Neutral..

 

Qatar’s football stadiums, designed by some of the world’s most renowned architects, have become a symbol of Qatar’s monumental development project ahead of the FIFA World Cup  

Norman Foster, Zaha Hadid and Fenwick Iribarren are just some of the stars behind the eight stadiums for Qatar 2022, where accessibility, sustainability and the legacy of stadiums has been the top priority.

“The first thing we did was build the stadiums. We work with very high-level and specific construction standards, which are as efficient as possible and which work for the region.

The stadiums have been designed to be sustainable and use solar panels, and state-of-the-art waste management systems and will continue to be used after the World Cup, given six of the eight stadiums have been built with a modular system, meaning they can be disassembled or modified after the tournament.

It will be the first FIFA World Cup to have the ISO 20121 sustainability certification — which sets the requirements for an event to be labeled as sustainable — and the first carbon-neutral tournament.

Qatar-1..

 

A million supporters from around the world will descend on the small but wealthy Gulf nation to watch stars from 32 countries face off over the next four weeks in the men’s soccer tournament, which is the world’s second-largest sporting event after the Olympics.

The time of year and location, this is the first World Cup to take place in the Middle East, meant the event had long promised to be unlike any other before it.

The news that alcohol sales would be banned from stadium perimeters highlighted the cultural clash of the conservative emirate hosting a global party.

In a press conference on the eve of the tournament, Gianni Infantino, the head of world soccer’s governing body, accused the host’s critics of hypocrisy. Just a thought.

Qatar..

Flipping..

 

Real estate investor Austin Rutherford, who has over 700,000 followers on TikTok, has talked at length about the opportunities for wealth in real estate investing since the start of the pandemic. But, in a recent video, he breaks down how his latest deal will likely result in a $30,000 loss.

Rutherford purchased the Hilliard, Ohio home last year for $248,000 and says he put in between $5,000 and $10,000 worth of work. Now, he's receiving offers for only $260,000, which after closing costs and agent fees will likely put him in the red.

Flippers across the country from small-time independent operators to major corporations are facing difficult market conditions as increasing mortgage rates freeze out buyers. 

The iBuyer firm OpenDoor has been losing money on homes in pandemic real estate hotspots Austin, Atlanta, and Phoenix. More recently, competitor Redfin announced that it was getting out of the flipping game and was laying off its 13% of its staff. And then in other instances, some flippers are turning to deep-pocketed investors to bail them out.

Dis..

 

Enron..

 

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers is likening the collapse of troubled cryptocurrency exchange FTX to the meltdown that engulfed Houston-based energy company Enron two decades ago.

The swift collapse of FTX was underscored on Friday by the company’s announcement that it had begun Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in a Delaware court and that its chief executive, Sam Bankman-Fried, had resigned. John J. Ray III, the lawyer who was brought in to clean up the mess left at Enron, was appointed to succeed Bankman-Fried. The announcement rattled the cryptocurrencies sector, where the price of Bitcoin BTCUSD touched a two-year low after FTX’s announcement.

“A lot of people have compared this to Lehman. I would compare it to Enron,” Summers reportedly said.

Enron is the once high-flying energy trading company that collapsed in late 2001 amid accusations of accounting fraud.

Hunt--er..?

 

House Republican poised to investigate the Biden family said he's not planning to subpoena President Joe Biden despite being prepared to issue one to his son, Hunter.

"There's no plans to subpoena Joe Biden. There are plans to subpoena Hunter Biden," GOP Rep. Jim Comer told CNN in a sit-down interview.

The acknowledgment by Comer, the likely next chairman of the House Oversight Committee, that subpoenaing a sitting president unleashes a host of thorny executive privilege issues underscores the complicated task ahead for Republicans as they claim they will try to connect Hunter Biden's foreign business dealings to his father.

Comment: No wonder President Biden kept saying he is defending Democracy. He is not concerned about Democracy; he may have a different concern.  

Just a thought.

Liz..

 

 In 2014, Elizabeth Holmes, then 30 years old, a Stanford University drop-out, founded a company valued at $9bn (£6.5bn) for supposedly bringing about a revolution in diagnosing disease.

With a few drops of blood, its Edison test could detect cancer and diabetes quickly without the hassle of needles. Bigwigs from Henry Kissinger to general James Mattis sat on the board.

But by 2015, the seams were coming apart, and within a year, Holmes was exposed as a fake. She had a time to switch to the real diagnosis.

During the trial Holmes accused her ex-boyfriend and business partner, Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, of emotional and sexual abuse at the time of the alleged crimes, impairing her mental state. She was sentenced to 11 years in prison.

Just a thought.

Gavel..

 

Diffusing..