TheChek News Flow

Weekend Papers Summary

Saturday

• The job market halted its pandemic-induced collapse in May as employers brought back millions of workers and the unemployment rate unexpectedly declined, with manufacturing, health care, and professional services adding jobs in a sign the economic damage wasn’t as deep as many feared.

• The White House, universally recognized symbol of American democracy, increasingly looks like a fortress under siege as the Trump administration builds out a security perimeter in response to protests against police brutality.

• Mexico is gradually reopening after a quarantine that hammered its economy, but many residents, including medical experts, are worried the move has come too early, and will lead to more illness and death under a pandemic that has not been brought under control.

• Long after most nations urged their citizens to wear masks to reduce coronavirus transmission and after months of hand-wringing about the quality of the evidence available, the World Health Organization has finally endorsed the use of face masks by the public.

• As subways and roads emptied out because of the coronavirus, transportation agencies in New York and across the country were able to fast-track major repairs and upgrades without having to worry about triggering huge disruptions and traffic backups.

• The pandemic is reordering the global economy in ways that have led some analysts to question whether a Brexit agreement with the European Union even makes sense for the UK government anymore.

• In an interview, Claudio Del Vecchio, the 63-year-old Italian industrialist who owns Brooks Brothers, talks for the first time about the decision to divest from the vertical made-in-America supply chain in order to keep the company thriving post-Covid-19.

• Mortgage rates may be appealingly low, but people shopping for a new home this spring face a challenging market—high demand and a dearth of homes for sale are keeping prices up and setting off bidding wars in some areas as states continue to reopen for business. Sunday

• “Demonstrations across America that began as spontaneous eruptions of outrage over police violence appeared to have cohered by Saturday into a national mass protest movement against systemic racism, marked more by organization and determination than by street fury.”

• A growing number of prominent Republicans, including former president George W. Bush and former secretary of state Colin Powell, say they won’t back Trump’s re-election—or might even vote for Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee—following Trump’s “incendiary response to protests.”

• A Times analysis of coronavirus infections, official layoff notices, and federal unemployment data highlights the sharp disconnect between extreme economic pain and limited health impact from the pandemic in many parts of the country.

• Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro has enabled the razing of the Amazon rainforest—illegal loggers, miners, and land grabbers have cleared vast areas with impunity in recent months as law enforcement efforts were hobbled by the coronavirus pandemic.

• People around the world have turned out in solidarity with American protesters calling for justice in the death of George Floyd at the hands of the police in Minneapolis, but the crowds have some officials worried about the risk of spreading Covid-19.

• Democrats in Congress plan to unveil expansive legislation Monday to make it easier to prosecute police misconduct and recover damages from officers who violate civilians’ constitutional rights, and will pressure the Justice Department to address systemic racial discrimination by law enforcement.

Weekend

• The Justice Department is deepening federal antitrust scrutiny of the $213B US meat industry, following complaints from farmers and meat buyers about pricing practices, and recently issued subpoenas to JBS USA Holdings, TSN, Cargill, and National Beef Packing.

• The pandemic forced schools into a crash course in online education, but remote learning efforts have faced a host of problems, including lack of access to technology and trouble keeping students and teachers connected.

• “Recent data suggesting that social-distancing measures cost jobs doesn’t mean they are mistakes, especially faced with the need to save lives, but lockdown orders do present trade-offs for policy makers to reckon with.”

• Trump signed into law a bill giving companies more time and flexibility to spend funds from the federal aid program to help small businesses during the coronavirus pandemic.

• In a move that will reshape Washington’s military position in Europe and ties with Germany, Trump directed the Pentagon to remove 9,500 American service members from Germany—where 34,500 troops are permanently assigned—by September.

• The federal government sent nearly a half-million doses of Covid-19 drug remdesivir to states last month, but the supplies weren’t enough to treat the tens of thousands of hospitalized patients, according to Wall Street Journal analysis.

• UK Researchers testing whether the antimalaria drug hydroxychloroquine helped hospitalized Covid-19 patients said they halted the study after a preliminary analysis showed the drug provided no benefit.

• Trump is shifting his focus away from the coronavirus—the White House task force is meeting less frequently, infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci gets little face time with Trump, and the administration’s virus-testing coordinator is returning to his previous job.

• Democrats leading the effort to draw up the party’s 2020 policy platform say they will push for it to include new criminal justice measures in response to protests following the killing of George Floyd in police custody.

• China could beat the US—home to the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies—in the race to develop a vaccine for Covid-19, a feat that would change the dynamics of the fight against the virus and add to the geopolitical competition between Washington and Beijing.

• The International Atomic Energy Agency is expressing concern about Tehran’s failure to let inspectors access two sites or to answer questions about possible undeclared material, and it reported another big jump in Iran’s nuclear-fuel stockpile.

• + Huawei: Story says founder Ren Zhengfei is “taking off the gloves in the fight against the US”—internal communication show how the Chinese telecom giant pivoted to counter Washington’s charges with lawsuits and reorganization.

• American stock exchanges won a legal battle with the SEC on Friday when the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled some fee increases can’t be challenged by the government after they have taken effect.

• Several companies badly hit by the pandemic are set to be ejected from blue-chip stock indexes in Europe, a demotion that will prompt funds managing billions of dollars of investments to sell their shares.

• H.O.T.S.: American universities—a business bigger than Bit Tech—“needs to adapt as student numbers drop and learning from home exposes poor value for money”; ZM set a high bar for tech companies such as WORK that are benefiting from the pandemic’s work-from-home surge; There are reasons to doubt the accuracy of Friday’s employment report—but its underlying message that the job market may have passed its nadir shouldn’t be ignored.

FINANCIAL TIMES

Weekend

• OPEC and Russia agreed to extend their record oil production cuts for a further month as crude recovers to $40 a barrel, but while Riyadh and Moscow agreed to take the bulk of the nearly 10M barrels a day in cuts, they called for greater compliance by other members.

• Better-than-expected jobs data is reviving hopes that the US might experience a quicker and stronger rebound from the coronavirus shock than many experts assumed, though it doesn’t mean the economy is in the clear.

• The Prado in Spain, one of the world’s great museums, will re-open its doors after its longest closure since the Spanish civil war more than 80 years ago, but only a fifth of the paintings will be on display, ticket sales will be reduced, and strict health guidelines will be implemented.

• The French military said its forces killed Abdelmalek Droukdel, a senior al-Qaeda leader in Africa and one of the architects of a diffuse terror network that has killed thousands of people and displaced millions across the western Sahel.

• Lex Column: Long before the coronavirus, solitary living had become widespread, and it is rising fast in poorer countries as people move from the countryside to cities.

• Comment: American business leaders must respond to the George Floyd protests, says Brian Offutt—“Finally, America is being forced to confront the truth and deal with it.”

Saturday

• Four of every five US workers favor switching to a four-day workweek as the pandemic forces them to renegotiate their relationships with their jobs, according to a new Harris Poll survey, and 71 percent of those workers think the switch would make them more productive. Sunday

• New York City mayor Bill de Blasio lifted the city’s controversial curfew on Sunday, saying that looting and violent protests had let up and that the city needed to focus on Phase 1 of its plan to end the coronavirus lockdown.

• Story reports that using Instagram celebrities and other “influencers” to boost brands may not be as sustainable and powerful a marketing model as many businesses thought.