Fortune Recommends™ has partnered with CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Fortune Recommends™ and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers. Chase Ultimate Rewards® is superior to its key rivals among travel rewards programs in the same way that a four-star hotel is superior to a three-star one. From the outside, a three- and four-star hotel may look exactly the same. Heck, they may even have similar revolving doors that spill into indistinguishable lobbies. But once you’re inside long enough, you start noticing the difference. The four-star hotel has a spa. Spin class. A bigger pool. There’s a New York strip…
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Another day, another wave of all-inclusive resorts taking on major hotel loyalty affiliation. Wyndham Hotels & Resorts continued its all-inclusive resort expansion Tuesday through a new partnership with Decameron All Inclusive Hotels & Resorts, a Latin American all-inclusive resort operator. The partnership kicks off with nine resorts across Mexico, Panama and Jamaica, and it brings Wyndham’s overall all-inclusive resort footprint to more than 50 properties around the world. The Decameron resorts will maintain their existing likeness but take on an affiliation with two of Wyndham’s brands. Five resorts will take on Trademark Collection by Wyndham branding, while the remaining four…
Qatar says mediation efforts are being hampered by Israel’s offensive on Gaza’s southern city. Israel’s military operation in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah has set ceasefire negotiations with Hamas “backward”, mediator Qatar has said, adding that the talks have lost steam. “Especially in the past few weeks, we have seen some momentum building but unfortunately things didn’t move in the right direction and right now we are on a status of almost a stalemate,” Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani told the Qatar Economic Forum in Doha on Tuesday. “Of course, what happened with Rafah has…
Sona, a workforce management platform for frontline employees, has raised $27.5 million in a Series A round of funding. More than two-thirds of the U.S. workforce are reportedly in frontline jobs, which might be anything from customer service and healthcare to retail environments and hospitality. But managing this vast workforce, ensuring roles are filled and service is delivered, is resource intensive. That is where Sona has been setting out to help since its foundation three years ago. “Sona intelligently deploys our customers’ largest cost base — frontline labour,” Sona’s co-founder, Steffen Wulff Petersen, told TechCrunch. “This not only optimises their…
A larger proportion of Americans are worried about their mental health now than at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new survey from CVS Health. In March, the nation’s biggest pharmacy chain partnered with Morning Consult to poll 2,202 U.S. adults. In survey results released Thursday, about 65% of respondents said they’ve experienced concerns about their own mental health or that of friends and family, compared to 59% in April 2022 and 50% in April 2020. “I think the take-home point is that we continue to see behavioral health be an increasing focus of the public,”…
Even before he became one of Australia’s most high-profile whistleblowers, McBride led a colourful life. After graduating from Oxford University with a law degree, he started his career with a stint in the British army. Leaving after reaching the rank of captain, he then tried his hand at everything from private security to reality TV and politics, before coming full circle and joining the Australian Defence Force (ADF). As a legal officer, he did two tours of Afghanistan in 2011 and 2013, the latter with the special forces. It was then that he began to form the impression that “a…
Los Angeles, California – As the war in Gaza enters its eighth month, Israel’s military campaign, one of the most destructive in modern history, has killed nearly 35,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children. The death toll, as well as the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, has many progressive and pro-Palestinian activists in the United States critical of their country’s role in the war. The US has long been Israel’s closest ally, supplying the country with about $3.8bn each year in military aid. Critics have blasted that support, as well as the billions of dollars in additional assistance used…
Sony is appointing co-CEOs Hermen Hulst and Hideaki Nishino to lead its PlayStation business from June 1st. Hermen Hulst, who currently serves as PlayStation studios chief, will be appointed as CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment’s (SIE) studio business group. Hideaki Nishino will be appointed CEO of SIE’s platform business group, and both will report up to Sony CFO and SIE chairman Hiroki Totoki. The unusual appointment of co-CEOs comes just months after former PlayStation boss Jim Ryan retired. Totoki had been serving as interim CEO of SIE and was working to find the successor for the SIE CEO role, but…
Posted: 5/13/2024 | May 13th, 2024 Croatia has been a bustling tourist hot spot for six or seven years now. Shaped like a boomerang and bordering Bosnia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia, this small country of four million people punches well above its weight. You can spend time relaxing on the sunny Adriatic Sea, hop between hundreds of rugged and remote islands, feast on Italian-esque cuisine, or travel inland and visit stunning waterfalls and lush national parks. While there is a lot to see and do here, most travelers confine their visit to Dubrovnik or Split. And sure, those are cool…
Criminal charges are not warranted in the rare liquor probe that shook Oregon’s alcohol agency last year and forced its executive director to resign, state justice officials said Monday. In February 2023, the Oregon Department of Justice began investigating whether employees of the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission improperly used their positions to obtain bottles of top-shelf bourbon for personal use. The department reviewed thousands of documents and emails, and interviewed dozens of people, including current and former commission employees and liquor store agents. It concluded it did not have sufficient evidence to prove the criminal offenses it had considered — official misconduct…
Award-winning Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof says he has fled the country after receiving a jail sentence for making his latest film in secret. In an Instagram post, he said he was in a “safe place” after people “risked their lives” to help him cross borders. His film The Seed of the Sacred Fig is to be premiered at the Cannes festival, which opens on Tuesday. Rasoulof won the top prize at the 2020 Berlin Festival with There Is No Evil, a film about the death penalty in Iran. “I am grateful to my friends, acquaintances, and people who kindly, selflessly,…
For years, Apple has positioned itself as a champion of consumer privacy, setting itself apart from its tech industry peers Google and Facebook and their ad-based business models that rely on siphoning up as much user data as possible. “Privacy is a fundamental human right,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said last year, repeating a mantra he has made a central part of Apple’s marketing strategy. But Apple’s privacy reputation is starting to show some major cracks—due to mounting revelations about its lucrative relationship with Google, which has been called “the pioneer of surveillance capitalism.” The U.S. government’s antitrust lawsuit against…