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Balvinder Sopal has opened up about ending up in the bottom two on Strictly Come Dancing two weeks in a row

EastEnders actress Balvinder Sopal has spoken candidly about landing in the dance off on Strictly Come Dancing for two consecutive weeks, confessing she felt “crushed” following the most recent results programme.

The soap star joined her dancing partner Julian Callion on Tuesday’s (21 October) edition of It Takes Two, where they discussed the tense dance off with presenter Fleur East.

“My heart just sank. I felt quite disappointed. I thought we’d done enough to come back after the week previous, where we were were again, bottom two,” Balvinder admitted. “Yeah, I was crushed.”

Fleur, a former Strictly contestant from 2022, expressed empathy with Balvinder’s situation, remarking: “Yeah, it is such a crushing feeling.”

Julian, making his debut as a professional on the programme, explained how he comforted Balvinder when the results were announced, reports Wales Online.

“To be honest, I didn’t really say much because we’d actually just been in there seven days ago. I think in those situations where it’s high pressure, it’s high stress, sometimes the more you say and the more you try to think, the worse it is,” Julian said.

He added: “I definitely don’t think we were there based on dance ability or anything.”

The pair went head to head with rugby star Chris Robshaw and his partner Nadiya Bychkova in the elimination showdown, with both couples having garnered the fewest public votes.

The judges voted to save Balvinder, with Craig Revel Horwood having the deciding vote on the night, following a new rule which stops head judge Shirley Ballas having the deciding vote every single week.

“The new rules meant that Craig saved you. How did that feel?” Fleur asked Balvinder, who plays Suki Panesar in BBC One’s EastEnders.

The actress issued a heartfelt message to Craig, who is known for his harsh criticism and low scores on the BBC show, after he saved her due to her “quality” and “technical ability”.

“Oh, I mean, I am so grateful to Craig, actually,” Balvinder said. “And, he’s one of the scariest judges, I think. But, Sunday night, he saved us and I can’t thank him enough.”

It Takes Two airs on weeknights on BBC Two at 6.30pm. Strictly Come Dancing airs on Saturday on BBC One and is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.

Bitmine Immersion Technologies (BMNR -10.21%) didn’t have timing on its side with its latest round of capital raising. The cryptocurrency mining and holding company that concentrates on Ethereum saw its share price sag by more than 10% on Monday after it provided details of a share sale. That came on a trading day when the S&P 500 index closed up by 0.4%.

A big share and warrant sale

That morning, Bitmine divulged that it signed a purchase agreement for an institutional investor to buy slightly over 5.2 million shares of its common stock. That investor, which the company did not identify, is paying $70 per share for the stock.

Image source: Getty Images.

It is also receiving warrants to buy an additional pack of up to 10.4 million-plus shares at an exercise price of $87.50 apiece. Bitmine wrote that the “Potential future aggregate proceeds from the warrants represent approximately $913 million from cash exercises.”

All told, the company added, the total take from these issues could be roughly $1.28 billion.

Future 5% holder?

Bitmine has set a goal of acquiring 5% of total available Ethereum. Helpfully, and also on Monday, it offered an update on its holdings of the popular cryptocurrency. It wrote in a press release that its portfolio of Ethereum now tops 2% of supply.

That amount has ramped up quite considerably of late. Fueled by $20 billion in equity financing, in late August, the company snapped up almost 200,000 Ethereum. Prior to that buy-in, Bitmine held less than 1%.

Unfortunately for the company, its twin announcements came on the heels of a broad cryptocurrency sell-off this past weekend, which leaked into Monday trading. Timing is often critical in the ever-volatile cryptoverse; the bright side of this is that investor sentiment on Bitmine could improve quite drastically once Ethereum starts to head north in value again.

A star stock during the pandemic era wasn’t shining so brightly on Friday. On a media report that the current presidential administration is preparing to link a set of fatalities to Covid vaccines, BioNTech‘s (BNTX -7.35%) share price declined by 7% across that day’s trading session. The biotech company’s decline was particularly notable given the essentially flat-line performance of the S&P 500 index.

Negative accounts

That morning, The Washington Post published an article stating that healthcare officials in the Trump administration were aiming to link the deaths of 25 children to coronavirus vaccines. BioNTech is a co-developer of a top vaccine, Comirnaty, aimed at preventing the disease’s spread (its partner in the effort was U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer).

Image source: Getty Images.

Citing four unnamed people “familiar with the situation,” this effort will be based on findings that were apparently filed with the federal government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. The platform contains unverified accounts of experiences and events following the administration of jabs.

The newspaper added that the government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stresses that the system isn’t intended to determine if any vaccine injections result in fatalities. According to the CDC, such a judgement requires significant investigation by scientific and medical professionals.

Danger of reputational damage

The Post wrote that administration officials aim to present their findings next week to a CDC advisory panel. That panel is considering recommendations for new Covid vaccines.

BioNTech might be particularly exposed in such a move, as it is a much smaller company than its big U.S. partner Pfizer. If it becomes seen as a developer of a supposedly harmful product, its reputation could suffer irreparably.

Beaten-down chemical industry stock Dow (DOW -2.27%) absorbed another body blow on Monday. Investors traded out of the company’s shares, on the back of an analyst’s bearish adjustment, to the point where they closed the day more than 2% lower in value. In contrast, the S&P 500 (^GSPC 0.21%) ended up rising by 0.2%.

A cut to the chemical giant

The pundit behind the move was Jefferies‘ Laurence Alexander. Well before market open that day, he reduced his Dow price target to $23 per share from his preceding $28. He maintained his hold recommendation on the shares in the process.

Image source: Getty Images.

Alexander’s new take on Dow was due to several factors, including the company’s lingering supply chain woes, according to reports. The analyst also wrote that there was a risk that a potential interest rate cut would take some time to result in increased demand for the company’s wares.

On the spending side, Alexander opined that with such ongoing pressures, Dow management will be compelled to continue reining in capital expenditures. This, plus anticipated restructuring measures in 2026 and the following year, are likely to affect the company’s fundamentals negatively.

Not a good time for the industry

Dow, a long-standing incumbent in the chemical sector, is a highly unfavored stock these days. Over the summer, the company cut its quarterly dividend in half; as this payout was a major draw pulling people into the stock, many investors sold on the news.

Globally, the industry is in a significant down cycle, in many ways still adjusting from oversupply at the start of this decade. The tariff policy of the current presidential administration isn’t helping sentiment, either.

Given all that, Alexander’s cautious move feels entirely justified.

Dogecoin (DOGE -8.63%) is falling on Monday, down 10.6% in the last 24 hours as of 5:47 p.m. ET. The drop comes as the S&P 500 lost 0.5%, and the Nasdaq Composite lost 0.3% today.

Dogecoin and the rest of the crypto market are down after last Friday’s huge spike following Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s address to the nation.

Rate cuts could be coming

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell spoke from the Fed’s annual Jackson Hole summit on Friday, shedding light on its plans for rate cuts in the near future. Powell painted a complicated picture of the current economy with signs of a slowdown in hiring happening even as other signs point to the possibility that inflation is heating up.

Ultimately, he believes that the economy has proven to be resilient, and though he didn’t confirm it explicitly, he seemed to indicate rate cuts were coming in September. Investors reacted strongly to the news, and markets on Friday were green. More speculative investments like Dogecoin saw an outsized spike — lower rates tend to lead to riskier assets performing comparatively well.

Image source: Getty Images.

Today, investors appear to be weighing how much the Fed will cut. Just as Dogecoin saw an outsized spike on Friday, it saw an outsized dip today.

Dogecoin is meant to be taken lightly

Dogecoin is a meme coin. It is not a serious investment. The coin’s “tokenomics” are highly inflationary. That means over time, unless more and more people invest consistently, its price will continue to move downward.

This was created as a joke and a way to have fun — that is exactly how it still should be treated. There are plenty of crypto projects with proven track records of value like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Choose these or projects like them if you are serious about investing in crypto.

TRAGIC billionaire Mike Lynch’s superyacht sank because it was vulnerable to wind, a report claims.

Investigators examining the sinking of the 180ft Bayesian off Sicily last year say it was knocked over by “extreme wind” and could not recover.

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Brit tech tycoon Lynch, 59, and daughter Hannah, 18, were among seven killed in the disaster.

An interim report by the Marine Accident Investigation Branch said the yacht had a “vulnerability” to lighter winds but the owner and crew would not have known.

It added it had “limited verified evidence” as the criminal probe in Italy had restricted its access.

Andrew Moll, chief inspector of marine accidents, said: “The findings indicate that the extreme wind experienced by Bayesian was sufficient to knock the yacht over.

“Further, once the yacht had heeled beyond an angle of 70° the situation was irrecoverable.

“The results will be refined as the investigation proceeds, and more information becomes available.”

Five people were injured “either by falling or from things falling on them”, while the deck hand was “thrown into the sea”, a report said.

Two guests used furniture drawers “as an improvised ladder” to escape their cabin.

The skipper instructed guests and crew on an area of the deck to “swim clear of the mast and boom as the vessel was sinking”.

Survivors later made their way onto a life raft released from the Bayesian.

They went on to be rescued on a small boat dispatched by yacht Sir Robert Baden Powell, which was also at anchor nearby.

A search was conducted of the accident site.

All the bodies of those who died were subsequently recovered by the local authorities.

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