John McCain's recovery could take longer than we think

• Mark Abadi
 

• 15h
• 16,868
 

John McCain. Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

John McCain's recovery could take longer than initially expected, medical experts told The New York Times on Sunday, two days after the Arizona senator underwent surgery to remove a blood clot from above his left eye.

McCain's office suggested in a statement last week that the senator would be out for a week recovering in Arizona. But two neurosurgeons told The Times that the typical recovery time for such a procedure was "a few weeks" or more.

That's bad news for Senate Republicans, who are delaying a vote on their healthcare bill until McCain returns to Washington. Two Republican senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky, have already said they will not vote to proceed on the measure, meaning that Republicans need McCain to have a chance at reaching the necessary 50-vote threshold.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had hoped to hold a procedural vote on the bill, the Better Care Reconciliation Act, next week.

"While John is recovering, the Senate will continue our work on legislative items and nominations, and will defer consideration of the Better Care Act," McConnell said in a statement on Saturday.

McCain's office has not disclosed any further information about the surgery since it was announced, and surgeons at the hospital are not granting interviews, leading to speculation over how doctors discovered the blood clot. According to one of the neurosurgeons interviewed by The Times, the type of blood clot McCain had is usually discovered when the patient has symptoms and not as the result of a routine physical as McCain's office said.

SEE ALSO: 'Another shoe just dropped': John McCain says more bombshells on Trump and Russia are coming

DON'T MISS: People were left utterly confused by Sen. John McCain's bizarre questioning of James Comey

NOW WATCH: ABC calls out Kellyanne Conway over Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer after previously denying any contact with Russians

h

More: John McCain Blood Clot Healthcare Better Care Reconciliation Act 

Ethereum's share of the cryptocurrency market has exploded

• Frank Chaparro
 

• 18h
• 10,961

Autonomous

Ethereum is gobbling up share in the cryptocurrency market. 

A new report by Autonomous NEXT, a financial technology analytics service, shows that Ethereum's percentage of the total cryptocurrency market has sharply risen since the beginning of the year.

In January it stood at approximately 5%. As of June 22, its marketcap as a percentage of the entire market rose to 30%.

Ethereum's impressive rise has led to a dramatic fall in bitcoin's marketcap as a percentage of the market. It has declined from about 85% at the beginning of the year to just under 40% as of late June.  Up until mid June, Ethereum was on track to surpass bitcoin as the world's largest cryptocurrency by market cap, according to Coindesk, but its share of the market has since pulled back. 

Still, the shift from bitcoin to Ethereum reflects a change in what the cryptocurrency industry wants from blockchain tech, according to the report.

"Early phase of cryptocurrency market development focused on who will be the “digital gold” – and Bitcoin won through the largest developer and adoption ecosystem," the report said. "However, current battle is for other functionalities, such as global decentralized computing or smart contracts infrastructure."

Ethereum, unlike bitcoin, wasn't built to simply function as a "digital gold." According to Paul McNeal, a bitcoin evangelist, the Ethereum blockchain was built as a platform on which two parties could enter into a so-called smart contract without a third party. As a result, it can be used as a currency and it can "represent virtual shares, assets, proof of membership, and more." 

The multifaceted functionality of Ethereum has many folks in financial services bullish on its future. Mike McGovern, the new head of Investor Services Fintech Offerings at Brown Brothers Harriman & Co, is one such person. 

"Ethereum is not only cheaper than bitcoin, it is also more robust and has more applications outside of simply financial transactions," he said in a recent interview with Business Insider. 

A  survey recently cited by Nathaniel Popper in The New York Times indicates that a lot of businesses are singing a similar tune. Almost 94% of surveyed firms said they feel positive about the state of ether tokens. Only 49% of firms surveyed had a positive feeling about bitcoin. 

Get the latest Bitcoin price here.

SEE ALSO: BITCOIN MINER: The rise of Ethereum could help some bitcoin miners

The revised Senate healthcare bill is already on the verge of imploding

• Bob Bryan
 

• 21h
• 14,277
 

Senate Majority Leader McConnell. Thomson Reuters

Skeptical Republican senators bristled at the newly updated version of the Senate healthcare bill released Thursday morning, putting its future in doubt.

Almost immediately, two Republican senators came out against a procedural vote that would get the bill to the floor, meaning Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and GOP leaders cannot afford to lose another vote.

A third GOP defection would prevent the bill from even being considered by the broader Senate and would most likely require the Better Care Reconciliation Act to be substantially overhauled — or scrapped.

Here's a rundown of the senators to watch in the debate and their current status on the vote:

• Susan Collins (NO): Collins tweeted soon after the release of the updated BCRA that she would not support a motion to proceed: "Still deep cuts to Medicaid in Senate bill. Will vote no on MTP. Ready to work w/ GOP & Dem colleagues to fix flaws in ACA."
• Rand Paul (NO): A longtime critic of the bill, Paul said soon after the update came out that he would not vote for the motion to proceed.
• Rob Portman (UNDECIDED): Portman's office confirmed he was reviewing the bill and would wait for a score from the Congressional Budget Office. His chief concern is deep cuts to Medicaid funding proposed in the bill.
• Lisa Murkowski (UNCLEAR): Despite a substantial funding proposal for Alaska in the newest version of the BCRA, Murkowski remains on the fence. The senator has taken issue with the BCRA's cuts to Medicaid and the freeze of funding to Planned Parenthood. Murkowski was seen meeting with McConnell and Sens. Dean Heller and Shelley Moore Capito after the bill's release.
• Dean Heller (UNCLEAR): Heller, who is up for reelection in 2018 in Nevada, a state Hillary Clinton won, has concerns about the Medicaid cuts.
• Shelley Moore Capito (UNCLEAR): Capito has expressed similar concerns about potentially slashed Medicaid funding.
• Mike Lee (UNDECIDED): Lee supported an amendment from Sen. Ted Cruz that would allow insurers to sell plans that did not comply with the Affordable Care Act's regulations. The modified version included in the newest BCRA version did not immediately get Lee on board. "Just FYI — The Cruz-Lee Amendment has not been added to BCRA. Something based on it has, but I have not seen it or agreed to it," Lee tweeted. "I am withholding judgment and look forward to reading it."

SEE ALSO: Republicans just released a new healthcare bill — here are all the changes

NOW WATCH: Listen to the leaked audio of Australia's prime minister mocking Trump

h

More: Better Care Reconciliation Act Obamacare Obamacare Repeal

A $4.4 trillion investing giant that's changing money management just named a new CEO

• Graham Rapier
 

• 19h
• 3,456

F. William McNabb is stepping down as CEO of Vanguard.Tim Shaffer/Reuters

F. William McNabb will be stepping down as CEO of Vanguard Group.

He will be replaced in January by Vanguard’s current CIO Mortimer J. “Tim” Buckley and transition to chairman next year before also passing that role to Buckley.

McNabb, who joined the company in 1986, became CEO in 2008.

Under his leadership, Vanguard’s assets under management have exploded from $1.25 trillion almost threefold to $4.4 trillion. Last year, investors poured $277 billion into Vanguard funds — 54% of all new money put into equity funds. Vanguard is now the second largest American money manager behind BlackRock.

 “As the firm continues to grow, evolve and expand globally, it is the right time for a new leader and the Board is unanimous in its belief that Tim Buckley is the ideal next chief executive for Vanguard," McNabb said in a statement. "I have worked alongside Tim for many years and he brings a strong passion for serving Vanguard clients and crew, a global mindset, and significant leadership experience in all facets of our operations.”

Buckley, who is currently chief investment officer, joined the firm in 1991 as an assistant to John Bogle, the legendary investor who was chairman at the time. Bogle founded Vanguard in 1974, creating the first index fund and allowing investors to passively invest in the stock market by tracking a market index.

Index investing has been revolutionary for Main Street investors, allowing them to bypass high-fee investment managers, many of which have not performed well. The firms that specialize in index investing have become giants of the industry, meanwhile.

NOW WATCH: Barclays strategist: You can expect a major department store to fail in the next 18 months

h

More: Vanguard Money Management Asset Management Private Equity

Singapore's economy has been growing much more slowly than people thought

• David Scutt, Business Insider Australia

• 14h
• 1,156

FILE PHOTO: GuocoLand Ltd's mixed-use Tanjong Pagar Centre, soon to be the tallest building in the city-state, towers over other buildings in the central business district of Singapore Thomson Reuters

Singapore’s economy continued to splutter in the June quarter, growing at a far slower pace than expected.

According to advanced estimates offered by the Singaporean government, the economy grew 0.4% in seasonally adjusted annualised terms, missing forecasts for an expansion of 1.1%.

Despite the large miss it was still a significant improvement on the 1.9% contraction reported in the March quarter, and ensured that the economy avoided falling into recession.

From a year earlier, GDP expanded by 2.5%, unchanged from the previous quarter but below the 2.8% rate expected.

The government said that manufacturing expanded 8% over the 12 months, while services grew by a smaller 1.7%. That was offset by weakness in construction which fell 5.6% over the same period

This table shows the recent trend.

Singapore Ministry of Trade and Industry via Business Insider Australia

The government will release updated figures in its Economic Survey of Singapore that will be released in August. 

Read the original article on Business Insider Australia. Copyright 2017. Follow Business Insider Australia on Twitter.

MORE FROM BUSINESS INSIDER AUSTRALIA:

• The 10 most important things in the world right now
• The Aussie dollar just hit its highest level since the US election
• AUSTRALIAN STOCKS CLOSE THE WEEK AHEAD: Here's what you need to know
• 2 charts that show China's importance to the global coal industry
• This chart is more evidence that there's something strange going on with wage growth in Australia

SEE ALSO: Singapore's 'Uber of lifesaving' app is a simple way to stop people from dying on the street

NOW WATCH: An economist explains what could happen if Trump pulls the US out of NAFTA

h

More: Singapore Markets Business Insider Australia

Janet Yellen went to Congress and got grilled about the Fed's leaks and secret speeches

• Pedro Nicolaci da Costa
 

• 23h
• 1,941

Federal Reserve Board Chairwoman Janet Yellen speaks during a news conference after the Fed releases its monetary policy decisions in Washington, U.S., June 14, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen needs to get her story straight.

Yellen faced a tough grilling on the central bank’s ethics and communications policies during congressional testimony from Rep. Ann Wagner. Wagner laid out a number of troubling instances of dubious ethical behavior — including leaks of private information to investors and private speeches to money-making audiences.

She was speaking before the House Financial Services Committee, which has been investigating the Fed over potentially criminal leaks of sensitive internal information to private sector consultants. 

In particular, Wagner asked Yellen about the practice. The Fed's official policy on external communications, drafted as recently as 2011 and only after reporting on other Fed leaks, states the following:

"Committee participants will strive to ensure that their contacts with members of the public do not provide any profit-making person or organization with a prestige advantage over its competitors. They will consider this principle carefully and rigorously in scheduling meetings with anyone who might benefit financially from apparently exclusive contacts with Federal Reserve officials and in considering invitations to speak at meetings that are sponsored by profit-making organizations or that are closed to the public and the media."

Business Insider reported in April that Stanley Fischer, the Fed’s Vice Chair gave such private remarks to the Brookings Institution. While Brookings is a non-profit, many of its donors, whose executives get to attend the speech, are private corporations, including financial firms.

The Fed says it is commonplace for Fed officials to give speeches to private groups that include market participants who stand to make millions of dollars on trades based on their insights on Fed policy.

And Yellen said Fischer had not violated the Fed’s policy on external communications because his remarks were related to regulation, not monetary policy. That's an important distinction because even minor shifts in the Fed's interest rate outlook can have broad implications for financial markets globally, meaning a lot of cash is at stake. 

But two participants of the Brookings conference said that Fischer did take questions from the audience on the issue of interest rates.

Yellen's assertion that Fischer did not speak on monetary policy exposes yet another flaw in the Fed's policy of letting its officials speak in closed meetings.

It also means that either she needs to communicate better with her No. 2 official about what he's up to. Saying he didn't talk monetary policy, when he took questions on monetary policy opens her up to the charge that she deliberately misled Congress on the key issue of the Fed's transparency.

The Federal Reserve declined to comment.

Wagner also asked about a leak scandal that began in 2012 and never really ended, but which led to the abrupt resignation of Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker. 

 Yellen largely ducked the issue. Congress needs to keep asking.

SEE ALSO: I tried to ask Yellen about the Fed leak — and the question echoed for longer than I expected

NOW WATCH: Here's how Google Maps knows when there is traffic

h

More: Federal Reserve Yellen Leaks Ethics 

The Echo Dot came out on top as the best-selling product from Amazon Prime Day 2017

• Connie Chen, Insider Picks
 

• 24h
• 1,448

The Insider Picks team writes about stuff we think you’ll like. Business Insider has affiliate partnerships, so we get a share of the revenue from your purchase.

Amazon

Another Prime Day has come and gone, and this year's event was the biggest global shopping event in Amazon's history. Sales grew by more than 60% compared to last year's Prime Day. In addition, more new members joined Prime on July 11 than on any single day in Amazon history. 

With 30 hours to shop, Prime members flocked especially to Amazon devices like the Echo,Fire tablets, and Kindle devices. 

The most popular purchase of the event was the Amazon Echo Dot.

According to Amazon, members purchased seven times more Echo devices globally than on Prime Day 2016. The Echo Dot also claimed the title for the best-selling product from any manufacturer in any category across Amazon globally.

Outside of Amazon devices, Prime members around the world loved everything from video game consoles to DNA tests. In the US and Canada, top sellers included the Instant Pot Pressure Cooker. In the UK, it was the TP-Link Wi-Fi Smart Plug and Sony PlayStation 4. It looks like shoppers in France and Belgium are big "Game of Thrones" fans and went for the Complete Season 1-6 Blu-Ray Pack, while shoppers in China bought a surprising number of Fisher Price Soothe & Glow Seahorses. 

If you want to see more from Insider Picks, we're collecting emails for an upcoming newsletter. You'll be the first to hear about the stuff we cover. Click here to sign up .

Disclosure: This post is brought to you by Business Insider's Insider Picks team. We aim to highlight products and services you might find interesting, and if you buy them, we get a small share of the revenue from the sale from our commerce partners. We frequently receive products free of charge from manufacturers to test. This does not drive our decision as to whether or not a product is featured or recommended. We operate independently from our advertising sales team. We welcome your feedback. Have something you think we should know about? Email us at insiderpicks@businessinsider.com.

Read the original article on Insider Picks. Copyright 2017. Follow Insider Picks on Twitter.

MORE FROM INSIDER PICKS:

• Take over $100 off a cordless Dyson vacuum — and more of today's best deals from around the web
• This discreet wearable makes me feel a lot safer wherever I travel alone — here's how it works
• The best bed frames you can buy on Amazon

SEE ALSO: 11 Amazon Prime Day deals that are still going on