Weekend Papers Summary
NEW YORK TIMES
-The Jan. 6 hearings have undercut, if not demolished, the myth of a stolen election repeated by former President Trump. But the Republican response — indifference, diversion and doubling down — reflects how central the lie has become to the party.
-On the anniversary of the June 17, 1972, break-in, alumni of the hearings gather for a reunion. They had it easier than the Jan. 6 committee, they say.
-Russians Breached This City, Not With Troops, but Propaganda
As Russians batter cities and towns with artillery, they are also bombarding Ukrainians with messaging aimed at eroding their trust in their government.
-Stocks tumble in worst week since beginning of Pandemic
The S&P 500 dropped 5.8% as fears of runaway inflation persisted.
-America Is Heading for a Cliff. Inflation is expected to remain high later this year even as the economy slows and layoffs rise. Already, signs of financial stress are surfacing.
-The cryptocurrency market’s reliance on Tether, a so-called stablecoin, could be its undoing.
-Putin Stokes Anti-American Sentiment as Kyiv Steps Closer to EU
Vladimir Putin accused the US of treating its allies as colonies while declaring itself “the messenger of the Lord on Earth.” Catch up on Ukraine news.
-A Filmmaker Imagines a Japan Where the Elderly Volunteer to Die
The premise for Chie Hayakawa’s film, “Plan 75,” is shocking: a government push to euthanize the elderly. In a rapidly aging society, some also wonder: Is the movie prescient?
-An Uvalde officer had a chance to shoot the gunman before he entered a school, according to a chief deputy sheriff. The officer declined, fearing injuries to others.
-The FDA has authorized Moderna and Pfizer Covid vaccines for the youngest children. A recommendation from the C.D.C. director would be the final step before doses are rolled out for the roughly 20 million children under the age of 5.
-Seven ‘Late Show’ producers arrested at US capitol while filming television stunt. CBS said the group was part of a production team recording interviews at the Capitol building for a comedy segment on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.”
THE FINANCIAL TIMES
-US stocks have suffered their heaviest weekly fall since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, after investors were spooked by a series of interest rate increases by big central banks and the threat of an ensuing economic slowdown.
-The world’s most-watched central banks are finally stamping down on a surge in inflation. But this week it became clear that they know this comes at a cost. From the UK, where the Bank of England raised interest rates for the fifth time in as many meetings, to Switzerland, which bumped up rates for the first time since 2007, policymakers in almost every major economy are turning off the stimulus taps, spooked by inflation that many initially dismissed as fleeting.
-While most residents in Shanghai, Beijing and other lockdown-affected cities have been free to travel around their hometowns since early June, venturing beyond the city limits is another matter as regions across the country continue to enforce quarantine and other restrictions on outsiders.
-Russia cutting gas supplies to Europe has long been one of the EU’s greatest fears. This week it became a reality.
Moscow has blamed the decision to restrict volumes on the Nord Stream-1 pipeline to Germany on sanctions imposed after the invasion of Ukraine, specifically those by Canada that left key pumping equipment stranded at a Siemens Energy factory in Montreal.
-Mihály Varga, the Hungarian minister of finance, told fellow EU ministers at a meeting in Luxembourg on Friday that his country could not support the levy at this stage, in part because of the huge pressure economies and companies are under from the war in Ukraine and rising inflation.
-Boris Johnson made a surprise trip to Kyiv on Friday for talks with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during which the UK announced it would spearhead a training program me for thousands of Ukrainian troops. In his second visit to Kyiv since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion on February 24, the UK prime minister announced that he would provide support to train up to 10,000 soldiers every four months.
-The European Commission has recommended that Ukraine be made an official candidate to join the EU, a significant step for the war-torn former Soviet republic on what is set to be a long and arduous path to membership. The decision by the EU’s executive marks a new stage in Brussels’ eastern expansion and a significant leap forward for Kyiv’s western integration efforts amid Russia’s invasion of the country.
-Putin told a business conference in St Petersburg that “gloomy predictions about the Russian economy’s future didn’t come true” and that the sanctions had hit European businesses harder — a claim that is not supported by estimates published so far.
-Covid hospital admissions have risen in several countries including France and England, according to data analysed by the Financial Times. The BA.5 sub-variant of Omicron now accounts for more than 80 per cent of new infections in Portugal. In Germany, where admissions have been rising for over a week, the share of Covid-19 infections ascribed to BA.5 doubled at the end of last month.
-Esther George, president of the Fed’s Kansas City branch and typically one of the most hawkish voting members of the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee, was the lone dissenter on Wednesday to the biggest rate rise since 1994, which lifted the federal funds rate to a new target range of 1.50% to 1.75%. She instead voted in favor of the Fed sticking with its previously telegraphed half-point increase.
-If Rodolfo Hernández succeeds in his unlikely bid to win Colombia’s presidential election on Sunday, he can credit his campaign team’s clever use of social media and fervent support in his home city of Bucaramanga.
-Next week, Commonwealth leaders will gather in the manicured Rwandan capital Kigali for the organization’s heads of government meeting. For the country’s president, Paul Kagame, the event is an opportunity to burnish his reputation as a man the west can do business with — despite widespread international criticism of his treatment of opponents at home and abroad.
THE NEW YORK POST
-Dozens of travelers stranded by a string of disastrous delays and cancellations at LaGuardia Airport waited for hours in long lines Friday in hopes they could finally re-book their flights. “It’s horrible. They text you all the updates as far as the delays, but when the actual cancellation [comes], no word from anybody,” John Rodriguez, who missed a wedding in the Florida Keys.
-New Yorkers can’t complain about a lack of solid choices in the governor’s race this year. If Democratic primary voters, in particular, are secretly as upset about crime, economic distress and population loss as the rest of the state is, they have a chance to show their ire now, or they might end up with — gasp — a Trump-sympathetic Republican governor in the fall: The nation is in a “Throw the bums” out mood.