Wallstreet
Major indices in the US stock markets closed lower on Wednesday as investors anticipate President Joe Biden’s budget proposal for the fiscal year of 2022, scheduled for next week.
The Dow Jones was down 0.01% at the close while the Nasdaq fell 1.68%. The S&P 500 was down 0.55% as ViacomCBS plunged 23.18% after announcing it will sell $3 billion in stock to invest in its streaming service.
Crude oil prices were down by 5% on Tuesday as the number of COVID-19 cases across the world began to resurge due to a third outbreak wave.
Covid Developments
On the development around the covid-19 vaccine, India’s Health Ministry said on Wednesday that a new “double mutant” coronavirus strain had been detected in the country.
“Though VOCs [variants of concern] and a new double mutant variant have been found in India, these have not been detected in numbers sufficient to either establish a direct relationship or explain the rapid increase in cases in some States,” the statement said.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, India has registered more than 11.7 million confirmed virus cases and over 160.000 COVID-19-caused deaths.
Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk announced on Wednesday that the company has enabled customers to buy vehicles using Bitcoin as a payment method.
Earlier in February, Tesla Inc revealed it purchased $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin and said at the time that it would start using Bitcoin as the payment method in exchange for its products as well.
Meanwhile, Jeep, a brand of American automobile and a division of Stellantis, announced on Wednesday plans to move its production so that every new vehicle to be an electric car.
“Our vision is to be the greenest SUV brand in the world. We have a very strong plan to deliver that through a lot of exciting products in the pipeline,” Chief Executive Christian Meunier told CNBC. Jeep’s new vehicles will include both all-electric vehicles and hybrid models, according to Meunier.
Telegram’s $1 billion bond sale
Messaging app Telegram raised over $1 billion by selling bonds to “some of the largest and most knowledgable investors from all over the world,” according to the company’s co-founder Pavel Durov.
“This will enable Telegram to continue growing globally while sticking to its values and remaining independent,” Durov said.
The cloud-based messaging app was the most downloaded app in the world last January following an uproar over WhatsApp’s new privacy policy.
AWS New CEO
Amazon has tapped the CEO of Tableau, Adam Selipsky, as the new boss of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) division, following the appointment of the predecessor Andy Jassy as Amazon CEO after Jeff Bezos stepped down from his position.
The news was shared in a memo note to the employees as Andy Jassy noted that Selipsky was one of the first vice-presidents of AWS, starting in 2005 and then running sales and marketing for 11 years.
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