Weekend Papers Summary
NEW YORK TIMES
-As world leaders pour into Qatar, world cup becomes backdrop for diplomacy. Dozens of top officials have flown to Qatar to cheer for teams while talking shop. The event has magnified the Gulf nation’s role as a diplomatic broker.
-Qatar paid David Beckham tens of millions of dollars to promote the country and its interests. It has not received much return on the investment.
-Dozens of missiles knocked out heat and electricity systems around the country including in Kiev, where two-thirds of its residents had no heat or water.
-Brittney Griner said she would return to the WNBA next season and pledged support for Paul Whelan.
-A Russian official working to gain influence in the Central African Republic was wounded by a package bomb, Moscow said.
-Hospitalizations for respiratory illnesses are at high levels for this time of year, making it hard to predict how bad this winter will be.
-The research was conducted in part when older variants of the coronavirus were spreading. Other factors may have influenced the conclusions.
-A NY Times investigation shows how Donald Trump stored classified documents in high-traffic areas of Mar-a-Lago where guests may have been within feet of the materials.
-A separate House committee is expected to vote on whether to release former President Trump’s tax records.
-Robert Crimo Jr., whose son is accused of killing seven people at a Fourth of July parade in Illinois this year, was charged with reckless conduct.
-The concert was supposed to be one of Mexico’s largest, sold out months before. Instead, one of the world’s biggest stars played to a half empty floor.
-In Peru, two government ministers resigned after the new president, Dina Boluarte, deployed the military to crack down on demonstrations.
-University of California academic workers reach deal to end strike. The tentative agreement comes more than a month after 48,000 employees walked out.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer has been cleared of ‘black mark’ after 68 years.
The physicist and architect of the American atomic bomb was stripped of his security clearance in 1954 after what is now called a flawed investigation.
-FTX was vastly different from stock exchanges, which are highly regulated and barred from engaging in many of the activities it pursued.
-The January 6 plot, which also included attacking an FBI office, was foiled by a witness who aided the authorities and recorded the defendant, court papers say.
THE FINANCIAL TIMES
-Goldman Sachs is preparing to lay off as many as 3,900 employees starting in January as chief executive David Solomon seeks to boost the bank’s profitability amid economic headwinds. Wall Street is contending with sharply reduced dealmaking and capital markets activity after a bumper 2021 that resulted in big hiring surges and large bonuses. Investment banking fees have tumbled 35% in the year to date, according to Refinitiv data.
-Hedge funds have been upping their short positions against shares of cryptocurrency miners, betting that more will go to the financial brink after the collapse of the FTX exchange.
With the bitcoin price down by nearly two-thirds this year and the cost of the power that miners require to fuel their energy-intensive computers having risen sharply, hedge funds are wagering that some companies’ business models are still far from viable.
-A globetrotting Italian union boss-turned-politician has emerged as the kingpin in a sprawling international investigation into allegations that Qatar and Morocco sought to bribe EU legislators to influence policy and used a network of non-governmental organizations to hide the corrupt dealings. Pier Antonio Panzeri, a Socialist member of the European parliament between 2004 and 2019, is one of four people charged with corruption, money laundering and being part of a criminal group after police seized €600,000 in cash at his residence in Brussels. A separate suitcase with €600,000 in cash was found in the possession of the father of Eva Kaili, a Greek MEP also charged in the case.
-A month after Donald Trump launched his third presidential campaign with a declaration that “America’s comeback begins now”, his attempt to recapture the White House is floundering amid a drumbeat of criticism from Republican lawmakers and ever mounting legal woes.
-Outflows from Binance accelerated to $6B in the first half of this week, while accounting firm Mazars has halted its work on crucial “proof of reserves” reporting, as the crypto exchange battles to avert a crisis of confidence.
Binance, which suffered $1B outflows in a single day on Tuesday, is battling to reassure investors of its financial strength following the collapse of rival crypto exchange FTX.
-The head of Elon Musk’s family office has approached investors who helped the billionaire buy Twitter for $44B in October to try and raise new funds as the social media company continues to bleed cash and faces heavy interest payments on its debts. Jared Birchall, a former Morgan Stanley banker, approached Twitter’s shareholders on Thursday afternoon, according to two people familiar with the matter. He offered new shares in the company at $54.20 — the same price Musk paid to take the company private.
-David Cameron, Britain’s former prime minister, is returning to public life with a new job teaching politics at a university in the Gulf state of Abu Dhabi. Cameron will lecture students on “practicing politics and government in the age of disruption” for a three-week course in January at the New York University Abu Dhabi. It will involve topics such as the war in Ukraine and the migration crisis.
-Explosions from the latest major barrage of Russian air strikes knocked out utilities in Kiev and scores of other Ukrainian cities on Friday, increasing officials’ pleas for more western air defense systems to protect critical infrastructure.
-Russian crude oil is being shipped to India on tankers insured by western companies, in the first sign Moscow has reneged on its vow to block sales under the G7-imposed price cap.
-Speaking just days after the Federal Reserve slowed down the pace of its policy tightening and raised the federal funds rate by half a percentage point, the heads of the New York and San Francisco branches of the Federal Reserve countered what they described as an “optimistic” view held by investors that elevated inflation will be close to extinguished next year, especially after recent positive data.
-The decision to buy crude again for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve follows a decline in oil prices in recent weeks. It is a reversal for the administration of Joe Biden, which has aggressively sold off supplies from the reserve in an effort to drive down fuel costs and alleviate fears of global energy shortages triggered by Russia’s war in Ukraine.
-US President Joe Biden pledged unparalleled support for labor unions. But the federal agency responsible for conducting an increasing number of union elections is on the verge of furloughing its own employees due to a funding crunch.
NY POST
-Oberlin College has forked over the $36M owed to a local bakery after the progressive Ohio school falsely accused the family-operated business of being racist. The substantial payout was awarded earlier this year after Gibson’s Bakery won a defamation lawsuit against the school that sided with three black students who claimed the store racially profiled them when they were caught stealing from the shop in November 2016. “We can confirm that all funds have been disbursed and that the family is continuing with the process of rebuilding Gibson’s Bakery for the next generations,” Brandon McHugh, the Gibson family’s attorney, told 3News on Thursday.
-King Charles will invite Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to his coronation in spite of the couple’s new Netflix docuseries containing fresh attacks on the royal family. The historic event at Westminster Abbey set for May 6.
“Harry is his son and His Majesty will always love him. While things are difficult at the moment, the door will always be left ajar,” one insider told the outlet.
-Former President Donald Trump on Friday publicly backed House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s bid for speaker of the House in the next Congress. The 76-year-old former commander-in-chief also warned that GOP lawmakers opposing the California Republican are playing a “very dangerous game.” “Yeah, I support McCarthy,” Trump told Breitbart News during an interview from his Doral golf resort in Miami, Florida.
-FTX investor and former paid spokesperson Kevin O’Leary refused to condemn Sam Bankman-Fried or classify the doomed company’s meltdown as fraud during a tense television appearance on Friday. O’Leary, one of the sharks on the hit show Shark Tank, provided a toothless response when pressed to point a finger at who’s to blame.
“I don’t have all the facts,” he told the hosts of CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” Bankman-Fried faces up to 115 years in prison on eight federal charges for his alleged crypto con job and has drawn comparisons to the late Ponzi scheme mastermind Bernie Madoff. Prosecutors say Bankman-Fried is responsible for “one of the biggest financial frauds in US history.” He is locked in a Bahamian prison while he fights extradition. But O’Leary isn’t ready to convict his former benefactor.
-The managing director of Elon Musk’s family office is seeking new equity investors for Twitter, news platform Semafor reported on Friday, citing two people familiar with the fundraising effort. Musk’s money manager, Jared Birchall, reached out to potential investors this week, offering shares of Twitter at the same price, $54.20, that Musk paid to take the company private in October, according to the report. Musk sold another $3.6B worth of shares in Tesla earlier this week, making it nearly $40B worth of shares in the electric-vehicle company sold this year.