assets

On October 17, 2025, hedge fund TB Alternative Assets Ltd. disclosed a new position in Strategy (MSTR 2.12%), formerly known as MicroStrategy, acquiring 126,000 shares for an estimated $40.6 million.

IMAGE SOURCE: GETTY IMAGES.

What happened

According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission dated October 17, 2025, TB Alternative Assets Ltd. disclosed a new position in Strategy during the third quarter ended September 30, 2025. The fund reported owning 126,000 shares worth $40.6 million. The purchase corresponds to an estimated $40.6 million transaction value, calculated using average prices for the reporting period ended September 30, 2025.

What else to know

This new position represents 6.1% of TB Alternative Assets Ltd.’s reportable U.S. equity AUM as of September 30, 2025.

TB Alternative Assets’ top holdings after the filing are:

• META: $76.97 million (11.5% of AUM) as of September 30, 2025
• GOOG: $58.56 million (8.8% of AUM) as of September 30, 2025
• INTC: $51.26 million (7.7% of AUM) as of September 30, 2025
• PDD: $45.72 million (6.8% of AUM) as of September 30, 2025
• MSTR: $40.60 million (6.1% of AUM) as of September 30, 2025

As of October 16, 2025, shares were priced at $283.84, up 34.3% over the past year and outperforming the S&P 500 by 32.8 percentage points during the same period.

Company Overview

Company Snapshot

Strategy provides enterprise analytics solutions, enabling organizations to derive insights from data at scale. The company leverages its robust software platform and specialized services to address complex business intelligence needs for large enterprises.

Strategy offers enterprise analytics software, including a software platform with features such as hyperintelligence, data visualization, reporting, and mobile analytics.

The company generates revenue primarily through software licensing, support services, consulting, and education offerings for enterprise clients. It serves a diversified customer base across industries such as retail, finance, technology, healthcare, and the public sector.

Foolish take

Hedge fund TB Alternative Assets’ investment in Strategy shares is noteworthy for a few reasons. The buy represents an initial position in the stock. Moreover, the hedge fund went big with the purchase, putting Strategy shares into its top five holdings. Lastly, those top holdings are dominated by tech stocks, and although Strategy began as a data analytics software platform, it’s now more of a cryptocurrency play.

Strategy became the first publicly-traded company to buy Bitcoin as part of its capital allocation strategy back in 2020. Since then, it has transformed into “the world’s first and largest Bitcoin Treasury Company,” according to Strategy.

As of July 29, the company holds 3% of all Bitcoin in existence. This brought its Q2 total assets to $64.8 billion with $64.4 billion of that in digital assets. As a result, Strategy’s fortunes rise and fall with the value of the cryptocurrency rather than its software products.

So far, the gamble has paid off. As Bitcoin’s value has risen, so has Strategy’s stock. And now, the company is leveraging its cryptocurrency holdings to offer various Bitcoin-related investment vehicles.

TB Alternative Assets may have found this new direction for the former MicroStrategy a compelling case for investing in the stock. If you’re seeking exposure to Bitcoin, Strategy offers a unique take, and with the stock down from its 52-week high of $543 reached last November, now may be a good time to buy.

Glossary

13F AUM: The total market value of U.S. equity securities reported by an institutional investment manager in quarterly SEC filings.
Position: The amount of a particular security or asset held by an investor or fund.
Stake: The ownership interest or share held in a company by an investor or fund.
Holding: A security or asset owned by an investor or fund, often listed in portfolio disclosures.
Outperforming: Achieving a higher return compared to a specific benchmark or index over a given period.
Enterprise analytics: Software and tools that help organizations analyze large-scale data to support business decision-making.
Business intelligence: Technologies and strategies used to analyze business data and support better decision-making.
Software licensing: The practice of granting customers the right to use software under specific terms and conditions.
Support services: Assistance provided to customers for software maintenance, troubleshooting, and technical issues.
Consulting: Professional advisory services that help organizations implement and optimize software or business processes.
TTM: The 12-month period ending with the most recent quarterly report.
Reportable U.S. equity AUM: The portion of assets under management invested in U.S. stocks that must be disclosed in regulatory filings.

European Union leaders are considering a “reparations plan” that would use frozen Russian state assets to provide Ukraine with a $164bn loan to help fund its reconstruction after the war with Russia ends.

Leaders expressed a mixture of support and caution for the plan on Wednesday as they met in the Danish capital, Copenhagen, days after drones were spotted in Denmark’s airspace, prompting airport closures. While the drones in Denmark were not formally identified as Russian, other European countries, including Poland, Romania and Estonia, have accused Russia of drone incursions into their airspace in September.

“I strongly support the idea,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said. Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson also said he was “very much in favour” of the plan. Others said there could be legal complications, however.

Here is what we know about Europe’s “reparations plan”, how it may work and what the response from Russia is likely to be.

What is Europe’s ‘reparations plan’?

The reparations plan was first outlined by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in mid-September, and backing for it has grown as United States financial support for Ukraine wanes.

During his 2024 presidential campaign, US President Donald Trump promised voters he would pull the US back from providing high levels of financial and military aid to Ukraine.

Since the beginning of his term in January, Trump has made it clear the US will take a back seat in terms of providing financial support and security guarantees to Ukraine, indicating Europe should fill the gap instead.

Europe’s plan would use Russian assets frozen in European banks as collateral for a 140-billion-euro ($164.4bn) loan to Ukraine. Repayments for the loan would be recouped via war reparations from Russia, but the loan would also be guaranteed either in the EU’s next long-term budget or by individual EU member states.

“We need a more structural solution for military support,” von der Leyen said on Tuesday. “This is why I have put forward the idea of a reparations loan that is based on the immobilised Russian assets.”

How much in frozen Russian assets does Europe hold?

About $300bn in Russian Central Bank assets have been frozen by the US and European countries since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Most of this – $246.9bn – is held in Europe, of which $217.5bn – the vast majority in cash – is held by Euroclear, a Belgium-based capital markets company.

On June 30, Euroclear reported the Russian sanctioned assets on its balance sheet generated $3.2bn in interest during the first half of 2025, a drop from the $4bn in interest earned over the same period last year.

What are the challenges to this plan?

Under international law, a sovereign country’s assets cannot simply be confiscated. Hence, loaning this money to Ukraine would be an infringement of Moscow’s sovereign claim over its central bank assets.

Since most of the assets are held in Belgium, the country has asked for the plan to be fleshed out in case it is required to return the assets to Russia.

“I explained to my colleagues yesterday that I want their signature saying, ‘If we take Putin’s money, we use it, we’re all going to be responsible if it goes wrong,’” Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever told reporters in Copenhagen on Thursday.

On Wednesday, von der Leyen said: “It’s absolutely clear that Belgium cannot be the one who is the only member state that is carrying the risk. The risk has to be put on broader shoulders.”

Are any European leaders hesitant about this plan?

Yes. Besides De Wever, other European leaders have expressed hesitation or have asked their fellow leaders to work out more details of the plan before they agree to it.

Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof said the proposal should be considered very carefully, given the legal and financial risks that could arise.

Others also signalled caution. “I think that’s a difficult legal question,” Luxembourg Prime Minister Luc Frieden told reporters. “You can’t just take over assets that belong to another state so easily.”

Frieden added: “There are now other proposals on the table, but these also raise a whole host of questions. I would like to have answers to these questions first. Among other things, how would such a loan be repaid? What would happen if Russia did not repay these reparations in a peace treaty?”

Is the plan likely to go ahead?

Experts said European leaders would likely have to find a way to make the plan viable as the prospects of further US aid for Ukraine dry up.

“It is going to happen because with the US walking away, Europe is left with $100bn-plus annual funding needs for Ukraine,” Timothy Ash, an associate fellow in the Russia and Eurasia programme at Chatham House, told Al Jazeera.

Ash explained that the bigger challenge for Europe would be to not go ahead with the plan if it means leaving Ukraine underfunded generally and placing it at higher risk of losing the war with Russia. “Risks to Europe would then be catastrophic,” he said, including the prospect of tens of millions of Ukrainians migrating west into Europe.

If a Ukrainian loss in the war becomes more likely, European nations would be forced to ramp up defence spending to 5 percent of their gross domestic products (GDPs) much faster than expected.

In June, members of NATO pledged to increase their defence spending to 5 percent of their GDPs by 2035.

Such an acceleration “would mean higher budget deficits, higher borrowing costs, more debt, less growth and a weaker Europe and euro”, Ash said.

How has Russia responded?

Moscow has rebuked the EU plan, calling it a “theft” of Russian money.

“We are talking about plans for the illegal seizure of Russian property. In Russia, we call that simply theft,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday.

Peskov said anyone involved in seizing Russian assets “will be prosecuted in one way or another. They will all be called to account.”

He added: “The boomerang will very seriously hit those who are the main depositories, countries that are interested in investment attractiveness.”

Ash said Russia could take legal action against European countries if the plan goes ahead. However, “it would have to lift its own sovereign immunity to be able to launch any such legal action. And a legal action by Russia would take years – decades to conclude.”

Russia is protected by sovereign immunity, which is a legal principle shielding foreign governments from being sued in courts outside their own country. If Russia wants to legally pursue this, it would need to waive this immunity, which, in turn, would mean Russia could also be sued or tried in a foreign country.

Ash added that another course of action Russia could take would be to seize Western assets under its jurisdiction, but this also does not come without challenges. “Russia has 10 times more assets in the West than vice versa,” Ash said. “It’s just more vulnerable through this channel.”

How much in Western assets does Russia hold?

Moscow said the value of all foreign assets it holds is comparable to the frozen Russian reserves held in the West. Citing data from January 2022, Russia’s state-run RIA news agency reported there were about $288bn of assets in Russia that could potentially be seized by Moscow.

However, Russian Central Bank records from 2022 show there were $289bn in “derivative and other foreign investments” in Russia. By the end of 2023, these foreign assets had dropped in value to $215bn.

Ash explained: “Those assets are all foreign assets – not just Western. [They include] Chinese, Indian, Middle East assets. And most of those assets are private – not state.”

Millions of TikTok users in the United States will be relieved to hear President Donald Trump say that China had agreed to approve a deal on the future of the social media platform in the US.

With US politicians worried that TikTok poses a national security threat and spreads propaganda, Congress passed a bill last year that banned the short video app unless its Chinese owner, ByteDance, sold its US business.

But Trump had extended the deadline by which ByteDance was to divest from the platform or face the promised ban, and even went so far as to raise the matter with Chinese President Xi Jinping in a call on Friday.

So, why does a deal on this app matter so much to Trump?

Presenter: Tom McRae

Guests:

Richard Weitz – senior non-resident associate fellow at the NATO Defense College

Einar Tangen – senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation

Maria Curi – technology policy reporter for Axios, focusing on government oversight of social media platforms

As much as some people dread the idea of growing older, there can be benefits. For example, when I was younger, I grew anxious every time there was a shake-up in the stock market, positive that we were about to lose everything.

With time, I realized that investing in the market is like riding a Tilt-a-Whirl operated by a distracted carnival worker. Like a Tilt-a-Whirl, the market tends to be up and down, then up again (followed by another drop).

Image source: Getty Images.

Historically, it’s worked out for investors over the long term, but that doesn’t mean it’s not scary. It’s tempting to read a deeper meaning into every move the market makes.

Rather than stressing out over each economic hiccup that impacts our investments, time has taught me to focus on the things I can control: frequently rebalancing our portfolio to ensure our asset allocation includes both high- and low-risk investments, and building buffer assets we won’t touch until retirement.

What are buffer assets?

Buffer assets are very low-risk assets we can draw from when and if our portfolio goes into the toilet following retirement. While high-quality corporate bonds, Treasury securities, and municipal bonds are all considered lower risk, I can purchase those through my solo 401(k), so I don’t include them in my buffer basket.

I’m putting our buffer assets into a high-yield savings account. It won’t make us rich, but my objective is not to live like a 19th-century Rockefeller. The buffer assets exist solely to get us through the bear markets and recessions we experience following retirement. The goal is to avoid pillaging our retirement accounts.

However, other places to access money when you need a buffer include the cash you’ve built in a cash-value life insurance policy, multiyear guaranteed annuities, fixed indexed annuities, and CD ladders.

While it’s easy to confuse the two, buffer assets and an emergency savings account are two different things. An emergency account is specifically designed to pay for emergency situations, so you don’t end up having to charge new tires or a water heater to a credit card. Your buffer account is meant to prevent you from taking money from your retirement account when those dollars could be better spent beefing up your portfolio.

How buffer assets can preserve wealth

As Dan Egan, director of behavioral finance at investing platform Betterment, told the AARP, “Negative news sells, because people are looking for things to worry about.” Egan says that people tend to pay attention when the market is tumbling but pay far less attention when things are going well. As humans, it’s natural to look out for scary things.

It’s that very human reaction to bad news that causes so many people to sell off investments, even if doing so costs them hundreds of thousands of dollars over time. I hope to zig when every instinct tells me to zag. When others are panic-selling, I want to stay the course.

Let’s say our post-retirement budget requires us to withdraw $12,000 annually from our retirement account. Because those stocks and other assets are less valuable during a bear market or recession, we would have to sell more to come up with the $12,000 we’re counting on. The more assets we sell, the less money we’ll have left to take advantage of the bargains available on high-quality assets during each market downturn.

Even though we’ll trim our budget for the duration of the downturn (which is a good idea during bear markets and recessions), we’ll need another reserve of money to draw from. And that’s where our buffer account comes in. It’s money we can dip into so the funds in our retirement account can be used to invest in well-priced assets.

Here’s my rationale: On average, stocks lose 35% in a bear market (helping to explain the bargain-basement prices). However, as the market regains steam and moves into bull territory, stocks gain an average of 111%. Long-term investors who stay the course are in the best position to profit from the ups and downs of the market.

How large should a buffer be?

There’s no one-size-fits-all formula for how large a buffer a retiree might need. It depends on how much you count on withdrawing from a retirement account. The average bear market lasts 289 days, or just shy of 10 months. The average recession in the 20th and 21st centuries has lasted 14 months. Ideally, your buffer account would be large enough to cover you throughout those events.

Realistically, how can anyone know how many bear markets or recessions they will experience throughout retirement? Some experts suggest building a buffer account with one to three years’ worth of essential living expenses, minus your guaranteed income.

For example, suppose your total monthly living expenses in retirement are $3,000 and you have $2,000 coming in from Social Security, a pension, or some other source of guaranteed income. In that case, you’ll need an extra $1,000 per month. If you were to follow the experts’ advice, you would want to build a buffer account totaling $12,000 to $36,000.

Believe me, I understand how difficult it can be to save even more money, especially when you’re still building a retirement account and paying ever-higher everyday living expenses. If you can’t meet the goal of one to three years’ worth of essential living expenses, chip away at it the best you can.

Any amount you tuck into a buffer account is money you won’t have to take from your retirement account when the market is in the dumps.

SACRAMENTO — Not long ago, California’s pharmacists came to town and hosted a get-acquainted reception for legislators. The fete was held at Frank Fat’s restaurant, a venerable haunt of choice for the capital’s power elite.

Like other freshmen legislators, Assemblyman Tom Bordonaro was eager to attend. There was just one problem: He could not get into the party. Literally.

Bordonaro, 36, is a quadriplegic who uses a wheelchair. Frank Fat’s banquet room is up a flight of stairs; hence, Bordonaro was out of luck.

What is most intriguing about this story is Bordonaro’s reaction. Instead of pitching a fit, the assemblyman adopted a no-big-deal approach: “It’s unfortunate,” he mused recently, “but eventually they’ll get the message and change their ways.”

Elected in November, Bordonaro is the first quadriplegic to serve in the California Legislature–and only the second member in a wheelchair. As a result, he now commands a powerful pulpit from which to trumpet–and perhaps remedy–the troubles of California’s 2.4 million disabled residents. That, however, is not his style.

Indeed, Bordonaro opposed the Americans With Disabilities Act–the landmark federal law banning discrimination against the disabled–and he considers many regulations protecting the disabled too burdensome for business. Progress, he believes, can best be won through public awareness and persuasion–with a carrot, not a stick.

“To the dismay of many folks, I’m just not a huge disabled advocate,” said Bordonaro, a conservative Republican from San Luis Obispo County. “Sure I’ll help on some things, but I was elected to serve my district. That’s my priority and that’s what I’m going to do.”

Given his lukewarm interest in their cause, some disabled activists lament Bordonaro’s election.

Others, however, are more upbeat. “He may not see himself as an advocate, but he is–just by being here,” said Kathleen Barrett, who works for the California Assn. of Persons With Handicaps.

A garrulous man with a self-deprecating wit, Bordonaro has spent half his life in a wheelchair after a car accident when he was 18.

Until last year, Bordonaro was content to help manage his family’s alfalfa and cattle ranching business in Paso Robles.

But when the assemblywoman in his district announced that she was leaving, friends persuaded Bordonaro to run. The political rookie beat six opponents in the GOP primary, then drubbed his Democratic rival.

His disability never came up in the campaign, but he suspects that it may have been an asset: “I think my opponents were afraid to attack me. Who’s gonna beat up on the poor guy in the wheelchair?”

It is unlikely that that will hold true in the Assembly. So far, Bordonaro has kept a low profile. But one of his bills–rescinding conjugal visits for certain state prisoners–is likely to stir a fuss. And another–requiring public disclosure of the names of juveniles arrested for certain crimes–drew fire this week.

Although Bordonaro may hesitate to introduce legislation on behalf of the disabled, he has made a phone call or two.

This year, the DMV issued disabled people new license plates bearing a large, glow-in-the-dark wheelchair logo. Many disabled drivers worried that the highly visible logo told criminals they were vulnerable. The assemblyman intervened, ensuring that those who prefer a less obtrusive plate may get one.

Bordonaro has made a mark in another way as well. Before his arrival in Sacramento, numerous changes were made to the Capitol, leaving it far more accessible to those with disabilities–as mandated by federal law.

In the wake of January’s horrific fires, detractors of Los Angeles — an urban reality often seen as a toxic mixture of unsustainable resource planning and structurally poor governance systems — are having a field day.

Los Angeles knows how to weather a crisis — or two or three. Angelenos are tapping into that resilience, striving to build a city for everyone.

Their criticism is not new: For most of the 20th century — and certainly for the last five decades or so — Los Angeles has been seen by many urbanists as less city and more cautionary tale — a smoggy expanse of subdivisions and spaghetti junctions, where ambition came with a two-hour commute.

Planners shuddered, while architects looked away, even as they accepted handsome commissions to build some of L.A.’s — if not the world’s — most iconic buildings.

In 1961, Jane Jacobs, the famed urban theorist and community activist, referred to “the ballet of the good city sidewalk” in her landmark 1961 book “The Death and Life of Great American Cities.” If Manhattan was her “ballet of the sidewalk,” L.A. was a suburban parking lot with delusions of grandeur.

“Los Angeles is a city of pleasure and peril; we’ve always known this,” Zeina Koreitem, founding partner of Downtown L.A. architecture studio Milliøns, said following the fires. “We consume our environment instead of living with it.”

And yet, like so many Hollywood plot twists, maybe we misunderstood the protagonist.

What if L.A.’s so-called flaws — its low density, car culture and decentralized sprawl — weren’t liabilities in a changing world, but underappreciated assets? Not because they were the right urban solutions all along, but because the systems beneath them are shifting?

Urban form has always followed transportation infrastructure. Roman roads influenced the creation of grid-based military cities. Railways shaped satellite towns. Subways gave rise to vertical density.

Today, the emergence of autonomous mobility solutions like robot taxis as well as distributed energy — decentralized, small-scale energy generation located near where energy is actually consumed — is redrawing those relationships once again — and the L.A. model just may be a big beneficiary in the long run.

Dismissed as the nemesis of sustainable urbanism, L.A. can, in fact, be well-positioned for the next chapter. Technologies like rooftop photovoltaics, vehicle-to-grid systems and AI-optimized resource flows do not depend on compactness. They benefit from space, sunlight and flexibility — qualities that Los Angeles has in abundance across its 1,600 square miles of urbanized area.

That vast, polycentric mass — long derided by urban experts residing in denser cities — can also be an asset in the years ahead as autonomous mobility becomes ubiquitous. Elastic, demand-driven autonomous services — which will inevitably also extend to Los Angeles airspace — can and will complement an increasingly built-out Metro light rail system and increased bus rapid transit routes, helping open up economic opportunities to those in once disadvantaged, isolated neighborhoods.

Instead of forcing the city into a European mold, perhaps the question is how the city’s existing DNA might evolve. Could its low-rise form become a testing ground for neighborhood-scale energy networks? Could it become a solar-powered metropolis built on microgrids, where each district produces and manages its own resources?

There is already a shift underway. L.A.’s wide boulevards and streets are being reimagined for a new mix of mobility modes: e-bikes, delivery bots, shared shuttles, autonomous vehicles. A city that was once an ode to the freeway is fast becoming a globally recognized source of innovations in multimodal transport. This is what CoMotion LA has been looking at for the last eight years: bringing together public and private stakeholders to imagine a city of seamlessly connecting mobility options.

Young Angelenos increasingly prioritize neighborhoods where walking, biking and public transit are viable. Following a COVID-induced hiatus, downtown’s renaissance, with banks converted into lofts and vibrant public spaces, is showing — once again — a new appetite for urban living.

Cul-de-sac homes in Calabasas in October 2024. Dismissed as the nemesis of sustainable urbanism, L.A. can, in fact, be well-positioned for the next chapter.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Los Angeles is even emerging as a global pioneer in rethinking the curb — often treated as an afterthought — looking at ways those stretches of sidewalk can serve new functions: a charging node, a logistics port, a civic gathering point.

Meanwhile, the scattershot green spaces across Los Angeles offer another opportunity. Rather than a singular large park like New York’s Central Park or Boston Common, the city could develop an ecological mesh, a “sponge city” capable of managing stormwater and heat while fostering public life. Because sustainability is not only about emissions or energy. It is also means access, health and shared space.

This isn’t about longing for midcentury Los Angeles, or about replicating Copenhagen. It’s about testing new possibilities — much like what we’re exploring this year at the Biennale Architettura in Venice. There, participants from diverse disciplines are investigating how we can adapt to a changing planet. We begin with the understanding that climate change is no longer a distant threat; it is a present condition. Our response must be adaptive, experimental and iterative: a continuous process of design evolution, shaped by trial and error, much like nature itself.

But the United States and the world do not need a single model of urban sustainability — they need many. New York might go vertical and social. Barcelona is building out superblocks for pedestrians. Rotterdam is going resilient and water-wise. And Los Angeles? It could — and we believe, it will — become a solar-powered, biodiversity-rich metropolis that helps us rethink what urban sustainability really means.

The sustainable city of the future should not look the same everywhere. It should build on the best of what each place already is and push that to its most imaginative conclusion. “No city has ever been produced by such an extraordinary mixture of geography, climate, economics, demography, mechanics and culture,” said Reyner Banham, the British architectural historian who wrote about Los Angeles a half-century ago. “Nor is it likely that an even remotely similar mixture will ever occur again.”

Los Angeles may have been the warning of the 20th century. But it could become the blueprint of the 21st.

John Rossant is chief executive of CoMotion and international impresario of the multimodal transportation world.

Carlo Ratti is the director of the Senseable City Lab at MIT and the curator of the Biennale Architettura 2025.

Aug. 6 (UPI) — ESPN announced Wednesday that it has made a non-binding agreement with the National Football League to acquire the NFL Network and some of its other media assets.

The announcement said ESPN, owned by the Walt Disney Company, bought the assets for a 10% equity stake in ESPN.

Other assets included in the purchase are NFL’s RedZone Channel and NFL Fantasy, which are owned and controlled by the league.

The NFL also will continue to own and operate some of its media businesses, including NFL Films and NFL.com.

The two companies also are entering into a second non-binding agreement, under which the NFL will license to ESPN certain NFL content and other intellectual property to be used by NFL Network and other assets.

“Today’s announcement paves the way for the world’s leading sports media brand and America’s most popular sport to deliver an even more compelling experience for NFL fans, in a way that only ESPN and Disney can,” said Bob Iger, CEO of Disney. “Commissioner Goodell and the NFL have built outstanding media assets, and these transactions will add to consumer choice, provide viewers with even greater convenience and quality, and expand the breadth and value proposition of Disney’s streaming ecosystem.”

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell agreed.

“Since its launch in 2003, NFL Network has provided millions of fans unprecedented access to the sport they love. Whether it was debuting Thursday Night Football, televising the Combine, or telling incredible football stories through original shows and breaking news, NFL Network has delivered. The Network’s sale to ESPN will build on this remarkable legacy, providing more NFL football for more fans in new and innovative ways.”

ESPN chair Jimmy Pitaro said he’s excited about the acquisition.

“This is an exciting day for sports fans. By combining these NFL media assets with ESPN’s reach and innovation, we’re creating a premier destination for football fans. Together, ESPN and the NFL are redefining how fans engage with the game — anytime, anywhere. This deal helps fuel ESPN’s digital future, laying the foundation for an even more robust offering as we prepare to launch our new direct-to-consumer service.”

ESPN is 80% owned by ABC, an indirect subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company, and 20% by Hearst.

The agreements are subject to approval from NFL owners and government regulators.

On Tuesday, Fox announced the streaming service Fox One will go live Aug. 21 ahead of NFL season. The streaming service will broadcast some NFL games.

Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, accuses Supreme Court justice of behaving ‘like every dictator’, after assets and accounts frozen.

Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes has ordered the freezing of the accounts and assets of former President Jair Bolsonaro’s third son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, while the former president may now face arrest over his activities on social media.

Eduardo, a Brazilian congressman who has been active in Washington, DC, drumming up support for his father’s court battle, called the decision “another arbitrary and criminal decision” by Moraes.

“Moraes relies on illegal decisions to protect himself from the consequences of his crimes. Like every dictator,” Eduardo Bolsonaro said in a post on X on Tuesday.

“If he thinks this will make me stop, I make it clear: I will not be intimidated, and I will not be silenced. I prepared myself for this moment,” he said.

“This is just another demonstration of abuse of power and confirms everything I have been denouncing in Washington and to authorities worldwide,” he added.

CNN Brasil first reported that the confidential court decision was issued on Saturday as part of a probe into Eduardo Bolsonaro’s conduct in the United States.

In a separate court order issued on Monday, Justice Moraes, who oversees the criminal case in which the former president is accused of plotting a coup to overturn the result of the 2022 election, said any attempt to circumvent a court ruling in which he ordered Bolsonaro to wear an ankle bracelet and banned him from using social media could result in arrest.

Brazilian news outlet G1 reported that Moraes summoned Bolsonaro’s lawyers to clarify their client’s alleged non-compliance with his court order restricting his use of social media. According to G1, Moraes gave the lawyers 24 hours to present an explanation, adding that if the defence does not adequately justify Bolsonaro’s online behaviour, he may order the immediate arrest of the former president.

On Friday, Bolsonaro described the decision by Moraes to prohibit his social media use as “cowardice”, and said he intended to continue engaging with the media to ensure his voice was heard.

Vera Chemim, a Sao Paulo-based constitutional lawyer, told the Reuters news agency that she believed the country’s former leader is now on shaky ground, noting that media interviews, while not explicitly mentioned in the court order, could still be used to justify Bolsonaro’s arrest.

“Bolsonaro is now completely silenced,” she said. “Any misstep could lead to a preventive arrest.”

The tightening restrictions on Bolsonaro come after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Brazilian court officials, and specifically Justice Moraes, were conducting a “political witch-hunt” against the former president. As a result, the US was revoking travel visas for “Moraes and his allies on the court, as well as their immediate family members”, Rubio said.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula swiftly labelled Washington’s decision to impose visa bans on court officials “arbitrary” and “baseless”, saying that foreign interference in his country’s judiciary was “unacceptable”.

Earlier this month, US President Donald Trump threatened to impose a 50 percent tariff on Brazilian goods starting on August 1, as he called on Lula to drop the charges against Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro, whose right-wing policies while in power earned him the nickname “Trump of the Tropics “, has denied that he led an attempt to overthrow the government but acknowledged taking part in meetings aimed at reversing the 2022 election outcome.

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What the US government dubbed as the “Crypto Week” yielded in the House passing the first federal legislation to regulate stablecoins. As it has been previously approved by the Senate, it comes into effect the moment the president signs it.

Two additional crypto-related bills also passed in the House and will now proceed to the Senate.

This is a major win for the crypto industry, which poured millions into last year’s election, supporting candidates, including Donald Trump, who became a major advocate for cryptocurrency investments.

The House had three crypto-related bills to pass this “Crypto Week”. However, the bills were stalled for more than a day due to disagreements among House Republicans over how to combine the legislation.

Ultimately, GOP leaders put the three bills up for separate votes. One of the three bills, legislation to regulate a type of cryptocurrency called stablecoins, had already passed the Senate with broad bipartisan support and will now head to Trump’s desk.

The other two bills — a broader measure to create a new market structure for cryptocurrency and a bill to prohibit the Federal Reserve from issuing a new digital currency — will be considered by the Senate later.

How stablecoin is being regulated in the US

The stablecoin bill, called the “Genius Act”, sets initial guardrails and consumer protections for the cryptocurrency, with reserve requirements, audits, and compliance.

Stablecoins are digital tokens tied to a stable asset, often the US dollar, to reduce price volatility.

“Around the world, payment systems are undergoing a revolution,” said House Financial Services Chair French Hill of Arkansas as lawmakers debated the stablecoin legislation Thursday morning. Hill said the bill will “ensure American competitiveness and strong guardrails for our consumers.”

The stablecoin measure is seen by lawmakers and the industry as a step toward adding legitimacy and consumer trust to a rapidly growing sector. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in June that the legislation could help that currency “grow into a $3.7 trillion (€3.2tr) market by the end of the decade.”

The bill outlines requirements for stablecoin issuers, including compliance with US anti-money laundering and sanctions laws, and mandates that issuers hold reserves backing the cryptocurrency.

Without such a framework, Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee warned in a statement, “consumers face risks like unstable reserves or unclear operations from stablecoin issuers.”

After the votes, House Republicans strongly urged the Senate to take up the second bill, which would create a new market structure for cryptocurrency.

That legislation aims to provide clarity for how digital assets are regulated. The bill defines what forms of cryptocurrency should be treated as commodities regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and which are securities policed by the Securities and Exchange Commission. In general, tokens associated with “mature” blockchains, like Bitcoin, will be considered commodities.

The third bill, passed in the House on a narrower 219-210 margin, prohibits the US from offering what is known as a “central bank digital currency,” which is a government-issued form of digital cash.

Why the US needs crypto regulation

The crypto industry has long complained that unclear laws have made it difficult to operate in the US and that the Biden administration attempted to regulate it through enforcement actions rather than transparent rulemaking.

Passing this bill has been a top priority for the industry, which has quickly become a major player in Washington, thanks to substantial campaign donations and lobbying efforts.

Patrick McHenry, the former chair of the House Financial Services Committee and now vice chair of the crypto firm Ondo Finance, said the legislation will have a “massive generational impact,” similar to the securities laws Congress passed in the 1930s that helped make Wall Street the centre of the financial world.

“These bills will make the United States the centre of the world for digital assets,” he said.

While the bill has significant bipartisan support, it has also faced pushback from Democrats who argue that the legislation should address Trump’s personal financial interests in the cryptocurrency space.

A provision in the stablecoin bill bans members of Congress and their families from profiting off stablecoins. But that prohibition does not extend to the president and his family.

According to Forbes, the president’s crypto holdings are worth more than any single real estate asset in his portfolio, an estimated $1 billion (€860 million).

The Republican president’s family holds a significant stake in World Liberty Financial, a crypto project that launched its own stablecoin, USD1.

Trump reported earning $57.35 million (€49.2 million) from token sales at World Liberty Financial in 2024, according to a public financial disclosure released in June.

Some Democrats also criticised the bill for creating what they see as an overly weak regulatory framework that could pose long-term financial risks. They have also raised concerns that the legislation opens the door for major corporations to issue their own private cryptocurrencies.

“If this bill passes, it will allow Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg to issue their own money. The bill still permits Big Tech companies and other conglomerates to issue their own private currencies,” said Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee.