Weekend Papers Summary
NEW YORK TIMES
-Jury in Alex Jones Trial Awards $45M to Sandy Hook parents. The conspiracy theorist was ordered to pay the punitive damages for spreading the lie that the parents helped stage the 2012 school shooting. The decision came a day after the jury awarded the parents more than $4 M in compensatory damages.
-Indiana Governor signs near-total abortion ban. The law passed despite dividing Republicans. Some of them said the measure was too restrictive; others objected to limited exceptions for rape and incest.
-Democrats’ long-sought plan for lowering drug costs is at hand. Empowering Medicare to negotiate prices with drug makers has been a Democratic goal for 30 years, one the pharmaceutical industry has fought ferociously.
-Progressives embrace climate and tax deal, despite disappointments. Liberal Democrats who once sought a far more ambitious plan seem ready to support one that could be their party’s last chance to enact some of its agenda.
-With Senator Kyrsten Sinema’s demands on the climate and tax bill, the “carried interest loophole” survived again.
-Good News on jobs may mean bad news later as hiring spree defies Fed. Employers hired rapidly and paid more in July, suggesting the Federal Reserve may have to remain aggressive in its effort to cool the economy.
-The US added 528,000 jobs in July, despite widespread expectations of a slowdown as the Fed raised interest rates.
-China stages show of force near Taiwan for a third day. The military drills, which appear to be simulating an attack on the main island, have edged closer than ever before to territory Taiwan considers its own.
-Blasts are reported at a nuclear plant seized by Russia. Fighting has picked up in recent weeks near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power complex, which Russia is using as a fortress. Catch up on news about the war.
-The US and Russia are ready to negotiate Brittney Griner’s release. The countries’ top envoys made separate announcements after a meeting where they sat close together — without talking.
-Israel has hit Gaza, prompting rocket barrage and ending relative calm. In by far the biggest escalation of violence in Gaza since the end of a war in May 2021, Israeli airstrikes killed a militant leader and at least nine others, according to Palestinian officials.
THE FINANCIAL TIMES
-The Federal Reserve will face more urgency in its fight to cool down the US economy with steep interest rate increases after the latest batch of labor market data showed an unexpected acceleration in jobs gains and strong wage growth.
-US government bonds tumbled and stocks slipped after employment data showed red-hot labor conditions, leading traders to boost their expectations for Federal Reserve interest rate increases.
-As they face the latest upheaval, the Meta CEO and his top executives are no longer sitting cheek by jowl in their San Francisco Bay office. The pandemic forced a new way of working, and this week came news that two top Meta figures — Adam Mosseri of Instagram and global policy chief Nick Clegg — are moving to London for all or part of the time. This follows similar moves by other top executives this year: one is already in the UK, while others have departed for Israel, Spain and New York.
-China has suspended regular communication channels with the US military, as well as climate talks between the world’s two largest economies, in retaliation for US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan this week. The Chinese foreign ministry declaration came after the country’s military sent planes and warships to probe Taiwan’s defenses for a second day.
-Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Vladimir Putin have pledged to deepen economic ties between their countries as Moscow seeks to soften the blow of western sanctions imposed over its invasion of Ukraine. After a four-hour meeting at Putin’s residence in Sochi on Friday, the Russian and Turkish presidents released a joint statement pledging to raise their bilateral trade volumes and deepen their economic and energy ties.
-The Pelosi visit to Taipei, the first in 25 years by a Speaker of the House, was designed to demonstrate support for the country in the face of what many in the US believe to be a growing threat of a Chinese invasion. But some in Washington now fear that the visit could have the opposite effect — giving Beijing the chance to demonstrate its capacity for military coercion and leaving Taiwan even more exposed to the expanding rivalry between the two superpowers.
-The battle between Asia and Europe to lock in gas supplies is stepping up a gear, heightening the risks of a further surge in prices that would add fresh fuel to the cost of living crisis. Japan and South Korea, the world’s second- and third-biggest importers of liquefied natural gas, are looking to secure supplies for the winter months and beyond, out of fear of being priced out later in the year as Europe’s demand increases, according to traders.
-In the past few years, conversations about the future of crypto usually alight on a semi-mythical event at an undetermined date known as the “Merge”, and involves Ethereum, one of the industry’s premier blockchain networks. It matters because it confronts one of the sharpest criticisms of crypto: that the industry guzzles vast amounts of energy when the planet desperately needs to reduce its consumption.
NY POST
-Republican border-state governors are sending busloads of illegal entrants — released in their states by the Department of Homeland Security — to DC and New York City, prompting recriminations and pleas for federal cash from the Democratic mayors of those erstwhile immigrant-friendly cities. Those mayors, seemingly unwittingly, are making the governors’ point — that the administration has created a disaster at the US-Mexico line, requiring an immediate policy shift to protect lives and state and local finances.
-Jim Cramer was the target of ire on social media on Friday after crypto trader Coinbase’s stock shot up just a week after the CNBC finance guru warned of an SEC probe into the company. On July 26, Cramer tweeted: “The Coinbase roll over on a possible SEC investigation is very bad news given that we don’t even know what it’s about. But they were always hoping to avoid SEC scrutiny.”
Twitter users then posted screenshots showing Coinbase’s stock price soar by more than 16% on Thursday to above $106/share.