A house located in the 3700 block of Carlson Circle in Palo Alto has new owners. The 1,812-square-foot property, built in 1952, was sold on Oct. 31, 2023. The $3,400,000 purchase price works out to $1,876 per square foot. This single-story house has three bedrooms and three bathrooms. Inside, a fireplace enhances the ambiance of the living area. In addition, the house features a double carport.

These nearby houses have also recently been purchased:

• A 2,254-square-foot home on the 3700 block of Carlson Circle in Palo Alto sold in April 2023, for $3,090,000, a price per square foot of $1,371. The home has 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms.
• In October 2022, a 1,488-square-foot home on Redwood Circle in Palo Alto sold for $2,950,000, a price per square foot of $1,983. The home has 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms.
• On Roosevelt Circle, Palo Alto, in June 2023, a 1,474-square-foot home was sold for $2,820,000, a price per square foot of $1,913. The home has 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms.

With flights getting more expensive around Thanksgiving and the winter holidays, you may be inclined to use accumulated points and miles to try to save some money. About 30% of holiday travelers plan to use points and miles to pay for travel expenses in 2023, according to a NerdWallet survey conducted by The Harris Poll of more than 2,000 adults.

That might have been a dependable money-saving strategy five or 10 years ago, back when airlines published award charts that clearly showed how many points or miles you’d need to book a flight. But most U.S. airlines have switched to dynamic award pricing, meaning the cost in points can fluctuate as much as cash prices do.

So in many cases, holiday flights on points are no longer the deal they once were — and can be high enough to make your jaw drop. In fact, you might get a lower cent-per-point value than usual if you’re not careful.

What the data says about holiday travel on miles

NerdWallet does an annual analysis of the value of airline miles. Conducted in August, the analysis looks at redeeming miles for flights 15 days in advance, for flights 180 days in advance, and for holiday flights. (For the latter, NerdWallet looked at flights departing Dec. 22, one of the busiest days to fly around the winter holidays, and returning Dec. 29.) The results show that airline miles are generally worth less around the last week of December.

If you’re flying domestically, there are two ways to think about getting maximum value for miles.

• One would be to use the airline miles that are worth the most around the holidays, so you’ll need fewer miles than you would if you booked a similarly priced flight on another airline. In that case, your best bet would be to fly American Airlines or Southwest Airlines, because both airlines’ miles are worth 1.5 cents, the highest holiday valuation of the domestic airlines in the analysis.
• The alternative is to use airline miles that have the greatest value at the holidays relative to other times of the year. The analysis found that miles on Frontier Airlines are actually worth more at the holidays, although that comes with some caveats. Meanwhile, miles on Southwest, Delta Air Lines and Spirit Airlines had the same value on holiday redemptions as on nonholiday flights.

If you’re flying internationally, you have other options to maximize your miles.

1.5 cents per mile is good for holiday travel

Among U.S. airlines, American and Southwest have the highest-valued miles when redeemed for holiday flights. Their miles are worth about 1.5 cents per dollar during the holidays. For American, this is slightly lower than its usual valuation at 1.7 cents per dollar. For Southwest, the 1.5 cents per point is the same as nonholiday travel redemptions.

To determine the redemption value of miles, divide the cash price of the flight by the number of miles required to get it.

Frontier Airlines is the only airline that fared better in the analysis than usual. Its holiday valuation of 1.3 cents per point is slightly higher than its normal baseline of 1.1 cent. However, this cost considers only the base fare — added fees for seat selection or baggage might decrease your value per point.

To maximize your points, consider international airlines

The highest-valued miles during the holidays don’t come from U.S.-based airlines. If you’re planning on vacationing during the holidays and aren’t tied to a specific location, you could blow the 1.5-cents-per-point mark out of the water if you were to fly, say, ANA (All Nippon Airways) or Singapore Airlines to Asia.

Not only do both airlines consistently rank as the world’s best in Skytrax’s rankings, but they also still have award charts, so their award flight prices generally don’t go up as much as the dynamic prices in other programs. ANA’s miles are worth 2.8 cents per mile during the holidays, the same as usual. Singapore’s miles are worth 2.1 cents per mile during the holidays, up from 1.5 cents usually.

If you haven’t flown these airlines recently (or ever), you might still be able to book with miles if you have a travel credit card that transfers to either of these airlines’ loyalty programs. ANA is a transfer partner of American Express Membership Rewards, and Singapore Airlines is a transfer partner of both AmEx and Chase Ultimate Rewards.

Use the same strategies to save as you would on flights booked with cash

If the price in miles makes your head spin, remember that the principles for saving are the same for flights booked in cash and points. To reduce the cost of holiday flights, you can try:

• Flying on less popular days. Less demand equals lower cash prices. And less expensive flights mean they usually cost less in miles, too. According to Transportation Security Administration data, you’ll want to avoid days like the Sunday after Thanksgiving, which is generally the busiest single travel day in U.S. airports all year.
• Use a combination of miles and cash. Delta and United offer the choice of paying for your fare partially in miles and partially in cash, which is a nice option if you don’t have sufficient miles for the fare you’re booking. Booking through your credit card’s travel portal also yields a miles and cash option. Lastly, consider other ways to unbundle your travel like paying cash for a one-way flight and miles for the way back.
• Go international when everyone else is going domestic. Thanksgiving week can be a cheaper time to travel abroad because it’s not a holiday in other countries. If you’re thinking about going abroad around the end of December, consider Thanksgiving instead.

You may be feeling the squeeze on holiday travel because it seems too expensive right now. Flight cash prices can still feel high, even though data from the consumer price index actually indicates that they are lower than they were before the pandemic (September 2023 airfares were about 6.5% lower than airfares in September 2019.) Redeeming miles can be a good way to lower your travel costs, but make sure you’re not spending more miles than it’s worth.

The article The Best Airlines for 2023 Holiday Travel on Points originally appeared on NerdWallet.

SAN DIEGO — A small Cessna plane crashed in La Jolla Wednesday night, killing the pilot, officials said.

The wreckage of the plane, a single-engine Cessna P210, was found shortly after 2 a.m. in a brushy area off Caminito Claro near Gilman Drive, said San Diego police Officer David O’Brien.

Residents called 911 around 9:35 p.m. reporting that they heard or saw a distressed plane and that it had crashed.

“We got reports that the plane was low, circling the area” and reports that “the plane had gone down,” O’Brien said.

Officers searched the area, but it took hours to locate the wreckage in the dark. O’Brien said the aircraft missed a condo complex and hit a hillside.

According to the Federal Aviation Administration registry, the plane’s registered owner lives in Carlsbad.

The pilot was the only person on board the six-seater and died before he could be taken to a hospital. His name was not released, pending notification of family.

According to FlightAware, the plane departed from French Valley Airport, just north of Temecula, on Monday and flew to Buchanan Field Airport in Concord. The plane was headed back from the Bay Area Wednesday night but diverted from French Valley. The Cessna appeared to attempt to land at Montgomery Field in Kearny Mesa before continuing west toward La Jolla, according to FlightAware tracking. It crashed about 3 miles west of the airport, according to a spokesperson from the National Transportation Safety Board.

“An NTSB investigator will arrive on site later today to begin the on-scene portion of the investigation,” according to the spokesperson. “Once on site, the investigator will begin the process of documenting the scene and examining the aircraft. The aircraft will then be recovered to a secure facility for further evaluation.”

No other information was immediately available.

The 24th edition of the Latin Grammys will bring together some of the biggest names across Latin music and some new faces that will vie for the award for best new artist. This time the event isn’t taking place in Las Vegas, instead it will be hosted in Sevilla, Spain.

Q: When, where and what time are the Latin Grammys?

A: The ceremony will take place on Thursday, Nov. 16, at the Palacio de Congresos y Exposiciones in Sevilla. It will be televised by the Spanish-language network Univision at 8 p.m. Eastern.

Q: Who is hosting the show?

A: This year the Academy has chosen Colombian singer Sebastián Yatra, Mexican singer Danna Paola with an assist by Roselyn Sánchez and Paz Vega.

Q: Who are the performers?

Q: Who are the presenters?

A: The presenters for the awards ceremony include such names as Majo Aguilar, Anitta, Pedro Capó, Jorge Drexler, Luis Figueroa, Fonseca, Mon Laferte, Yandel, Natalia Lafourcade, John Leguizamo, Nicki Nicole, Carlos Ponce and Carlos Vives.

©2023 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Jose Antonio Alvarez, 25, and Omar Rojo, 25, both entered no contest pleas to voluntary manslaughter and were formally sentenced in late October. They were originally charged with murder and robbery in the death of 25-year-old Jaime Valdovinos.

Police said at the time that Rojo and Alvarez arranged to rob Valdovinos and another man of “a large amount of marijuana” after setting up a cannabis deal. The four men met on the 3000 block of East Ninth Street in Oakland on Sept. 26, 2019.

Investigators said in a court statement that Alvarez was identified as a suspect through “surveillance video and witnesses.”

The plea deal includes a court order for both defendants to stay away from the surviving victim and to not possess guns after their release from prison. Both men were originally charged with crimes that made them eligible for life without the possibility of parole.

Neither man has yet been transferred to state prison, according to public records.

A Baltimore paperboy sold newspapers on the cities and streetcars of Baltimore in 1914, likely for one or two cents each. Along the way, he collected baseball cards of Baltimore Orioles players included in that day’s paper.

He treasured them — particularly one of George Herman Ruth, a 19-year-old pitcher for the minor league Orioles — for years, eventually passing them on to his son. That Ruth card is now one of only a handful still around. And soon, it will be auctioned for the first time since it was issued 109 years ago.

It’s expected to fetch at least several million dollars and could potentially compete for the title of priciest baseball card ever, a record currently held by a Mickey Mantle rookie card sold for $12.6 million last year.

Archibald Davis, the paperboy who was 16 years old at the time, grew up to play semiprofessional baseball and later passed the cards down. Glenn Davis, Archibald’s grandson, remembered playing with them as he grew up in Towson in the 1950s and 1960s.

“Certainly, had we known how valuable they would become, we would have handled them with more care,” Glenn wrote in an email to The Baltimore Sun.

After a century of ownership, including many years in which the card was on loan at the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum in Baltimore, the Davis family sold the cards to a private collector in 2021. That collector is now auctioning it off beginning Friday in what is expected to draw eye-popping bids as one of the most expensive cards ever sold.

First off, the 1914 Baltimore News Babe Ruth card is rare. Issued in both red and blue, there are only 10 known to exist in either color. For comparison, there are at least 50 examples of the T206 Honus Wagner card, one of the most iconic and valuable cards of all time.

Secondly, the card is the first collectible of Ruth as a baseball player, issued before he’d ever played a Major League Baseball game. At the time, he was playing for his hometown team and listed as a “pitcher,” the position he first played for the Boston Red Sox before becoming a slugging outfielder for the New York Yankees, changing baseball and becoming one of the country’s first athlete celebrities.

Before the two-week, online-only auction begins, the card will be displayed in Baltimore once more: The Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum hosted a showing of the card Wednesday.

The card is the centerpiece of Robert Edward Auctions’ fall catalog. The auction house will start the bidding at $2.5 million, but it expects the card to fetch much more than that, likely becoming at least the second-most expensive card ever auctioned.

The Mantle rookie card, which was in mint condition and has the benefit of being auctioned just last year, is the only card to ever sell for more than $7.5 million. Brian Dwyer, the auction house’s president, thinks the Ruth card could reach or surpass $10 million because of its rarity and its unique provenance, having spent a century with one family. It could be many years, he projected, before another one of these 1914 cards is for sale.

“We believe that it has the potential to threaten the all-time record,” Dwyer told The Sun.

The Ruth card is not in mint condition, but Ruth’s esteemed place in sports history could make it tantalizing for wealthy sports collectors, a hobby that has skyrocketed in popularity — and in dollars spent — in recent years.

Before the past few years, a card being sold for millions was rare. Now, it’s becoming more commonplace.

“This is definitely rarefied air,” Dwyer said. “But if you look at all of the examples of cards that have commanded six, seven, 12 million dollars, none of them, in our opinion, has the significance of this Babe Ruth rookie card.”

The simple card features just Ruth’s last name on the front. When the card was issued, he was in the midst of acquiring his nickname, “Babe,” for his youthfulness.

On the back, it advertises the 1914 Orioles’ schedule against other International League teams — such as the Buffalo Bison, the Jersey City Skeeters and the Montreal Royals (the team Jackie Robinson would integrate decades later before breaking MLB’s color barrier).

The 2 5/8 inch-by-3 5/8 inch red card has spent much of the past quarter century on display at the museum near Camden Yards, first lent there by the Davis family in the 1990s. The Davis family decided to sell the card in 2021 and — despite an estranged relative challenging the family’s ownership, Glenn Davis said — moved forward with a sale.

The new owner, whose identity the auction house is keeping anonymous, agreed to keep the card on display at the museum until earlier this year.

The card is now in the care of Robert Edward Auctions in a secure, undisclosed location — “It is heavily fortified, we’ll put it that way,” Dwyer said — and will be until Dec. 3, when the auction ends and a new buyer will own the century-old keepsake. In addition to the Ruth card, the other 14 cards collected by Archibald Davis in 1914 will be auctioned in separate lots.

The museum has had one of the few other examples of the card, a blue one, on display since July (thanks to a loan from a different collector) and on Wednesday, the one up for auction, a red one, will accompany it at the museum.

“We’re going to bring the Babe back to Baltimore and give collectors the opportunity to see both the red and the blue example together,” Dwyer said, “so two of the 10 known will be together for a two-hour period.”

Katie Dick, the museum’s director of external affairs called it a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

The card must remain behind layers of high-security glass, secured with motion detectors. When traveling, the multimillion-dollar card — the same one Glenn Davis casually played with as a boy in Towson — has its own cadre of professional guards.

“This card has to have its own security detail,” Dwyer said. “This card has to travel with armed security. If you think about any movie you’ve seen where there’s armored cars and armored guards, this is worthy of that type of protection.”

People interested in seeing the card can do so by paying the normal admissions fee ($13 for adults, $11 for seniors/veterans, $7 for kids) to the museum. Also on display now is an exhibit featuring the late Brooks Robinson, which has one of his gloves, one of the first examples of a batting helmet, worn by him, plus his first contract with the Orioles from 1955.

Wednesday could be one of the card’s last public appearances for some time. But whichever deep-pocketed individual is able to next lay claim to the card, Glenn Davis hopes they’ll consider making the card accessible to others, as his family did.

“We hope that the future owner will consider having them available for public display,” he wrote. “They are beautiful and amazing historical sports artifacts. Something to be treasured by those who love the sport of baseball.”

©2023 Baltimore Sun. Visit baltimoresun.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Three weeks ago, the sheriff’s office in Mariposa County had asked the public’s help in finding the 42-year-old man, whom it called armed and dangerous.

The announcement did not specify his connection to Pullins, a 57-year-old Ahwahnee woman who was reported missing on June 18, 2022.

She had last been seen three days earlier, before heading off toward Mariposa, 25 miles away, to register her vehicle.

She reportedly planned to stay the night at a friend’s home on Stumpfield Mountain Road, off Highway 49 between Ahwahnee and Mariposa. Her cellphone location indicated she left the friend’s house, but she never made it to the Department of Motor Vehicles, the Mariposa County sheriff’s office said.

About two months later, her Jeep Cherokee was found down a steep embankment in a remote area of Mariposa County, the sheriff’s office said. Pullins’ body was not found, but blood found in the SUV was determined to be hers.

No developments were reported in the case for more than a year, then the sheriff’s office issued a flurry of announcements:

• Sept. 26, 2023: It was announced that investigators believed Pullins to have been killed.

• Oct. 4: The sheriff’s office asked for the public’s help in finding a Subaru Outback believed to be connected to the case.

• Oct. 10: It was announced that the Subaru had been found.

On Monday, Nov. 13, law enforcement officers saw the suspect getting into the passenger seat of a car in Willits. The vehicle was followed about half a mile, and then officers from Mendocino, Lake and Mariposa counties closed in on it and  “performed a high-risk enforcement stop,” said a statement from the Mendocino County sheriff’s office.

The driver, said to be a relative of the suspect’s, obeyed commands to get out of the car, but the suspect did not. A dog was “deployed into the vehicle,” and the man was removed.

He was taken to Mendocino County Jail on a felony murder arrest warrant pending extradition to Mariposa County, the sheriff said.

Loay Abdelfattah Alnaji was expected to be booked into jail and held in lieu of $1 million bail, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department said.

Paul Kessler, 69, was found suffering on the afternoon of Nov. 5, a Sunday, bleeding from his head and mouth at Westlake and Thousand Oaks boulevards, according to authorities and witness accounts.

The Sheriff’s Department continues to investigate the case.

On Thursday, it asked that anyone driving in the area of the confrontation in a car with video-recording equipment between 3 and 4 p.m. to contact the agency. If a witness wants to remain anonymous, he or she can contact Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS (8477).

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

The shift, made this week, is accompanied by a new court calendar reserved for people who discover they are the subject of bench or arrest warrants, and until now had to submit to jail booking — and possible detention — just for the chance to argue to a judge why they shouldn’t be in custody.

According to the court and attorneys involved in shaping the new policy, the change had been in the works for several months. The issue gained added public pressure in July when the ACLU and the Stanford Law School Criminal Defense Clinic sued the court over the previous practice.

The plaintiffs — led by a man who discovered he had a warrant for a minor offense, then spent three days in jail only to be released at arraignment — called the system a “bail or jail” test that unfairly burdened poor people.

“Our hope is that this allows people to avoid truly unnecessary incarceration,” said Emi Young, a staff attorney at the ACLU Foundation of Northern California. “That’s something that never should have happened. It was extremely harmful to individuals and was bad public policy.”

The Superior Court declined to offer any comment other than to assert that the lawsuit was not the catalyst for the policy change.

Under the new protocol, people who learn they are wanted for a warrant now have the option, through an attorney, to request an arraignment date on the court calendar. They would still have to submit to an “informal booking” requiring a photograph and fingerprint recording, but they would head to court from there instead of being faced with posting bail or going into jail custody. In its initial stages, the reserved calendar for these cases will be on the second and fourth Mondays of the month.

A judge still has the final say on whether someone will be released, based on a person’s individual case and history. The kinds of cases on this calendar will typically involve minor and nonviolent offenses for which there is a good chance that someone will be ordered released while their case is adjudicated.

Meghan Piano, a county deputy public defender who was involved in drafting the new protocol — joined by representatives for the court, pretrial services, the district attorney’s office and the sheriff’s office — said the change is an important step toward leveling court access.

“Prior to this calendar, if you were poor and could not post bail, you sat in jail, whereas your wealthy neighbor would never step foot into a cell,” Piano said. “What matters is that we are here addressing this gaping hole of inequity.”

In several ways, this new calendar is a return to form. A similar practice was instituted as an emergency measure near the start of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. But in July 2022, Criminal Division Supervising Judge Daniel Nishigaya sent an email directive to judges stating that continuing to calendar unserved arrest warrants created an “administrative difficulty” that muddied recording, tracking, and reporting of cases.

Brandon Cabrera, supervising deputy district attorney for his office’s court diversion and mental-health unit, said a series of meetings followed in which there was a consensus to move away from forcing jail stays for people whose situations meant they would likely be released by a judge anyway.

“We got all the right people finally together to have a conversation about this,” Cabrera said.

Cabrera said that led to discussions about how to tackle those “administrative difficulties,” which ultimately led to the court agreeing to reserve a court session on two Mondays a month, when the arraignment calendar is the least busy, and the sheriff’s office agreeing to staff those Mondays at the county jail specifically to handle the warrant bookings.

What resulted, partly at Piano’s urging, was a “one-stop shop” system in which someone could get booked at the jail and go to court on the same day to see a judge and argue for release.

The new system is currently in a pilot phase, starting with one case this past Monday, and continuing with a full 10-case calendar Nov. 27.

Piano, who supervises the Pre-Arraignment Representation and Review program at her office, said she is already getting a flood of inquiries from people about the new court calendar.

“Just in the past week I have received numerous phone calls from people who really want to take care of their case but are petrified, and rightfully so, of having to sit in custody while they do so,” she said.

“It’s this unexpected complete interruption in life. All the main staples of what people have to hold on, their housing or their job or their family situation, they get ripped away from all that,” De-Bug cofounder Raj Jayadev said. “Even if the jail stay is only a couple of days, some of those things might never come back.”

Cabrera added that the new policy helps streamline the court system by incentivizing people to resolve their warrants, and allow cases to move along rather than wait for an unserved warrant to get activated by a happenstance encounter with law enforcement.

“If we can avoid someone waiting two to three days in jail and we know they don’t need to be there, this is a perfect solution,” he said.

Kenneth David McIsaac, 32, was arrested Tuesday in Oakland and booked into the Martinez Detention Facility, the Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office said.

At a hearing Wednesday, Judge Julia Campins terminated McIsaac’s mental health diversion status at the district attorney’s request. Prosecutors said McIsaac is being held without bail.

On Sept. 24, 2022, McIsaac allegedly broke into a Lafayette apartment, forced a family to be tied up at gunpoint and held them hostage for five hours until they were able to break free.

McIsaac was charged with a dozen felony counts that included kidnapping, false imprisonment by violence, robbery, burglary and child abuse. He spent a year in jail while the case was pending, until roughly two months ago, when Judge Campins ruled that he qualified for a mental health diversion program that allowed him to stay at a hotel but required him to submit to drug testing and other supervision.

Prosecutors, along with one of the alleged victims, objected to placing McIsaac in the diversion program.

At a hearing in September, Campins said she believed the diversion program would do a better job of addressing McIsaac’s underlying mental illness than the prison system.

“If properly done and properly managed, it is actually safer to have someone receive treatment and guidance through this process than place them in prison for a period of time with no such treatment and then released,” Campins said during the hearing.

McIsaac left the diversion program on Oct. 24. A warrant was then issued for his arrest.

Criminal proceedings against McIsaac will resume on Nov. 29, according to prosecutors.