Weekend Papers Summary
NEW YORK TIMES
Saturday
• The Senate voted overwhelmingly to override Donald Trump’s veto of the annual military policy bill, with most Republicans joining Democrats for the first override during Trump’s time in office, a major rebuke to the president during the final days of his term.
• Battered by a wave of coronavirus infections and deaths, local jails and state prison systems around the US have resorted to the drastic strategy of shutting down completely and transferring their inmates elsewhere in order to control the virus.
• The Pentagon sent the aircraft carrier Nimitz home from the Middle East and Africa over the objections of top military advisers, reversing a strategy that sought to deter Iran from attacking American troops and diplomats in the Persian Gulf.
• More than 10 percent of Israel’s population has received a coronavirus vaccine, a rate far higher than the rest of the world, boosting the battered domestic image of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu just as he faces a host of other problems.
• Officials in Rotterdam are testing a new series of giant offshore wind turbines planned by GE that have the potential to power cities, supplanting coal- and natural gas-fired plants that form the backbones of many electric systems today.
• American companies will have to pay higher taxes on some of the products they import from China, because the tariff exclusions that had shielded many businesses from Trump’s trade war expired at midnight on Thursday.
Sunday
• Eight weeks after a massive cyberattack carried out by Russia was discovered, American officials are trying to discover if it was mere espionage, or a larger effort to insert “backdoor” access into government agencies, corporations, the electric grid, and nuclear laboratories.
• Vice President Pence signaled support for a futile Republican bid to overturn the election in Congress next week, after 11 Republican senators and senators-elect said that they would vote to reject Joseph Biden’s presidential victory.
• A growing number of foreigners, mainly Americans, are heading to Mexico for short trips or longer stays to escape coronavirus restrictions at home, drawn partly by the prospect of normalcy in a place where pandemic restrictions have been more relaxed.
• A diminished sense of smell, called anosmia, has emerged as one of the telltale symptoms of Covid-19, and though it is the first and often only symptom for many patients, it is often accompanied by an inability to taste which in some cases lingers.
• By abolishing the so-called tampon tax, Britain became the latest country to change laws related to sanitary products, no longer classifying them as nonessential and eliminating the extra costs that many people criticized as sexist.
• Transferring water from agricultural communities to cities, though often contentious, is not a new practice, and it drove the growth of cities such as Los Angeles and Las Vegas—but in a new and controversial trend, private investors are buying water rights and directly managing the process.
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Weekend
• Far fewer people are being protected against Covid-19 as the vaccination rollout process moves slower than officials had projected because of confusion and disorganization in many states, a situation that hints at more problems in the future.
• Story reports on five dominant investment trends in 2020, during which US stocks had a record setting year despite the pandemic: the momentum trade, the options boom, special purpose acquisition companies, growth companies, and Bitcoin.
• Just over a year ago, India’s Oyo Hotels & Homes was the second-largest hotel chain globally, but the number of rooms on its network has declined by more than half in the past year to around 530,000, according to a WSJ analysis, a sign of problems that go beyond the pandemic.
• The White House extended a ban on immigrants coming to the US on work-based visas and green cards through the end of March, adding to the policy challenges the incoming Biden administration will have to manage.
• Hospitals say the continued Covid-19 surge will require more relief than Congress included in the new pandemic-aid act after lawmakers scaled back health-care funding—the $3B set to go to hospitals is far less than the $35B proposed.
• With the Brexit completed on January 1, decades of UK trade with the EU unencumbered by customs declarations and regulatory obstacles ceased, one of several changes likely to have big and lasting effects on the British economy.
• North Korea wants to have good ties with the US, a diplomat said in a December meeting with a European lawmaker, in one of Pyongyang’s only exchanges with the West in recent months, according to people familiar with the matter.
• H.O.T.S.: Investors are enthusiastic about QuantumScape, developer of an electric-vehicle battery that promises more power for less cost—and which could pose a challenge to TSLA; “Makeup sellers like Sephora and ULTA must walk a fine line between stores and e-commerce as the pandemic continues to influence consumer behavior”; China has become the world’s largest domestic aviation market in the wake of the pandemic.
FINANCIAL TIMES
Weekend
• European countries have fallen behind in mass coronavirus inoculations, with the founders of BNTX—which with PFE developed the first vaccine to be approved in the bloc—criticizing leaders for being too slow to secure stock of the shots.
• Retail experts predict that American consumers will return a record $115B worth of unwanted goods purchased during the holiday season, giving delivery companies a boost but hitting retail profit margins and intensifying concerns about environmental impact.
• Portugal, which is taking over the six-month rotating European Union presidency, said it will make mass coronavirus vaccination one of its top priorities as a more infectious strain of the bug spreads across the Continent.
• Nikola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, wants to lead an independent Scotland back into the EU, and will put Brexit at the center of her parliamentary campaign in May during which she will push for Scottish independence.
• Big Read piece asks whether Trumpism will outlast Trump’s presidency, noting that his claims of a stolen election have created a loyalty test for senior figures in the Republican party, some of whom will hope to inherit his mantle.
• Lex Column: Cybersecurity may be a crowded field, but the growing number of cyber attacks leaves companies with no option but to spend; Clean energy is proving to be a win-win for investors in a year when oil and gas companies lost about a quarter of their value; Better sustainability by fashion companies such as Asos, Boohoo, and others is on the rise—and investor funding is set to follow.
• Comment: Now that the Brexit is done, Britain must rebuild trust with Europe, says Camilla Cavendish, which will require a rolling series of negotiations and a battle against the commonly held EU notion that the UK is now irrelevant.
NEW YORK POST
Saturday
• + DAL: Chief Ed Bastian said in a memo on Friday that he continues to expect that the carrier, hit hard by the pandemic, will achieve positive cash flow in the spring. Sunday
• New York-based billionaires saw their collective wealth balloon by $81B to surpass $600B during the pandemic, according to Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies