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Joe Biden has been president of the United States for nearly 100 days since taking office on January 20, 2021. Having been nicknamed “Sleepy Joe” by incumbent President Donald Trump during the campaign, Biden woke up from the difficulties of the presidency only in the eyes of half of Americans. Nevertheless, he is ahead of former Trump opponent, whose approval rating after 100 days in office was only 42 percent.

What has Biden accomplished since taking office three months ago? Regarding the coronavirus pandemic, Biden promised “that within 100 days we can change the course of the disease and make a difference in America.” Indeed, vaccination campaigns in few countries have been as successful as in the United States, although Biden may have taken a page from Trump’s America First book, largely encouraging American manufacturers to sell vaccine production domestically through the Defense Production Act.

In his first 100 days in office, Biden also joined the Paris Climate Accord and the WHO, canceled the Keystone XL pipeline and border wall projects, backed away from Trump-era immigration restrictions, tightened environmental and anti-discrimination laws, and passed a $1.9 trillion aid package to fight coronavirus. He also proposed two other giant spending bills, a $2.3 trillion jobs and infrastructure package and a $1.9 trillion American Families plan that includes provisions for free community college and two years of free universal preschool. Nevertheless, his approval rating at this point remains quite low compared to previous presidents before Trump. At the 100-day mark, Barack Obama had an approval rating of 69 percent, and Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush even had approval ratings above 70 percent.

#Biden #Trump #president #U.S.
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In 2021, cryptocurrency markets were booming and growing, with various sectors flourishing and largely outperforming the market leader, bitcoin.

Cryptocurrency yields. Yields of the best cryptocurrencies in 2021

While bitcoin was only able to return 59.8% last year, the overall market capitalization of the crypto sector grew 187.5%, with many of the top coins offering four- and even five-figure return percentages.

Overview of the Crypto Market 2021

Last year was not only a breakthrough year for crypto in terms of revenue, but also a growing maturity of infrastructure and the resulting decorrelation of individual crypto-industries and coins.

The cryptocurrency infrastructure has evolved considerably, and people now have many more options for purchasing altcoins that do not require buying and using bitcoins in the process. As a result, the prices of many cryptocurrencies have been dictated more by the value and functionality of their protocol and applications, rather than their correlation to bitcoins.

Bitcoin was not the only cryptocurrency that failed to reach triple-digit returns in 2021. Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash also provided meager double-digit percentage returns as payment-oriented cryptocurrencies were largely ignored for projects with smart contracts capabilities.

Other older projects such as Stellar Lumens (109%) and XRP (278%) provided triple-digit returns, and Cardano (621%) was the best performer of the old guard, despite the failure to implement smart contracts functionality last year.

The rise of Ethereum’s competitors

Ethereum was well ahead of bitcoin in 2021, returning 399.2% as the boom in popularity of NFT and the creation of DeFi 2.0 protocols such as Olympus (OHM) expanded possible uses.

But with networking growth and a 50 percent increase in transfers in 2021, Ethereum’s gas fees have skyrocketed. From a low of $20 per transaction to NFT coin prices starting at around $40 and reaching into the hundreds on network congestion days, the retail cryptocurrency crowd has migrated to other smart contract platforms with lower fees.

Alternative promising smart contract platforms such as Solana (11,178%), Avalanche (3,335%) and Fantom (13,207%) all had 4-5-figure percentage returns as these protocols created their own decentralized financial ecosystems and NFT markets.

As Ethereum is set to merge with the beacon chain this year, which uses share proof instead of proof-of-work, we will see if 2022 will bring lower gas fees and a return of retail sales to Ethereum if the merger is successful.

Dog coins are their way to the top

While many new cryptocurrencies with powerful functionality and unique use cases have been rewarded with high returns, it was memes that provided the biggest returns in cryptocurrencies last year.

Dogecoin’s surge after Ilon Musk’s “adoption” led to many other dogecoin coins following, with SHIB making the biggest gain and returning an astounding 19.85 million percent.

But since Dogecoin went from $0.07 to a high of $0.74 in the second quarter of last year, the price of the original meme coin has slowly fallen 77 percent to $0.17 as of this writing. After a roller coaster ride last year, 2022 began with a positive catalyst for Dogecoin holders as Elon Musk announced that DOGE could be used to buy Tesla goods.

Gamification of the crypto industry

In 2021, the intersection of crypto, gaming, and the meta-universe has become more than just a pipe dream. Axie Infinity was the first crypto game to successfully create a “play to earn” structure combining its own token (AXS) and in-game NFT. is becoming a sensation and source of income for many in the Philippines.

Other cryptocurrency gaming projects, such as Defi Kingdoms, embed recognizable gaming interfaces into decentralized financial applications, with decentralized exchange becoming the “market” of the city and income farms becoming the “gardens” where the crops are harvested. This fantasy aesthetic is more than just a new coat of paint, as the $1.04 billion project develops a core game in which to make money.

Along with gamification, crypto and non-crypto developers in 2021 have been paying a lot of attention to digital worlds, or meta universes, in which users will inhabit. Facebook’s name change to Meta resulted in two well-known meta-village projects, The Sandbox (SAND) and Decentraland (MANA), growing another few hundred percent, ending the year with returns of 16,261% and 4104%, respectively.

With so much focus on the crypto sector after the 2021 breakout, we will see how U.S. regulatory developments and changing macroeconomic conditions will affect cryptocurrencies in 2022.

#gamification #ethereum #cryptocurrency #metacurrency

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If you are wondering what the best stock to pick up at the moment, we suggest you read this list

?3 stocks up 195% to 467%, according to Wall Street!

Plug power #plug estimated growth potential of 195%

Analyst Amit Dayal of HC Wainwright has assigned a target price of $78.

The company is in the hydrogen fuel cell business. Alternative energy sources, including hydrogen fuel cells, are becoming increasingly popular in efforts to fight climate change.

Plug Power entered into two important partnerships in January. SK Group bought a 10% stake in Plug and plans to work with the company to build fuel cell vehicles and hydrogen refueling stations throughout South Korea. And also with French automaker Renault will focus on the European light commercial vehicle market.

Zogenix #zgnx estimated growth potential of 319%

The most optimistic target price from Wall Street is $62.

The optimism around the company stems from FDA approval of Fintepla, a drug designed to treat a variety of seizure-related conditions. Zogenix plans to file a supplemental new drug application (sNDA) in the third quarter. If the drug is approved, commercial sales will begin as early as the first half of 2022. Fintepla’s rapid growth should make Zogenix one of the fastest growing stocks for at least the next three years.

Intercept Pharmaceuticals #icpt estimated growth potential of 467%

Yasmin Rahimi of Piper Sandler gives a target price of $82.

A small-cap biotech company specializing in liver disease.

Obeticholic Acid (OCA) as a treatment for nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) could help Intercept. NASH affects 2% to 5% of the U.S. adult population, is valued at $35 billion, and there are currently no FDA-approved drugs on the market.

In addition, OCA is FDA-approved for the treatment of predominantly biliary cholangitis (PBC). This could generate more than $350 million in annual revenue for Intercept.
#shares
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In the first half of January, an estimated 8.8 million U.S. workers were forced to stay home because they contracted the Covid-19 virus or cared for an infected person. This is not only an increase of more than two million from last year, but also the largest labor shortage since the beginning of the pandemic, as our graph shows.

Omicron winter causes record labor shortage

While the first crowning winter hit the U.S. workforce hard, with about 6.6 million employees forced to miss work in January because of the virus, this can largely be explained by the fact that the virus had free rein: a mass vaccination campaign began Dec. 14, 2020, and only about 37 million Americans received one vaccine shot by the end of January, according to Our World in Data. The advent of the Delta variant in April 2021 was countered by a widespread vaccination campaign by then; about 180 million doses had been given as of April 1, and a total of 350 million vaccinations were given at the peak of Delta prevalence in August 2021. This is also reflected in the number of health care calls: in September, the number of calls rose to just 4.7 million, even though the more aggressive variant dominated the new infections. Now, within a month, the Omicron variant has supplanted Delta, accounting for 97 percent of all new cases as of Jan. 19.

Although Omicron is said to be less deadly, its relatively mild symptoms are still causing more and more people to stay home. If it affects important members of the workforce such as health care workers and workers in logistics, retail and manufacturing, this development could well lead to a growing number of disruptions in the economy in the near future, further exacerbating already existing supply chain disruptions, resource shortages and waves of layoffs.

#covid #covid #omicron
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A supercomputer is a machine designed to process billions, if not trillions, of calculations simultaneously. Each supercomputer actually consists of many individual computers (known as nodes) that work together in parallel.

Visualizing the power of the world’s supercomputers

A common metric for measuring the performance of these machines is flops , or floating-point operations per second .

In this visualization, we used TOP500 data from November 2021 to visualize the computing power of the top five supercomputers in the world. For additional context, a number of modern consumer devices were included in the comparison.

Ranking by teraflops.

Because supercomputers can reach more than one quadrillion flops, while consumer devices are much less powerful, we used teraflops as our comparison metric.

1 teraflop = 1,000,000,000,000 (1 trillion) flops.

The Fugaku supercomputer was completed in March 2021 and is officially the most powerful supercomputer in the world. It is used for various applications, including weather modeling and discovery of innovative drugs.

Sunway Taihulight is officially recognized as the best supercomputer in China and the fourth most powerful supercomputer in the world. That said, some experts believe there are already two much more powerful systems operating in the country, based on data from anonymous sources.

As you can see, the most advanced consumer devices don’t even come close to the power of supercomputers. For example, it would take the combined power of 4,000 Nvidia Titan RTX graphics cards (the most powerful consumer card available) to match Fugaku.

Future supercomputers

One of China’s undisclosed supercomputers is supposedly called Oceanlite and is the successor to Sunway Taihulight. It is believed to have reached 1.3 exaflops or 1.3 quintillion flops. The following table makes it easy to keep track of all these big numbers.

In the U.S., competing chip makers AMD and Intel received contracts from the U.S. Department of Energy to create exascale supercomputers. AMD has Frontier and El Capitan, and Intel has Aurora.

The EL Capitan project also involves Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) , which claims that the supercomputer will be able to reach speeds of up to 2 exaflops when it is completed in 2023. All this power will be used to support several interesting projects:

Incorporate advanced modeling and simulation to support the U.S. nuclear arsenal and ensure its reliability and safety.
Reduce anti-cancer drug development time from six years to one year through a partnership with pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline.
Understand the dynamics and mutations of RAS proteins that are associated with 30 percent of human cancers.
Overall, exascale computing allows complex analysis in seconds, not hours. This could open up an even faster pace of innovation.

#typesofsupercomputer
#frontiersupercomputer
#fastestsupercomputerofworld
#perlmuttersupercomputer
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After China’s decennial census already significantly adjusted the number of births in the country downward in 2020, the latest report from the National Bureau of Statistics of China (NBS) shows that even fewer children will be born in China in 2021.

China’s birth rate has plummeted due to slowing population growth

Statistics counted only 10.62 million births in 2021, down from twelve million in 2020 . Meanwhile, China’s population has stagnated at about 1.41 billion.

The country’s fertility rate in 2020 was 1.3 children per woman . Since the 1990s it has been below the threshold of 2.1 needed for a stable population. Despite early warning signs, China abandoned its long-standing one-child policy only in 2016, when fear of overpopulation was replaced by fear of an aging society.

Ning Jizhe, head of NBS, attributed China’s falling birth rate to economic and social development. Countries tend to experience lower fertility rates in line with economic development as greater access to education and a focus on careers become new priorities for the population. This is certainly the case in other Asian countries, especially Japan and South Korea, where fertility rates have fallen to new lows. The situation is particularly worrisome in South Korea, where last year there were more deaths than births.

#fallingbirthrate #decliningbirthratesworldwide #fertilitydecline #havebirthratesdeclined #globalbirthratedecline #Fertilitydeclineinchina
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The oil sector has been the focus of investor attention after an impressive recovery that has made the sector one of the best performers in 2021. However, it was natural gas bulls who had a real ball with natural gas trading at its highest level since 2014, outperforming oil and many other commodities.

3 Major Trends Determining Natural Gas Use in 2022

The natural gas sector is off to another good start, with natural gas prices (Henry Hub) up 20% to $4.19 a barrel since the beginning of the year thanks to steady demand.
Natural gas prices are up nearly 10 percent in the past few days after updated weather forecasts called for freezing temperatures in the Northeast during January. The forecast comes amid winter storms that hit the East Coast over the weekend, pushing natural gas prices in the city’s Algonquin Gateway up to $24 a barrel. Many New England states have switched to burning oil to keep the grid running during inclement weather because of limited access to domestic gas supplies.
“The heating demand forecast for the [eastern] third of the U.S. improved substantially this weekend and in the last week of January,” said John Kilduff of Capital.
Last week, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported on Thursday that it withdrew 179 cubic meters of natural gas from underground reserves for the week ending Jan. 7, the largest inventory withdrawal this winter.
Low temperatures and high natural gas prices are a boon for major companies such as Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE:RDS.A) and BP Plc. (NYSE:BP), which produce liquefied natural gas in Trinidad and sell it to the New England market. Meanwhile, domestic natural gas producer AnteroCorp. (NYSE:AR) was recently moved to buy in BMO as discounted valuations and rising natural gas prices are expected to drive the stock up 50%, while Chesapeake (NASDAQ:CHK) recently started buying in BAML with ~30% growth.
Wood Mackenzie published his 2022 global gas and LNG report. Here are some of his interesting predictions.

1 Prices will fall if Nord Stream 2 comes online

Severe natural gas shortages, declining wind power generation, nuclear power plant outages and cold weather have left Europe facing one of the worst energy crises in history. Nevertheless, Europe’s energy problems continue to worsen at every turn.
European natural gas prices hit a new record high Tuesday after a pipeline carrying Russian gas to Germany shifted flows eastward, while U.S. ships carrying liquefied natural gas (LNG) destined for the European market headed for Asia, where prices are even higher.
Gas flows to the West through the 2,607-mile Yamal-Europe pipeline, one of the main routes for Russian gas supplies to Europe, have since gradually declined, but have recently changed direction, which the Kremlin says has no political implications.
Some Western politicians argue that Russia is using its natural gas as a weapon in political struggles related to Ukraine and over delays in certifying another controversial pipeline, Nord Stream 2. Russia, of course, denies any connection.
“There is absolutely no connection (to Nord Stream 2), it is a purely commercial situation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at a conference call Tuesday.
The Nord Stream project aims to ensure a reliable supply of Russian natural gas to Central Europe. To do so, Gazprom-owned Nord Stream will connect Russia with Germany through pipelines running through the Baltic Sea. Several EU countries have objected to the construction of the pipeline, believing it to be contrary to the organization’s interests.
Woodmac says that at current levels of Russian exports and given normal weather conditions, European storage inventories will fall below 15 billion cubic meters (bcm) by the end of March, a record low. Prices will eventually drop with the end of winter, but storage replenishment requirements will be high, about 20 to 25 billion cubic meters more than last year. The commissioning of Nord Stream 2 may well be the only option for restocking and preventing a repeat of last year’s winter crisis.
“Normal winter weather, including in Asia, and the visibility of Nord Stream 2 commissioning will drive prices down, although storage demand (and high carbon prices) will keep prices above $15 per metric million British thermal units (mmbtu). But cold winters in Europe and Asia, along with continued uncertainty over the commissioning of Nord Stream 2, could lead to further price increases during 2022-be prepared for another bumpy year ahead.

2 Global gas demand will remain resilient

Woodmack says natural gas demand is likely to remain resilient in the short term, with limited signs of demand disruption so far.
Asian LNG demand continues to rise as much of the supply is priced under old oil-indexed contracts and is currently trading at half the price of Asian LNG spot prices. The outlook for the European market is less rosy, as industrial and energy gas demand is down 4% since the summer compared to the past five years.
But Woodmac vice president Massimo Di Odoardo says higher prices will eventually put pressure on demand. In Asia, for example, the rationale for switching from coal to gas will diminish as higher spot prices for LNG will lead to higher contract prices indexed to oil. Meanwhile, investment in renewables and batteries is likely to continue to grow, limiting opportunities for gas demand growth. Policy makers in Europe will seek to accelerate the transition away from natural gas, as the EU’s recent proposal to support biomethane and hydrogen suggests.

3 More natural gas liquefaction projects

Wood Mackenzie predicted that LNG projects will continue to gain momentum as LNG prices are expected to be structurally higher and oil indexation will rise.
The analyst expects a final investment decision (FID) of 79 million tons per year (mtpa) of additional LNG over the next two years, including 33 mtpa in North America, 16 mtpa in Qatar and 20 mtpa in Russia.
Woodmack notes that the big oil companies have so far stayed on the sidelines, but some action is likely in 2022, and some are expected to complete negotiations with QatarEnergy to secure a portion of the Northeast field development.
TotalEnergies (NYSE:TTE) may well acquire a stake in Novatek’s Arctic LNG-1 project, similar to what it did in Arctic 2 and Yamal. And it is also possible that big companies will continue to make takeover deals with third-party projects in North America, both on the East Coast and the West Coast.
Woodmack says natural gas will continue to be the backbone of oil companies’ energy transition strategies, but their ability to invest in upstream and downstream projects is still limited.

Courtesy of the author: Alex Kimani

#naturalgas #northernstream #spg #gas #naturalgas #naturalgas #gasprices

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On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization officially classified the COVID-19 outbreak as a pandemic. As a result, travel bans have decimated the tourism industry, and international air travel initially declined by as much as 98% .

10 Tourist Destinations for Post-Pandemic Life

Nearly two years later, travel is finally back on the table, although there are many limitations to consider. Nevertheless, a September 2021 survey shows that as things return to normal, 82% of Americans look forward to international travel more than anything else.

To inspire you for your next vacation (whatever it may be), this infographic lists the 10 most visited countries in 2019, along with their top three attractions according to Google Maps.

Have a safe trip

Here are the 10 most popular tourist destinations in 2019 in terms of international arrivals.

France has been the most popular tourist destination by a considerable margin, and it’s easy to see why. The country is home to many of the world’s most famous landmarks, including the Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre .

The Arc de Triomphe was built in the early 1800s to honor those who died during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. In 1944, Allied soldiers marched through the monument after the liberation of Paris from the Nazis.

On the other hand, the Louvre is often recognized by its giant glass pyramid . The museum houses more than 480,000 works of art, including Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.

Art is not the only thing France has to offer. The country is famous for its culinary prowess, with 632 Michelin-starred restaurants, more than any other country. Japan is in second place with 413.

While you’re there…

After sightseeing in Paris, you might consider a trip to Spain. The country is the southern neighbor of France and is known for its beautiful villages and beaches.

One of its most impressive sights is the Sagrada Familia , a massive 440,000 square foot church whose construction began in 1882 and is still ongoing (139 years in the making). The video below shows the striking evolution of the structure.

The Sagrada Familia is 172 meters tall and has about 52 stories.

Another popular spot is Ibiza, an island off the coast of Spain that is famous for its wild nightlife. The island is often mentioned in pop culture: Netflix released an adventure/romance film called “Ibiza” in 2018, and a remix of Mike Posner’s song “I took a pill in Ibiza” garnered more than 1.4 billion views on YouTube.

Beaches in Abundance.
If you’re looking for something outside of Europe, consider Mexico or Thailand, which rank 7th and 8th among the most popular tourist destinations. Both offer hot weather and an abundance of white sand beaches.

If you need even more convincing, check out these links:

13 Best Beaches in Mexico
Mexico’s best resorts: readers’ picks for 2021
Best night markets in Bangkok, Thailand
Best rooftop bars in Bangkok

Expect turbulence

Under normal circumstances, international travelers spend hundreds of billions of dollars annually . According to the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTCC), this spending accounted for an impressive 10.4 percent of global GDP in 2019.

Travel restrictions imposed in 2020 have dealt the industry a serious blow, reducing its share of global GDP to 5.5 percent and destroying an estimated 62 million jobs. While the WTCC believes those jobs could return by 2022, the new Omicron option has already prompted many countries to tighten restrictions again.

To avoid future headaches, make sure you fully understand the rules and restrictions of where you’re going.

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#france #island #mexico # usa #turkey #china #china #tailand #germany #greatbritain