~Bitcoin News of the Day

• Since Trump won the election, the stocks for bitcoin mining companies across the board have skyrocketed, with CleanSpark (CLSK) even being halted due to such breakneck upward price action, indicating that not only miners but also investors believe that Bitcoin mining is welcome in the U.S. and that the industry will thrive as a result.

Global Trade & ~Econ

• Cross border challenges are widening the gap between the output of Europeans and Americans, who have been moving ahead since the 1990s, a study by the International Monetary Fund showed. The European Union's GDP per capita measured with purchasing power parity is now around 72% of the United States, the IMF study said.

~Politics_and_Law

• The House Ethics Committee, which has been investigating allegations that Representative Matt Gaetz engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, was prepared to vote to release a highly critical report about Mr. Gaetz on Friday, according to a Republican official familiar with the matter. The release would have come two days after President-elect Donald J. Trump selected Mr. Gaetz to be attorney general.

~Stacker_Sports News

• Mike Tyson wasn’t in the mood for talking in the final news conference before the 58-year-old former heavyweight champion faces YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul. Tyson had terse answers for all the questions Wednesday night, two nights before the fight against Paul, who is 31 years younger, at the home of the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys.

~Tech & ~Science

• Residents of India's capital New Delhi choked in a blanketing toxic smog Wednesday as worsening air pollution surged past 50 times the World Health Organization's recommended daily maximum.

~History with Mystery

• At 8.23am on the morning of 14 November 1994, crowds cheered as the first Eurostar train carrying fare-paying passengers under the English Channel left London’s Waterloo Station. Its journey was punctuated by cheers from those on board as the train entered the tunnel at Folkestone, more cheers when it emerged 18 minutes later near Calais and by spontaneous applause when it arrived into Paris two minutes ahead of schedule at 11.21am. Passengers would later describe the ‘party atmosphere’ in every carriage, although the day’s newspapers also reported the ‘bloody awful’ coffee and lack of champagne in the buffet. Many of those who travelled on Eurostar’s maiden voyage had booked their tickets years in advance, and among them were those celebrating birthdays and anniversaries, a 90-year-old Canadian former railway worker who had crossed the Atlantic to travel on the first train, author Jeffrey Archer, television presenter Jeremy Beadle and two great-grandsons of the engineer William Low, who had proposed his own Channel tunnel scheme in the 1860s.

~Entertainment World

• Are you frustrated by how Americans pick presidents? Do you sometimes wish there were another method for choosing the leader of the free world? Luckily, Hollywood has just what you’re looking for. If only the U.S. voted for president the way members of the Academy vote for the best picture Oscar — through ranked-choice voting, or RCV — the sort of people who end up in the Oval Office might look very different. The way RCV works is that voters select their first, second and third choices on their ballots; if their first choice doesn’t reach 50 percent in the initial tally, their ballot counts toward their second choice in the next tally, and so on, until one candidate emerges victorious. It’s likely how long-shot movies like Moonlight and Parasite ended up winning best picture, and could give less polarizing presidential candidates a better shot at the White House. In fact, several states already are experimenting with RCV; Democrats have used it in elections in Alaska, Hawaii and Wyoming, while Republicans in Virginia have tried it for certain state-wide contests.

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