Chinese rhetoric was running so hot ahead of Nancy Pelosi’s arrival in Taiwan this week that many people watching livestreams of the historic moment on state-controlled websites were surprised when her plane touched down at Taipei’s Songshan Airport. Why, some wondered, had the People’s Liberation Army Air Force not forced the US House of Representatives
Is Beyoncé still a pop star? It’s a question I’ve been asking myself over the past week as I walked around Brooklyn, where her latest album has been blasting steadily from cars and portable speakers, providing a soundtrack to late summer barbecues and block parties. I even witnessed one man playing Renaissance loudly through his
The latest crypto market research from Bloomberg Intelligence suggests that Bitcoin may start to behave more like United States (U.S.) Treasury bonds and gold, rather than stocks. In its August Crypto Outlook report, penned by Senior Commodity Strategist Mike McGlone and Senior Market Structure Analyst Jamie Coutts, the research unit compared Bitcoin markets to those of
Megan Mohr was five years into her Apple career when, in 2013, a male colleague took advantage of her after a platonic night out drinking together. After the colleague drove her home and helped her inside, she briefly fell asleep before waking to the sound of clicking. The colleague had removed her shirt and bra.
Last week something unusual happened. A chief executive who presided over a UK corporate failure received a financial punishment. The case in question was particularly egregious: the collapse of construction company Carillion in 2018 with £7bn in liabilities and £29mn in cash. The fines for directors? At less than £400,000 a piece, maybe not so
Mastercard sees cryptocurrency as more of an asset class than a means of payment, according to the payments giant’s chief financial officer. Mastercard’s crypto strategy “has been fairly successful ever since crypto environments came up,” he added. Mastercard’s CFO on Crypto as Asset Class vs. Means of Payment Mastercard Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Sachin Mehra
Victorian Police in Australia will soon be granted new powers to seize cryptocurrency and digital assets from criminals, as well as compel platforms to hand over information about suspects. According to a statement released by Victorian premier Daniel Andrews on Aug. 2, new laws were introduced to parliament on Tuesday under the Major Crime and
Microstrategy (MSTR) has “outperformed every asset class and big tech stock” since the company adopted a bitcoin strategy and started accumulating the cryptocurrency in its corporate treasury, says CEO Michael Saylor. The pro-bitcoin executive will be stepping down as the CEO of Microstrategy and take the role of the company’s executive chairman to focus on
Foreign secretary Liz Truss, frontrunner in the race to become the next British prime minister, said she would look to change the Bank of England’s mandate to ensure it controlled inflation. Speaking at a hustings of Conservative party members in Cardiff on Wednesday, she argued that inflation had been caused by “huge” supply side shocks
Tesla rival Lucid Motors halved its 2022 production target on Wednesday, citing “extraordinary supply chain” challenges as it tries to ramp up production and meet “strong demand”. The California-based group, backed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, said 2022 production is now estimated between 6,000 and 7,000 cars, down from an earlier projection of 12,000
Ether (ETH) price is up 60% since May 3, outperforming leading cryptocurrency Bitcoin (BTC) by 32% over that span. However, evidence suggests the current $1,600 support lacks strength as network use and smart contract deposit metrics weakened. Moreover, ETH derivatives show increasing sell pressure from margin traders. The positive price move was primarily driven by
On Wednesday, Galoy, the firm behind El Salvador’s Bitcoin Beach Wallet, announced that the company raised $4 million in funding in an investment round led by Hivemind Ventures. On the same day, the startup launched a new product called Stablesats, a stablecoin concept that leverages derivatives contracts to create a bitcoin-backed synthetic dollar pegged to
Puerto Rico bankruptcy Judge Laura Taylor Swain approved the extension of mediation discussions for the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority for the fourth time this year. Swain ordered the mediation to continue to at least Aug. 15, with the mediation team being given the authority to extend the mediation deadline until Sept. 9. In late
SoftBank has raised as much as $22bn in cash from deals that would sharply reduce its stake in Alibaba over the coming years, as the Japanese investor responds to a market downturn that has ravaged its technology portfolio. The group, led by billionaire founder Masayoshi Son, has this year carried out the sale of about
Municipals were weaker Wednesday, U.S. Treasuries were mixed and equities rallied. Muni-UST ratios were at 61% in five years, 79% in 10 years and 96% in 30 years, according to Refinitiv MMD’s 3 p.m. read. ICE Data Services had the five at 61%, the 10 at 83% and the 30 at 95% at a 3:30
In this week’s newsletter, read about how Binance started its nonfungible token (NFT) ticketing service by partnering with a sports club. Check out the NFT exchange-traded fund (ETF) that was released by trading platform KuCoin and how Google AI was able to paint BAYC-inspired NFTs. In other news, learn about how much the NFT community
Opec and its allies have agreed one of the smallest oil production increases in the group’s history as Saudi Arabia attempts to appease western allies without using up all its unused capacity. The increase agreed on Wednesday of just 100,000 barrels a day, or 0.1 per cent of global demand, is likely to cause disappointment
Voters in Orem, Utah, will decide whether to leave the state’s largest school district and create their own after the city council voted 4-3 Tuesday night to place the measure on the Nov. 8 ballot. But even with a new district, taxpayers in the northern Utah city would still be on the hook for about
While elevated expenses persist in battering not-for-profit hospital operating margins, the sector received one dose of good news this week as the federal government raised the Medicare payment rate for inpatient care. Hospitals can expect more than $2.6 billion of additional payments under the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ fiscal 2023 Hospital Inpatient Prospective
Motoring organisations on Wednesday called on BP and the big four supermarkets to cut their petrol prices and provide greater help to Britons struggling with the cost of living crisis. The AA claimed BP — which unveiled its highest quarterly profits for 14 years on Tuesday — was charging “what they can get away with”