* NYT (Saturday): Pressured by an expanding protest movement and a rising death toll, prime minister Adel Abdul Mahdi of Iraq told Parliament he will resign, taking the country into greater uncertainty and possibly months of turmoil ahead; Donald Trump re-launched negotiations with the Taliban in a jolting fashion by seeming to demand a cease-fire that his negotiators had long concluded was overly ambitious; The police shot and killed a man wearing a fake bomb on London Bridge Friday, after two people were fatally stabbed in what the police called a terrorist incident; Senator Lindsey Graham, “who has long prided himself on being an institutionalist, has gone from expressing an open mind about impeachment to becoming a leader of the president’s counterattack” and “an aggressive and unapologetically partisan defender of Trump”; Trump will travel to London next week for a NATO summit marking the alliance’s 70th anniversary, and will meet with French president Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Angela Merkel, but not with UK prime minister Boris Johnson; Jerrold Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, asked Trump whether he intends to mount a defense during the committee’s consideration of impeachment articles, setting a deadline of next Friday for doing so; (Sunday): Front page investigative story uses Baltimore as a case study to report on how AMZN “may now reach into American’s daily existence in more ways than any corporation in history”; Venezuela’s devastating six-year economic crisis is hollowing out the school system, once the pride of the oil-rich nation and for decades an engine that made the country one of the most upwardly mobile in Latin America; Fentanyl sourced from China accounted for 97 percent of the drug seized from international mail services by U.S. law enforcement in 2016 and 2017, but Chinese president Xi Jinping’s promised crackdown appears to have slowed the widespread and open selling of the drug; + TWTR: Twitter suspended the accounts of Danielle Stella, a Republican hoping to challenge Democratic representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota next year, after she suggested the congresswoman should be tried for treason and hanged; Sunday Business: Lead story profiles University College London economist Mariana Mazzucato, who is trying to change the way society thinks about economic value by arguing against the long-accepted binary of an agile private sector and a lumbering, inefficient state
* WSJ (Weekend): Front page story reports “The strength of the American consumer as a driving force behind the economy was on display during the annual Black Friday ritual, as shoppers headed to malls and visited websites looking for deals”; +/- Huawei: Chinese telecom giant plans to fight an FCC decision that further curtails its business with some of its few remaining customers in the U.S., as it continues to advocate for itself in an escalating battle with Washington; + AMZN: The Trump administration is testing a new method for federal agencies to buy office supplies and other goods online, a move that could give the e-commerce giant a foothold in a market worth as much as $50B a year; Bernie Sanders’s most adamant backers expect that he will be the Democratic nominee for president, but if that turns out not to be the case, they want Sanders to put up a fight; A Trump administration push for oil drilling off the coast of South Carolina and Florida faces resistance from Republican leaders on the Southeastern seaboard, who have pledged to put the beauty of the coastal waters above the U.S. thirst for oil; India’s economic slowdown is hurting rural residents as the prices of the commodities they grow and sell are rising more slowly than the things they buy, a growing problem that poses a major challenge for prime minister Narendra Modi; Economic growth in Canada slowed markedly in the third quarter after posting the fastest expansion among Group of Seven countries in the previous three-month period; The Center for Consumer Freedom, a Washington-based nonprofit partly funded by meat producers and other companies has launched a campaign to counter consumers’ belief that meat alternatives are healthier than regular meat; The bull run’s trajectory for next year looks like it will be far more modest than it was in 2019, say investment-bank strategists who forecast stock market performance, but few believe the longest-ever bull market is on its last leg; Lebanon’s repayment of a $1.5B sovereign bond failed to bolster the prices of its other bonds, reflecting mounting concern that the country is running out of cash to meet its foreign obligations; H.O.T.S.: “Airlines are under mounting pressure to improve their environmental credentials, but have few good options”; UK-listed Ocado has earned its place as one of Europe’s most-promising grocery technology ventures, but there are few hard numbers to back the soaring share price; The rise of BABA has brought Chinese parcel shippers plenty of business, but it has also fostered cutthroat competition
* FT (Weekend): DAI’s plan to lay off 10,000 people, a major blow to Germany’s industrial engine, comes as Berlin is implementing a strategy designed to protect sensitive technology from foreign takeovers; India’s economic growth slowed further in the third quarter, highlighting the depth of the downturn afflicting a nation that was only recently reveling in its status as the world’s fastest-growing economy; Big Read story on LVMH says the company’s acquisition of TIF “is the latest in 40 years of voracious dealmaking by Bernard Arnault,” who is “betting on a growing middle class and that conglomerates won’t kill the industry’s artisanal allure”; “Millions of Americans avoided shopping malls and instead reached for their phones to get Black Friday bargains, fueling a boom in online orders over the extended Thanksgiving holiday,” with AMZN capturing 61% of the market share; Lex Column: Ocado’s journey from an overpriced player in Iow-margin food deliveries to snazzy tech company has been remarkable, but may not justify a quadrupling of the share price; Postal Savings Bank of China may be come a safe choice for conservative portfolios when its price drops, but investors seeking growth now should look elsewhere; In the biotech sector, “many are called, but few are chosen”—the number of fledgling startups dwarfs the number of successful buyouts; Comment: Equality should be judged over a lifetime, says Merryn Somerset Webb, and young people calling for the rich to be heavily taxed may regret their words at some point, since age is a huge driver of wealth and income.
* NY POST (Saturday): With a dearth of new, blockbuster toys expected this holiday season, retailers have had to display toy lines that are a year or more old; +/- AAPL: Design chief Jony Ives has left the company, ending a 27-year stint at the company to form his own design firm, LoveFrom, whose roster of clients will include Apple; (Sunday): Millions of people could lose their food stamps, with New Yorkers being particularly hard hit, under new Department of Agriculture eligibility rules, with about two million households nationwide seeing $127 per month in cuts; A pollster for former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg said the Democratic presidential candidate’s campaign will focus on climate change, gun violence, income inequality and education; Researchers at The Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research have developed a lightweight, wearable electrode sleeve that regulates and triggers finger movement in quadriplegics, giving hope to millions of people living with paralysis across the U.S