Weekend Papers Summary
NEW YORK TIMES
-President Biden has insisted that the evacuation of Kabul was done as efficiently as possible. But documents obtained by The Times suggest otherwise. Refugees pushed their way onto planes. Children were separated from their parents. Tensions flared at shelters.
- Even before the Taliban takeover, Afghanistan placed near the bottom of every list when it came to protections for women, and at the top in terms of the need for safe houses, counseling and courts that could help keep women safe.
- At least a third of the fatalities in New Jersey were people who drowned after being trapped in vehicles in a densely packed state known for its car culture, its tangle of highways, suburban commuter towns and limited public transportation.
- Cleanup crews are working to contain what experts called a substantial oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, according to an examination of satellite and aerial survey images, ship tracking data and interviews with local officials and others involved in the spill response.
- Federal health officials told the White House to scale back a plan to offer coronavirus booster shots to the general public this month, saying that regulators need more time to collect and review all the necessary data, according to people familiar with the discussion.
- South Africa was convulsed this summer by some of its worst civil unrest since the end of apartheid. The imprisonment of former President Jacob Zuma for refusing to appear before a corruption inquiry set off violent protests by his supporters. Soon, riots and looting erupted in parts of the country, fed by broad disgust at poverty, inequality and the government’s failure to provide even the most basic services, like water or electricity.
- The Democratic National Committee just concluded a multistate “Build Back Better” bus tour. Participants extolled the virtues of Democratic governance, trying to show voters in places like Arizona, the Carolinas, Michigan, Nevada, Texas and Wisconsin the real-life ramifications of the bills yet to pass and measures already approved, such as the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief legislation enacted this year over unanimous Republican opposition.
- Building dams that flood land, a surge in the beaver populations in Scotland have infuriated farmers. Some have obtained permits to kill the animals — setting off outrage among conservationists.
-Monica Lewinsky has slowly made her way into producing, including an upcoming documentary about public shame and a newly-formed production company, aptly titled “Alt Ending.”But “Impeachment,” which premieres on Sept. 7, is the most personal — and arguably the most prominent — chapter in her rehabilitation.
- A Texas judge granted a temporary restraining order against the state’s largest anti-abortion group on Friday, blocking it from suing Planned Parenthood under the terms of the restrictive abortion law that went into effect this week.
- New Zealand has low and declining crime rates, and is far from the flash points of global terrorism. But questions about how the country handles potential assailants have grown in volume since 2019, after an anti-Muslim terrorist murdered 51 people at two mosques in the city of Christchurch.
FINANCIAL TIMES
-Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine may offer longer-lasting protection than Pfizer’s, new research suggests, as governments and scientists debate who needs booster shots and when.
-A sharp slowdown in US jobs growth precludes the possibility that the Federal Reserve will announce plans this month to begin scaling back its pandemic-era stimulus, economists say, as the spread of the Delta coronavirus variant muddies the economic outlook.
- Russia’s central bank says a new financial crisis on the scale of the 2008 collapse could happen in less than 18 months if global inflation is not kept in check.
-Both the chaotic nature of the pullout and Biden’s emphasis on its broader significance are reverberating across Washington and the world, crystallizing America’s shift of the past few years towards a more restrained and cautious exercise of its military power.
-Two years ago, Denis Bukalov mobilized support on social media to block construction of a Chinese-funded water-bottling plant on the shore of Lake Baikal. Now the environmental activist has set his sights on a political career as he steps up his attempts to protect the world’s oldest, largest and deepest body of fresh water from yet another threat
— millions of tonnes of toxic discharge flowing from an abandoned Soviet-era paper mill.
- A handful of ecommerce “aggregators”, led by Massachusetts-based Thrasio, had together raised $1bn by the end of the year to buy up the most successful independent merchants on Amazon’s marketplace.
-Fixing economic deprivation is a mammoth task, but assisting with basic financial education — to boost budgeting skills, debt knowhow and investment nous — need not be. And yet basic financial understanding can make a vast difference — not just to poorer communities such as North Ormesby, but to anyone in virtually any circumstance.
-Productivity gurus offer an array of techniques for becoming more efficient (or “optimized”) so as to process more emails and dispatch more tasks. The implied promise is that one day, finally, you’ll feel “on top of things” and “in control” of your life. Yet because the incoming supply of demands on your time is effectively infinite, that day never quite arrives, no matter how close it might sometimes seem. It’s like getting better at climbing up an infinitely tall ladder. No matter how fast you go, you’ll never reach the top.
-Responding to China’s new video gaming restrictions for children, Tencent and rival NetEase noted that only a tiny fraction of their gaming revenues come from minors, and their shares have bounced back in recent days. But analysts are fearful that the rules will squeeze the pipeline of future gamers, who often pick up the habit in childhood.
-Many of the large US companies that have spoken out on everything from voting rights and racial equality to transgender recognition in recent years are so far dodging the polarizing debate over abortion as some of the country’s tightest restrictions go into effect in Texas.
-The White House wants to spend $65B over the next 10 years to plan for future pandemics, including setting up a new office of pandemic preparedness at the heart of the US government.
- British PM Boris Johnson is preparing to break his election manifesto commitment not to raise tax rates in order to press ahead with a long-heralded overhaul of the UK’s creaking social care provision.
-Former regulators at the heart of mainstream US financial markets over the past decade are wrestling with new roles in the fast-changing cryptocurrency industry, with some key appointments lasting just months in the job.
NEW YORK POST
- Since the Biden administration eased restrictions at the border earlier this year, federal agents have seen a surge of illegal immigrants attempting to cross, with dramatic increases in single adults, unaccompanied children and members of “transnational criminal organizations.”
- Hurricane Larry strengthened to a Category 3 storm overnight and is likely to remain a “major hurricane” for several days, according to the National Hurricane Center.
- President Biden will tour storm-shattered neighborhoods in Queens Tuesday, with a second stop in a New Jersey town that was also inundated by the remnants of Hurricane Ida, the White House announced Saturday.
- A record number of container ships are stuck waiting to enter California’s two largest ports as labor shortages and COVID-19 disruptions continue to roil a supply chain that’s being pushed to its limits ahead of the busy holiday shopping season.
-‘Talibanned?’ Google has temporarily locked some Afghan government email accounts in an apparent attempt to head off the Taliban’s hunt for the identities of former officials who worked with the recently collapsed US-backed administration.