Weekend Papers Summary
NEW YORK TIMES
-Putin Says Ukraine’s Counteroffensive Has ‘No Chance’ at Economic Forum. By claiming to be in control at a pivotal moment, critics say, President Vladimir Putin can no longer pass any of Russia’s military failures off on others.
-After meeting with African leaders on a peace mission, President Zelensky of Ukraine suggested that their plans were unrealistic.
-3 Years after George Floyd’s death, ‘Defund the Police’ movement has faltered. “Defund the police” became a rallying cry after George Floyd’s death, but efforts to do away with conventional policing have largely been abandoned. The Justice Department accused the Minneapolis Police Department of discrimination and unlawful conduct in a scathing report.
-Daniel Ellsberg, Who Leaked the Pentagon Papers, Is Dead at 92
Deeply disturbed by the accounting of American deceit in Vietnam, he approached The New York Times. The disclosures that followed rocked the nation. Months before his death, Daniel Ellsberg spoke with Times Opinion about his life’s work.
-Jury Convicts Man in Killing of 11 in Pittsburgh Synagogue
The gunman was found guilty of dozens of federal hate crimes and civil rights offenses. Jurors will next hear arguments about a death sentence.
The massacre at the Pittsburgh synagogue in October 2018 is considered to be the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history.
-The Business of Being Chris Christie
After leaving the governor’s office in New Jersey, Mr. Christie traded on his political profile — and on his ties to the man he now wants to defeat.
THE FINANCIAL TIMES
-New York based Global Tiger is falling short in its latest attempt to lure new investors, securing just over $2bn for a fund targeting $6bn after eight months, underscoring concern over valuations of technology companies.
-Investors are having to adjust to the prospect of interest rates across major economies staying higher for longer than expected, after central banks warned the battle against inflation is still not yet won.
-Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates met Xi Jinping on Friday, in one of the first contacts between a high-profile US business figure and China’s president in recent years amid rising geopolitical tensions.
The meeting, in which Xi referred to Gates as an “old friend”, came ahead of US secretary of state Antony Blinken’s expected visit to Beijing this weekend, which was initially postponed in February by a dispute over a suspected Chinese spy balloon.
-Over the years, Waltine Nauta has been pictured carrying a variety of objects in Donald Trump’s vicinity: mobile phones, a red tie, a briefcase. But it was cardboard boxes that have landed the personal aide in legal peril alongside his boss. Nauta was charged last week as an alleged co-conspirator in the Department of Justice’s case over Trump’s handling of classified documents, making him part of the first federal indictment brought against a former US president.
-Boris Johnson has urged his allies not to oppose a damning report that found he lied to MPs about the partygate scandal, increasing the likelihood that he may avoid a humiliating parliamentary vote about his conduct.
-The technology behind the ChatGPT chatbot could be available in toys as soon as 2028 and used to teach or even instill values such as not telling lies, said Allan Wong, the chair and chief executive of VTech Holdings, which owns US-based LeapFrog and already develops electronic learning products. Smart toys could use “AI to generate stories customised for the kid rather than reading from a book.”
-Germany, the powerhouse of continental Europe, was the only country (except Italy) in the G7 club of the world’s greatest industrial democracies without a national security strategy.
-Italy has approved measures to limit the shareholder rights of the Chinese chemical group Sinochem in Pirelli, the Milan-listed tyremaker and set out a wider range of sectors that the government judges to be of national security importance.
-Greek authorities were facing growing pressure on Friday over claims they could have acted earlier to help migrants on a ship that sank this week, killing at least 78 people and leaving hundreds missing.
NY POST
-President Biden unexpectedly ended a speech on gun control Friday by saying, “God save the Queen, man” — after warning his audience they could be liable for the actions of people who steal their cars. The 80-year-old president’s signoff confounded listeners, including journalists in the room at the University of Hartford’s campus in Connecticut. “Several of you have asked me why he might have said that,” Todd Gillman of the Dallas Morning News wrote in a pool report describing the moment. “I have no idea. Other poolers likewise have no idea.”
-Two United Airlines cargo agents at San Francisco International Airport orchestrated a years-long scheme to steal marijuana from departing passengers’ luggage and then raked in as much as $10,000 per week selling the contraband, the feds said. Joel Lamont Dunn was described as the mastermind and Adrian Webb his “right hand man” behind the brazen ring involving other cargo agents at the airport, according to a criminal complaint filed with the US District Court of Northern California on June 9.