Weekend Papers Summary
Sun, 13 Aug 2023 1:17 AM EST
NEW YORK TIMES
-Death toll in Maui inferno reaches 89.
The disaster is now the deadliest US wildfire event in the past century. The toll will continue to increase, Gov. Josh Green of Hawaii said.
-After the Maui fires, locals fear being shut out of recovery. Many who lost houses and jobs in Lahaina wonder if their home will re-emerge dominated by developers.
-Georgia Grand Jury to hear Donald Trump’s election interference case early next week. Prosecutors will present the results of their inquiry into whether former President Trump and his allies interfered in the 2020 election in the state.
-Why have republicans soured on the special counsel investigating Hunter Biden? Some GOP lawmakers see the appointment of David Weiss as a vindication, but others criticize the now-scuttled plea deal he struck with the president’s son.
-As the saga around President Biden’s son endures, Democrats are trying to dismiss worries. Hunter Biden’s plea deal on tax and gun charges fell apart in court last month.
-Ukrainian arms dealer Serhiy Pashinsky was sidelined in President Volodymyr Zelensky’s promise to root out corruption. In its hunt for weapons, Ukraine has rolled back its rules.
-Ukraine makes ‘tactically significant’ progress in its counteroffensive. Troops advanced 10 to 12 miles along two main lines of attack in Kyiv’s drive to reach the southern coast and sever Russian supply lines.
-2024 Presidential Election
Who Is Running?
-Donald Trump asserted his dominance in Iowa as he squared off against his closest rival, Ron DeSantis, in the Super Bowl of retail politics.
-Vivek Ramaswamy, a long-shot Republican candidate, said he has a 50% chance at winning the presidency.
-Popular devices known as “switches” are turning ordinary pistols into fully automatic weapons, making them deadlier and a growing threat to bystanders.
-Growing segregation by sex in Israel raises fears for women’s rights. An influential Ultra-Orthodox minority wants to expand the powers of all-male rabbinical courts, and to bar women and men from mixing in many public arenas.
-In Texas, activists are trying a new way to get rid of district attorneys they dislike.
-The Perseids meteor shower, one of the year’s best, is reaching its peak.
The event is formed from debris left by the comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, and the summer weather could make it a very good show.
THE FINANCIAL TIMES
-A basket of the top US streaming services will cost $87 this autumn, compared with $73 a year ago, as Disney, Paramount, Warner Bros Discovery and others have raised their prices in response to pressure from Wall Street to end the profligacy of the streaming boom. The average cable TV package costs $83 a month.
-Since launching his bid in late May, Gov. Ron DeSantis has been struggling to gain ground on the former president and consolidate support among anti-Trump voters within the party, forcing him to shake up the top brass of his campaign and attempt a reboot.
-Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky has ordered the sacking of all the country’s regional army recruitment chiefs after investigators discovered officials had been taking bribes to allow people to avoid the military draft on medical grounds.
-The US on Friday imposed sanctions on four Russian businessmen connected to the country’s largest private bank, stepping up a western campaign to punish Moscow’s elite for the invasion of Ukraine. The US targeted Petr Aven, Mikhail Fridman, German Khan and Alexey Kuzmichev, who are all connected to Alfa-Bank. The men already face sanctions from the UK and EU.
-Sam Bankman-Fried has been taken into custody after a federal judge found that the FTX founder probably attempted to tamper with witnesses on two occasions while awaiting trial on fraud charges stemming from the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange.
-Commodity trading advisers — hedge funds that rely on pattern-detecting algorithms and statistical models to direct trading across markets — have in recent weeks increased their exposure to equities to the highest level since before the pandemic, according to Deutsche Bank. CTAs managing hundreds of billions of dollars in assets now have net long futures positions on Wall Street’s S&P 500, Europe’s Euro Stoxx 50, London’s FTSE 100 and Japan’s Nikkei 225, among other indices, Deutsche Bank said.
-As airlines face pressure to cut emissions, they have joined forces with farmers to lobby in Washington so that corn helps power those planes. Their push has encountered resistance from environmental groups that say refining corn into biofuels has minimal benefits for earth’s climate. New tax rules that could make or break corn ethanol’s prospects as a so-called sustainable aviation fuel may be released as soon as next month. Airlines have pledged net zero emissions by 2050. But their plan hinges on sustainable aviation fuel that is in scarce supply, made mainly from cooking oil or animal fats.
-Novo Nordisk, the company behind semaglutide — branded as Ozempic for diabetes and Wegovy for weight loss — has benefited from a surge in demand from patients inspired by celebrities’ transformations. But the drug’s reputation as a “skinny jab” has not helped persuade health systems and insurers, or payers, to cover the cost of it.
-Public relations firm First International Resources will receive a monthly retainer of £100,000 for six months to strengthen the UAE’s reputation among “Western audiences”, according to a copy of its contract filed with the US Department of Justice under lobbying rules for foreign agents, which was published by the DoJ this month. The firm has been hired by the UAE’s state-owned renewables company Masdar, the contract said. Masdar is chaired by COP28 president-designate Sultan al-Jaber, who is also head of the petrostate’s oil company.
-Hong Kong was promised a limited degree of local autonomy for 50 years, an arrangement known as “one country, two systems”, under its handover from British to Chinese rule in 1997. Its internationally recognized common law system was a cornerstone of that model and the city’s success. But legal practitioners, including corporate lawyers, are concerned the broadening scope of a sweeping national security law could jeopardize the independence of the city’s legal system, a legacy of British administration, as Beijing tightens its grip.
NY POST
-President Joe Biden’s role as “the brand” for son Hunter’s lucrative international influence-peddling may have benefited him directly, according to mounting evidence from the first son’s abandoned laptop. Newly revealed bank records released by the House Oversight Committee show that the president’s family and allies hauled in a staggering $20 million from foreign sources in Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and China, some of whom met personally with Biden while he served as vice president.
-Elon Musk has reached out to Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to secure an “epic location” for his “cage match” with tech rival Mark Zuckerberg — but a government official has ruled out the Eternal City as a venue. “I spoke to the PM of Italy and Minister of Culture,” Musk tweeted on Friday. “Livestream will be on this platform and Meta. Everything in camera frame will be ancient Rome, so nothing modern at all.” Musk also posted a cryptic tweet hours later with a potential date for the clash between the tech titans.