Bitcoin Shortage Driving Rally Above $19K, Says Pantera CEO
Nov.24 -- Dan Morehead, chief executive officer and co-chief investment officer at Pantera Capital, discusses the rising price of cryptocurrencies on "Bloomberg Technology."
Nov.24 -- Dan Morehead, chief executive officer and co-chief investment officer at Pantera Capital, discusses the rising price of cryptocurrencies on "Bloomberg Technology."
Spectators at the beleaguered Tokyo Games are not a "must have", senior International Olympic Committee member Dick Pound said in an interview with Kyodo News on Wednesday. After postponing the Games last year because of the global coronavirus pandemic, Saturday marks six months until the rearranged Olympics are due to start on July 23. Organisers have said they will make a decision on whether spectators are allowed into venues in late February or March.
The National Rifle Association is in a double-barreled legal battle for its future, moving forward with its bankruptcy case while fighting accusations it only sought Chapter 11 protection to avoid a potentially crippling lawsuit. Lawyers for the influential advocacy group told a federal judge Wednesday that the organization’s decision to declare bankruptcy, with plans to reincorporate in gun-friendly Texas, was not an attempt to dodge a lawsuit brought by the attorney general in New York, its current corporate home. “New York is a hostile environment for second amendment advocacy that’s no secret, and it’s no accident,” NRA lawyer Sarah Rogers told the bankruptcy judge, Harlin DeWayne Hale, at a hearing in Dallas.
The more contagious variant of the coronavirus discovered in Britain is spreading rapidly across Portugal, pressuring the health service at a time when authorities are scrambling to tackle the country's worst outbreak since the pandemic's start. Around 20% of new COVID-19 cases being reported are of the more transmissible variant, Health Minister Marta Temido told broadcaster RTP late on Wednesday, warning that number could reach 60% as early as next week. Portugal's daily COVID-19 cases rose 40% on Wednesday from the day before to a record 14,647, with the national health system on the verge of collapse without enough intensive care beds or human resources to treat coronavirus patients.
A New York City street artist altered signs in the 46th Street subway station, paying homage to America’s 46th president, Joe Biden, on the day of his inauguration, January 20.Adrian Wilson, who installed similar tributes in the past was behind the changed sign, which now reads: “46th Joe”. Credit: Adrian Wilson via Storyful
Substitute Everton scored for Gremio just four minutes after coming on against Atletico Mineiro on Wednesday, winning his side a crucial point in the 1-1 draw. Both teams still have hopes of winning Brazil’s Serie A, although Atletico looked the more likely victors in a scrappy match and led for most of the game after Hyoran put them ahead from the penalty spot in 32 minutes. However, Everton, who replaced Victor Ferraz with nine minutes remaining, grabbed a vital late goal in what turned out to be a frustrating night for both clubs.
European Union leaders will on Thursday seek to address the coronavirus pandemic's mounting challenges, from containing more infectious variants to the threat of border closures and the slow roll-out of vaccines across the bloc. The heads of EU institutions have urged the leaders to maintain unity and step up testing and vaccinations, though no formal conclusions are expected from the online video conference, the ninth since the pandemic began. The European Commission said on Tuesday that the 27 EU countries should have vaccinated at least 70% of adults by summer and needed to be genome sequencing at least 5% of positive tests to identify new coronavirus variants.
President Joe Biden's proposal for a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package was based on an assessment of specific needs, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said on Wednesday, when asked about Republican objections about the total cost. Psaki said Biden would be closely involved in negotiating with Congress about the relief package, and acknowledged that the final version of any legislation rarely looked exactly like the initial proposal.
Facing the reigning Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs, Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen told reporters ahead of Sunday's AFC Championship game that he's focused on being "the best version of myself." The 24-year-old was dogged by skepticism through the first two years of his career, finishing 23rd in passing yards in 2019 amid concern from experts and armchair analysts alike that he could become yet another former first-round pick who failed to live up to his potential. Allen charged into the 2020 regular season with four straight wins and wrapped up the year with 4,544 passing yards - the fifth most in the league - improving his completion percentage to 69.2% from 58.8% in 2019 and honing his reputation as one of the NFL's strongest-performing quarterbacks under pressure.
Newly sworn-in U.S. President Joe Biden had barely set foot in the White House before he got straight to work - signing more than a dozen executive actions on Wednesday addressing the coronavirus pandemic, climate change and racial inequality and undoing some of his predecessor's most high profile policies. "And, i thought, with the state of the nation today, it's no time to waste." Among the actions, he started the process of rejoining the Paris climate accord, and canceled the presidential permit granted for the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline. He moved to end a travel ban Trump put in place on some majority-Muslim countries and called upon his administration to strengthen the DACA program for immigrants brought to the United States as children. Biden also ordered the wearing of masks and social distancing in all federal buildings and on all federal lands and moved to end a national emergency declaration that was the basis for diverting some federal funds to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. While former President Donald Trump broke with tradition by skipping the inauguration, leaving early Wednesday morning for Palm Beach - he did stick to one modern-day ritual… leaving behind a letter for his successor. Without going into detail, Biden cast the letter in a positive light, saying he didn't want to say more until he'd spoken with Trump directly. "The president wrote a very generous letter. Because it was private, I won't talk about it until I talk to him. But it was generous."
At least three people were killed, several were injured, and one person remained missing after an explosion destroyed a building near the Puerta de Toledo in Madrid, Spain, on January 20, officials said.Four floors of a building on Calle de Toledo were severely damaged by the explosion. Local news reports said the explosion was believed to have been caused by a gas leak and investigations were underway.Footage posted by Bomberos Madrid, the city’s fire department, shows crews stabilizing area buildings that were damaged in the explosion and surveying the blast site.According to Google Translate, the fire department said on Twitter, “We have worked all afternoon and part of the night securing the area, eliminating unstable elements from the adjoining buildings that were at risk of falling onto the public roadway.” Credit: Bomberos Madrid via Storyful
Bruce Springsteen, Demi Lovato and John Legend are among the artists performing at the Celebrating America concert
Jan.20 -- Roger McNamee, Elevation Partners co-founder and managing director, talks about what big tech can expect from a President Joe Biden administration. He also discusses the impact of former President Trump being banned on some social media platforms. He speaks to Emily Chang on "Bloomberg Technology."
A third pandemic lockdown appears to be having little impact on rates of COVID-19 in England, researchers warned on Thursday, with prevalence of the disease "very high" and "no evidence of decline" in the first 10 days of renewed restrictions. Until rates of COVID-19 are reduced substantially, health services "will remain under extreme pressure" and the number of deaths will continue to rise rapidly, researchers leading Imperial College London's REACT-1 prevalence study said. "The number of COVID-19 in-patients (in hospital) is extremely high at the moment, and we can't expect that to drop unless we can achieve lower levels of prevalence," said Steven Riley, a professor of infectious disease dynamics who co-led the work.
A version of this story about “Hope” first appeared in the International Film Issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Nine years elapsed between Norwegian director Maria Sødahl’s first film, 2010’s “Limbo,” and her new one, “Hope.” But the long hiatus was never part of the plan for Sødahl, who was forced to put her film career on hold when she was diagnosed with brain cancer and told she only had a few months to live. That experience became the basis for “Hope,” an understated drama deals with the strain on a family when a wife and mother receives the same diagnosis that Sødahl did. Obviously, she survived to make “Hope,” which stars Andrea Bræin Hovig as Anja, the woman who receives the diagnosis, and Stellan Skarsgård as her husband, Tomas. Skarsgård is also close friends with Sødahl and her husband, director Hans Petter Moland, and starred in Moland’s drama “Out Stealing Horses” last year. That film was Norway’s 2019 submission in the Oscar race for Best International Feature Film; Sødahl kept it in the family when “Hope” was chosen as this year’s submission. Also Read: Oscars International Race Breaks Record With 93 Entries Was it a difficult decision to make a movie about your own experience? It was crazy. It was a huge decision, and difficult for many reasons. Professionally, it was difficult I hate sentimental cancer movies, and I didn’t want to do something like that, at all. And doing it also involved my close family and friends. I had to get their permission so that I could work freely and without interference, because it’s her point of view. At the same time, I wanted to get their points of view on her, because I was so drugged, and it was interesting to hear their different points of view. Did I really do that? Did I really say that? Is it possible to be so self-absorbed while dying? It was not an easy decision, but at the end of the day I had no choice. I really wanted to work again – I was in grief because I had lost my métier. It took a while before you were ready to do it, or capable of doing it? Yeah. In short, I had brain surgery. I have a scar in the back of my head. It took some time to get back my concentration, and to know if I was intellectually, mentally, cognitively capable of doing it. But also, I knew about working with memories, because I also did that in my first movie. Memories, they’re so fantastic, because they take away all the non-interesting stuff and you get totally into the crystal-clear essence of the emotions, which are universal. By being the most private, you can reach something that is universal. But having enough distance, I had to be aware of whether I had that, to make something so scarily personal into fiction. There’s so much true stuff there in the medical story, when it happened, how many days. So it was about having to leave stuff, because it seemed too organized, too dramatic. Also Read: Oscars International Entries, 2020: The Complete List How do you approach yourself as a character? Did you try to put distance between you and her? Writing, I was only thinking, “How can I keep my own interest going?” I tried to fake things the first half year, and then I just realized no, it had to be very close to what happened. I realized, either you have to go all the way or do pure fiction. But by the time I got to the end, she was not me, she had become somebody else, and I was looking forward to directing this fiction. When you were on the set with the actors, did you find yourself thinking, “It didn’t happen like this, but it works for the movie”? I never thought about that, because that part was done. I was all into making new stuff. Really seeing what they were contributing, and making it richer and more nuanced. We laughed a lot, seeing all the black humor. How did you find the right tone? The film could easily veer into melodrama because of the nature of the story, but it never does. You make lots of choices, and with that comes this unsentimentality. Black humor, which is there subtly, was very important. If the actors cried, we would do their interpretation of the scene, and then we had one dry take with no tears. And that was what we used all the time, at the end of the day. I knew that this was a film that the audience should experience physically. You should be exhausted after it. There’s no time for grief. And I always thought about this story as a love story, from the very beginning. That’s also a part of not becoming sentimental with cancer. But the most important word for us behind the camera and the actors was truth. That’s something I always do, but probably more on this movie. Nothing should smell or taste manipulated. Read more from the International Film Issue here. Read original story From Battling Brain Cancer to Directing an Oscar Contender: Maria Sodahl’s Dramatic Journey to ‘Hope’ At TheWrap
Amanda Gorman, the 22-year-old poet who stole the show at Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ inauguration, delivered one more stellar performance on Wednesday as two of her books soared to the top of Amazon’s best-seller list. “I AM ON THE FLOOR MY BOOKS ARE #1 & #2 ON AMAZON AFTER 1 DAY! Thank you so much to everyone for supporting me and my words,” Gorman tweeted. “As Yeats put it: ‘For words alone are certain good: Sing, then.'” Both of Gorman’s books, “Change Sings” and “The Hill We Climb: Poems” are scheduled to publish on Sept. 21 from Viking Books. Also Read: Hollywood Celebrates Inauguration With Joy and Relief: 'We Did It. In So Many Ways' Earlier in the day, the youth poet laureate from Los Angeles delivered her poem, “The Hill We Climb,” at the inauguration, to much acclaim from Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other luminaries like Oprah Winfrey and Lin-Manuel Miranda. “I have never been prouder to see another young woman rise! Brava Brava, @TheAmandaGorman! Maya Angelou is cheering–and so am I,” tweeted Winfrey, who gave Gorman the pair of earrings and caged-bird ring that she wore at the inauguration. “You were perfect. Perfectly written, perfectly delivered. Every bit of it. Brava!” Miranda tweeted. Of course, they aren’t her only fans. Gorman’s Twitter account earned over half a million new followers since her performance — and the day’s not over yet. Read original story Inauguration Poet Amanda Gorman’s Books Shoot to Top of Amazon Best-Seller List At TheWrap
Jan.20 -- Baillie Gifford partner and portfolio manager James Anderson discusses Amazon's growth trajectory post pandemic. Anderson speaks exclusively with Bloomberg senior deals reporter Ed Hammond.
The photograph of Sen. Bernie Sanders sitting in isolation, waiting for the Biden-Harris swearing-in Wednesday morning, had turned into a cottage industry for memes before the ceremony was even over. And for some reason, it particularly appealed to members of the music community, who could relate to the insufferability of perennially waiting around for something […]
Vice President Kamala Harris won accolades for her fashion at the inauguration on Wednesday — but did “The Simpsons” once again predict her choice of attire? For her swearing in as the nation’s first female vice president (and first Black and Indian American as well), Harris wore a purple dress and coat by the award-winning young Black designer Christopher John Rogers (along with shoes by Sergio Hudson). She also wore a custom pearl necklace by Puerto Rican designer Wilfredo Rosado, according to Women’s Wear Daily — a look that recalls the signature pearl necklace worn by elementary-school overachiever Lisa Simpson in Fox’s long-running animated sitcom. The necklace Harris wore was a nod to her sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, whose members receive badges adorned with pearls. Also Read: Did 'The Simpsons' Predict the Capitol Riots With This 'Schoolhouse Rock' Parody? (Video) In addition, a classic 2000 episode of “The Simpsons” imagined a future in which an all-grown-up Lisa Simpson was elected president of the U.S. and tries to bail the nation out of financial ruin. (The episode, “Bart to the Future,” also infamously references the past presidency of Donald Trump — a full 16 years before the real estate mogul and reality TV star was in fact elected to the White House.) And in that episode, Lisa can be seen behind the podium at the White House (and in the Oval Office) wearing a purple jacket with a striking similarity to Harris’ Inauguration Day attire. Of course, this is not the first time that “Simpsons” fans have found the show to be predictive of future events. In its three-plus decades on the air, the show has depicted yet-to-happen events ranging from Nobel Prize winners to the tiger attack on the late Vegas magicians Siegfried and Roy. Not to mention, well, the presidency of Donald J. Trump. Read original story Did ‘The Simpsons’ Predict Kamala Harris’ Inauguration Day Fashion? At TheWrap
Students at a high school in Canada were glued Wednesday to coverage of former student Kamala Harris's inauguration as US vice president, saying her achievements would drive them to reach new goals.
Tom Hanks is hosting a primetime TV special with performances from Justin Timberlake, Demi Lovato and more