Category: News

The Miami Heat‘s arena got renamed a little more than a year ago, and due to recent events, the name is about to change again. After being known as American Airlines Arena for more than two decades, the Heat and cryptocurrency firm FTX struck a deal for the stadium to be renamed FTX Arena.

But on Friday, the Heat and Miami-Dade County, which officially owns the building, announced that they’re on the lookout for a new stadium name. FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection earlier in the day in what was the largest crypto-related bankruptcy in history.

“The reports about FTX and its affiliates are extremely disappointing,” the statement read. “Miami-Dade County and the Miami HEAT are immediately taking action to terminate our business relationships with FTX. We will be working together to find a new naming rights partner for the arena.”

Brian Windhorst of ESPN laid out the financials of the deal, which was supposed to be a 19-year naming rights agreement.

The county, which owns the arena, signed a 19-year, $135 million deal for the bayfront Heat homecourt’s name in 2021. After an initial balloon payment of $14 million, FTX was scheduled to make a $5.5 million payment in January.

The Heat are not the only NBA team that named its stadium after a crypto company. In late 2021, the Lakers and Clippers’ stadium, previously known as Staples Center, was renamed Crypto.com Arena.

In the last days of October, Elon Musk took control of Twitter, but he’s already accomplished so much. No, he hasn’t saved the social media service from racist and bigoted trolls. Quite the opposite. Instead, he’s implemented “bold” moves, hoping to turn the famously unprofitable joint profitable. But those plans have backfired spectacularly, and are now even hurting other businesses.

As per Fortune, on Friday the pharmaceutical company Elli Lilly became the latest victim of practical jokers exploiting — or even showing the underlying problems with — Musk’s Twitter Blue, his since put-on-pause feature, in which users can fork over a mere $8 for a coveted blue check mark. The original checks were there to verify the veracity of accounts belonging to celebrities, journalists, and other public figures. But the new one has perhaps inevitably led to a rash of impersonators. Some of them were satirical. Whoever created one faux-Elli Lilly account sure was.

“We are excited to announce insulin is free now,” said the ersatz account, which bore the name and avatar of the one for the real Elli Lilly.

It might have been a joke — a dark, angry joke about what pharmaceutical companies charge those with diabetes just to survive — but it had real life consequences. No, Elli Lilly didn’t actually announce insulin was now free of charge. Instead, hours after the post, the company’s stock plummeted.

Something similar happened to the weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin, when a joke account claimed they were “halting all weapon sales to Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United States until further investigation into their record of human rights abuses.” Their stocks, too, sank.

In other words, what was supposed to make Twitter profitable may doom it to financial peril.

(Via Fortune)

An interview with Joni Mitchell is about as rare as they come in the music world these days. But when Mitchell does give an interview, it might as well be with Elton John, right? Mitchell did just that, sitting down with John for the latest episode of his Rocket Hour radio show and detailed her plans to release a brand new live album.

This past summer, Joni Mitchell gave a surprise performance heard ’round the world at the Newport Folk Festival. Accompanied by Brandi Carlile, Marcus Mumford, Wynona Judd, and Dawes’ Taylor Goldsmith, Mitchell delivered a 13-song setlist which included staples like “Big Yellow Taxi,” “Help Me,” and “Case Of You.” It’s this performance that Mitchell plans to release on her next live album she tells John. “People out there…you haven’t heard things from the Newport Folk Festival yet, but I think there’s going to be an album coming out of that one?” John said, baiting Mitchell. “Yeah, we’re trying to put that out,” Mitchell confirmed.

Mitchell revealed that she didn’t have any rehearsals ahead of the Newport Folk Festival performance and spoke about re-learning how to play guitar following a 2015 brain aneurysm. “I’m learning. I’m looking at videos that are on the net, to see where to put my fingers. It’s amazing… when you have an aneurysm, you don’t know how to get into a chair. You don’t know how to get out of bed. You have to learn all these things again. You’re going back to infancy, almost.”

She says she was proud of herself for standing up to play electric guitar on “Just Like This Train,” even though she can’t sing it anymore. “I couldn’t sing the key, I’ve become an alto, I’m not a soprano anymore, so I couldn’t sing the song. And I thought people might feel lighted that if I just played the guitar part, but I like the guitar part to that song. So anyway, it was very well received, much to my delight.”

Listen to the full episode of Elton John’s Rocket Hour on Apple Music here.

After Takeoff was tragically killed in Houston last week, family and friends gathered at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena on Friday afternoon for a celebration of life for the late Migos rapper. While the life celebration was large scale in nature at the 21,000 person arena, it was still private and closed off to the media. So today, Takeoff’s uncle and band-member in Migos, Quavo, shared his heartfelt and beautiful tribute to Takeoff.

“It’s so hard to tell you Ima miss you because you always with me and we did everything together,” Quavo wrote on Instagram. “This whole time I’ve been trying to figure what you really are to me because nephew wasn’t it. We hated that word “nephew” or when they said “Unc and Phew” cuz we always knew we were way closer than that and it made me feel old too. But I knew you weren’t my brother cuz you are my sister’s son, so I couldn’t say brother. Now I finally get it… you are OUR angel watching me and watching us this whole time in living form making sure EVERYONE FELT UR LOVE AND HUGS while u here and u made our dreams come true.”

For all of the downright emotional moments in Quavo’s eulogy, there were equally as many words that’ll make you smile. He spoke about their mutual love of pro wrestling and how Takeoff, “Imitated all the wrestlers so good.” And he also encapsulated Takeoff’s whole aura with a simple anecdote: “Whenever we would be running late to the shows He would always say ‘God will get us there on time.’ Some shows God did, some shows we were late. Point is he trusted God though.”

Read Quavo’s complete tribute to Takeoff via his Instagram below.

Notre Dame is coming off of a pair of season-defining wins in the last two weeks. After an embarrassing start to the season that included a loss to Marshall, the Fighting Irish appeared to have gotten things back on track, as they picked up ranked wins over Syracuse and Clemson.

Next up is a rivalry game against Navy, and while the troops aren’t as good as they have been in the past, things can get weird when these two teams take the field. But fortunately for Notre Dame, they have Braden Lenzy, who pulled off one of the catches of the season to haul in a touchdown during the first quarter.

Fighting Irish signal caller Drew Pyne escaped the pocket to evade pressure and launched one down the field. Lenzy should not have been able to get to it thanks to some good positioning by a Navy defensive back, but instead of giving up on the play, he just hugged the opposing player and managed to reel it in for six.

This was Lenzy’s second touchdown grab of the season and the eighth of his college career. I am very confident when I say that he’s not going to have a better one than this.

It’s been over a year since the tragic shooting on the set of Rust, which ended with the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. A shroud of mystery still hangs over the incident, even after an investigation concluded that the gun wouldn’t have gone off had someone not pulled the trigger. Alec Baldwin, who wielded the gun that accidentally fired a live round, has always maintained he didn’t fire the gun, or at least pointed the blame elsewhere. Now he’s taking a more dramatic step in an effort to restore his reputation.

As per Deadline, Baldwin filed a lawsuit on Friday, blaming several crew members for alleged negligence. That includes armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed, first assistant director David Halls, property master Sarah Zachry, and weapons and rounds supplier Seth Kenney. As per the cross-complaint:

“This tragedy happened because live bullets were delivered to the set and loaded into the gun, Gutierrez-Reed failed to check the bullets or the gun carefully, Halls failed to check the gun carefully and yet announced the gun was safe before handing it to Baldwin, and Zachry failed to disclose that Gutierrez-Reed had been acting recklessly off set and was a safety risk to those around her.”

“More than anyone else on that set, Baldwin has been wrongfully viewed as the perpetrator of this tragedy,” Baldwin’s lawyer writes about his client. “By these Cross-Claims, Baldwin seeks to clear his name and hold Cross-Defendants accountable for their misconduct.”

The filing comes mere days before the Santa Fe District Attorney is set to announce how she’ll handle prosecuting the shooting. Meanwhile, amidst all of this — and after reaching a settlement with Hutchins’ family — producers of the film are hoping, however improbably, to get the cursed production back on track.

(Via Deadline)

Is Donald Trump finally down for the count? Knowing his history, probably not. But the disastrous midterm elections, which saw one MAGA candidate after another either underperforming or bombing outright, have made him, once more, persona non grata in the Republican party. Even before Tuesday’s bloodbath, Trump was struggling to retain his pull over the GOP, at one point even threatening to pull an endorsement from a candidate he felt was insufficiently kiss-assy.

As per The New York Times (in a bit teased out by Raw Story), Trump got big mad at Joe Lombardo, the Nevada sheriff who was running for governor. He won the race, but almost without support from Trump. Shortly before the election, Trump rang up GOP chair Ronna McDaniel, complaining about a debate in which Lombardo had recently taken part. Specifically he was mad that Lombardo was backing off of 2020 voter fraud talk. What’s more he had refused to call Trump a “great” president.

“Mr. Trump fumed about withdrawing his endorsement, threatening to throw into chaos one of the nation’s most consequential swing states, a place with three competitive House races and a tossup Senate seat. Ms. McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, pleaded with the former president. She asked him for one hour to fix the situation.”

Trump’s temper tantrum appears to have worked. Shortly thereafter, Lombardo issued a statement in which he indeed called Trump “great.” At a subsequent rally, Lombardo even stepped it up, telling the crowd that he was “the greatest president.”

Whatever one thinks of Trump’s merits while in office, he clearly didn’t help with last week’s failed “red wave.” Quite the contrary, as even at least one Fox News host and the Dilbert guy have pointed out.

(Via NYT and Raw Story)

When the year began, cryptocurrency seemed like it was on the up-and-up. There were even multiple ads with celebrities imploring plebeians to invest. Over the summer, crypto crashed. But that was only the beginning. Earlier this month, FTX, the crypto exchange based in the Bahamas and promoted by Larry David and Tom Brady, collapsed, with customers withdrawing their funds en masse. The company declared bankruptcy on Friday, but before that happened there was some financial scrambling by the company’s top brass. And in the process, a chunk of that money appears to have gone AWOL.

As per Reuters, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried — or “SBF,” as the young, schlubby, shorts-llving entrepreneur likes to be called — secretly transferred $10 billion of customer funds to his trading firm Alameda Research. SBF showed spreadsheets of the transfers to regulatory and legal teams, who then noticed something: Somewhere between $1 billion and $2 billion was no longer accounted for. What’s more, they discovered what some called “backdoor” shenanigans:

They said the “backdoor” allowed Bankman-Fried to execute commands that could alter the company’s financial records without alerting other people, including external auditors. This set-up meant that the movement of the $10 billion in funds to Alameda did not trigger internal compliance or accounting red flags at FTX, they said.

SBF has denied any underhandedness, and even claimed ignorance of the secret transfers:

In text messages to Reuters, Bankman-Fried said he “disagreed with the characterization” of the $10 billion transfer.
“We didn’t secretly transfer,” he said. “We had confusing internal labeling and misread it,” he added, without elaborating.
Asked about the missing funds, Bankman-Fried responded: “???”

It’s not known where those missing funds went, but there has been some wild speculation. Some believe the money was taken by SBF himself.

One rumor, reported by finance industry news site Benzinga, is that SBF is heading for Argentina.

Why Argentina? Perhaps because they have a decentralized exchange system where one can swap crypto for cash, including USD.

The mess at FTX caught the attention of another enterprising tycoon whose own empire is also crumbling: new Twitter honcho Elon Musk.

(Via Reuters)

Holders have a high-risk, low-reward job. Basically every time a football is snapped to them, their job is to make sure it gets set perfectly so their kicker is able to boot the ball through the uprights, whether it is on a field goal attempt or an extra point. If they don’t do their job perfectly, they run the risk of messing up the entire thing, which usually leads to their kicker getting scapegoated.

On very, very, very rare occasions, holders get asked to do something else, and one of two things happen. Either the decision works out perfectly, or it is a total disaster. And on Friday night during USC’s game against Colorado, things went so well that the Trojan holder perfectly executed a backflip.

USC quarterback Caleb Williams hit Tahj Williams for a 61-yard touchdown in the third quarter, which extended the Trojan lead to 32-10. Instead of taking the essentially guaranteed point on a PAT, USC holder and backup punter Will Rose took the snap and just ran it in untouched. He was in a pretty good mood over this and decided to bust out a backflip as a result.

That’s a good backflip! Anyway, he got called for a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty, but in my opinion, it’s totally worth it.

Cardi B posted a touching tribute to the late rapper Takeoff on social media, following his Atlanta funeral this afternoon. Takeoff, as a member of Migos, was also a relative to Quavo and Cardi B’s husband, Offset, making the loss all the more personal for those involved.

In the Instagram post, she included a number of pictures of Takeoff, born Kirsnick Khari Ball. She also shared touching messages between the two of them, including one where he wrote “love you too 4L & after thank u sis” — which she also ended the caption with.

“Takeoff your untimely passing has brought a great deal of pain and sorrow to so many lives,” Cardi wrote. “The impact you had in this world was so considerable and we have struggled to grasp this tragedy. I am heartbroken but I am grateful for all the precious memories we got to share while you were here with us. This has truly been a nightmare and the pain is incomparable.”

“As a Migos fan it hurts me to look at pictures and videos of y’all together, and hearing y’all songs that changed the music industry and moved the culture and had the clubs lit,” she continued. “It hurts because I know it will never be the same again—but I know your bros and y’all fans will make sure the world never forgets the impact you made. I will remember your remarkable talent and your dope ass personality. I pray that you are at peace and in paradise because you deserve every bit of it.”

Read Cardi B’s full tribute to Takeoff below.

Cardi B is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.