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The Supreme Court is poised to overturn the constitutionally protected right to abortion ensured by the nearly 50-year-old Roe v. Wade decision, according to a leaked initial draft of the new opinion obtained by Politico.
The draft is written by Justice Samuel Alito, with the concurrence of at least four other conservative members of the Supreme Court.
“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” Alito wrote in the decision, which relates to Mississippi’s strict new abortion law, according to the report.
Politico noted that Supreme Court draft opinions are not set in stone, and that justices sometimes change their positions on a case after a copy of a draft is circulated among them.

A protester holds a sign outside the U.S. Supreme Court after the leak of a draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito preparing for a majority of the court to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion rights decision later this year, in Washington, U.S., May 2, 2022. 
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters

The Supreme Court is poised to overturn the constitutionally protected right to abortion ensured by the nearly 50-year-old Roe v. Wade ruling, according to a leaked initial draft of the new opinion obtained by Politico.
The draft was written by Justice Samuel Alito, with the concurrence of at least four other conservative members of the Supreme Court.

“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” Alito wrote in the 98-page draft decision on Mississippi’s strict new abortion law, according to Politico’s report published Monday night.
“The inescapable conclusion is that a right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and traditions.”
“It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives,” the justice wrote in the draft published by the site, and whose authenticity CNBC has been unable to confirm independently.
“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start.”
Currently, the Supreme Court’s decisions in Roe v. Wade and in a 1992 case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, bar states from passing laws that restrict abortions before the point of fetal viability — around 24 weeks of gestation, and require that laws regulating abortion not pose an “undue burden.”

But if the conclusions of Alito’s draft opinion are officially released by the court before its term ends in about two months, individual states would be able to restrict when and how women could terminate their pregnancies, without federal courts having a say over the legality of those rules.
While any state could allow abortions with no or few restrictions, those led by conservative Republicans in the South and Midwest are likely to impose much tighter restrictions on abortion than ones currently in place.
The abortion rights-supporting Guttmacher Institute in October said that if the Supreme Court weakened or overturned Roe v. Wade, 26 states are certain or likely to ban abortion.
Oklahoma’s House on Thursday passed a bill set to be signed by Gov. Kevin Stitt that would ban most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy.

Associate Justice Samuel Alito participates in the swearing-in ceremony for Defense Secreaty Mark Esper in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, on July 23, 2019.
Nicholas Kamm | AFP | Getty Images

Politico said Alito’s draft opinion had been circulated among the justices in February, and that court’s three liberal members, Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, are writing dissents to it.
It is unclear if there have been subsequent changes to the draft by Alito since it first circulated.
The Supreme Court ruling anticipated in Alito’s draft also would be a monumental victory for religious conservatives, who for decades have tried to get the Supreme Court to undo the decisions making abortion a constitutional right.
Supreme Court draft opinions are not set in stone, and justices sometimes change their positions on a case after a copy of a draft is circulated among them.
Politico noted that “no draft decision in the modern history of the court has been disclosed publicly while a case was still pending.”
“The unprecedented revelation is bound to intensify the debate over what was already the most controversial case on the docket this term,” Politico said.
The Supreme Court news site SCOTUSblog tweeted: “It’s impossible to overstate the earthquake this will cause inside the Court, in terms of the destruction of trust among the Justices and staff. This leak is the gravest, most unforgivable sin.”
Politico’s executive editor, Dafna Linzer, wrote in an editor’s note that “after an extensive review process, we are confident of the authenticity of the draft.”
“This unprecedented view into the justices’ deliberations is plainly news of great public interest,” she wrote.
A Supreme Court spokeswoman declined to comment to CNBC on the Politico report.
On the heels of the article, Republican lawmakers, whose party has pushed for overturning Roe v. Wade, condemned the leaking of the draft opinion, while Democrats blasted the contents of the ruling, which would undo a cornerstone of their own party’s platform.
Republicans in their statements assumed, without evidence, that the leaker was someone opposed to the ruling.
“The next time you hear the far left preaching about how they are fighting to preserve our Republic’s institutions & norms remember how they leaked a Supreme Court opinion in an attempt to intimidate the justices on abortion,” tweeted Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., in a joint statement said, “If the report is accurate, the Supreme Court is poised to inflict the greatest restriction of rights in the past fifty years— not just on women but on all Americans.
“The Republican-appointed Justices’ reported votes to overturn Roe v. Wade would go down as an abomination, one of the worst and most damaging decisions in modern history,” Schumer and Pelosi said. 
Alexis McGill Johnson, CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement reacting to the report: “Let’s be clear: Abortion is legal. It is still your right.”
“This leaked opinion is horrifying and unprecedented, and it confirms our worst fears: that the Supreme Court is prepared to end the constitutional right to abortion by overturning Roe v. Wade,” McGill Johnson said.

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Alito’s draft ruling as reported came in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case centering on a Mississippi law that would ban almost all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. 
Lower federal courts had blocked the law on the grounds that it violates the protections established by the Roe and Casey decisions.
During oral arguments at the Supreme Court for the Mississippi case in December, the three liberal justices expressed grave fears about the consequences of the court reversing decades of precedent on perhaps the most divisive issue in American politics, at a time when the court has become a flashpoint for controversy and faced all-time low public approval ratings.
“Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?” Sotomayor asked. “I don’t see how it is possible.”
But Alito, in the draft opinion as reported, wrote, “The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely —  the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
“Roe’s defenders characterize the abortion right as similar to the rights recognized in past decisions involving matters such as intimate sexual relations, contraception, and marriage,” Alito wrote.
“But,” he reportedly continued, “abortion is fundamentally different, as both Roe and Casey acknowledged because it destroys what those decisions called ‘fetal life’ and what the law now before us describes as an ‘unborn human being.'”
Alito wrote that the tradition known as stare decisis, or deference toward court precedents such as Roe v. Wade, “does not compel unending adherence to Roe’s abuse of judicial authority.”
“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” Alito went on in the draft.
“Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issues, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division.”
“Abortion presents a profound moral question,” he wrote.
“The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion. Roe and Casey arrogated that authority. We now overrule those decisions and return that authority to the people and their elected representatives.”
Alito’s draft anticipates the backlash to overturning Roe and Casey even as he dismisses the idea of allowing that to affect how he and the other justices in the majority vote on the issue.
“We cannot allow our decisions to be affected by any extraneous influences such as concern about the public’s reaction to our work,” Alito wrote, according to Politico’s report.
“We do not pretend to know how our political system or society will respond to today’s decision overruling Roe and Casey. And even if we could foresee what will happen, we would have no authority to let that knowledge influence our decision.”

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Restaurant Brands International reported results that beat expectations, fueled by strong same-store sales growth from Burger King’s overseas restaurants.
Net sales rose 15.2% to $1.45 billion, beating expectations of $1.41 billion.

In this photo illustration, a Burger King Whopper hamburger is displayed on April 05, 2022 in San Anselmo, California. A federal lawsuit has been filed and is seeking class-action status alleging that fast food burger chain Burger King is misleading customers with imagery that portrays its food, including the Whopper burger, as being much larger than what is actually being served to customers. 
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Restaurant Brands International on Tuesday reported quarterly earnings and revenue that beat analysts’ expectations, fueled by strong same-store sales growth from Burger King’s overseas restaurants.
The burger chain’s international same-store sales soared 20.1% in the quarter, but in its home market they were flat as the chain embarks on a turnaround to rejuvenate demand. Worldwide, Burger King saw its same-store sales climb 10.3% in the quarter.

Burger King is Restaurant Brands’ only chain to have restaurants in Russia, through a joint venture where it owns a 15% stake. The company has previously said it’s looking to divest its interest in the joint venture, and said Tuesday the decision to suspend all corporate support to those locations had a “measurable, but not material” impact on its results this quarter.
Burger King’s Russian restaurants accounted for just 0.6% of the company’s total revenue last year. Those locations dragged down its adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization by about $12 million during the first quarter. Rival McDonald’s, on the other hand, reported $127 million in charges related to its Russian business for the first quarter.
Here’s what Restaurant Brands reported for the quarter, compared with what Wall Street was expecting based on a survey of analysts by Refinitiv:

Earnings per share: 64 cents adjusted vs. 63 cents expected
Revenue: $1.45 billion vs. $1.41 billion expected

Restaurant Brands reported first-quarter net income of $270 million, or 59 cents per share, down from $271 million, or 58 cents per share, a year earlier.
Excluding items, the company earned 64 cents per share, topping the 63 cents per share expected by analysts surveyed by Refinitiv.

Net sales rose 15.2% to $1.45 billion during the period, beating expectations of $1.41 billion.
This marked the first full quarter that Restaurant Brands’ acquisition of Firehouse Subs was included in its revenue. The sandwich chain saw same-store sales growth of 4.2% in the quarter. In the U.S., its same-store sales rose 4.5%.
The company’s Tim Hortons chain reported same-store sales growth of 8.4% for the quarter, which includes double-digit gains in Canada. The coffee chain has taken longer than Restaurant Brands’ other eateries to bounce back from the pandemic because of its home market’s Covid restrictions. A year ago, its same-store sales shrank by 2.3%.
Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen was once again the only chain in Restaurant Brands’ portfolio to report same-store sales declines. Worldwide, same-store sales shrank by 3%. However, the fried chicken chain also reported net restaurant growth of 7.9%. Only locations that have been open at least 13 months are included in its same-store sales metrics.
CEO Jose Cil said in a statement that home-market digital sales reached their highest levels ever during the first quarter. The company does not disclose how much of its system-wide sales come from digital channels, although its digital sales reached $10 billion in 2021.
Read the full earnings report here.

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Over the weekend, the capital city of Beijing closed theme parks and banned dining in restaurants to control Covid — just as a five-day holiday got underway.
In Shanghai, the city announced Saturday it added 1,188 more companies to a whitelist for resuming production.
Both cities have announced plans for making virus tests a regular requirement.

As part of the latest Covid controls, China’s capital city of Beijing banned in-store dining as a five-day holiday kicked off, prompting restaurants to sell food outside.
Kevin Frayer | Getty Images News | Getty Images

BEIJING — Two months since China’s latest Covid outbreak began, many businesses in the country’s two largest cities by GDP face new or existing constraints on operations.
Over the weekend, the capital city of Beijing closed theme parks and banned dining in restaurants to control Covid — just as a five-day holiday got underway. During the holiday last year, domestic tourism revenue nationwide had more than doubled from the prior year, according to official figures.

Universal Beijing Resort closed Sunday until further notice. All gyms, entertainment and live performance venues, internet cafes and other indoor sports facilities are to close for the holiday, which officially runs through Wednesday, the city government said.
A major luxury mall in the city said Friday it would close temporarily due to Covid-related restrictions.
Meanwhile, Shanghai, which has been subject to the some of the most stringent citywide lockdowns, showed some signs of easing restrictions over the last few days.
The city announced Saturday it added 1,188 more companies to a whitelist for resuming production. For the initial list announced in mid-April of 666 companies — including 247 foreign-funded ones — more than 80% had resumed work, the city said.
Before the second list came out, the EU Chamber of Commerce in China said the whitelist “is a promising sign for Shanghai’s bounce back.”

But truck driver shortages and getting shifts of workers between factory bubbles and their homes remained a challenge, said Bettina Schoen-Behanzin, the chamber’s vice president and Shanghai chair. She estimated Friday that supply chain and logistics challenges would last until the end of June.

As of Monday, the number of people in Shanghai subject to the strictest stay-home orders fell to 2.5 million, down from 5.3 million four days earlier, according to official figures. On Sunday, municipal authorities announced six regions of Shanghai had contained the virus at a community level, but not most of the downtown areas of the city.
The city said it has been building out sites for regular virus testing.
For Monday, mainland China reported a drop in new Covid cases with symptoms, to 368 versus closer to 1,000 or far more in recent weeks. Shanghai reported the most cases with symptoms, at 274, while Beijing came second with 51 new cases with symptoms.
While residents are not allowed to leave parts of the city under lockdown, businesses in other areas generally remain open to those with a negative virus test from within the last 48 hours.
Beijing has been conducting multiple rounds of mass testing in the last week. It also announced weekly tests would be required after the holiday to take public transit or go to public areas like supermarkets.
On Sunday, the city announced the opening of a centralized quarantine facility with 1,200 beds.
Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of Universal Studios and CNBC.

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Business people are getting out and about again. And they’re looking for places to stay.
More people are traveling for business meetings and industry events now than at any time in the past two years. A full recovery may be a couple years away, but Deloitte is forecasting 55% of business travel will be back by the end of this year.

That’s why CNBC International is surveying business travelers for their favorite hotels across Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific. We want to know the names of the individual hotels and the amenities — such as room service, conference rooms, and a great coffeemaker — that you value most when you’re traveling for work.
If you feel strongly about what makes a hotel great for business trips — and we’re betting you do — then now’s the time to weigh in. Click below to take our short survey:

Results will be tabulated alongside research conducted by our partners at market and consumer data firm Statista.
Winners will be announced later this year in special reports on CNBC.com and beyond. More

Everyone told me not to travel solo during a pandemic.
Especially not to learn snowboarding, a sport that not all travel insurance policies cover. It didn’t help that I wanted to visit a country where I don’t speak the language.

Administrative matters — such as Covid tests, vaccination certificates and health declarations — would be painful for a solo traveler, I was told. I could also catch Covid or injure myself while snowboarding overseas.
It made sense, but I didn’t know anyone who could go with me. So I joined a Singapore tour group to South Korea.
I didn’t know it when I booked my trip, but I was part of a trend of solo women travelers who are joining group tours as tourism finds its feet again.

The Singapore-based agency I traveled with, EU Holidays, said many more solo travelers have joined its trips since it restarted international tours in September.
The numbers are small, but there has been a noticeable increase, according to Wong Yew Hoong, director at EU Holidays.

Before the pandemic, he said, solo travelers rarely joined their tours “because they normally plan and travel on their own,” he told CNBC Travel. Now they are, and most solo travelers are women, he said.

Global trend

In other parts of the world, this trend started before the pandemic.
The Canadian-based travel agency G Adventures said solo travelers made up 51% of its bookings this year — and 70% of them are female, up slightly from 2019.
The solo travel trend has grown exponentially over the past four years, according to Melissa DaSilva, North America president of The Travel Corporation’s tour division, TTC Tour Brands. TTC owns travel agencies such as Trafalgar and Contiki.
“The pandemic has certainly spurred interest even further,” she told CNBC, adding that TTC Tour Brands has made more single rooms available and reduced or waived extra fees for single travelers in response to solo travel demand.

The SoFe Traveler Network, which organizes tours for solo female travelers, said bookings have reached about 60% of pre-pandemic levels.
Even married people are traveling solo because they have different interests from their spouses, said Bruce Poon Tip, owner of Just You, a solo traveler specialist that organizes adult-only tours.
The pandemic made people more determined to tick off their “bucket list” destinations, said Tip, who also founded G Adventures.
“[But] couples don’t necessarily have the same lists, and so they’re traveling separately,” he told CNBC.
According to Just You’s website, women usually make up around three-quarters of travelers in a solo travel group.

‘Don’t wait’ attitude

Solo travel is typically associated with flexibility, and group tours are seen as rigid. So why are female solo travelers signing up for this style of travel?
In my case, I wasn’t alone by choice or because I wanted more freedom. I spent weeks trying to find friends who would agree to come with me.
G Adventures’ Tip said people who travel now are “early adopters,” but their friends may not have the same appetite for risk. That was the case for me — many of my friends said they were still concerned about Covid.
But it was also difficult to find someone whose goals and schedule matched mine. I realized that, even if Covid subsides in the coming year, I might still end up without travel buddies, so now was as good a time as any.

Don’t wait to tick off your ‘bucket list.’ … Nothing is promised.

Melissa DaSilva
North America president of TTC Tour Brands

DaSilva of TTC Tour Brands described that as the “don’t wait” attitude that many solo tourists have, which she said the pandemic reinforced.
“Don’t wait for a travel companion to want to go to the same destination, at the same time. Don’t wait to tick off your ‘bucket list.’ Don’t wait – nothing is promised,” she said.
I didn’t want to wait, but I also didn’t want to navigate pandemic travel alone. So I joined a tour.

CNBC’s Abigail Ng (6th from left) joined a small group tour from Singapore to South Korea in March 2022.
Courtesy of Shawn Koh

Border regulations, Covid testing and flight cancellations have made it challenging for solo travelers to plan their own trips, said Megan Arzbaecher, a tour manager with SoFe Travel.
“Confidence in travel dropped dramatically, and until it rebounds, joining a solo group tour takes away all of the mystery and worry, because we are on top of all the changing restrictions,” she said.

Safety in numbers

Singaporean Nicole Lim will be going on her first group tour as a solo traveler in May. She said safety was a big consideration.
She wanted to go hiking, but felt it might be dangerous to do it alone.
“Being in Singapore for so long, I haven’t done a lot of hiking and camping. I think it’s better for me to go and find a guide and join a group, so that we can all help one another out,” she said.
Before the pandemic, she said she probably would have asked friends to join her. But after two years without travel, she didn’t want her plans to be determined by whether she had someone to go with.
“If that’s the case, then I’ll be delaying my travels and planning according to another person’s schedule rather than mine,” she told CNBC.

After more than two years of living through the pandemic, some travelers are going solo because they don’t want to be dependent on other people’s schedules.
Michael Duva | Stone | Getty Images

Covid also adds another dimension to safety concerns, given that travelers could need medical care or be stuck overseas.
“The travel agency can take care of you, like help you change [flight] tickets and make some arrangements for you,” said Wong of EU Holidays.

Meeting people, making friends

The majority of women who travel independently still want a social experience, said DaSilva of TTC Tours.
Alison Allaire, a New Yorker who works in operations at an education company, first joined a group tour as a solo traveler some 10 years ago when no one was available to travel with her.
“I think it’s a great social experience, you get to meet people from literally all over the world,” she told CNBC.
She has even traveled with a friend whom she first met on a guided tour. “Being on these trips, I’ve made friends that will be [my] friends for the rest of my life,” she said.

New Yorker Alison Allaire said she prefers tour groups because it’s easier to make friends compared with traveling by herself.
Courtesy of Alison Allaire

Still, it can be daunting to join a tour group alone. Before I left for my trip to South Korea, I wondered if I would make friends and was prepared to have some meals alone.
After all, traveling with people you’ve just met isn’t the same as traveling with family or friends.
“There’s a bit of fear that like, if I don’t know anyone there personally, then there’s no one to really look out for me,” said Lim, the Singaporean who signed up to go hiking in Bali in May.
But between two options — staying home or being alone in Bali without help, should she need it — Lim said she would choose the latter.
“I’d rather have no one,” she said. More

The Modi government has announced a national green hydrogen policy with a target of producing 5 million tons per annum by 2030. It provides tax breaks and allots land to set up plants. 
Water and cheap power are the two important resources needed to become a global green hydrogen player. India has a large coastline with access to seawater and ample sunlight for solar power.
Green hydrogen industry is still in its infancy and pilot plants to study the technology and costs will take at least 5 years to show results.

Hydrogen packs a lot more punch than lithium-based batteries. India’s federal minister Nitin Gadkari (second from left) seen here launching the country’s first green hydrogen-based advanced fuel cell electric vehicle (FCEV), Toyota Mirai, at his residence in March.
Hindustan Times | Hindustan Times | Getty Images

The sun’s searing heat can be punishing on summer days and India’s enormous coastline makes it a challenge to defend. But vast amounts of water and abundant sunlight have opened a path to green energy that could slake India’s vast appetite for fuel.
Indian companies have pledged to commit billions of dollars to green hydrogen projects — but experts caution that the technology is still very new and its commercial viability unproven.  

Green hydrogen is a clean fuel that’s produced by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, using renewable energy such as solar power. When burnt, it emits no exhaust, only water. Environmentalists claim it can help decarbonize heavy industries like oil refining, fertilizers, steel and cement, as well as help cut emissions globally.
“At this point, the technology is not mature or cheap enough to be used widely,” Amit Bhandari, senior fellow, energy and investment at Gateway House, a Mumbai-based think tank, told CNBC. He pointed to the example of solar energy which took about a decade to become viable.
The green hydrogen industry is still in its infancy and pilot plants to study the technology and costs will take at least five years to show results, Bhandari said.
“Ten years ago, if you had asked me if solar energy is viable, I would have said ‘no,’ even though solar power potential was known and technology was available. It took off only when the cost became comparable to traditional energy sources over a long period of time,” Bhandari said, adding that he was reluctant to write off a new technology.
Renewables currently account for almost 40% of total installed capacity in India, the world’s third largest crude oil importer after China and the U.S.

But without large-scale energy storage, renewable energy cannot become a viable alternative to traditional power sources. 

Lithium batteries cannot store energy at a large scale even though they are widely used to power electric vehicles. Green hydrogen, which can be stored in large amounts, can power heavy vehicles such as trucks over long distances. 
India’s government last year announced a national green hydrogen policy with a target of producing 5 million tons of the fuel annually by 2030. In February, it provided tax breaks and allotted land to set up plants to boost the investment. 

Right now, India is vulnerable to all manner of external and geopolitical shocks. With green hydrogen, that vulnerability will reduce.

Amit Bhandari
Senior fellow, energy and investment, Gateway House, Mumbai

“Two important resources are required to become a large global player: water and cheap power,” the chairman of Celeris Technologies, Venkat Sumantran, told CNBC. “India has a large coastline with access to seawater and ample sunlight.” 
Several states in India get good sunlight most of the year and this allows solar panel farms to be optimally deployed, said Sumantran, whose Chennai-based consultancy firm provides new energy alternatives to fossil fuels in the auto sector.
But becoming a global player also depends on how cheaply photovoltaic cells — which convert sunlight into energy — are produced. “There are many signs that policies to allow this to happen are being implemented,” he added.
Indian companies investing in hydrogen
In recent months, several Indian companies have announced green hydrogen plans:

In January, India’s largest company by market capitalization Reliance Industries announced it would commit $75 billion to green energy, including an undisclosed amount  toward green hydrogen projects. 

In early April, Hyderabad-based Greenko group and Belgium-based John Cockerill to build a two-gigawatt hydrogen electrolyzer gigafactory in India, the largest outside of China.

In March, state-owned Indian Oil Corporation, which accounts for nearly half the market share of India’s petroleum products, teamed up with two private companies to launch a joint venture to develop green hydrogen. There are also plans to manufacture and sell electrolyzers, used in the production of green hydrogen.

In November 2021, the world’s largest solar power developer Adani Group announced it would invest $70 billion by 2030 into renewable energy infrastructure, including in green hydrogen. 

Reliance Industries and Adani Group have both pledged to make the world’s cheapest green hydrogen at $1 per kilogram, or about a quarter of a gallon — that’s down from the current cost of $5-$6. When contacted by CNBC, neither company provided details on how they were going to bring down the costs so drastically. 
Green hydrogen fuels India’s geostrategic ambitions too.
Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani predicted that green energy has the potential to be a gamechanger. 

“When wood was replaced with coal, Europe overtook India and China to emerge the world leader. With the emergence of oil, the U.S. and West Asia outgrew others,” he said at a conference on renewables in February in Pune, a western Indian city.  
“When India becomes not only self-sufficient in green and clean energy, but also a large exporter, it will help India emerge as a global power,” he said at that time.
Acknowledging there has been a lot of hype around green hydrogen, Bhandari from Gateway House said it was not necessarily a bad thing.
“A key thing is that hype can create its own reality. If there is the right amount of capital, human intelligence is thrown at a problem. And technology evolves. Costs start to fall and that creates demand,” he said.
“Momentum is on the side of innovation and costs are declining. Also, there is already demand for green hydrogen, which can be absorbed right away in the petroleum refining, fertilizer and steel industries,” he added.
Pilot projects needed
Green hydrogen will become commercially viable only when it becomes cheaper, Bhandari noted. 
“You cannot start with a 500 megawatt plant,” he said, adding that even a company like Reliance, which has had long experience handling hydrogen gas at its oil refineries, would not invest in a huge plant without pilot projects. “We are several years away from large-scale capacity,” he said.

Tapping India’s 7,500 kilometer long coastline is also complicated, Bhandari said.
“There are other claims on the coastline. It is not uninhabited. There are several large cities and ports. And, it must be weighed against the need to protect mangroves and other fragile ecosystems too,” he said. 
Still, he conceded that if successful, the green hydrogen push would make India less vulnerable to price shocks in natural gas and oil.
“Right now, India is vulnerable to all manner of external and geopolitical shocks. With green hydrogen, that vulnerability will reduce,” he said.

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CNBC’s Jim Cramer said investors should take a chance on buying the dip during trading days like Monday — even if it means accepting some short-term losses.
“This is my eighth tightening cycle and I know from experience that if you wait until the [Federal Reserve] is done and inflation’s broken, it’ll be too late to buy,” the “Mad Money” host said.

CNBC’s Jim Cramer said investors should take a chance on buying the dip during trading days like Monday — even if it means accepting some short-term losses.
“This is my eighth tightening cycle and I know from experience that if you wait until the [Federal Reserve] is done and inflation’s broken, it’ll be too late to buy,” the “Mad Money” host said, referring to the Fed’s plan to implement several interest rate hikes this year to control soaring inflation.

“You have to anticipate the peak in inflation, just like [Monday] where the market looked so treacherous and then turned placid. You have to accept some short-term losses. … If you can’t take the pain, though, go ahead and swap into Treasurys now that they’re yielding near 3%,” Cramer said.
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite dropped to new lows for the year on Monday but made a comeback before the session’s end. The Nasdaq gained 1.63% while the S&P 500 climbed 0.57%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which was down more than 500 points at its low, edged up 0.26%. 

Stock picks and investing trends from CNBC Pro:

Cramer also advised investors that if a company’s stock performed poorly on Monday despite reporting an upbeat quarter earlier this earnings season, it’s a reflection of the current market, not the firm. He cited American Express, Coca-Cola and UnitedHealth Group as some examples of companies whose stocks teetered.
“The market’s simply not willing to pay as much for those future earnings in this new environment — whenever interest rates rise rapidly, price-to-earnings multiples start shrinking,” he said.

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The owner of a Greenwich estate is willing to accept cryptocurrency as payment for its $6.5 million asking price.
The sales agent said it is the first such listing of its kind in that wealthy Connecticut town.
The unidentified owner’s background explains the unusual offer and their comfort level in taking bitcoin or Ethereum crypto for the 187-year-old farmhouse compound.
“Not only does my client hold a lot of cryptocurrency,” the agent Kevin Sneddon said, “she actively trades a fair amount of it on a daily basis.” 

Main residence at 241 Bedford Rd in Greenwich, CT
Anthony Acocella / Modern Angles

The Gold Coast of Connecticut soon might become the Crypto Coast if this real estate listing is any indication.
The owner of a Greenwich estate is willing to accept cryptocurrency as payment for its $6.5 million asking price, in what an agent says is the first such listing of its kind in the wealthy town.

The unidentified owner’s background explains the unusual offer, and their comfort level in taking bitcoin or Ethereum crypto for the 4.3-acre farmhouse compound on Bedford Road, which dates to the early 1800s.
“It’s not like a gimmick,” the property’s listing agent, Kevin Sneddon of Compass told CNBC in an interview.
“Not only does my client hold a lot of cryptocurrency,” Sneddon said, “she actively trades a fair amount of it on a daily basis.” 

Dining room
Anthony Acocella / Modern Angles

The prices of bitcoin and Ethereum are highly volatile and have declined by more than 19% apiece since the beginning of 2022.
If a buyer of the property uses cryptocurrency to pay for the estate as opposed to cash — which remains an option for payment — the seller would be accepting a risk of further significant decline in the price if she did not immediately sell off the crypto for cash.

In recognition of that risk, a number of prior real-estate listings that have entailed cryptocurrency have required the buyer to convert the crypto to cash before the sale closes.
But the listing for this property makes crystal clear, in all-capital-letters type at the end of the description of the estate: “SELLER WILL ACCEPT CRYPTOCURRENCY.”

Main residence on the left with one bedroom guest-cottage in the foreground.
Anthony Acocella / Modern Angles

Sneddon said the seller intends to hold the payment in cryptocurrency.
“She’s not going to turn it over and convert it to anything else,” Sneddon said. “She’s going to add it to her crypto portfolio.”
Sneddon is counting on state-of-the-art amenities on the property to attract a buyer, and he hopes his seller’s willingness to accept payment in digital currency will score his listing the attention of newly minted crypto millionaires.
“They’d want to come up and consider this house because we take their currency,” he said.
“Someone’s already asked me what kind of crypto she would take,” Sneddon noted.
The fact that the seller in the Greenwich property will accept crypto at closing has brought more attention to the old home in the form of press and inquiries from intrigued potential buyers. 
But Sneddon said his “private-minded” seller isn’t interested in any of that extra attention focusing on her.  
“They wouldn’t want their names out there,” he said of the buyer.

Aerial view of the farmhouse compound in Greenwhich, CT
Anthony Acocella / Modern Angles

Public records don’t shed light on the identity of the homeowner.
The property last changed hands in 2009 for $5.68 million, according to the Multiple Listings Network.
Records showed it was bought by a limited liability corporation called Bedford Road Holdings. LLCs often are created to hide the true owners of real estate.

Kitchen in main residence
Anthony Acocella / Modern Angles

Then, the property’s seller was Anson McCook Beard Jr., a retired Wall Street bigwig, who is the brother of the late photographer and artist Peter Beard.
Beard spent many years at Morgan Stanley. According to the investment bank’s website, he was hired in 1977 to launch its private client services division.
The compound up for sale sits in the northwestern-most part of Greenwich, only about 200 feet from Connecticut’s border with New York state.
Sneddon described the area as the equestrian countryside, an area of town where neighbors tend to have their third, fourth, or even fifth home set aside for weekend retreats. 
The residence at 241 Bedford Road was built in 1835 and is a Greenwich-designated landmark known as the Levi Ireland House, the agent said.

Interior view of the compound’s “party barn”
Stephanie Loda – Greenwhich Photo

The main house spans over 4,200 square feet with five bedrooms, three baths, and a powder room.
Elsewhere on the property is a carriage house that boasts three bedrooms, a one-bedroom guest cottage and an old barn. 
That “party barn,” as it is called in the listing, is wired for electricity, but otherwise has an unfinished interior. 

Primary bedroom in main residence with Porsche lighting in the ceiling.
Anthony Acocella / Modern Angles

While it is a great space for throwing a bash, Sneddon said the new owner might want to convert it into stables for horses. 
“Not many 187-year-old farmhouses are packed with as many modern comforts as the Levi Ireland House,” said Sneddon.
In other words, a lot has changed on the estate since Andrew Jackson was president.

“It’s got Lutron lighting, and you press a button and it’s got automatic shades, and it has Porsche pinhole recessed lighting.”
Sneddon said that his client told him the German carmaker-designed fixtures cost her $2,800 per light and that many of her high-tech splurges were inspired by the Covid-19 outbreak.
Prior to the pandemic, his crypto-trading client and her family spent most of their time in Manhattan, but when New York went into lockdown they retreated to their Greenwich estate. 
When weeks turned into months his client decided to turn the home, which was mostly just used as a weekend getaway, into a full-week residence where she and her family could live and work from home.  

One of the main residence’s four guest bedrooms.
Anthony Acocella – Modern Angles

Sneddon said it was important for the owner to be able to trade crypto in real-time from anywhere on the property including the poolside lounge chairs, so she equipped the residence with a top-shelf Wi-Fi system that delivers high-speed internet to every corner of the sprawling estate.
The homeowner also installed a Covid-inspired heating and cooling system that includes a virus-killing infrared air purifier.

Pool and an outdoor dining area.
Anthony Acocella / Modern Angles

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