"As recently as late October, Mugabe said black owners who invited whites back to rent and work seized fields would lose their farms. But the Zimbabwe Independent reports that the former first family was doing exactly that: leasing out part of Mazowe Citrus Estate to a company in which some of the main shareholders were white."
"The defect that causes the neurodegenerative disease Huntington's has been corrected in patients for the first time, the BBC has learned. An experimental drug, injected into spinal fluid, safely lowered levels of toxic proteins in the brain. The research team, at University College London, say there is now hope the deadly disease can be stopped. Experts say it could be the biggest breakthrough in neurodegenerative diseases for 50 years."
"The possible marginal tax rate of more than 100% results from the combination of tax policies designed to provide benefits to businesses and families but then deny them to the richest people. As income climbs and those breaks phase out, each dollar of income faces regular tax rates and a hidden marginal rate on top of that, in the form of vanishing tax breaks. That structure, if maintained in a final law, would create some of the disincentives to working and to earning business profit."
"Trading, which began at 6 p.m. ET (5 p.m. CT), was so intense that halts designed to cool volatility were triggered twice on the CBOE."
"Two months ago we noted former Fed chief Ben Bernanke's apparent flip-flop since leaving office as he agreed to be the keynote speaker at a blockchain conference, having warned in 2015 of 'serious problems' with bitcoin due to its 'instability' and 'anonymity'..."
"Nasdaq Inc plans to launch a futures contract based on bitcoin in 2018, making it the third exchange operator to plan U.S. derivatives contracts linked to the digital currency, a source with knowledge of the matter said on Wednesday. CME Group, the world’s largest derivatives exchange, and CBOE Holdings, have both said they plan to launch futures products based on bitcoin this year, pending regulatory approval, helping fuel the crypto-currency’s rally. While Nasdaq does not have a hard date set for its product, the transatlantic exchange operator has offered an exchange-traded note based on bitcoin on its Stockholm exchange since 2015."
"But the use of the system to prevent identity theft isn’t what people are worried about; the problem is the lack of oversight in government programs that allows anyone with access to look into the database. As such, state-run facial recognition databases are dangerous and can lead down a slippery slope to allow other operations the technology wasn’t intended for."
"The Trump administration is considering a set of proposals developed by Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a retired CIA officer — with assistance from Oliver North, a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal — to provide CIA Director Mike Pompeo and the White House with a global, private spy network that would circumvent official U.S. intelligence agencies, according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials and others familiar with the proposals."
"Friday was one of the most embarrassing days for the U.S. media in quite a long time. The humiliation orgy was kicked off by CNN, with MSNBC and CBS close behind, with countless pundits, commentators and operatives joining the party throughout the day. By the end of the day, it was clear that several of the nation’s largest and most influential news outlets had spread an explosive but completely false news story to millions of people, while refusing to provide any explanation of how it happened."
"'Venezuela will create a cryptocurrency,' backed by oil, gas, gold and diamond reserves, Maduro said in his regular Sunday televised broadcast, a five-hour showcase of Christmas songs and dancing. Ironically, Venezuela’s currency controls in recent years have spurred a bitcoin fad among tech-savvy Venezuelans looking to bypass controls to obtain dollars or make internet purchases. Maduro’s government has a poor track record in monetary policy. Currency controls and excessive money printing have led to a 57 percent depreciation of the bolivar against the dollar in the last month alone on the widely used black market."