Weekend Papers Summary
NEW YORK TIMES
-President Biden is planning a series of measures to further reduce greenhouse gases, including regulations on vehicles and power plants, officials said. In pushing more executive action, he is trying to make up for climate compromises Democrats made to pass the Inflation Reduction Act earlier this month.
-President Biden may deploy a series of regulatory measures, including new regulations on emissions from a variety of industries, even after signing the Inflation Reduction Act.
-Louisiana doctors concerned about complying with new abortion bans in post-Roe America gave a pregnant woman a devastating diagnosis, but not an abortion.
-A conservative group in Michigan filed a challenge to adding an abortion vote to November’s ballot, based on word spacing.
-After a recent court ruling that allowed Louisiana’s abortion bans to go into effect, the abortion provider Hope Medical Group for Women in Shreveport said that it would move out of the state.
-A new strategy of attacks on logistical targets in Russian-held territory is having an impact, analysts say, symbolically as well as militarily.
Ukraine updates: Russia replaced the commander of its Black Sea Fleet following a series of setbacks in the war.
-A federal judge declined to stay an order that Senator Lindsey Graham appear before a special grand jury investigating election interference by Donald Trump.
-Two House Democrats demanded social media companies address right-wing threats after the F.B.I.’s Mar-a-Lago search.
-Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has fought a subpoena to appear in person before a special grand jury in Atlanta that is investigating efforts by Donald J. Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia.
-Dermatologists said that the key ingredient in a topical treatment to grow hair worked even better when taken orally at a low dose. Brandy Gray, 44, was seen by Dr. Crystal Aguh before and after treatment with oral minoxidil.
-In deep red Texas, Beto O’Rourke takes on guns and abortion.
“I can’t win this with Democrats alone,” the candidate for Texas governor said during a 49-day drive across the state that included deeply Republican towns.
-Eyeing a 2024 presidential bid, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is visiting hard-right candidates in Pennsylvania and Ohio.
-The killing of Freya the walrus has polarized Oslo and threatens to blight the image of a country more associated with diplomatic good deeds than with mob-like hits.
-Retailers stumble adjusting to more selective shoppers. In earnings reports this week, companies struggled to adapt to a consumer mind-set vastly different from what it was during much of the pandemic.
THE FINANCIAL TIMES
-Traders at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase have warned clients in recent days that the bounce in shares is not underpinned by confidence the surge can last, according to interviews with traders and private brokerage reports. Rather, the rally — including the frenzied boom and bust in meme stocks that recalls last year’s market ructions — has been fueled by hedge funds covering short bets structured to profit from the market decline earlier this year.
-As financial markets soared in 2021, fueled by a pandemic surge in technology stocks that made Tiger Global one of the most successful hedge funds on the planet, the firm invited in US downhill skier Lindsey Vonn to offer advice to about 30 investors.
-Former president Trump’s return to the fore of the US’s political stage, with a barrage of seething rhetoric and under a cloud of serious legal trouble, risks blunting the Republican party’s advantage heading into the midterm elections by alienating swing voters at a time when it was already showing signs of ebbing.
-Sanna Marin, Finland’s prime minister, revealed she had taken a drugs test after a video emerged this week of her partying and dancing wildly with friends. Marin said she regarded calls for her to undergo a narcotics test as “unjust” but had agreed to it to dispel any suggestion she had taken drugs. In the clip that first appeared on social media this week, other partygoers reportedly mention the word cocaine.
-Berkshire Hathaway won the approval of a US energy regulator on Friday to buy up to 50% in Occidental Petroleum, giving Warren Buffett’s company the option to vastly increase its stake in one of the US oil industry’s most storied producers.
-A senior French official said President Putin had agreed in a call with Macron on Friday that the IAEA inspectors could visit from Ukrainian-held territory — as demanded by Kiev — and would not be obliged to access the power station from the zone invaded and controlled by Russian forces, although the Kremlin did not confirm this.
-WeWork’s valuation soared to $47B, pumped up by funding from SoftBank, then crashed in 2019 as its heavy spending and Adam Neumann’s erratic behavior sank its plans to go public. Neumann walked away a billionaire, but his story — retold in books and television shows — became a cautionary tale for unicorn-hunting investors. Less than three years later, however, one of the biggest names in venture capital has put $350M behind Neumann’s latest attempt to change the way we live. This week Marc Andreessen, the Netscape co-founder who spotted tech hits from Airbnb to Facebook, announced his firm, Andreessen Horowitz, would be investing in Neumann’s new company, Flow.
-Just a decade after Crispr was invented, the first drug to make use of the revolutionary gene-editing technology will be with regulators by the end of the year, with the promise that it will eventually transform the treatment of genetic diseases.
-Air travel on both sides of the Atlantic has been in disarray this summer. From the start of May to mid-August, a quarter of flights into, out of, or within the US, UK and Europe were disrupted — delayed or cancelled — as airlines struggled to scale up operations to meet soaring demand, while labor shortages ranged from pilots to cabin crew, ground staff and air traffic controllers.
NY POST
-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell threw cold water Thursday on talk that Republicans would cruise to control of the upper chamber of Congress in November’s midterm elections.
“I think there’s probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate,” McConnell (R-Ky.) told the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce in remarks reported by Fox News and other outlets.
“Senate races are just different,” he added. “They’re statewide. Candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome.”
-Elon Musk has approached brain chip implant developer Synchron about a potential investment as his own company Neuralink plays catch-up in the race to connect the human brain directly to machines, according to four people familiar with the matter.
Musk reached out to Synchron’s founder and chief executive, Thomas Oxley, in recent weeks to discuss a potential deal, the sources said. It is not clear if any transaction would involve a tie-up or collaboration between Synchron and Neuralink.