The husband of a Massachusetts woman who has been missing since New Year’s Day was charged on Tuesday with her murder after authorities earlier said they had found a knife and blood in the basement of their home, a prosecutor said on Tuesday.

Brian Walshe, 47, was already being held on $500,000 bail after being arrested on Jan. 8 on a charge of misleading a police investigation into the disappearance of Ana Walshe in a case that has garnered national headlines.

Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey said a murder warrant has now been issued against Brian Walshe in the death of Ana Walshe, a 39-year-old mother of three who has been missing from Cohasset since about Jan. 1.

Walshe will be arraigned Wednesday in Quincy District Court. An assistant for his lawyer, Tracy Miner, declined to comment on the charge, saying her “focus is on defending Mr. Walshe in court.”

Ana Walshe, who worked in real estate company Tishman Speyer’s Washington office, was reported missing on Jan. 4 by her employer and husband.

At the time, Brian Walshe was on house arrest awaiting sentencing in Boston federal court after admitting in 2021 he sold forgeries of Andy Warhol art based on paintings he had taken from a former college classmate and never returned.

Brian Walshe initially said had taken a ride-hailing service to the airport for a flight to Washington for work, authorities have said.

But during a Jan. 9 court hearing, Assistant Norfolk District Attorney Lynn Beland said authorities found no evidence she actually took such a ride and that a plane ticket for Jan. 3 went unused.

Beland said investigators later discovered that Brian Walshe on Jan. 2 bought $450 of cleaning supplies at a Home Depot. When police obtained a warrant to search his home, they found blood in basement and a bloody knife, she said.

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Grammy Award-winning rapper Cardi B has until March 1 to complete 15 days of mandatory community service over a 2018 assault at a strip club, a New York City judge ruled on Tuesday.

The Queens District Attorney’s Office told Reuters the hearing was a “compliance update” and the judge had asked Cardi B to come in because she had not completed her 15 days of community service as per her plea deal.

The “WAP” artist arrived at the Queens County Criminal Court wearing a white form-fitting dress and long white coat.

“Personally and professionally, Cardi is dedicated to community service and charitable endeavors. She therefore appreciates the court giving her until March 1st to complete her community service commitment in Queens, New York,” Cardi B’s attorney said in a statement.

Police said that Cardi B, whose real name is Belcalis Almanzar, got into an argument with female bartenders at a club. She had accused one of them of having an affair with her husband and fellow rapper, Offset.

The 30-year-old rapper pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor assault charges last year after being accused of starting a fight with two bartenders, claiming she wanted to be a better example for her children.

“Part of growing up and maturing is being accountable for your actions,” she said after her hearing in September.

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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday he had no knowledge at the time of any classified documents taken to the Penn Biden Center, after some classified documents from President Joe Biden’s time as vice president were discovered at the center. read more

While outside of government, Blinken served as managing director of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, which was affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania but located in Washington.

“Just as you heard from President Biden about a week ago I was surprised to learn that there were any government records taken to the Penn Biden Center. I had no knowledge of it at the time,” Blinken said when asked about the documents, adding he would cooperate fully with a Justice Department review.

A potential juror in a case brought by Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) shareholders over CEO Elon Musk’s 2018 tweets that he had secured funding to take the electric care maker private said on Tuesday that the billionaire was “a little off his rocker.”

The statement came as U.S. District Court Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco attempted to select an impartial jury to decide whether Musk’s statement that funding was “secured” amounted to fraud and cost investors “billions.”

Chen homed in on a handful of panelists who said in questionnaires that they viewed Musk as “crazy” and “arrogant.”

“I think he’s a little off his rocker, on a personal level,” said one juror, referring to Musk’s management of Twitter, which he took over in October.

That potential juror and others said they could set their views aside and judge the case impartially if selected.

Panelists were asked ahead of time about their opinions of Musk and whether they own a Tesla vehicle.

“I truly believe you can’t judge a person until you walk in their shoes,” said another potential juror, who had said Musk seemed “narcissistic.”

Since rising to prominence as head of Tesla, Musk has gained a reputation for unpredictable behavior, from anointing himself Tesla’s “technoking” to naming one of his children with a symbol to his stated dream of colonizing Mars.

Investors sued in August 2018, shortly after Musk posted on Twitter that he was considering taking Tesla private at $420 per share. “Funding secured,” he said.

In another tweet the same day, he wrote, “Investor support is confirmed,” adding, “only reason why this is not certain is that it’s contingent on a shareholder vote.”

Chen has ruled that those statements were untrue and reckless. The jury will decide if Musk’s words mattered to investors, whether he acted knowingly and whether to award damages and in what amount.

The defendants, who also include seven current and former Tesla directors, have denied wrongdoing.

They have said in court papers that they will argue that Musk had good reason to believe funding for the deal was secured.

The billionaire had met Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the managing director of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, on multiple occasions, according to the court filing, which also said Al-Rumayyan had urged Musk to take Tesla private and offered up to $60 billion in backing.

Musk may take the stand in the case, according to court documents, along with Oracle Corp (ORCL.N) co-founder Larry Ellison and James Murdoch, son of Fox Corp (FOXA.O) Chairman Rupert Murdoch.

The trial is expected to last around three weeks.

Trysta Barwig, Megan Zuckerman, Chloë Grande, and Patricia Kolesa.

Trysta Barwig, Megan Zuckerman, Rachel Sulman Photography, Patricia Kolesa

• Since 2020 adults aged 25 to 34 are living at home at higher rates than past generations, said the Census Bureau.
• Four millennials talk about what contributed to their decision to live with their parents.
• Some are saving for a down payment, while others don’t consider homeownership a marker of adulthood.

Since the onset of the pandemic, young millennials are living with their parents at rates not seen since 1972, and they seem to be in no rush to move out.

According to the US Census Bureau, about 18% of men and 12% of women ages 25 to 34 were living with their parents in 2022.

For the roughly 48% of 18 to 29 year olds the US Census Bureau estimates are living with their parents, no rent can mean spending savings on luxury handbags and watches, according to a report about discretionary spending by Morgan Stanley research. 

But for many of their slightly older millennial counterparts, living at home means saving money for a down payment for their own place, waiting out high mortgage rates and sky-high housing prices, and prioritizing spending on experiences like vacations and concerts rather than material goods.

There’s also a shift happening: Americans well into their 30s aren’t afraid of being labeled immature or unsuccessful for living at home.

Trysta Barwig, a project manager for a home-improvement store in Atlanta and one of three millennial women in the US Insider spoke with who are still living at home, said she’d experienced the shift in her own thinking.

“I think back in the day people used to look down on you for staying at home with your parents like you’re some kind of loser, but I’ve got a job, I’ve got a salary,” Barwig said. “I don’t see why I need to live on my own.”

And the trend isn’t limited to the US. Right across the border in Canada, rents also have spiked. Insider spoke to a woman who moved from her own place in Toronto to live at home in Ontario to save money.

All four women opened up about how much money they’re saving by doing it, what they’re prioritizing in their futures, and what they think about their living arrangements.

Financial goals, and cultural traditions, keep her at home

Barwig.

Trysta Barwig

Barwig, 33, has almost always lived with her parents.

“In my culture — I’m from Malawi — you stay home until you get married,” she said.

Barwig tried living on her own, about two years ago, in a $2,000-a-month studio in Atlanta.

“I knew I could afford it, but it was a lot of money,” said Barwig, who in addition to working as a project manager for a home-improvement store runs a Hawaii travel blog on the side. Barwig asked not to name her employer and wouldn’t share her salary, but Indeed.com lists the average salary at Lowe’s for Barwig’s role as $49,456 a year.

She doesn’t consider herself a frivolous spender, and decided the expense of the monthly rent payment outweighed the pros of independent living. In early 2022 she decided to move into her parents’ home in Atlanta to save up for a down payment and, she hopes, wait out higher mortgage rates.

There are other pluses, too. Barwig said she’s able to contribute the maximum amount to her 401(k) and other benefits through work because she isn’t paying a huge sum for rent. She’s also able to spend more on experiences, like traveling to Hawaii three times a year.

Barwig contributes $200 a month to her household to help cover the electricity bill. Her other monthly expenses include her phone bill, health insurance, and car insurance. She’s paid off her student loans and doesn’t have any credit-card debt. Barwig estimates she’s saving about $30,000 a year.

“I don’t really spend a lot of money,” she said. “You’re never going to see me at a restaurant spending $50 on a dish.”

The pandemic brought her home, but the savings make her stay

Zuckerman.

Megan Zuckerman

In March 2020, Megan Zuckerman moved home to the Jersey Shore from her apartment with two roommates in Manhattan’s Flatiron neighborhood, where she paid $2,000 a month.

The 28-year-old, who had been living in New York City for about seven years at that point, was used to being more independent. The disappointment of moving home was overwhelming.

She was planning on signing a new lease in Manhattan when things got a bit more back to normal.

“But then I started realizing that I was saving so much money, and it was going to be really hard to go back to spending so much on rent,” she said.

Zuckerman works as a public relations and events manager at an educational consultancy, where she pulls in six figures. She’s been able to maintain the job as a mostly remote employee at the Jersey Shore, where her parents live.

She looked to a few of her older friends as inspiration for her next decision: to continue living at home as she saves up for a down payment, ideally for a studio on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

“I really don’t want to have a crazy-high mortgage, so I think it’d be better to keep waiting and then put down as much of a down payment as possible,” Zuckerman said. She’s hoping to save about $100,000 before moving out.

She contributes to the grocery bill and often picks up the tab when her family dines out, she said. And living at home has freed her up financially to lean more into experiences, like splurging on Bruce Springsteen tickets and going to more nonprofit fundraisers, which Zuckerman said usually start at about $100 a ticket.

She has FOMO — fear of missing out — when she knows her friends who still live in the city are going out, but the savings help her overcome the feeling.

She’s focusing on her health, and starting her own business

Grande.

Rachel Sulman Photography

Chloë Grande moved 19 times in 10 years, but her most recent experience with a negligent landlord in Toronto pushed her to her limit.

She broke her lease and moved home to St. Catharines, Ontario, right across the border from Buffalo, New York, in April 2021.

On top of that, the coronavirus pandemic pushed Grande, then working in corporate communications, inward.

“I really thought deeply about my values, my purpose. So I had a lot of thinking, which is also connected to my relapse with an eating disorder over the pandemic,” Grande said. “I really put my health as a priority rather than these external goals that I felt pressured to achieve before the pandemic.”

Grande quit her gig, focused on her health, and decided to launch her own business in early 2022 as an eating-disorder-recovery blogger, writer, and speaker. The transition not only saw her leave behind a steady paycheck but also changed her big-picture priorities.

“My spending habits now are mostly directed towards my business,” she said. “That’s become the priority and dream rather than saving for a down payment.”

When she was bringing in 80,000 Canadian dollars in her corporate-communications role, the 29-year-old is now hoping to make 20,000 to 30,000 Canadian dollars, or about $15,000 to $22,000, in her first year of self-employment.

She pays her mom 500 Canadian dollars a month for a separate apartment in the home, and she still has savings from her corporate job when she’s ready to buy a home of her own. But she’s in no hurry.

She said studying abroad and talking to friends from different cultures that don’t idealize homeownership, such as in Germany and France, where people often remain renters, had helped her to change her expectations.

“I feel I don’t need to own a house for that to be a marker of success,” she added, “or a sign that I’m a proper adult.”

Her friends live at home, so she’s in no big hurry

Kolesa.

Patricia Kolesa

Patricia Kolesa has never lived too far from home, straying only when she lived in the dorms at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, the same town she grew up in.

After graduating in 2019, Kolesa decided to move back in with her parents as she pursued her master’s degree online in human nutrition. She’s been living at home ever since.

The cost of housing in New Jersey is far higher than the national average — 38%, according to RentCafe — a fact that Kolesa is acutely aware of. Now, she and her boyfriend, both 26 and both living with their parents, are saving for a down payment and forgoing the high rents in the area.

She feels more at ease living at home because a lot of her friends are doing the same. “Just having them within close proximity has been really another reason for me to stay,” she said.

The ability to live at home while working full time as a registered dietitian at an acute-care hospital, where she makes about $65,000 annually, has also helped her to afford to travel the world, with stops in Ecuador, Portugal, and Turks and Caicos since mid-2021.

Kolesa doesn’t have any student loans and said her big expenses at the moment were healthcare, auto repairs, and credit-card bills.

She estimates she’s putting about $30,000 a year into her bank account, and she wants to invest more in the stock market in 2023 to diversify her income streams. She is also saving to start her own business as a dietician to counsel clients on healthy eating habits.

Still, she does want to buy her own place one day.

“Unfortunately, something a lot of people that I’m close to wish for is another crash,” she said, referring to the subprime-mortgage crisis. “So then the prices go down, which is not an easy thing to say, but it’d be easier for us to have the ability to purchase a home.”

If you or someone you know has an eating disorder, call the National Eating Disorders Association Helpline (1-800-931-2237) on weekdays for support, resources, and information about treatment options. In crisis situations, NEDA offers 24/7 support — just text “NEDA” to 741741.

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• Jean Chalopin is co-creator of Inspector Gadget and the chairman of Bahamas-based Deltec Bank.
• Chalopin secured a secret $50 million loan for Deltec from an FTX-related entity in 2021, according to Forbes.
• It is one of many lucrative deals between Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX and Chalopin’s firms.

One would not be blamed for not having the kids’ show “Inspector Gadget” on their FTX collapse bingo card, but apparently the two are connected. 

Jean Chalopin, one of the minds behind several children’s shows including the 1980s cartoon, is the chairman of Deltec. The Bahamian bank’s parent company secured a secret $50 million loan from an entity connected to FTX through former executive Ryan Salame, Forbes reported on Monday.

Deltec International Group received millions from Norton Hall, an entity run by Salame, in October of 2021, Chalopin confirmed to the news outlet. 

You may not have heard of Deltec, but the obscure financial services provider was once on its way to becoming the most important crypto bank with clients like FTX and Tether. The mysterious offshore bank said that it was holding nearly $2 billion for Tether in 2018.

Bankman-Fried’s Alameda Research trading firm later invested $11.5 million in another Chalopin-owned entity called Moonstone through a holding company. Chalopin is on the board of both Moonstone and Deltec. The investment from Alameda was for 10% of the bank, valuing Moonstone at $115 million, Protos reported in late November.

Moonstone was formerly known as Farmington State Bank, a small rural banking institution and a mysterious piece of the FTX puzzle in the wake of the exchange’s collapse. 

Chalopin said that the deal signified “the recognition, by one of the world’s most innovative financial leaders, of the value of what we are aiming to achieve,” according to a press release. 

Moonstone, which is located in a 140-person farming town in Washington state, had roughly $50 million in FTX funds, per a court filing in December. The crypto exchange became Moonstone’s largest customer. 

Chalopin’s companies and FTX, along with the bankrupt exchange’s related entities, forged a lucrative relationship, according to Forbes. Deltec sponsored FTX’s Crypto Bahamas Conference in late April, with Chapolin as a guest speaker alongside Tony Blair and Bill Clinton. 

In the sponsorship announcement, Chalopin described Deltec as a “long-time friend of FTX.”

“It is is our pleasure to support them,” he added. “As the first financial institution in The Bahamas to have supported blockchain developments and adopted digital currencies, our participation in Crypto Bahamas is a great fit as we work with regulators, industry experts and entrepreneurs to advocate for innovation and positive disruption.”

After Deltec decided to pivot to digital assets in 2018, Chalopin and his associates assisted Bahamian authorities with their own crypto efforts and helped the government draft crypto-friendly legislation.

“They were one of the first regulators to put together something,” Chalopin previously told Forbes. “And that attracted FTX.”

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As kids, most of us learned how to play an on-the-fly version of chicken: two players are on a collision course that can be avoided only if one of the parties swerves. The responsible party is branded a “chicken” for demonstrating an aversion to risk, a deficit of courage, a desire to choose compromise over mutually assured destruction. The winner proves the boldest, if most likely to allow hubris to overtake rationality.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

As we grow up, the idea of chicken evolves into a game of conflicting goals rather than literal bodies hurtling toward one another, with the loser more often described as the first to “blink.” And these days, the so-called grown-ups may have overdone their exposure to partisan Botox—and now they can’t even flinch. It’s a common affliction in Washington, where the pursuit of the ideal renders nerves numb if not fried, and the cost is a staring contest that has few signs of abating.

On Thursday, according to the Treasury Department, Washington is set to hit its limit on borrowing, meaning money already spent whose bills come due. Now, Treasury can take so-called extraordinary measures to kick the can down the road for a few months, but the $31.4 trillion limit on the national credit card isn’t going away. The United States is the only industrialized nation to have such an arbitrary institution as a debt ceiling, but the players who keep ending up in the same standoff aren’t exactly looking to kill it.

House Republicans, led by newly elevated Speaker Kevin McCarthy, say they won’t move the debt ceiling without corresponding cuts in spending, something President Joe Biden and fellow Democrats insist is not on the table as part of these talks. House Republicans have just five votes to spare at the moment, while Democrats control the Senate and the White House. It’s a moment that seems to demand compromise, but that’s not in the offing, thanks in large part to McCarthy’s nakedly political concession to his hard-right flank that the House would leverage the debt ceiling to shrink the federal government. Democrats, who to this point have proved unified, say Republicans are trying to take the economy hostage to placate their performative right.

But, as has been said plenty of times before, the debt ceiling has nothing to do with future spending. The Treasury Department needs to borrow money to pay for things already shoved out the door. This is simply a draw to cover money spent months ago. Congress in December considered boosting the borrowing limit to delay the fight until well into the new session, hoping calmer heads might then prevail. They failed, setting up an early test for how well the new Republican-led House can plug into the existing political-economic ecosystem.

Put simply, the debt ceiling has to be raised, one way or another. Failing to do so puts the entire U.S. economy at risk. The credit rating for the United States would face an immediate downgrade. Hedge funds and retirement accounts alike would be hit hard. Money for new houses, schools, and bridges would get more expensive to borrow, a trend already going in the wrong direction as the Fed tightens access to cheap capital. One estimate suggested GDP would drop 4%, families would lose $15 trillion in wealth, and unemployment would climb back to 9%.

The politicians who trigger this crisis would rightly get the brunt of the blame, and no one in the general public cares much about caucus promises when they see their 401(k) plummet in value. Carve-outs that cover automatic spending like Social Security could insulate some individuals, but critics on all sides could find a winning message in highlighting what gets cut off, such as social safety programs or national defense efforts.

Which brings us back to that potentially fatal game of chicken, or Who Will Blink First? The House Republicans’ right flank demanded that McCarthy start down this collision course. In turn, they made him Speaker. But, as has been the case far too often, the GOP doesn’t exactly have a matrix in hand for when their leader should stand down or when to upshift. Defining a win is something they forgot to do before reaching in the henhouse. Some of the demands on the table are frankly unworkable, and Democrats aren’t exactly in the mood to cede their path, either. After all, cutting Social Security and Medicare may play well in some deep-red corners of the country, but would almost certainly be calamitous for either party looking to win in the swing districts that determine majorities.

All of which is to say this: thank goodness Treasury can sidestep the limits and use some—ahem—creative ways to cover the costs already incurred for a beat. Still, it’s not a long term solution. Everyone has known this needed hike to the national credit card was coming, is still coming, and will come again after that. No level of tinkering with spending is going to change the fact that publicly held debt in this country is equal to its entire GDP, a huge spike from the roughly 40% ratio in 2008 and a ratio unseen since World War II. The Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent investments helped pull down the United States into the debt-laden fraternity of Japan, Italy, and Greece, for sure, but those dollars are already spent. Now, it’s time to pay for popular programs that drew support from both parties.

Which leaves McCarthy in the position of possibly working with Democrats over the outraged shouting of members of his own caucus. It may be the only way for lawmakers to end this unnecessary staring contest without crashing the economy, or into each other.

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