U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris has a big new job courtesy of President Joe Biden: revamping America’s immigration policy. A continuing influx of migrants has overwhelmed shelters along the Mexico border, with more than 15,000 unaccompanied minors currently housed by U.S. agencies. The surge has forced Biden to take on the divisive issue just as he’s trying to focus on his Covid-19 vaccine campaign. Harris will have two goals in her new role: develop strategies to stop the flow of migrants and establish better relations with Mexico as well as Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, where extreme poverty, rampant violence and now climate change are forcing more people northward. —Margaret Sutherlin

Bloomberg is tracking the progress of coronavirus vaccines while mapping the pandemic globally and across America. 

Here are today’s top stories  

The world has a serious blockage. A container ship longer than the Eiffel Tower ran aground in the Suez Canal, one of the planet’s most important waterways. Despite herculean efforts on Wednesday, it’s unclear when the wayward vessel will be freed. Dozens of ships are already stuck in the resulting gridlock, with a lengthy halt threatening global supply chains already disrupted by the pandemic. So how did this happen in the first place? That’s a very good question. 

The drama unfolding in Europe over vaccine export curbs has put a spotlight on America’s accelerating campaign—and its own noticeable lack of exports. The U.S. has administered more than one-quarter of the world’s coronavirus doses so far, thanks in part to a 70-year-old law that obligates domestic manufacturers to fill U.S. government orders first. In exchange, companies get crucial aid procuring supplies. The policy amounts to a de facto ban on vaccine exports, despite Biden administration protestations that there’s no formal prohibition. The White House has moved to give away some doses, but the overall approach by Biden and his predecessor has been criticized by allies and public health experts. Here’s the latest on the pandemic. 

He doesn’t date a synth-pop star or profess to want to die on Mars, but VW Chief Executive Officer Herbert Diess is starting to look and sound an awful lot like Elon Musk. Earlier this month, he kicked off a news conference modeled after Tesla’s “Battery Day”—Diess called his “Power Day”—by declaring that there’s only one way to quickly reduce emissions from transportation: Go electric. Skeptics could be forgiven for raising their eyebrows at that message, coming as it is from the same carmaker that spent years gaslighting the world about “clean diesel.” But VW is finally seeing the payoff from its five-year effort—and it could mean the end of Tesla’s dominance in the EV market. 

In what was supposed to be a relatively quiet two days of testimony, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen found herself in the hot seat with both Senate Democrats and Republicans on Wednesday. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren pressed Yellen on whether she’d direct an oversight board to consider designating BlackRock Inc. as too big to fail. Yellen suggested she may oppose singling out the world’s biggest asset manager for tougher oversight. In another heated exchange, she sparred with Louisiana Senator John Kennedy over expanded spending for the International Monetary Fund. For his part, Fed Chair Jerome Powell held his line on employment and inflation. Here’s your markets wrap. 

New York is ready to legalize recreational marijuana. Under the deal between Governor Andrew Cuomo and legislative leaders, cannabis use would become legal for adults 21 years old and up and would be subject to a 13% sales tax. The Democrat’s office estimates the program could pull in about $350 million a year in tax revenue once fully implemented.

Tennis is the world’s fourth-most-popular sport by some metrics. As a business, though, it’s a perennial underachiever. Players good enough to win matches at Grand Slams struggle to support themselves on their tennis earnings, sometimes taking second jobs to make extra income. Tennis’s economics are broken, and Serbian star Novak Djokovic and a new players group want to fix it. 

Novak Djokovic celebrates a point against Russia's Daniil Medvedev during their men's singles final match in Melbourne on Feb. 21

Photographer: Paul Crock/AFP

Just as $1,400 Covid-19 rescue package payments arrive in bank accounts all across the U.S., day-trader favorites are losing steam, stirring speculation that the army of individual investors who disrupted markets over the past year have opted to spend the cash on plane tickets and restaurants rather than Robinhood.

What you’ll need to know tomorrow 

What you’ll want to read in Businessweek

The Line Between Digital and Fine Art is Blurring

The market hasn’t been kind to avant-garde artist Wladimir Baranoff-Rossiné. But now, the late painter and sculptor’s descendants are taking his market into their own hands. They’re auctioning an abstract painting from 1925 tied to an NFT, or non-fungible token. As more “traditional” artists attempt to cash in on the $1 billion boom (or bubble), and prices rise to stratospheric levels, determining and justifying these artists’ prices has become an increasingly thorny issue for the market.

The buyer of Abstract Composition (1925) by Baranoff-Rossiné will get both the physical painting and its NFT.

Source: Mintable

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