Weekend Papers Summary
NEW YORK TIMES
-Officials described a harrowing series of 911 calls, including some from children inside Robb Elementary in Uvalde. The National Rifle Association’s annual convention opened in Houston and former President Donald J. Trump defended gun owners.
-Above all else, activists and politicians at the NRA convention gathering sought to divert pressure to support popular overhauls like expanded background checks by seizing on the issue of school safety.
-A report by legal and rights experts cited a ‘genocidal pattern’ by Russia. The U.S. plans to send long-range mobile rocket launchers to Ukraine as Russian troops seize Lyman, the second small city to fall this week, and moved closer to encircling Sievierodonetsk.
-A report warned that Ukrainians were at “imminent” risk of genocide as Russian forces captured the Ukrainian city of Lyman. Follow updates on the war.
-He Left Russia to Fight Putin. Now He Leads Ukrainian Soldiers.
The commander, an opponent of Vladimir Putin who identified himself only by his codename Kandalaksha, left his homeland in 2014 when Moscow annexed Crimea.
-Despite a resurgent virus, millions of Americans are expected to be traveling over the holiday weekend.
This is likely to be one of the busiest travel periods since the start of the pandemic.
-Former President Trump had argued that an inquiry by the attorney general violated his constitutional rights. It was his second legal loss in two days.
-Up to 50 Subpoenas Are Expected as Grand Jury Begins Trump Inquiry
The district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., is weighing racketeering charges connected to Donald Trump and his allies’ attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
-The root of Haiti’s Misery: reparations to enslavers. For generations, Haitians were forced to pay France for their freedom. How much was a mystery — until now. The Times scoured centuries-old documents to find out.
-Dan O’Dowd, a software entrepreneur in California, is running for Senate on a single-issue platform: Tesla’s self-driving software.
-A verdict is expected as early as Tuesday in the case brought by a Trump-era special counsel against a lawyer with ties to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
THE FINANCIAL TIMES
-In his provocative speech, “Why investors need not worry about climate risk”, HSBC’s Stuart Kirk joked that he was not a typical head of responsible investing as he had “never used the word ‘journey’”. He was suspended from the bank and received this BS-filled rebuke from his boss: “The transition to net zero is of upmost [sic] importance to us and we will strive for ways to help our clients on this journey.” Worryingly for the ESG complex, many people found HSBC’s response more objectionable than Kirk’s words. The controversy has exposed a real divide between those who embrace BS and those who do not.
-Police in Texas have admitted it was the “wrong decision” for officers not to enter a classroom at Robb Elementary School in the city of Uvalde sooner during a shooting on Tuesday that killed 19 children and two teachers.
-Michelle Bachelet, the UN human rights chief, has staked her reputation and that of the 193-member organization on an investigation into China’s crimes against Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. The former Chilean president, long considered a contender to be the first woman head of the UN, traveled to the north-western Chinese region where 1M Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities have been subjected to mass internments, forced labor, re-education camps, tech-based surveillance and police persecution.
However, despite her personal experiences of repression and a sterling reputation among UN peers, hopes are dim that Bachelet will learn anything of value about China’s security apparatus and the plight of the Uyghurs. Nor is she expected to persuade Beijing to change course.
-Elon Musk must raise significantly more cash to finance his $44B takeover of Twitter after allowing a $6.25B margin loan commitment backed by his shares of electric carmaker Tesla to lapse.
-Twitter has refused to remove Silver Lake co-chief executive Egon Durban from its board, even after the social media company’s investors voted against his re-election at this week’s shareholder meeting.
-Elon Musk, arguably this era’s most prominent capitalist, last week labelled ESG a “scam” after Tesla, his pioneering electric carmaker, was removed from S&P’s ESG index. Such indices’ scores depended on how compliant a business was with “the leftist agenda”, he claimed in a meme shared on Twitter.
-The gloomy global elite strolling the Promenade in Davos this week could cheer themselves up by stopping off for free ice cream courtesy of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Or they could drop into the Saudi café for coffee, pumpkin jereesh and a rose mamoul crumble. Then visit Prince Mohammed’s Misk Foundation “Youth majlis” pavilion. With Russian oligarchs banned, the Saudis stepped into the limelight.
-It would be easy to assume that Klarna chief executive Sebastian Siemiatkowski is feeling downbeat after the company’s first large-scale job cuts, reports of a big fall in its valuation and general questioning of its buy now, pay later business model.
Although he admitted to being “quite exhausted” by recent events, the 40-year-old chief executive and co-founder of Europe’s most valuable private tech business also insisted: “I’m very, very optimistic.
-China will open up the final corner of its onshore bond market to foreign financial institutions as Beijing attempts to reignite global interest in renminbi debt in the face of a severe economic slowdown.
-The shenanigans in Downing Street are symptomatic of a deep malaise at the center, a casual carelessness which pervades Whitehall. Jacob Rees-Mogg can wander around leaving snippy notes on empty desks, but there is an emptiness at the top. The British system is heavily dependent on the centre for direction: yes, officials can run rings around Number 10, but without it, everything defaults to drift.
THE NEW YORK POST
-Texas Gov. Greg Abbot will skip Friday’s National Rifle Association convention in Houston and return to Uvalde amid pressure to pull out of his scheduled appearance in the wake of Tuesday’s elementary school shooting that claimed 21 lives.
-According to North Korea, its fight against COVID-19 has been impressive: About 3.3M people have been reported sick with fevers, but only 69 have died. If all are coronavirus cases, that’s a fatality rate of 0.002%, something no other country, including the world’s richest, has achieved against a disease that has killed more than 6 million people.
-An inflation gauge closely tracked by the Federal Reserve rose 6.klar3% in April from a year earlier, the first slowdown since November 2020 and a sign that high prices may finally be moderating, at least for now.