Weekend Papers Summary
NEW YORK TIMES
-Furor over Chinese spy balloon leads to a diplomatic crisis. The Pentagon called the object, which has flown from Montana to Kansas, an “intelligence-gathering” balloon. Beijing said it was used mainly for weather research and had strayed off course.
-A giant balloon floats into town, and it’s all anyone can talk about: A Chinese balloon has been raising a lot of questions for people who live under its path. “I did see it, and it should have been shot,” said a barbecue chef in Billings, Mont.
-US hiring surges with January gain of 517,000 jobs. The report defied expectations and underscored the challenges for the Federal Reserve, which is trying to cool the labor market to fight inflation.
-Job growth is a boost for Biden as he bets on a lasting turnaround. President Biden has for months pointed to solid hiring trends as evidence that his agenda has rebuilt the economy after the pandemic shutdowns.
-Jury rules for Elon Musk and tesla in investor lawsuit over tweets
The case centered on whether investors lost money because they believed Mr. Musk’s social media posts about taking Tesla private in 2018.
-The Advisory Firm Innisfree M&A has sued Elon Musk’s Twitter, saying that Twitter, which Elon Musk bought last year, has not paid it $1.9M for services it rendered for the deal.
-E.M.T.s provided no care for 19 minutes after police beat Tyre Nichols
The board that regulates emergency medical technicians in Tennessee on Friday voted to suspend the licenses of the two E.M.T.s who arrived at the scene and failed to render aid.
-The EU vows more help for Ukraine but tamps down membership talk. European Union leaders met in Ukraine’s capital with President Volodymyr Zelensky, who said Ukraine would not give up on Bakhmut, the eastern city caught in a fierce battle with Russian forces.
-Gautam Adani’s rise was intertwined with India’s. Now it’s unraveling.The tycoon often said the Adani Group’s goals were in lock step with India’s needs. Now, the company’s fortunes are crashing, a collapse whose pain will be felt across the country.
THE FINANCIAL TIMES
-US secretary of state Antony Blinken has cancelled his weekend visit to China after the Pentagon said it discovered a Chinese spy balloon that has been flying over sensitive nuclear missile sites in the western state of Montana. The top US diplomat had been set to travel to Beijing where he had been expected to meet China’s president Xi Jinping. He would have been the first Biden administration cabinet secretary to visit China and the first secretary of state to travel to the country in more than five years.
-By Friday, the Gautam Adani’s listed companies had lost more than $100B of their value and the share sale was off. Adani, once the world’s third-richest man, had fallen to number 17 on Forbes’ list of billionaires. Apart from the future of the billionaire and his business empire, something bigger is on the line: India’s probity in corporate governance and pursuit of a development model in which the state has entrusted a few ultra-rich men with running India’s infrastructure and pioneering investments abroad.
-The UK’s FTSE 100 hit an all-time high on Friday, as the blue-chip index dominated by multinational companies overcame the drag of a domestic economy headed for recession. The FTSE added as much as 1.1% on the day to trade at 7906.58, eclipsing its previous peak in May 2018, before closing at 7902. After ending 2022 up almost 1%, the best-performing developed market index in local currency terms, the FTSE 100 has risen 6.1% in 2023.
-The Bureau of labor Statistics claims that the US economy added more than half a million new jobs last month, taking unemployment to its lowest for decades despite the Federal Reserve’s efforts to raise rates to fight inflation.
US payrolls increased by 517,000 for January, nearly double December’s total and almost triple the consensus forecast of 185,000. The country’s unemployment rate, at 3.4%, is now the lowest for 53 years.
-Google has invested about $300M in artificial intelligence start-up Anthropic, making it the latest tech giant to throw its money and computing power behind a new generation of companies trying to claim a place in the booming field of “generative AI”.
-Amazon, Meta, Alphabet and Microsoft will collectively incur more than $10B in charges related to mass redundancies, real estate and other cost-saving measures, as the Big Tech companies reveal the hefty price they incur to rein in spending. The US companies that have been implementing the largest job cuts in the tech sector disclosed the high costs related to their restructuring efforts in earnings statements released this week.
-EU member states have agreed on the level of price caps to be imposed on shipments of Russian refined oil products, which will come into effect on Sunday as part of a G7 effort to cut Moscow’s export revenues. Ambassadors of the 27 EU states agreed at a meeting on Friday to limit the price of premium products such as diesel at $100 a barrel and that of low-end products including fuel oil at $45 a barrel.
-Volodymyr Zelensky has warned Ukrainian citizens against complacency in the face of an expected Russian offensive and called on western allies to speed up their assistance to Kiev.
The Ukrainian president said he saw signs that in some cities, people were letting their guard down despite ongoing hostilities, a “weakness” his country could not afford. Compared to the start of the war, when “the spirit was stronger”, Zelensky said, “now I see in some cities that they are at rest.”
-Nigeria’s attempt to replace its high-denomination currency notes less than a month before a crucial general election has descended into chaos, with long lines of people forming outside cash machines and fights breaking out inside banks as customers demanded access to their own money.
-The Chinese state over the past three years mobilized millions of workers, who formed the backbone of the country’s battle to contain the virus with lockdowns, quarantines and mass testing. Colloquially known as dabai, or “big whites” owing to their distinctive personal protective equipment, many were doctors and nurses, civil servants and local volunteers who were reassigned to administer Covid tests or staff temporary fever wards.
-CryptoCompare figures also show the total assets under management for digital asset investment products increased almost 37% in January to more than $26B, the highest since May 2022 — the month when crypto’s unprecedented crisis of confidence began. Grayscale’s GBTC — an investment trust designed to track the price of bitcoin — last month notched up $38.9M in average daily volume, a 23% rise from December, according to the crypto data provider. The recent digital asset surge hasn’t taken place in a vacuum, but amid a wider rally for other speculative assets.
-Ford is returning to Formula 1 after a two-decade absence in an effort to drive demand for its electric vehicles, just as the sport starts to shift from the traditional engines for which it is renowned. The US carmaker has joined forces with Red Bull to return to the sport in 2026, when rules requiring the use of sustainable fuels come into force.
-EY has told retired US partners it is considering giving them a cut of the proceeds from a spin-off of its consulting arm, after complaints that the firm’s leadership is cashing in on a business built by previous generations.
NY POST
-President Biden and first lady Jill Biden took out a $250,000 line of credit against their home in the Delaware beach town of Rehoboth – as federal investigators probe both the president and his son, Hunter, a new report reveals. The Bidens secured the loan – which allows them to borrow the quarter of a million dollars against the home’s equity – on Dec. 5, according to county records reviewed by Fox News. It’s unclear from any paperwork why the couple took out the line of credit on the home, reportedly purchased in 2017 for nearly $3M. The White House did not respond to a request for comment from The Post. But the mortgage documents were filed about a month after Biden’s personal lawyers found classified documents at his Washington think tank, the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement.
-Bill Gates told BBC interviewer Amol Rajan that he does not believe Elon Musk’s mission to colonize Mars is a good use of funds, saying providing vaccines to people in need should be a higher priority. “It’s actually quite expensive to go to Mars,” Gates said. “You can buy measles vaccines and save lives for $1,000 per life saved, and so it just sort of grounds you, as in — don’t go to Mars.” Last year, Musk confirmed he turned Gates down on an offer to collaborate on philanthropic efforts to combat climate change, after leaked texts between the two showed Musk telling Gates he can’t take him “seriously when you have a massive short position against Tesla, the company doing the most to solve climate change.”