Weekend Papers Summary
NEW YORK TIMES
-A week after the Supreme Court issued monumental rulings loosening restrictions on carrying guns and overturning the constitutional right to abortion, New York enacted sweeping measures designed to blunt the decisions’ effects.
-Blockbuster rulings on abortion, guns, religion and climate only began to tell the story of the conservative juggernaut the court has become.
-Abortion abolitionists want to criminalize abortion as homicide and hold women responsible. Long seen as a radical fringe, they are now gaining followers.
-An abortion clinic in Louisiana intends to serve as many women as possible until a judge rules if a ban can go forward.
-Google said it would delete abortion clinic visits from users’ location history after the Supreme Court overturned Roe.
-Republicans are bracing for Donald J. Trump to announce an unusually early bid for the White House, a move designed in part to shield the former president from a stream of damaging revelations emerging from investigations into his attempts to cling to power after losing the 2020 election.
-Cassidy Hutchinson, the first Trump White House aide to testify publicly in the Jan. 6 inquiry, showed the outsize influence of young aides in Washington. Donald Trump’s ex-deputy chief of staff for operations is a key figure in a dispute over testimony in the Jan 6 inquiry.
-The most advanced weapons that the United States has so far supplied Ukraine are making an impact in their first several days on the battlefield, destroying Russian ammunition depots and command centers, American and Ukrainian officials say.
-As Russia relies on overwhelming destructive force to grind forward a mile or two a day in eastern Ukraine, Ukrainian soldiers fighting some 400 miles to the south are claimed to have been working steadily to chip away at Russian frontline positions across an expanse of steppes and swamps.
-Brittney Griner arrived in Russia in February to play basketball, one of the sport’s biggest stars. She arrived in a courtroom outside Moscow on Friday as something else entirely — a potential bargaining chip in Russia’s tense standoff with the West over the war in Ukraine, described by supporters as a hostage of the Kremlin.
-New York City suddenly removed its color-coded coronavirus alert system on Thursday just as newer Omicron subvariants are fueling another rise in cases and hospitalizations. Mayor Eric Adams and health officials quietly took down the city’s high profile alert system that warned New Yorkers when they were at a greater risk of catching the virus and should consider taking more precautions.
-The US has demonstrated international leadership on climate change in the past, but recent setbacks are presenting new challenges for President Biden.
-California requires plastics makers to foot the bill for recycling. The landmark legislation also restricts single-use plastics. Because the state’s economy is so big, experts said, the law could have far-reaching effects.
-Mark Zuckerberg prepares Meta employees for a tougher 2022
In an internal meeting this week, Mr. Zuckerberg said the tech giant was facing one of the “worst downturns that we’ve seen in recent history.”
THE FINANCIAL TIMES
-US government bonds rallied sharply on Friday after a gloomy report on America’s factory sector intensified concerns over the outlook for the world’s biggest economy.
-The hugs, handshakes and bonhomie this week at NATO’s annual summit in Madrid and a G7 meeting in Germany represented a new high-water mark of western unity against Russia in response to the war in Ukraine — the apogee of an alliance rejuvenated by conflict on its borders. There were also warnings about the growing threat represented by China.
-The US Supreme Court on Thursday concluded one of the most momentous terms in recent history, erasing decades-long legal precedents, reshuffling the scope of citizens’ rights and wading into the most polarizing debates in the country.
-Eurozone inflation increased from 8.1% in May, after a sharp acceleration of energy and food prices in many countries due to supply disruptions caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Rising price pressures in the bloc more than offset a slowdown in German inflation driven by transport and electricity subsidies to cushion the higher cost of living.
-Three Arrows Capital has filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy in New York, days after the beleaguered crypto hedge fund’s liquidation commenced in the British Virgin Islands. The liquidation, and subsequent bankruptcy filing, come in the teeth of an unrelenting crypto market crash that has enveloped lenders, exchanges and investors.
-US president Joe Biden is likely to sell new oil leases in offshore waters despite his election campaign pledge to shut down drilling for fuels on federally owned territory, according to a proposal released late on Friday.
His administration set out several options for sales of leases to oil producers, including up to 10 auctions for rights in the Gulf of Mexico and another potential round of bidding off Alaska. However, the proposal by the US interior department ruled out new exploration along the Atlantic and Pacific coastlines.
-Gotland, an idyllic 1,200-square-mile Swedish island in the middle of the Baltic Sea is one of the tourist pearls of northern Europe with dozens of perfect, white beaches as well as the medieval walled town of Visby. But it is also, in the words of one of the soldiers I meet here, an “unsinkable aircraft carrier in the middle of the Baltic”. Military control of Gotland would threaten not only Sweden, but Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. There are few more strategically important locations in Europe, which is why experts have repeatedly said a Russian invasion of the Baltic States could start here. And yet, for decades before the invasion of Ukraine, Sweden left it all but demilitarized.
-Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary, the pioneer of low-cost travel in Europe, has warned fares will rise for the next five years because flying has become “too cheap” to make profits as industry costs spiral. His warning comes as ticket prices have risen in Europe and the US this summer as passengers return and some airlines cut capacity because of staff shortages.
-Google is closing a loophole that has allowed thousands of companies to monitor and sell sensitive personal data from Android smartphones, an effort welcomed by privacy campaigners in the wake of the US Supreme Court’s decision to end women’s constitutional right to abortion.
-Almost 4M people lived in Kiev before the invasion on February 24. The population plunged as Russian troops neared. It has recovered to around 2.7M now, but the trauma lingers.
-Many energy groups have been closing refineries in recent years as they attempt to manage the transition to greener forms of energy — but Mexico is making a multibillion-dollar bet the other way. Pemex, the state-owned oil and gas company, formally declared its vast Dos Bocas refinery in the country’s south-east open on Friday.
-Vladimir Putin has ordered the transfer of all rights to the Sakhalin-2 natural gas project to a Russian entity in a move that could force foreign investors including Shell, Mitsubishi and Mitsui to walk away from the project. The Russian president’s decree said western sanctions had created “the threat of an environmental and technological emergency” at Sakhalin-2, forcing Moscow to act “to defend its national interests”.
NY POST
-Americans will have to endure pain at the pump indefinitely in the name of the “liberal world order,” a top economic adviser to President Biden said Thursday — hours after Biden himself said US drivers would have to shell out the big bucks for “as long as it takes” for Ukraine to defeat Russia’s invasion. During an appearance on CNN Thursday, National Economic Council director Brian Deese was asked by anchor Victor Blackwell: “What do you say to those families who say, ‘Listen, we can’t afford to pay $4.85 a gallon for months, if not years. This is just not sustainable’?”
-Chinese-owned social media site TikTok told US senators it was working on a final agreement with the Biden Administration that would “fully safeguard user data and US national security interests,” according to a TikTok letter seen Friday by Reuters.
The letter dated Thursday came in response to questions raised in a June 27 letter by a few senators including Republicans Marsha Blackburn and Ted Cruz, TikTok said.