• A New Yorker's Airbnb business thrived until a new city law shut it down.
• NYC moved to restrict short-term rentals, in part to address the city's housing shortage.
• The former host now rents his basement through Facebook and friends, earning income after a layoff.

After Paul and his wife bought their townhouse in Astoria, Queens, in 2013, they decided to transform their basement into a guest suite for visiting family and friends.

To help pay off the loan they took out for the renovation, the couple rented their basement — which has a bedroom, living space, and a kitchenette — on Airbnb for short-term stays in between family visits. They were quickly inundated with eager guests. There aren't many hotels in Astoria — a largely residential neighborhood — and the few that exist are "dinky" and expensive, Paul said.

Fast-forward several years and the couple is still renting out the basement for short periods. But they're knowingly violating New York City's new law banning most short-term rentals.

Through Airbnb, they hosted tourists from across Asia, Europe, and the US, as well as people visiting family members in Queens. Guests usually stayed about three or four days, but sometimes as long as two weeks.

"It turned out to be enormously profitable," said Paul, whose name was changed for this story to protect his family's anonymity.

In the high season, he said they charged up to $300 a night for the space, which can comfortably sleep four, and they never charged less than $150 a night. In a good month, it brought in nearly $3,000, according to their Airbnb earnings report. But when the pandemic hit in early 2020, they were forced to shut down their Airbnb business. Because the basement doesn't have a proper kitchen, including an oven, they couldn't rent it out long-term.

A couple of years later, they were just about to re-list their basement on Airbnb when the New York City government passed new regulations — known as Local Law 18 — cracking down on short-term rentals.

Under the law, homeowners can host paying guests for less than 30 days only if their unit is in an approved building, they rent to a maximum of two guests at a time, and they stay in the home with their guests. The law also requires that guests have access to the entire unit and that there aren't any locked doors inside the home. Every potential host has to apply and be approved by the city's Office of Special Enforcement (OSE). Hosts can be fined up to $5,000 for repeated violations.

Paul and his wife applied, but they were denied, according to documentation viewed by Business Insider. To comply with the law, they would need to open up their personal living room and kitchen to their Airbnb guests. An OSE representative helpfully explained how they could alter their home to comply with the law, but Paul and his wife felt the changes would "sacrifice our own sense of privacy," so they gave up on Airbnb.

Since the city began enforcing LL18 last September, the number of short-term rental listings has plummeted. Airbnb listings for stays of less than 30 days fell from 22,246 in August of last year, just before the city began enforcing the law, to nearly 4,000 in May 2024, a roughly 82% drop.

As of June 24, the city had received 6,395 applications for short-term rentals, according to OSE. The office has approved 2,276 of these, denied 1,746, and asked 2,269 applicants to submit additional information.

LL18 aims to address the city's severe housing shortage by opening homes to long-term renters that were previously reserved for visitors. Some evidence, including from Irvine, California, suggests that restricting short-term rentals can reduce rents. Less than a year into enforcement of the near-ban, it's not clear whether New York City is achieving this goal, but it has made hotel rooms more expensive.

Crucial income after a layoff

After the city rejected his application, Paul says he was "pissed off" and decided to find other ways to rent the basement out to short-term guests. So he began promoting it in various Facebook groups and through friends in the neighborhood. He quickly found takers.

With so many former Airbnbs gone and hotel rates on the rise, business has been good. For the last about 18 months, he's managed to regularly rent the place out for short-term and medium-term stays, charging between $150 and $200 per night or $2,500 for a month-long stay.

He's not particularly worried about being fined by the city because he thinks the government is more concerned with shutting down large-scale, short-term rental businesses rather than small-time property owners. OSE told BI it's working with Airbnb and other short-term rental companies to ensure they're in compliance before it begins fining hosts who violate the rules.

Right now, Paul is hosting a local family waiting for renovations to be finished on their new home in the neighborhood. And they have lots of regular, repeat guests — mostly grandparents visiting from out of town and others who want to stay near family who live in Astoria. "They want a place that's within walking distance and also has the amenities of a home that you won't find in a hotel," he said.

He believes that Airbnb and other short-term rentals in New York City should be regulated, but he doesn't think LL18 does enough to protect small-time hosts like himself, who wouldn't be able to rent out their space long-term.

"I agree with the sentiment behind the regulations," he said. "I just think that the regulations were designed as sort of blunt instruments rather than a precision tool."

Since Paul was laid off from his job as a TV producer a few months ago, the family has come to rely on the income from short-term renting. He also feels they're doing a service for visitors who need a more affordable place to stay in the neighborhood.

"The best use of that space I could think of is to rent it out to local families," he said. "The way we use this space is good for Astoria, and it's good for New York, and it makes living here easier."

Have you been impacted by New York City's short-term rental regulations? Reach out to this reporter at erelman@businessinsider.com.

• Walmart's new Bettergoods brand is strikingly similar to the Good & Gather line from Target.
• I picked up a range of comparable items from each to see which is better.
• While I couldn't pick a decisive winner, the real advantage here goes to customers.

Whether you call them store brands, private labels, or something else, companies like Target are investing big bucks to ensure shoppers don't think of their in-house offerings as "generic."

The latest significant entry into this premium owned-brand space comes from Walmart, which in April announced its Bettergoods line as the company's "largest private brand food launch in 20 years."

While the brand emphasizes interesting taste combinations and plant-based recipes, I found a closer look at the products revealed a striking resemblance to another shopper favorite: Target's Good & Gather.

Target launched Good & Gather five years ago, promising food products free of artificial flavors, colors, and high-fructose corn syrup, and has grown the line to include over 2,000 products. Walmart had 300 products in April.

Good & Gather now generates more than $3 billion in sales for the Bullseye, so it's no surprise that Walmart would want a slice of the action.

To better understand the competition Bettergoods represents, I figured a taste test was in order.

Since Bettergoods is just getting started, I went to Walmart first.

I looked for a range of snacks, mains, and dessert options but skipped things like seltzers, non-dairy milk, and seasonings.

Then I headed to Target.

I did my best to match the Walmart basket with selections from Target's far more extensive collection.

The first thing that struck me was how closely I was able to match the baskets.

Almost every Bettergoods item had a counterpart from Good & Gather (or the sister brand Favorite Day, for ice cream).

Naturally I expected some degree of similarity, which is why I decided to write this story in the first place, but the likeness between brands was quite surprising.

I was able to roughly match 13 items.

Here's what made the cut: frozen chicken wings/bites; fancy potato chips; corn salsas and fire-roasted salsas; plant-based shredded cheese; cauliflower crust frozen pizzas; Greek yogurts; beef empanadas; fritter balls; phyllo pastries; fancy traditional ice cream; and non-dairy ice cream.

My surprise increased when I saw how close the two brands were in terms of pricing.

With very few exceptions, most items were within a few nickels or dimes of their counterparts. Even if an item from one brand was more expensive, that was offset by another item being less expensive, so the overall baskets of 13 items each were within six cents of each other.

In terms of quality, most of the products were also quite similar.

I think they could easily be sold under the competitor's branding, and you'd be hard-pressed to tell which was out of place.

One item that did stand out was the potato chips.

Target's Good & Gather offers a kettle-style chip seasoned with interesting flavor combinations, like Parmesan and garlic.

Walmart's Bettergoods offering had a simple pink salt seasoning on what seemed to be a slightly overcooked traditional chip. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't that special, either.

The salsas were generally on par.

Bettergoods had a slight edge here. I noticed the Walmart brand features a family recipe and is made in Texas.

Bettergoods shone when it came to the wings and the bulgogi empanadas.

They were much more satisfying than the Good & Gather buffalo bites (dry) and jalapeño empanadas (tiny).

Both brands' pizzas were somewhat disappointing.

This is a high bar for me, considering how well I think Costco's Kirkland Signature makes its cauliflower crust. Still, between the two choices on the table, Walmart was marginally better.

Good & Gather had slightly better appetizers.

While I preferred the Good & Gather lobster mac and cheese bites to Bettergoods' croquettes, neither was much of a hit with my toddlers.

Good & Gather also did better with their fluffy and flaky spinach and feta spanakopita than Bettergoods did with their flat and chewy fig and orange phyllo bites.

Dessert was a split decision. No real losers here. I mean, who doesn't like ice cream?

On the traditional ice cream front, I found Bettergoods' pistachio flavor somewhat overpowering, but Target's Favorite Day s'mores ice cream was soft, rich, and delicious, even though I accidentally bought the reduced fat option.

For the non-dairy version, however, Bettergoods' oat-milk-based blueberry swirl was slightly better in flavor and texture than the Favorite Day almond-milk strawberry fudge. Both were nearly as good as many dairy-based choices.

Two things are clear from this experiment.

Walmart has successfully launched a high quality brand that would fit right in on Target's shelves, but Bettergoods has a very long road ahead before it will match Good & Gather's full lineup.

So who comes out ahead after these too-close-to-calls and offsetting wins? Customers.

At a time when household grocery budgets are stretched to their limits, Walmart and Target are in a welcome competition to provide high-quality foods at very manageable prices.

I hope they keep it up.

• At 8 months old, our oldest started co-sleeping with me and my husband.
• Then, when our youngest was 3, he also joined us in bed. At 5 and 7, they're still sleeping with us.
• Co-sleeping won't be a lifelong arrangement, but for now, it works for us.

When he was just 8 months old, our oldest began sleeping in our bed every night. (Before that, he slept in his yet-to-be-recalled Rock 'n Play.) It was something we said we'd never do. We weren't going to be co-sleepers. But suddenly, we had a son who refused to sleep in his crib, and we were tired and a couple of softies. In our king-sized bed, there was plenty of room, and he began going to bed with us regularly..

Two years later, we had another son. This one liked his crib. He slept in it until he was 3. By then, our oldest was 5 and slept in his own bed about half the time. It was only when our youngest wandered in and saw his brother in our bed that he even realized co-sleeping was an option. It was like a lightbulb moment for him. But this caused a problem: while one baby fit fine, two growing boys don't fit quite so comfortably.

We know co-sleeping not a lifelong scenario — our kids won't always want to sleep with us — so for now, it's comfort that we can provide them. The warmth and safety of "Mommy and Daddy's bed."

There is only one exception to co-sleeping: cases of the stomach flu are not allowed to share the bed.

They usually start the night in their own bed, but almost always end up in ours

The boys climb into their own twin-sized beds and get cuddles. Both want me — an infuriating compliment — so I take turns about who gets snuggles first. After a long day, snuggler number two is likely asleep before I reach them.

At some point in the night, one or both of them crawls into our bed. It might have been a bad dream, they may have been cold, or they could have just woken and wanted some cuddling time. It's not uncommon for me to wake up to find a child in the middle of me and my husband, or wedging me into the middle. It's also not uncommon for me to move and relocate to their bed, which is plenty comfortable. And a 5'3", I'm an easy fit. (My 6'1" husband hangs his feet off the end.)

On days when the kids are overly tired or upset, we allow them to go to bed in ours and then move them once they are in a deep sleep. Occasionally, this can be used as a reward, too. Of course, they ask not to be moved, to sleep there all night, but we make no such promises.

We don't see things changing anytime soon

My mom jokes that we need another mattress in our room, essentially doubling the size of our current bed. And while I know our habits are a bit unorthodox, it also allows us the freedom to sleep in the way everyone needs.

They each have night lights in their rooms, and we run two fans on high. The youngest piles his bed with about 15 stuffies, while hard toys such as Lego bricks or cars are fair game in the oldest's bed. Therefore, when they come in needing comfort and I need to decamp to a twin bed, I opt for the former. I can toss a few fabric animals to the floor, but rolling onto a metal car would ruin my entire night of sleep.

In any case, I've found it's easier to move than try to convince them they don't need us nearby. Besides, if sleeping in our bed can give them the comfort they need, some great core memories, and the peace of mind they need at night, why wouldn't we provide it?

• Some kitchens are turning to AI to monitor how much food they're wasting.
• AI company Winnow tracks food waste going into the trash using a motion-sensor camera and scales.
• Hilton has been using Winnow to reduce waste at its breakfast buffets by serving smaller portions of croissants, fruit, and salmon.

Hotels are reducing how much food they waste at their breakfast buffets by installing AI-powered cameras above their kitchen trash cans.

British company Winnow's hardware involves a scale that kitchens place a trash can on, as well as a screen with a motion-sensor camera. Its AI scans the items after they're placed in the trash — it can identify whether that was a bowl of carrot peelings, excess guacamole, or uneaten mashed potato — and the scale then records how much of that item was thrown away.

Chefs and restaurant managers can see this data in real time.

The system "makes it really easy for us to gather accurate data on what's being wasted in these kitchens," Winnow cofounder Marc Zornes said, noting that the difficulty of collecting accurate recordings was the "biggest problem" many companies faced in tackling their food waste.

"And it's important that you make this process easy because kitchens are very busy places," he said.

Winnow then uses this data to advise chefs on buying the right amount of ingredients and how to prepare them to minimize waste.

Zornes said that Winnow's accuracy at identifying foods "can vary from site to site."

"If it knows what it is outright, it identifies the product," Zornes said. "If it doesn't know what it is and it thinks it's a couple of options, it can present that to the user, and they can help the system get better over time."

According to the United Nations Environmental Program, 19% of food available to consumers globally — or more than 1.1 billion tons — was wasted in 2022. Of this, nearly 30% was wasted in the food service sector. Food loss in the supply chain and food waste generate almost five times the total greenhouse gas emissions from the aviation sector, per the UNEP.

Reducing food waste can boost a company's eco credentials — and cut costs.

Winnow's clients include hotels, cruise lines, universities, and food service companies that provide professional catering services.

And it's not just back-of-house waste that they're tracking.

In the Middle East, Hilton has been using Winnow to look at which items from its breakfast buffets are being wasted the most, Sebastian Nohse, Hilton EMEA's senior director of culinary, told BI.

Breakfast buffets create "a really big chunk of waste that we in the hotel industry in general didn't really have clear insights about," he said.

He said Hilton used data from Winnow to experiment with smaller croissants, fruit, and smoked salmon served in smaller portions for its breakfast buffets.

"If we can remove choice, that will drive impact," Nohse said. "If we can make the choice for the guests by providing a smaller croissant or a smaller doughnut or cutting the fruit in a different way, we can create positive impact without letting the guests make the choice but by creating impact by default."

It's not just big portion sizes that are contributing to diners leaving food on their plates. Using Winnow, chefs can see which dishes aren't going down well with diners, Paul Fairhead, CEO of Guckenheimer, the food services arm of ISS which provides commercial catering, told BI. They can then, for example, consider whether the flavors of the dish weren't right, or check the pictures recorded by Winnow to see whether it just looked burned that day.

Winnow declined to share specifics about how much its services cost.

Hilton said that in a "Green Breakfast" pilot that involved making decisions based on Winnow data as well as introducing sustainable behavior "nudges," it cut food waste at 13 of its hotels in the United Arab Emirates over a four-month period in 2023 by 76% for pre-consumer, or kitchen, waste and by 55% for post-consumer waste.

The most wasted items included bread and pastry, white eggs, porridge, congee, sambar, shakshuka and baked beans, Hilton said.

• Contractors are developing a rocket artillery system for Europe that could rival HIMARS.
• The heavier EuroPULS could carry twice as many rockets.
• HIMARS may be a victim of its popularity, as Lockheed Martin tries to meet surging demand.

Europe is building a multiple rocket launcher that resembles America's HIMARS, the ground-fired weapon that took on the precision strike missions that Ukraine's battered air force couldn't.

EuroPULS, a truck-mounted multiple rocket launcher, is a collaboration between Franco-German defense firm KNDS and Israel's Elbit Systems. It's based on Elbit's Precise and Universal Launching System, or PULS, which is fielded by the Israel Defense Forces and several European nations.

This raises the question of whether EuroPULS will be a competitor to HIMARS, or High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, a decades-old launcher which made its name in the Ukraine war. Comparing EuroPULS to HIMARS reveals platforms that are similar in concept. EuroPULS is mounted on an eight-wheel truck chassis, while HIMARS uses a six-wheel vehicle. A KNDS fact sheet describes EuroPULS as being 34-feet long, and weighing 38 tons, with a maximum road speed of 55 miles per hour.

That makes it much heavier than HIMARS, which has a combat-loaded weight of 18 tons. But a larger vehicle can carry more rockets. EuroPULS has two pods, which can fire 12 rockets in 60 seconds, depending on the munition. HIMARS has one pod that can fire six GMLRS rockets or one long-range ATACMS missile. The price for a EuroPULS system hasn't been disclosed. But a HIMARS launcher costs almost $5 million apiece, according to 2024 US Army budget figures, while a GMLRS rocket costs more than $100,000 each.

European armies already field multiple launch rocket systems. Many, such as France's LRU and Germany's MARS 2, are based on the U.S. M270, a tracked mobile rocket launcher, and its Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System rockets.

EuroPULS broadens that menu of munitions. EuroPULS can fire a "mix of European legacy and PULS rockets," according to KNDS. Elbit markets a variety of PULS pods. Pod choices include 18 Accular 122-mm rockets with a range of 22 miles, 10 Accular 160-mm rockets with a range of 25 miles, four EXTRA extended-range rockets that can reach out to 93 miles, and two Predator Hawk weapons with a range of 186 miles. Different pods can be mounted on the same vehicle.

What's also notable is that KNDS and Elbit are touting the ability of EuroPULS to fire all sorts of rockets. KNDS says the system is "adaptable to future missiles." Elbit says EuroPULS "will form the basis for a modularly scalable and flexible artillery system that can be integrated to fire from any mobility platform with pinpoint accuracy and safety. The open EuroPULS concept does not exclude any provider of respective missiles from cooperation enabling EuroPULS users to employ those."

This suggests that EuroPULS could fire the GMLRS rockets launched by HIMARS. Except that HIMARS manufacturer Lockheed Martin has said that's not an option. "Our MLRS Family of Munitions cannot be integrated into the PULS system," a Lockheed Martin executive told Defense News. "If Germany was to opt for PULS they could not gain access to our missiles."

Whether EuroPULS could rival HIMARS is complicated. HIMARS does enjoy the immense advantage of its reputation in the Ukraine war, where it proved crucial in helping halt Russia's invasion in 2022. HIMARS rockets destroyed Russian ammunition depots and headquarters, disrupting logistics and command and control, and spurring Russian forces to move vital facilities deeper behind their lines. HIMARS and other GPS-guided weapons such as HIMARS have recently lost some of their luster, as extensive Russian jamming of GPS signals has degraded the accuracy of guidance systems. But for now, multiple rocket launchers are prized items.

On the other hand, KNDS can use economic incentives as a carrot, or at least for European customers; Lockheed Martin produces its guided HIMARS rockets at plants in the US. The KNDS fact sheet stated that "European production base of launcher and ammunition planned."

HIMARS is used, or has been ordered, by more than a dozen nations. But Elbit's PULS has already had some success in Europe, with the Netherlands and Denmark purchasing it, and Germany planning to buy five to replace MARS 2 launchers sent to Ukraine, and possibly as many as 89.

To some extent, HIMARS may be a victim of its popularity, with questions about whether Lockheed Martin can meet surging demand for the launchers and rockets, though the company plans to boost manufacturing capacity. Ukraine for example has ordered new HIMARS launchers and the US Defense Department is replacing the launchers and missiles from its arsenal that it provided to Ukraine.

"Demand for such military capabilities risks outstripping supply, given limitations on how quickly industrial production capacity can be ramped up and given the need to also backfill or provide systems for Ukraine," James Black, assistant director for defense at the RAND Europe think tank, told Business Insider. "There are also industrial policy and security of supply questions at play, with many nations hoping to assure access to production lines and munitions in times of crisis or war, and with many countries hoping to secure lucrative domestic or export contracts. Collectively, such trends are prompting some militaries to consider possible alternatives to the US HIMARS system, though certainly that remains a major player in this competition for contracts."

Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine, and other publications. He holds an MA in political science from Rutgers Univ. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.

• Mohawked real-estate investor Robert Rivani moved from California to Florida in 2022.
• Rivani, who dropped out of high school, went on to transact over $750 million in commercial deals.
• He described a typical day in his life in Miami, from intermittent fasting to trying to never drive.

Robert Rivani got a taste for business flipping shoes as a teenager in his hometown of Los Angeles.

At first, he said, he sold his own Air Jordan and Nike shoes to just afford other shoes, but when business took off, he was making $10,000 a month before he could legally drink. He dropped out of high school in the 11th grade. At 18 years old, Rivani said he was approached to sell his shoe collection for over $150,000 and he took it.

"The hustle came young because my family wasn't wealthy or rich by any means, and I wanted to be able to afford nicer things in life," Rivani, now 34, told Business Insider. "The only way for me to go about getting that done was by making it on my own."

He started working in property management, helping run buildings in Los Angeles, and has stayed in real estate ever since. He specializes in buying more dated buildings, from restaurants to offices, and revamping them.

"I consider myself somewhat of an artist when it comes to designing the properties," he said. "Painting a building a certain way or making it more aesthetically pleasing, from the facade or the landscaping, and then being able to have tenants buy into the vision. It was an amazing thing to turn around these dilapidated properties into something special or unique."

Rivani left California in 2022 to make his mark in Miami, where he's grown his real-estate portfolio.

His investment group, Black Lion, has a portfolio of restaurants, office buildings, and mixed-use buildings in South Florida totaling 500,000 square feet of space owned.

His hospitality real-estate investment firm has completed $750 million in transactions, he said.

In April, he paid $62.5 million for a building in Miami Beach with stores at its base and offices above. He plans to renovate the interior and exterior and rebrand it at The Rivani. So far, West Elm and Williams Sonoma are retail tenants.

"To buy my own office building at 34 years old for 60-some-odd million with no investors or no partners was a huge milestone in my career," Rivani said. "It was a dream of mine since I was a kid to have that and then also have the building named with my last name."

Rivani is also known for his California home — a Beverly Hills castle inspired by "Harry Potter" and "Game of Thrones," including a $50,000 replica of the latter franchise's iron throne — which he sold for $22 million in 2023.

Rivani now lives in a 9,000-square-foot mansion in Miami. He let Business Insider take a peek inside a typical day, and described how he sets his life up for success.

5:30 a.m.

Although Rivani left California for South Florida, he still sticks to his West-Coast rituals and wakes up around 5:30 a.m. or 6 a.m. While working in California, he still had properties to worry about on the East Coast, so he had to be up early to stay efficient. Now it's just a habit.

"I get anxiety if I sleep until 8 a.m. or 9 a.m.," Rivani told BI. "I feel like I'm missing things. I feel like I'm being disrespectful."

6 a.m.

Once awake, Rivani immediately spends 30 minutes to an hour catching up on emails he didn't get to the night before and researching current market trends. He also takes time to meditate and visualize what's ahead in the day.

Around 7 a.m. every morning he has tea with his wife, Krystal.

"I can't stress how important it is to have a healthy, stable marriage when you're trying to do what you do in real estate because you're always so busy 24/7," he said. "I make sure I spend quality time with her in the morning."

8 a.m.

Rivani usually hits the gym in the morning for about an hour.

"I'm a big, big believer in going to the gym at least four to five days a week — or at least staying active, whether that's hitting weights or playing paddle or tennis or physical therapy to keep my body," he said. "As I've gotten older, I've realized that without your health, there's no wealth."

9 a.m.

Rivani leaves his home in Miami to his office in Miami Beach — which can take up to 45 minutes depending on traffic. Even that 45-minute drive is valuable time, so his personal assistant or wife drives while Rivani texts and takes calls.

"I'd rather not text and be on phone calls," he said. "A lot of the good old residential brokers do, and I see them on their phone. I'd rather be safe than sorry."

10 a.m.

Rivani is a believer in intermittent fasting and has his first meal, usually a protein shake, at 10 a.m.

His next meal won't come until dinner.

"I'm a big fan of intermittent fasting, so that's why I decided to drink tea versus other drinks because I fast for 14 to 16 hours every single day," he said. "I won't eat any food or have any special breakfast routine."

1 p.m.

On Mondays, Rivani is usually slammed with a gauntlet of meetings from the legal team, to the construction team, to designer meetings, so he's usually in the office from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Throughout his meetings he'll meet with his legal team and go over the status of pending deals. Meetings with the construction team checking in to see where they're at with bids on new projects and ensuring current projects are on track. He'll have interior design meetings to go over renderings for projects and help with furniture selection.

However, he's a little more active every other day of the week. Tuesday through Friday, Rivani meets with tenant companies, potential vendors, and contractors.

Rivani has the luxury of having restaurants, including Delilah Miami, as tenants and can host multiple meetings in one location instead of bouncing around Miami.

"I'll set back-to-back meetings at one of my restaurant properties where I'll just have people coming there," he said. "So I try to be as efficient with my time. I'm never lapping the city to go to a meeting and going to another meeting — that's just an inefficient use of my time."

7 p.m.

About 65% of the time, Rivani eats dinner at home, he said.

"My wife loves to cook, and if I decide to eat out too much she'll kill me," he said. "On the weekends, that's when we're going out and having dinners. I'll be having dinners much later than that, unfortunately."

After dinner, Rivani winds down by watching TV for about an hour — he's on his third watch of the History Channel's Viking-age drama "Vikings," he said.

Rivani said that because of the nature of the job, he's still fielding calls up until bedtime.

"There's no cutoff," he said. "There are times when I'm talking to people right up until bed. I had a really bad habit where I would leave my phone on at night. But now it's on silent and I don't pick up anyone's call. Once it gets to 9 o'clock-ish, my phone just goes on silent and time's up."

9 p.m.

It's time for bed.

• Sicily, Italy, is in a state of emergency over the worst drought the country has seen in 20 years.
• Water rations are so strict that hotel and inn owners are turning tourists away.
• As a tourism-driven economy, the drought is threatening the financial stability of the region.

An extreme drought in Sicily is the worst the Italian island has seen in 20 years, and it's so bad it's threatening the region's economy.

The drought in Sicily has caused the local climate to mirror that of Ethiopia, UK outlet Sky News reported, causing a state of emergency, drying up lakes, and prompting officials to implement strict water rations.

The rations are so strict — with some residents being asked to cut their water use by as much as 45% — it's prompting some hotel and inn owners to turn guests away because they cannot guarantee showers will run or toilets will flush, CNN reported.

"Rightly, people ask us for reassurances before coming, but we don't know what to say," Giovanni Lopez, who owns the Le Cinque Novelle bed and breakfast (B&B) in central Agrigento, told CNN. "The situation is quickly impacting the entire tourist accommodation sector, which risks serious economic consequences, given that tourism is a sector almost everyone in this part of Sicily relies on."

The economic impact is impossible to ignore — between empty reservoirs and livestock that have died due to the drought, CNN reported the region has lost more than a billion Euros, or nearly 1.1 billion USD.

Representatives for Italy's Ministry of Tourism did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. However, CNN reported that Italy's tourism minister, Daniela Santanchè, suggested in April that Sicily should attempt to expand its tourism beyond summer to address the region's worsening water crisis.

In addition to the drought, numerous regions of Italy, including Sicily, are also facing population destabilization, prompting officials to offer incentives to relocate to its rural regions in hopes that new residents will help stabilize the population levels.

• President Joe Biden has recently faced calls to move aside for another Democratic nominee.
• Prof. Allan Lichtman, who predicted 9 out of 10 elections since 1984, says it could be a bad idea.
• Biden checks off more of the 13 key questions than Kamala Harris, Lichtman told WSJ.

A professor and historian who successfully predicted the last 9 out of 10 elections since 1984 believes President Joe Biden is still the safest bet for Democrats.

Since Biden's poor debate performance against Donald Trump, the president has fielded calls from voters, donors, and congressional colleagues to drop out of the race for a new nominee.

Some names floated as potential replacements include Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and California Gov. Gavin Newsom. However, as Business Insider has previously reported, Vice President Kamala Harris may be the most obvious and viable option for Democrats given the immediate war chest she would get from Biden's campaign and the boost from intra-party support.

But Allan Lichtman, a presidential historian at American University, told The Wall Street Journal that even Harris can't save the Democrats based on his famous model, "Keys to the White House." This model entails 13 true-and-false questions to determine the performance of the party holding the White House. If six or more of the 13 keys are false, then the holding party, in this case, the Democrats, will lose.

Lichtman told the Journal that Biden has provided Democrats with seven keys so far: the incumbency, no significant primary contest, no recession during the election, a strong long-term economy based on real per capita economic growth compared to the average of the previous two terms, major policy changes, no major scandal directly pertaining to the president, and an uncharismatic challenger.

If Harris were to become the new nominee, Democrats risk losing two of those keys Biden secured: the incumbency and the primary contest.

"Biden steps aside, they lose obviously the incumbency," Lichtman told the Journal. "And it's not at all clear that there wouldn't be a big party fight."

Lichtman said the only highly unlikely scenario in which Harris could maintain the same keys Biden has is if Biden steps down from the presidency now, giving the White House to the VP just a few months before the election.

He said Harris would obtain the incumbency key, and Biden could then release his delegates to his VP to secure the contest key.

A spokesperson for the Biden campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Lichtman has predicted election outcomes since Ronald Reagan secured his second term against Democratic challenger Walter Mondale in 1984. The only election he missed was in 2000, when he predicted Al Gore would secure the presidency, although the historian argued that he predicted correctly that Gore would win the popular vote.

In 2021, Lichtman told The Miami Herald that he believed Trump would not make a successful political comeback in 2024, citing some of the former president's flailing businesses and financial troubles at the time as well as the fact that Trump is not the incumbent.

• Joe Biden's campaign says it raised $38 million since the debate against Trump over a week ago.
• In the day following the debate, Biden's team raised $27 million to Donald Trump's $8 million.
• Biden is recovering from a painful debate where he seemed lost next to a rambling Trump.

President Joe Biden's reelection campaign knows it took a hit in the debate against former President Donald Trump.

But Biden is coming back swinging, one campaign spokesperson says, touting $38 million in donations since last Thursday's debate.

"People going to joebiden.com and chipping in because they understand that when you get knocked down, you get back up and you keep fighting, and that's exactly what the President has done," Michael Tyler, the communications director for Biden's campaign, told the hosts of MSNBC's "The Weekend" on Saturday.

In the day after the July 27 debate, Biden raised $27 million while Trump raised $8 million, Business Insider previously reported. While Trump appeared to win the debate, both candidates made gaffes and delivered incoherent sentences.

Tyler added that the flood of donations after the debate was "one of our most successful stretches of the campaign so far" and that Biden maintains he is "the best person to take on Donald Trump."

"Nobody is going to fight harder to defeat Donald Trump," Tyler said of Biden. "He is the one person who has demonstrated an ability to actually defeat Donald Trump, given everybody else who was tried on both sides of the aisle."

The Biden campaign intends to spend $50 million on paid advertising in July while knocking on 3 million doors, Tyler said.

Since Biden's first presidential debate against Trump, the president's campaign has been rocked with growing calls from Democratic colleagues and top donors to either convince the American public that Biden is fit for a second term or step aside for a new candidate.

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia has been rallying his colleagues in Congress to ask Biden to drop out of the race, The Washington Post reported.

Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings was one of the first megadonors of the Democratic Party to call on Biden to end his campaign.

Biden, however, appeared to dismiss the gravity of his campaign's woes in a recent interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos.

The president chalked up his debate performance to a "bad night," dismissed poll numbers that continue to show him trailing behind Trump, and discredited any rumblings inside the Democratic Party about a new nominee.

Biden's campaign has repeatedly touted donation numbers. According to a Politico report, the campaign brought in $127 million in June when combining funds from the Democratic National Committee, trouncing the $112 million the Trump campaign raised the same month.

Spokespeople for the Biden and Trump campaigns did not immediately respond to a request for comment.