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Travel Rewards Cards: How to Maximize Points, Perks and Miles

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Sign-up bonuses, lounge access, cash rebates, free hotel rooms and plenty of fine print: The dizzying promotions and Byzantine rules on earning and redeeming points with rewards credit cards can make your head spin. Here are some ways to cut through the confusion and get the most out of them.

Rewards cards offer three types of value. There is typically a sign-up bonus, up to 120,000 points or miles after spending a minimum amount within a certain period. Then there are the points, miles or cash back you receive for spending with the card, sometimes multiplied for purchases in specific categories like travel, dining or fuel. Last, there are the benefits you receive as a cardholder, like credits for the Global Entry or TSA PreCheck application fees, access to airport lounges, and elite status at hotels.

Travelers should weigh the rewards against the annual cost of a card, which can range from zero to $695, and which airlines, hotels and other travel partners it works with. To get the best value, pay off the total balance each month to avoid interest charges. Autopay is your friend.

A co-branded card, like the Alaska Airlines Visa Signature (fee $95), helps you achieve status faster with that airline. Cards co-branded with airlines may also offer perks like priority boarding, free checked bags and lounge access — a plus if you tend to fly on one carrier. The Alaska card offers a $99 companion ticket (plus taxes and fees) each year when spending requirements are met. Hotel chains offer similar co-branded cards. The World of Hyatt Visa and Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Visa (both $95) give cardholders one free night, at their low- to midtier brands, on the anniversary of the customer’s sign-up.

If you choose a card that’s not co-branded, you can sometimes transfer your points to your preferred airline’s loyalty program. For cards that don’t have partnerships with certain airlines, you can often use code-sharing as a workaround. For example, Capital One does not allow you to transfer your points directly to Delta SkyMiles. To book a seat on a Delta flight, transfer your points to Aeromexico — which Capital One does have a partnership with — then use those points to book a code-share seat on Delta through the SkyTeam alliance.

Redemption values can change depending on how you use your points, said Gary Leff, of the travel site View From the Wing. His advice: Explore the variety of ways you can redeem them and aim to get at least one penny per point. Citi ThankYou points are usually worth a penny when buying gift cards from a variety of retailers. American Express cardholders will get 1 cent per point when they’re using their Membership Rewards balance to purchase an airline ticket or a hotel room on the Amex website — and some also earn five points per dollar spent. For example, a $500 room booking will cost 50,000 points, but earn 2,500 points, worth $25, for buying it through the website.

Those same Amex points are worth only about 0.7 cents if used to make a purchase on Amazon and 0.6 cents if used to pay for eligible purchases on your monthly statement. Credit card websites typically have a section detailing redemption values.

Sometimes, points can exceed 1 cent in value if you transfer them to an airline loyalty program to buy a ticket, Mr. Leff said. And keep an eye on travel websites, social media and your email inbox for temporary transfer bonus offers, which can give you an additional bump of up to 30 percent on points you are moving to a specific airline or hotel partner.

Tempted by a hefty sign-up bonus? Wait until you’re planning a big vacation, doing a home renovation, or paying college tuition or another large expense, advises Kylie Queisser, who offers travel advice on TikTok. Then use that big expense to meet the minimum spending requirement for the bonus. The Capital One Venture X Visa card ($395) offers 75,000 miles after spending $4,000 in three months. The Citi AAdvantage Executive World Elite Mastercard ($595) was recently offering 100,000 points for spending $10,000 in three months.

Bonus amounts like those can be significant: 75,000 Capital One points can be redeemed for $750 in travel spending; 100,000 American Airlines miles could buy several cross-country plane tickets.

If you don’t mind a little juggling, tailoring individual cards to specific purchases can maximize benefits. For example, pair a Chase Sapphire Reserve card ($550), which earns three points per dollar on travel and dining expenses, with a no-annual-fee Chase Freedom Unlimited card, which earns one and a half points per dollar, for everything else, Mr. Leff suggested. “There are similar ways to pair American Express cards and Citibank cards,” he said.

So how do you keep track of which one does what? Easy, Mr. Leff said: He puts little stickers indicating restaurants, gas, groceries or other categories on each of his family members’ credit cards.

El tiempo frente a las pantallas influye en el desarrollo de los bebés, según un estudio

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Según un estudio publicado el mes pasado en The Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics, los niños de 1 año expuestos a más de cuatro horas diarias frente a una pantalla experimentaron retrasos en el desarrollo de las capacidades de comunicación y resolución de problemas a los 2 y 4 años.

La investigación también reveló que los niños de 1 año que estuvieron expuestos más tiempo frente a una pantalla que sus compañeros presentaron retrasos a los 2 años en el desarrollo de la motricidad fina y las habilidades personales y sociales. Sin embargo, estos retrasos parecían disiparse a los 4 años.

El estudio no encontró que el tiempo frente a una pantalla causara los retrasos en el desarrollo, sino más bien que hay una relación entre un mayor tiempo de exposición frente a una pantalla con los retrasos en el desarrollo de los bebés. Según los expertos, este patrón podría explicarlo el valor del tiempo cara a cara para los niños pequeños.

David J. Lewkowicz, psicólogo del desarrollo del Centro de Estudios Infantiles de la Universidad de Yale, afirmó que la interacción cara a cara entre padres e hijos es crucial para darles un valioso conjunto de información a los bebés, incluida la manera en cómo las expresiones faciales, las palabras, el tono de voz y la retroalimentación física se combinan para expresar lenguaje y significado.

“Esto no ocurre cuando estás viendo una pantalla”, comentó y agregó que no le sorprendían los resultados de la investigación.

Los hallazgos, de investigadores japoneses, se extrajeron de cuestionarios sobre desarrollo y tiempo frente a una pantalla que se entregaron a los padres de casi 8000 niños pequeños. En general, se descubrió que los bebés expuestos a mayores niveles de tiempo frente a una pantalla eran hijos de madres primerizas más jóvenes, con menores ingresos y niveles de educación en el hogar y de quienes sufrían de depresión posparto. (Se reportó que apenas el cuatro por ciento de los bebés estuvo expuesto a pantallas durante cuatro o más horas al día, mientras que el 18 por ciento pasó entre dos y menos de cuatro horas frente a una pantalla al día y la mayoría, menos de dos horas).

El estudio destacó una “asociación dosis-respuesta” entre el tiempo frente a una pantalla y los retrasos en el desarrollo: mientras más tiempo los bebés pasaban frente a una pantalla, más probabilidades había de que presentaran retrasos en el desarrollo.

Los autores del estudio señalaron que la investigación no distinguía entre el tiempo frente a una pantalla que tenía como objetivo ser educativo y el tiempo frente a una pantalla más enfocado al entretenimiento. Los investigadores agregaron que los estudios futuros debían explorar esta perspectiva.

Según Lewkowicz, los padres por lo regular le preguntan cuánto tiempo de pantalla es el adecuado. Su respuesta: “Habla con tu hijo lo más que puedas, cara a cara todo lo que puedas”, mencionó.

Pedirles a los padres que priven todo el tiempo de pantallas a sus hijos es poco práctico, afirmó: “Nadie le hará caso a eso. Tiene que ser con moderación. Con una fuerte dosis de interacción social en la vida real”.

Matt Richtel es un escritor y reportero ganador del Premio Pulitzer radicado en San Francisco. Se unió al Times en 2000 y su trabajo se ha centrado en la ciencia, la tecnología, los negocios y la narración de historias en torno a estos temas. Más sobre Matt Richtel

Mexico’s Next President Will Be a Woman

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Mexico’s governing party chose Claudia Sheinbaum, a former mayor of Mexico City, as its candidate in next year’s presidential election on Wednesday, creating a watershed moment in the world’s largest Spanish-speaking country, with voters expected to choose for the first time between two leading candidates who are women.

Ms. Sheinbaum, 61, a physicist with a doctorate in environmental engineering and a protégé of Mexico’s current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, will face off against the opposition’s top contender, Xóchitl Gálvez, 60, an outspoken engineer with Indigenous roots who rose from poverty to become a tech entrepreneur.

“We can already say today: Mexico, by the end of next year, will be governed by a woman,” said Jesús Silva-Herzog Márquez, a political scientist at Mexico’s Monterrey Institute of Technology, adding that it was an “extraordinary change” for the country.

Ms. Sheinbaum has built her political career mostly in the shadow of Mr. López Obrador, and had emerged early on as the party’s favored pick to succeed the current president. That connection is thought to give her a crucial edge heading into next year’s election thanks to the high approval ratings enjoyed by Mr. López Obrador, who is limited by Mexico’s Constitution to one six-year term.

In recent months, Mr. López Obrador has insisted that he will hold no influence once he finishes his term. “I am going to retire completely,” he said in March. “I am not a chieftain, much less do I feel irreplaceable. I am not a strongman; I am not a messiah.”

But some analysts say his influence will endure regardless of which candidate wins in 2024. Should Ms. Sheinbaum win, “there may be changes to certain policies, though the broad strokes of his agenda will remain intact,” according to a recent report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research institute in Washington.

If she is defeated, Mr. López Obrador “will not fade quietly into the background,” the report said, citing a large base of loyal supporters allowing him to command substantial influence. Some legacies of his administration — including austerity measures or the immersion of the military into social, security and infrastructure roles — could also be obstacles for Ms. Gálvez if she seeks to roll back his policies.

As the two female candidates target weaknesses in each other’s campaigns, they share some similarities. While neither are explicitly feminist, both are socially progressive, have engineering degrees and say they will maintain broadly popular antipoverty programs.

Both women also support decriminalizing abortion. In Ms. Gálvez’s case, that position stands in contrast to that of her conservative party. Mexico’s Supreme Court on Wednesday decriminalized abortion nationwide, building on an earlier ruling giving officials the authority to allow the procedure on a state-by-state basis.

Ms. Sheinbaum, who was born to Jewish parents in Mexico City, would become Mexico’s first Jewish president if she wins the race. She has faced a misinformation campaign on social media claiming falsely that she was born in Bulgaria, the country from which her mother emigrated; supporters of Ms. Sheinbaum have called this effort antisemitic.

She studied physics and energy engineering in Mexico before carrying out her doctoral research at California’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. After entering politics, she became Mr. López Obrador’s top environmental official when he was mayor of Mexico City.

When Ms. Sheinbaum herself was elected mayor of the capital in 2018, she took on public transit and environmental issues as top priorities, but was also the target of criticism over fatal mishaps in the city’s transportation systems, including the collapse of a metro overpass in which 26 people were killed.

With polls positioning Ms. Sheinbaum as the front-runner, her ties to Mr. López Obrador required discipline to maintain his support even when she may not have agreed with his decisions. For instance, when Mr. López Obrador minimized the coronavirus pandemic and federal government officials tweaked data to avoid a lockdown in Mexico City, she remained silent.

“What has stood out is her loyalty, I think a blind loyalty, to the president,” said Mr. Silva-Herzog Márquez, the political scientist.

Still, while hewing to Mr. López Obrador’s policies, Ms. Sheinbaum has also signaled some potential changes, notably expressing support for renewable energy sources.

Drawing a contrast with her rival, Ms. Gálvez, a senator who often gets around Mexico City on an electric bicycle, has focused on her origins as the daughter of an Indigenous Otomí father and a mestizo mother.

Ms. Gálvez grew up in a small town about two hours from Mexico City without running water and speaking her father’s Hñähñu language. After receiving a scholarship to the National Autonomous University of Mexico, she became an engineer and founded a company that designs communications and energy networks for office buildings.

After Vicente Fox won the presidency in 2000, she was appointed as head of the presidential office for Indigenous peoples. In 2018, Ms. Gálvez was elected senator representing the conservative National Action Party.

Mr. López Obrador has repeatedly made her the focus of verbal attacks, which has had the effect of raising her profile around the country while highlighting the sway that the president and his party exert across Mexico.

A combative leader who has embraced austerity measures while doubling down on Mexico’s reliance on fossil fuels, Mr. López Obrador looms over the campaigning. He pledged to do away with a long-held political tradition whereby Mexican presidents handpicked their successors with their “big finger,” replacing the practice with nationwide voter surveys.

Historically, political parties in Mexico mostly selected their candidates in ways that were opaque and lacked much inclusion. Handpicking was more common than a “free and fair competition for a candidacy,” said Flavia Freidenberg, a political scientist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

The new selection process has changed that tradition, but concerns persist over a lack of clarity and other irregularities that have been denounced by some analysts and other presidential hopefuls. Both the governing party, Morena, and the broad opposition coalition, called the Broad Front for Mexico, used public opinion polls “that have not been fully transparent,” Ms. Freidenberg added, “and are not necessarily considered democratic procedures.”

The new procedures also ignored federal campaign regulations, with those at the helm of the process in both the governing party and the opposition moving the selection forward by a few months and cryptically calling Ms. Sheinbaum and Ms. Gálvez “coordinators” of each coalition instead of “candidates.”

“These irregular activities have occurred under the gaze of public opinion, the political class and the electoral authorities,” Ms. Freidenberg said. “This is not a minor issue.”

Next year’s general election, in which voters will elect not only a president but members of Congress, might also determine whether Mexico may return to a dominant-party system — similar to what the country experienced under the once-hegemonic Institutional Revolutionary Party, which held uninterrupted power for 71 years until 2000.

Despite some setbacks, there are signs this is already happening. In June, Morena’s candidate won the governor’s race in the State of Mexico, the country’s most populous state, defeating the Institutional Revolutionary Party’s candidate.

That victory brought the number of states under Morena’s control to 23 out of 32 states, up from just seven at the start of the president’s term in 2018.

The question is “whether Morena reconfigures itself into a hegemonic party like the old PRI,” said Ana Laura Magaloni, a law professor who advised Ms. Sheinbaum’s mayoral campaign. “And that depends on how much of a fight the opposition can put up.”

UK Air Traffic Control Chaos Was a ‘1 in 15 Million’ Problem

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The technical failure that led to hundreds of flight cancellations and severe disruptions for thousands of people traveling in and out of Britain last week resulted from a “one in 15 million chance,” the country’s air traffic control service said on Wednesday.

“We have processed 15 million flight plans with this system,” Martin Rolfe, the chief executive of Britain’s National Air Traffic Service, told the BBC’s “Today” program. And the service, he said, had “never seen this before.”

On Wednesday, the service published a report based on an internal investigation of the event, detailing what Mr. Rolfe described as “an incredibly rare set of circumstances.”

According to the report, the air traffic control system encountered two separate pieces of navigational data in one aircraft’s flight plan that had the same name. As a result, the system’s primary and backup computer systems both shut down to avoid passing incorrect information to the controllers.

The service then reverted to manual air traffic control, meaning that fewer flights could be processed.

“Keeping the sky safe is what guides every action we take, and that was our priority during last week’s incident,” Mr. Rolfe said in a statement.

The problem was fixed several hours later, but 799 outbound and 786 inbound flights were canceled on Aug. 28, according to Cirium, an aviation analytics company. The disruption continued into Aug. 29, when more than 300 flights were canceled.

Mr. Rolfe apologized again to the affected passengers, many of whom were stranded in airports or on tarmacs for hours or had to wait several days for alternative flights. He said that if the issue were to happen again, the National Air Traffic Service would be able to deal with it.

“Action has been taken to ensure such an incident does not recur,” Mark Harper, Britain’s secretary of state for transportation, wrote on social media on Wednesday.

The Civil Aviation Authority, which oversees aviation safety in Britain, said on Wednesday that it had begun an independent review of the issue and the response to assess whether the National Air Traffic Service had breached its obligations. The results would be published by the end of the month, the authority said.

Wednesday’s report came as a New York Times investigation has found an alarming pattern of safety lapses and near misses in the United States’ skies and on airport runways.

Explaining Bidenomics – The New York Times

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Bill Clinton and Barack Obama both ran for president promising to reinvigorate the economy for ordinary Americans. And both enacted laws that helped millions of people. Clinton expanded children’s health care and tax credits for low-income families. Obama accomplished even more, making it possible for almost anybody to afford health insurance.

Yet neither Obama nor Clinton managed to alter the basic trajectory of the American economy. Income and wealth inequality, which had begun rising in the early 1980s, continued to do so. So did inequality in other measures, like health and life expectancy. Polls continue to show that most Americans are frustrated with the country’s direction.

In response, a growing number of policy experts aligned with the Democratic Party have decided in recent years that their party’s approach to economic policy was flawed. They concluded that Democrats had not gone far enough to undo the revolution that Ronald Reagan started in the 1980s — a revolution that sparked the huge rise in inequality.

These Democratic experts have grown skeptical of the benefits of free trade and Washington’s hands-off approach to corporate consolidation. They want the government to spend more money on highways, technological development and other policies that could create good-paying jobs. The experts, in short, believe that they had been too accepting of the more laissez-faire economic agenda often known as neoliberalism.

This turnabout is the central explanation for President Biden’s economic agenda, which White House aides call Bidenomics and will be core to his re-election campaign. He has signed laws (sometimes with bipartisan support) spending billions of dollars on semiconductor factories, roads, bridges and clean energy. He has tried to crack down on monopolies. He has encouraged workers to join unions.

The best description of this shift I’ve yet read appears in “The Last Politician,” a new book about Biden’s first two years in office by Franklin Foer of The Atlantic. Foer tells the story partly through Jake Sullivan, who helped design Biden’s domestic agenda during the campaign and then became national security adviser.

Sullivan was nobody’s idea of a left-wing populist: He is a Rhodes Scholar with two Yale degrees who was a close aide to Hillary Clinton before Biden. But the financial crisis and then Donald Trump’s victory led Sullivan to reflect on Americans’ frustration, and he decided that elites like him had not done enough to address its underlying causes. (Here’s a 2018 article in which I described his shift.)

“An entire generation of young Democratic wonks, with a similar establishment pedigree, found itself in the same brooding mood, tinged with fear,” Foer writes. These wonks built alliances with the more progressive parts of the party — those represented by Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — during Trump’s presidency. That’s why several Warren protégés, like Bharat Ramamurti, work in senior White House roles today.

Biden himself embodies the shift, too. Although he has long emphasized his humble background in Scranton, Pa., he supported his party’s more neoliberal agenda in the 1980s and 1990s. Recently, he has returned to some of the populist themes that he used to launch his political career a half-century ago. He has lamented the Democratic Party’s drift from working-class families toward college-educated professionals.

Much of the 2024 presidential campaign will revolve around the economy’s short-term performance, and both Biden and his Republican critics will be able to cite evidence to make their case. Republicans will note that inflation remains uncomfortably high and that Biden’s pandemic relief spending played a role (albeit a secondary one, as my colleague German Lopez has explained). Biden’s campaign will counter that job growth is solid, and wages have risen across the income spectrum. His investments, in semiconductors and more, seem to be playing a role.

But I would encourage you not to lose sight of the bigger picture during the back and forth of the campaign. The biggest picture is that the post-1980 economy failed to deliver the broad-based benefits that Reagan and his allies promised. So did several economic policies, like expanded global trade, that many Democrats favored.

Biden represents a response to these unfulfilled promises, as do the small but growing number of Republicans pushing their party to change. Whatever happens with the economy over the next year or with Biden’s presidency, the policy debate has shifted.

“Bidenomics sounds banal when plastered as a slogan across the backdrop of a presidential stump speech,” Foer told me. “But it’s more than a set of positive economic indicators. It’s a shift in ideology. For a generation, Democratic presidents were inclined to be deferential to markets, basically uninterested in the problem of monopoly, and lukewarm to unions. Biden has gone in the other direction.”

Related: Some people mistakenly think that “working class” is a euphemism for “white working class.” It isn’t. The American working class spans all races, and the Democratic Party has also lost ground with voters of color, especially those without a four-year college degree. You can read more from my colleague Nate Cohn.

  • Read more about the Republican debate on how much the government should do about inequality.

  • Many experts predicted Medicare would be an ever-growing burden on the federal budget. Instead, spending per person has been flat for the past decade.

  • Lawyers for Alex Murdaugh, who was convicted of murdering his wife and son, accused a court official of jury tampering and asked for a new trial.

  • “Cop City”: Dozens of people protesting an Atlanta police training facility were indicted on racketeering charges, accused of violence and destroying property.

  • Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of FTX, has protested his conditions in jail while he awaits trial for fraud, including a lack of hot vegan food.

New discoveries are likely to leave experts wanting to tweak the Big Bang theory. They should instead depart from the idea entirely, Adam Frank and Marcelo Gleiser write.

Here are columns by Thomas Friedman on diplomacy with Israel and Bret Stephens on American pessimism.

A landmark: The Yankees slugger Giancarlo Stanton hit his 400th career home run last night.

Galactic journey: Starfield, an adventure game set in a galaxy of 1,000 planets, comes out today on Xbox. Its release is a big deal for gamers: The company behind the game, Bethesda, is revered for its earlier creations like Fallout, and Starfield is its first new franchise in 25 years. The game was so eagerly anticipated that Microsoft recently bought the studio, in part to ensure that the franchise would be on its platforms exclusively.

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
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