Weekend Papers Summary
NEW YORK TIMES
-A special counsel will oversee the investigations into former President Trump’s role in the lead-up to Jan. 6 and the documents kept at Mar-a-Lago. Attorney General Merrick Garland’s decision allows the Justice Department to insulate its inquiries against Mr. Trump from political considerations.
-Jack Smith, the Justice Department’s new special counsel, has been prosecuting criminal cases for nearly three decades.
-Elon Musk’s Twitter teeters on the edge after another 1,200 leave. Mr. Musk sent emails on Friday asking to learn about Twitter’s underlying technology as key infrastructure teams have been decimated. So many workers have left that Twitter users have questioned whether the site would survive.
-Elizabeth Holmes has been sentenced to more than 11 years for fraud. Ms. Holmes was convicted in January of four counts of wire fraud for deceiving investors with claims about her blood testing start-up Theranos.
-Hakeem Jeffries, pressing to lead Democrats, marks a generational shift.
The congressman, who has served in the House for a decade, would be a far different leader from Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom he is running to succeed.
-Representative Lauren Boebert’s rival, Adam Frisch, conceded in their race in Colorado.
-Ukraine’s reclaimed city of Kherson is reconnected to Kyiv by rail. The train connecting the key southern city to the capital set out on its 11-hour journey for the first time since before Russia’s invasion.
-Russia raised hopes for Brittney Griner’s release, but the US said it was just talk.
-Maryland finds ‘no parish was safe’ for hundreds of clergy abuse victims.
The state attorney general identified over 600 young victims of sexual abuse in eight decades in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, a court filing showed.
-Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh is pressing for the release of his office’s full investigation.
-Ban on Beer is latest flash point in World Cup Culture clash
Qatar’s about-face on alcohol in stadiums signaled that FIFA, soccer’s governing body, may no longer be in full control of its showcase championship.
-Justice Department Is said to investigate Ticketmaster’s parent company. The inquiry predates the botched presale of Taylor Swift tickets and is said to focus on whether Live Nation has abused its power in the live music industry.
-The suspect in U. of Virginia shooting had guns in his dorm room. Authorities found a semiautomatic rifle, a pistol and ammunition in the room of a man accused of killing three fellow students, according to a newspaper.
-Iranian protesters attack Khomeini’s childhood home as unrest spreads.
The house where the Islamic revolution’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, grew up was set on fire amid anger over the government’s killing of children.
-Kim Jong-un took his daughter to witness a missile test launch. Little is known about North Korea’s ruling family. Yesterday was the first public appearance of the child, who is thought to be named Ju-ae.
THE FINANCIAL TIMES
-Chinese authorities are recruiting workers from villages and busing them to Foxconn’s iPhone assembly lines after the Apple partner suffered a staff exodus from its central China factory last month during a Covid-19 outbreak. The problems at Foxconn’s Zhengzhou plant caused by Beijing’s strict zero-Covid regime forced Apple to cut estimates for high-end iPhone 14 shipments this month in a rare warning to investors ahead of its peak holiday sales season.
-As details of FTX’s finances and chaotic bookkeeping have been revealed this week by the FT and others, the focus of the investigations and legal battles is now on the gaps in the crypto exchange’s balance sheet — and especially $8B of missing customer deposits. The most innocent version of events that Bankman-Fried can present is that the missing customer funds were simply an oversight.
-The whole FTX episode “undermines trust in financial markets”, Citadel’s chief Ken Griffin said in an interview with Bloomberg this week. “The confidence of a generation in financial markets has also been shaken. That’s really awful because the 20-something-year-olds to 40-year-olds who have are so engaged with crypto, they have got to save for their retirement, and if they don’t believe or trust in financial markets, this is a huge problem.”
-Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of failed blood-testing start-up Theranos, has been sentenced to more than 11 years in prison for what prosecutors called one of the “most substantial” white collar crimes ever seen in the US. The 135-month sentence handed down Friday marks the climactic point in a saga that ignited a debate on the US tech sector’s “fake it ‘til you make it” ethos and the investment community’s willingness to embrace charismatic company founders.
-Climate negotiators are locked in a stand-off in frantic eleventh hour talks at the UN climate summit in Egypt in a bid to agree a new deal for rich countries to provide financial support to poorer nations. The summit was due to end on Friday but negotiators said they would continue talks over the weekend in an effort to strike an agreement.
-A curious side effect of Musk’s divisive leadership — backing Republican candidates at the recent US midterm elections, drawing up plans to loosen content moderation, and firing staff by tweet — has been that engagement among Twitter’s more than 245M users appears higher than ever.
-Attorney-general Merrick Garland on Friday said the counsel, Jack Smith, would oversee an investigation into Trump’s handling of government documents and parts of a probe into potential interference in the 2020 presidential elections, including certification of the electoral college votes on January 6 2021, when a crowd of Trump supporters attacked the US Capitol.
-Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong says: “I’m just as bullish on crypto as ever.”
The founder-CEO on his enduring belief in blockchain, his ‘no politics in the workplace’ policy, and why the solution to crypto chaos is . . . more crypto.
-Oil prices fell sharply in the week as mounting concerns about weakening fuel demand in China outweighed fears that Russian supply could drop next month when tighter EU sanctions on its crude exports come into force.
West Texas Intermediate, the US benchmark, lost about 10% this week, falling 1.9% on Friday to settle at $80.08 a barrel. It was the biggest weekly loss since March. US oil prices fell by more than 4% to $78.50 a barrel earlier in the day, to what was the lowest price since September.
-The head of Japan’s travel agents’ association has warned that the post-pandemic recovery of the country’s tourism industry will hinge on whether it can reshape itself to cater to the spending habits of western travelers, in the continuing absence of tourists from China.
-Workers were still fitting toilets, building bedroom furniture and painting cabins just 72 hours before the FIFA World Cup tournament is due to kick off in Doha at 4pm GMT on Sunday. Each unit carries a banner with a message in English and Arabic - Welcome, Play, Now! -a few simply say: Cheer Up. But fan groups worry that the facilities will not be ready in time.
-The mother of a nine-year-old boy who died during protests in Iran this week has accused security forces of killing her son, as funerals take place across the country for some of those who died in the biggest anti-regime demonstrations yet in the Islamic republic. Authorities have blamed “terrorists” for the deaths of Kian Pirfalak, nine, and Artin Rahmani, 14, in Izeh. This follows an alleged armed attack by two men on a motorcycle that killed at least seven people.
-In 2016, Tom Ford told FT that he was “determined” to turn his eponymous beauty, eyewear and fashion company into a $3B business by 2025. He didn’t quite make the mark, but he got close. On Tuesday, Estée Lauder Companies announced that it had acquired the Tom Ford brand in a deal that values it at $2.8B. The sale is poised to make a billionaire of 61-year-old Ford, who made his name transforming a near bankrupt Gucci into a fashion powerhouse before launching his eponymous company in 2005.
NY POST
-An armed man was killed during a shootout with law enforcement officers during an undercover drug operation in Upper Manhattan Friday night, police and sources said. Members of a joint federal task force, which includes NYPD officers, were trying to execute a controlled drug buy at an apartment on Vermilyea Ave near Academy Street in Inwood when the mayhem erupted around 8:45PM, police and law enforcement sources said.
-Hundreds of Twitter employees are estimated to have quit after their new boss, Elon Musk, sent out a memo demanding “long hours at high intensity” as a condition of their employment. Musk had already fired half of Twitter’s employees, leaving only 3,000 or so when he then sent out a team email that gave Twitter workers a choice, to become “extremely hardcore” or leave. Many apparently chose to leave.
-Manhattan federal prosecutors are investigating whether Nadine Arslanian, the wife of Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), received gifts or services from individuals who sought favors from her husband, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
Arslanian’s associates have been subpoenaed in the investigation by the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York — and have been asked for information about both Arslanian and Menendez, according to the outlet.
-Former Attorney General Bill Barr says he thinks the federal government has enough evidence to indict former President Donald Trump. In an interview with PBS that aired on Friday, Barr told “Firing Line” host Margaret Hoover that the Justice Department “probably have the evidence” to “legitimately” charge the 76-year-old former president with a crime related to sensitive presidential documents that he allegedly stored at his Mar-a-Lago estate after leaving the White House. “If the Department of Justice can show that these were indeed very sensitive documents, which I think they probably were, and also show that the president consciously was involved in misleading the department, deceiving the government, and playing games after he had received the subpoena for the documents, those are serious charges,” Barr said.