Weekend Papers Summary
NYT (Saturday): House Democrats concluded their arguments against Donald Trump Friday by portraying his pressure campaign on Ukraine as part of a dangerous pattern of Russian appeasement that demanded his removal from office; related story says the Democrats do not appear to have won over the handful of Republicans who hold the key to gaining access to witnesses and documents that could cement their case; Democratic voters “are splintered across generational, racial and ideological lines, prompting some liberals to express reluctance about rallying behind a moderate presidential nominee, and those closer to the political middle to voice unease with a progressive standard-bearer”; The Environmental Protection Agency under Trump has made it easier for cities to continue to dump raw sewage into rivers by letting them delay or otherwise change federally imposed fixes to their sewer systems; A huge crowd of Iraqis gathered on the streets of Baghdad Friday to protest the US military presence at the behest of a leading populist cleric and armed forces with ties to Iran; A second patient in the US—a woman in her 60s who traveled to Wuhan, China and returned to Chicago—is infected with the Wuhan coronavirus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; The Trump administration said the Department of Health and Human Services would withhold federal money from California if the state does not drop during the next 30 days its requirement that private insurers cover abortions; London’s police department plans to begin using facial recognition to detect criminal suspects with video cameras as they walk the streets, a level of surveillance that is rare outside China; The Trump administration is moving quickly to hold China to its promise to protect American intellectual property, ratcheting up searches for counterfeit goods at ports and increasing pressure on e-commerce companies to halt online sales of Chinese knockoffs; (Sunday): Trump’s legal defense team mounted an aggressive offense Saturday in the Senate impeachment trial by claiming Democratic accusers were partisan witch-hunters trying to remove him from office because they could not beat him at the ballot box; Bernie Sanders leads Democratic presidential rivals in Iowa just over a week before the state’s caucuses, consolidating support from liberals and benefiting from divisions among moderates who are clustered behind him, according to a NYT/Siena College poll of likely caucusgoers; In China, markets that sell meat, fruits, and vegetables are again the source of an epidemic that has spread fear, challenged the Communist Party bureaucracy and exposed the epidemiological risks of places where humans and wildlife converge; The Des Moines Register, Iowa’s largest and most influential paper, endorsed Senator Elizabeth Warren for the Democratic presidential nomination on Saturday, calling her “the best leader for these times”; A Trump administration rule change, long in the making, is about to take effect, and by the administration’s own estimates, nearly 700,000 people across the country will be dropped from the food-stamp rolls; Sunday Business: Lead story says that stock traders are accused of siphoning $60B from European state coffers using a monetary maneuver called “cum-ex trading” to avoid double taxation of investment profits—and Germany is the first country to try to get its money back.
WSJ (Weekend): Front page story reports “The Commerce Department has withdrawn proposed regulations making it harder for U.S. companies to sell to Huawei from their overseas facilities after objections from the Pentagon and the Treasury Department”; China’s investment of billions in the frontiers of modern science is being put to the test by the coronavirus outbreak, an elementary health challenge, and its performance seems to be lagging based on early indications; The mortgage market in 2019 had its best year since the height of the pre-crisis boom, the latest sign that housing is firming up after showing signs of weakness early last year; US oil prices fell 7.5%, their sharpest weekly move lower since July, sparked by fears that a deadly virus spreading throughout China and other countries will hurt demand; Most planes and helicopters flying in the US must now be equipped with transponders that allow their movements to be traced with GPS coordinates, a move that should make tracking faster and more accurate than radar, and allow more planes in the air; A report by FTI that claimed Saudi Arabia likely hacked Jeff Bezos’ phone has spurred questions among cybersecurity experts who say the audit left several major technical questions unexplained and in need of more examination; Secretary of State Pompeo will travel next week to Kiev for meetings with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and other officials, part of a rescheduled trip to Europe and Central Asia; +/- DIS, MCD: Disney will temporarily close its Disneyland and Disneytown parks in Shanghai, while McDonald’s has closed stores in Wuhan, as the death toll from China’s spreading coronavirus continues to rise; +/- FB: As lawmakers continue to hash out the EU’s extensive privacy rules, a German court ruled that some user terms set by the social site violated consumer-data protection law; The Dow Jones Transportation Average—which tracks the performance of 20 large US airlines, truckers, railroads, and shippers—is 4.4% below its record from September 14, 2018, while during the same period, the DJIA has risen 11%; H.O.T.S.: TSLA’s share price reflects that unlike Volkswagen or GM, “Elon Musk’s car maker has little to lose in the journey to a greener future”; INTC’s production arms race with TSM grows more expensive, even as sales to the growing data-center sector increase; The zero-commission trend has led online brokerage customers to trade more and park more cash.
FT (Weekend): Front page story on the coronavirus outbreak says that while the CDC has not complained publicly about a lack of co-operation with its Chinese counterparts, some experts are unhappy with the information they’re receiving from China on who is getting infected, and how; London’s decision to start using facial recognition technology in security cameras comes as the European Commission is considering a ban on the technology across the bloc for five years to allow policymakers to create a regulatory framework; Brussels succeeded in preventing Washington from throwing a wrench in the World Trade Organization’s dispute settlement system, forging an alliance with 16 countries to work around a US block on judicial appointments; The EU will demand the right to rapidly sanction the UK for breaching any future deals in a bid to prevent “competitive undercutting or freeriding” by British companies, according to documents seen by the FT; Big Read piece on the coronavirus in China says the capacity of the Chinese system to marshal resources and give orders has been clear in Wuhan and its surrounding cities, but there may be downsides to president Xi Jinping’s style of leadership for crisis management; Lex Column: The decision by BCS chief Jes Staley to set a course for 10 percent return on equity by the end of 2020 may rankle some of staff, but he is right to hold his line; Rallies after outbreaks during the past two decades, from avian flu to Ebola, have been followed by corrections; “Watching the fight between XRX and HPQ can feel a lot like watching a pair of bickering old-timers”; Comment: The allied bombing of Dresden in World War II continues to reverberate 75 years afterwards, says PW Singer, and provide lessons for the current use of drones to carry out attacks without the use of pilots in planes.
NY POST (Saturday): The Chinese stock market sank to a record low this week as the deadly coronavirus outbreak panicked investors; An Israeli startup called GalaPro is partnering with Epson’s Moverio to develop smart glasses to help hearing impaired theatergoers; (Sunday): The mayor of Paris canceled the city’s Chinese Lunar New Year parade, set to take place at the Place de la République, amid concerns over the deadly coronavirus outbreak.