those he undertook at the property fund, Mr. Fedorishyn said.

Vitaliy Shabunin, the director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, said the appointment would “probably be the best decision of the president” because Mr. Umerov had deftly managed the privatization agency, a corner of government once plagued with corruption and insider dealing.

Though he is a member of an opposition political party, Mr. Umerov has taken on several critical roles for the government since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. He was the chief Ukrainian negotiator of the Black Sea grain deal and a prominent negotiator on prisoner exchanges.

Mr. Umerov is a lawmaker with the Holos political party, which is in opposition to Mr. Zelensky’s Servant of the People party. He served as a key negotiator for Ukraine in peace talks with Russian diplomats in the early months of the war, and was one of several people, including the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, who reportedly suffered symptoms associated with poisoning just before negotiations in Istanbul in March last year.

The Crimean Tatars have been persecuted since Russia illegally annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, and Mr. Umerov has been clear that he is aligned with Mr. Zelensky on refusing to cede any Ukrainian territory to Russia. Crimea and the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine are “our red lines,” he told the Turkish state news agency Anadolu last year, adding, “We will not give up our people or our land.”

In Ukraine, his Tatar roots drew attention as a signal to politicians and policymakers in Europe and the United States who have suggested that Ukraine cede Crimea in exchange for peace. It would be more difficult, Ukrainian commentators noted, to ask a Crimean Tatar to surrender the peninsula.

Like many Tatars, Mr. Umerov was born in Uzbekistan, where his family lived in exile after Stalin expelled the Tatars from Crimea, an injustice Tatars have compared to persecutions today under the Russian occupation.

Valerie Hopkins contributed reporting.

— Andrew E. Kramer and Anushka Patil Andrew E. Kramer reported from Kyiv, and Anushka Patil from New York.

Julio Urias, L.A. Dodgers Pitcher, Is Charged With Domestic Violence

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The Dodgers pitcher Julio Urias was arrested late Sunday night and charged with a domestic violence felony after a physical altercation with his wife at a stadium in South Los Angeles, the authorities said on Monday.

The altercation took place following a Major League Soccer match at the BMO Stadium, according to Assistant Chief Chris Carr of the Exposition Park Department of Public Safety, which manages the stadium and surrounding area.

Urias, 27, was arrested just after 11 p.m. and released on $50,000 bail just before 5 a.m. on Monday, according to a booking document from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. He is scheduled to appear in court on Sep. 27.

Further information regarding the details of the arrest were not immediately available.

On Monday, the Los Angeles Dodgers said it was “aware of an incident” involving the player.

“While we attempt to learn all the facts, he will not be traveling with the team,” the team said in a statement provided by Jon Weisman, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Dodgers. “The organization has no further comment at this time.”

Neither Major League Baseball nor Urias’s agent immediately responded to requests for comment on Monday afternoon.

The arrest comes four years after Urias, a star Dodgers player who earns more than $14 million a year, was placed on administrative leave following a similar incident in which he was arrested by the Los Angeles Police Department on suspicion of “intimate partner battery.”

Urias, then 22, was involved in an altercation with a woman in a shopping center parking lot, according to a 2019 article in The Los Angeles Times. The city prosecutor agreed not to file misdemeanor charges so long as Urias was not arrested again for violent criminal behavior that year, the newspaper reported.

Major League Baseball’s domestic violence and sexual abuse policy, implemented in 2016, provides for the possibility of discipline, including suspensions, even if the legal process is not completed.

The policy states that players may be placed on paid administrative leave for up to seven days while the commissioner’s office investigates accusations against them, but the leave has been extended in past cases.

Urias was suspended for 20 games, or around three weeks, following the 2019 incident, Mr. Weisman said by email. He did not comment on whether Urias would be suspended as a result of Sunday’s arrest.

Graft in Ukraine Military Spending Becomes a Headache

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The removal of Ukraine’s minister of defense after a flurry of reports of graft and financial mismanagement in his department underscores a pivotal challenge for President Volodymyr Zelensky’s wartime leadership: stamping out the corruption that had been widespread in Ukraine for years.

Official corruption was a topic that had been mostly taboo throughout the first year of the war, as Ukrainians rallied around their government in a fight for national survival. But Mr. Zelensky’s announcement Sunday night that he was replacing the defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, elevated the issue to the highest level of Ukrainian politics.

It comes at a pivotal moment in the war, as Ukraine prosecutes a counteroffensive in the country’s south and east that relies heavily on Western allies for military assistance. These allies have, since the beginning of the war, pressured Mr. Zelensky’s government to ensure that Ukrainian officials were not siphoning off some of the billions of dollars in aid that was flowing into Kyiv.

Just last week, the United States’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, met with three high-ranking Ukrainian officials to discuss efforts to stamp out wartime corruption. It comes as some lawmakers in the United States have used graft as an argument for limiting military aid to Ukraine.

Mr. Zelensky has responded to the pressure from allies and criticism at home with a flurry of anticorruption initiatives, not all of them welcomed by experts on government transparency. The most controversial has been a proposal to use martial law powers to punish corruption as treason.

Mr. Reznikov, who has held a range of positions during Mr. Zelensky’s tenure, submitted his resignation Monday morning. He has not been personally implicated in the allegations of mismanaged military contracts. But the widening investigations at his ministry posed a first significant challenge for the government on anti-corruption measures since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

“The question here is, ‘Where is the money?’” said Daria Kaleniuk, the executive director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center in Ukraine, a group dedicated to rooting out public graft that is now focused on war profiteering.

“Corruption can kill,” Ms. Kaleniuk said. “Depending on how effective we are in guarding the public funds, the soldier will either have a weapon or not have a weapon.”

At one point this year, about $980 million in weapons contracts had missed their delivery dates, according to government figures, and some prepayments for weapons had vanished into oversees accounts of weapons dealers, according to reports made to Parliament. Though precise details have not emerged, the irregularities suggest that procurement officials in the ministry did not vet suppliers, or allowed weapons dealers to walk off with money without delivering the armaments.

Ukrainian media reports have pointed to overpayments for basic supplies for the army, such as food and winter coats.

The public revelations of mismanagement so far have not directly touched foreign weapons transferred to the Ukrainian Army, or Western aid money, but they are nonetheless piercing the sense of unquestioning support for the government that Ukrainians had exhibited throughout the first year of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Two officials with the Defense Ministry — a deputy minister and the head of procurement — were arrested during the winter over the reports of the purchase of overpriced eggs for the army. Mr. Zelensky fired the heads of military recruitment offices last month after allegations emerged that some took bribes from people seeking to avoid the draft.

His proposed initiative to treat corruption as treason set off a wave of criticism that it could lead to an abuse of martial law powers.

Oleksii Goncharenko, a member of Parliament in the opposition European Solidarity party, said of Mr. Zelensky’s record, “I cannot praise his efforts in fighting corruption during the war period.”

Government officials acknowledge that some military contracts failed to produce weaponry or ammunition, and that some money has vanished. But they say that most of the problems arose in the chaotic early months of the invasion last year and have since been remedied.

Mr. Reznikov, the departing defense minister, said last week that he was confident the ministry would return prepayments to suppliers that have gone missing.

Military spending now accounts for nearly half of Ukraine’s national budget, and the reports of contracting scandals point to a shift in the sources of public corruption.

Before the full-scale invasion, the primary source of embezzlement had been poorly run state companies, of which there were more than 3,000 on the government’s balance sheet. Money was siphoned off through myriad schemes by wealthy insiders, while the national budget, propped up by foreign aid, absorbed the losses.

Anticorruption groups say the huge influxes of funds to support the war has prompted them to shift their focus to military spending.

Ukrainian investigative journalists have highlighted overpayment for basic supplies for the army, like eggs for 17 hryvnia, or 47 cents, each — far above prevailing prices, according to a report in Dzerkalo Tyzhnia, a Ukrainian newspaper. Canned beans were bought from Turkey at more than the price for the same cans in Ukrainian supermarkets, the newspaper reported, even though the military would be expected to purchase at less than retail prices.

The ministry also bought thousands of coats that turned out to be insufficiently insulated for Ukraine’s bitter winters.

Western donors are closely watching how Ukraine tackles the problem, the chairwoman of the Ukrainian Parliament’s anticorruption committee, Anastasia Radina, said in an interview.

Particularly worrying is the proposal to punish corruption as treason because it could allow the domestic intelligence agency, the S.B.U., which is under direct control of the president, to investigate official corruption.

The meeting last week with Mr. Sullivan, the American national security adviser, included the heads of a specialized investigative agency, a prosecutorial office and a court that were set up after Ukraine’s Western political pivot in 2014, with help from the United States and international lenders such as the International Monetary Fund. These are the Ukrainian agencies that could lose power under Mr. Zelensky’s treason proposal.

Western governments are wary of the agencies’ potential weakening, Ms. Radina said, adding that if the proposal goes forward, “most likely they will object.”

But, overall, Ms. Radina, a member of Mr. Zelensky’s governing Servant of the People party, defended the government’s efforts to fend off graft in wartime.

The arrest this past weekend of Ihor Kolomoisky, one of Ukraine’s richest men, was seen as a sign of the drive to curb oligarchs’ political influence. Suspected of fraud and money laundering, Mr. Kolomoisky supported Mr. Zelensky’s 2019 election campaign, but since the war began, the president has appeared to break all ties with him.

In other crackdowns this year, investigators pursued one of their highest-profile prosecutions ever for bribery, against the chief of Ukraine’s Supreme Court, who was ousted and arrested in May. In addition, a deputy economy minister is on trial, accused of embezzling from humanitarian aid funds.

That high-level cases of corruption are coming to light is positive, said Andrii Borovyk, director of Transparency International in Ukraine, rather than an indication of a nation bogged down by insider dealing; it shows that the country can fight the war and graft at the same time, he said.

“Scandals are good,” he said. “The war,” Mr. Borovyk added, “cannot be an excuse to stop fighting corruption.”

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