~Bitcoin News of the Day

• Salvadorans are beginning to appreciate bitcoin’s advantages for settling cross-border payments without intermediaries. According to info from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, U.S.-based company Compass Coffee completed the purchase of a batch of Salvadoran coffee using bitcoin at fair prices and sidestepping intermediaries.

Global Trade & ~Econ

• The eurozone economy contracted as the third quarter drew to a close, while inflationary pressures cooled, according to a series of business surveys released Monday. The surveys suggest that a soft landing from the surge in inflation that accompanied Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine could be in doubt. @TomK comment required.

~Politics_and_Law

• Asked if he saw himself running again in four years’ time if he is beaten by Democratic rival Kamala Harris, the 78-year-old former president told the news programme Full Measure: “No I don’t. I think that will be — that will be it. I don’t see that at all.

~Stacker_Sports News

• The 2024 No. 1 overall pick wound up claiming a number of Fever and WNBA records, most notably dishing out more assists than any player ever (337). She also posted the first triple-double for a rookie when she had 19 points, 12 rebounds and 13 assists in a July win over the New York Liberty. cc: @grayruby @Undisciplined @siggy47

~Tech & ~Science

• Freedman, a former investment banker who has helped companies with corporate governance matters, will replace Andrés Finkielsztain on the Bitfarms board, and was one of three nominees pushed by Riot. The two companies have been locked in a dispute since April, when Riot made an unsolicited $950 million offer to acquire the Canada-based company.

~History with Mystery

• Pietro Maria Orsini, an archbishop of Benevento who in 1724 became Pope Benedict XIII, was at the forefront of this crackdown. A lifelong Benedictine monk, and also the 18th century’s only fully bald pope, he may have approached the subject of wigs from a particularly personal perspective. Yet, like other ‘wig critics’ in the Catholic hierarchy, he saw artificial hair as vain, inappropriate and eccentric.

~Entertainment World

• During the 1992 presidential election, the TV sitcom "Murphy Brown" unwittingly became the center of a political controversy — one that reverberates today. The fervor over GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance’s now-infamous “childless cat ladies” remark had barely died down when Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders fanned the flames again.