Weekend Papers Summary
NEW YORK TIMES
-President Biden met with Poland’s president as he wrapped up a visit to Europe intended to bolster unity over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. His trip came even as there were indications that Moscow might be scaling back its military ambitions.
-A Russian general’s statement suggested that Moscow was moving away from its goal of taking Kyiv. At least three explosions were heard in central Lviv.
-President Biden told the Polish president that the U.S.’s commitment to NATO is “a sacred obligation.” He will speak later in Warsaw. After meeting with Ukraine refugees, Biden calls Putin ‘a butcher.’
-Vladimir Putin didn’t mention Ukraine in a speech on Friday. Instead, he discussed a personal obsession: “cancel culture.”
-A Minnesota man is released after being held by Russian troops for 10 days.
-Democrats have urged Justice Thomas to recuse himself in Capitol Riot cases. His wife Virginia Thomas’s texts, pressing the Trump White House to overturn the 2020 election, raise questions about her husband’s role in related cases.
-This week’s Senate hearings underscored the fragility of a bipartisan alliance that seeks to reduce the impact of America’s vast prison complex.
-Officials decided another vaccine shot might save thousands of lives if a new Covid wave hits before the fall. The FDA could authorize the boosters next week.
-Mayor Eric Adams is facing a backlash over a vaccine exemption for athletes in New York City.
-A few years ago, Hollywood argued over whether movies on streaming services even counted as films. Now, one is poised to win the Oscars’ top prize.
-Retirement investments that are fine in tax-sheltered accounts can generate big headaches without that protection. Vanguard’s target date funds are a case in point.
-The war in Ukraine has driven up prices across the Middle East and North Africa ahead of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month characterized by of daytime fasting and nighttime feasting.
THE FINANCIAL TIMES
-Ukrainian President The war in Ukraine has driven up prices across the Middle East and North Africa ahead of the Muslim holy month of daytime fasting and nighttime feasting.
-Russia said it was refocusing its month-long military offensive in Ukraine on the country’s eastern Donbas region, in comments that suggested Moscow could scale back attacks in other parts of the country.
-When Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene appeared on conservative radio show Voice of Rural America this week, she launched a full-throated defense of Vladimir Putin and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “You see, Ukraine just kept poking the bear, and poking the bear, which is Russia, and Russia invaded,” the Georgia congresswoman said. “There is no win for Ukraine here. Russia is being successful in their invasion.”
-“The Russian invasion of Ukraine has put an end to the globalisation we have experienced over the last three decades,” Larry Fink, chief executive of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, wrote in his annual letter to shareholders this week. “A large-scale reorientation of supply chains will inherently be inflationary,” he added.
-Associates of the imprisoned Russian anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny are publicly promoting the case that a mystery superyacht held by Italian authorities in Massa Carrara is probably Putin’s. In a video this week, activists from Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation alleged that most of the Scheherazade crew were Russian and that several were employed by the country’s Federal Protection Service, which is responsible for Putin’s security.
-The Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal spoke to Nestlé chief executive Mark Schneider last week, and then took to Twitter.
“Talked to Nestlé CEO Mr Mark Schneider about the side effect[s] of staying in Russian market,” Denys Shmyhal tweeted. “Unfortunately, he shows no understanding. Paying taxes to the budget of a terrorist country means killing defenseless children [and] mothers. Hope that Nestlé will change its mind soon.”
-The contrast between the Red Army’s victorious campaign across Ukraine in 1943 and President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of 2022 could not be starker. Harking back to the Soviet Union’s triumphs during WW2, the Russian president has played up the fraternal ties between the two Slavic peoples and the historic symmetry of a Russian army “liberating” the Ukrainian people from the supposed grip of neo-Nazis.
- As Moscow continues its bombardment of Ukraine, dividing friends and family on either side of the border, tensions are fraying in the traditionally close-knit post-Soviet émigré communities beyond Russia.
- Chinese property developers’ issuance of dollar debt has come to a near standstill as the escalating Evergrande crisis severs other real estate companies’ access to global capital markets.
-The US is finalizing a plan to supply the EU with up to 15B additional m3 of LNG by the end of 2022.
The agreement aims to help the EU reduce its dependence on natural gas from Russia, with the bloc racing to curb Russian imports by two-thirds this year. LNG deliveries from the US would go towards a goal, set by the EU this month, of replacing 50B m3 of gas currently supplied by Russia with alternative supplies. In 2021, the US supplied Europe with 22B m3 according to EU data.
THE NEW YORK POST
-Vladimir Putin is “a butcher,” President Biden said Saturday, after he made an emotional trip to visit Ukrainian refugees at Warsaw’s PGE Narodowy Stadium. “He’s a butcher,” Biden told a reporter who asked what he thought of Putin after speaking with just a few of the 3.7M Ukrainians who have fled the Russian invasion.
-If the GOP retakes control of Congress, Hunter Biden will be hauled before the House of Representatives and forced to reveal the identity of “the big guy” and address other unanswered questions about the contents of his infamous laptop, Republicans said. “We will subpoena Hunter Biden,” said House GOP conference chair Elise Stefanik bluntly in an interview with The Post.
-The Amazon-MGM merger gained approval from the Federal Trade Commission without fanfare or a fight last week — and antitrust advocates are blaming New York Sen. Chuck Schumer.