NEW YORK TIMES
Saturday
• Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran’s top nuclear scientist, long seen by American and Israeli intelligence as the guiding figure behind a covert effort to design an atomic warhead, was shot and killed Friday in what a roadside ambush as he and his bodyguards traveled outside Tehran.
• + AMZN: E-commerce giant is in the midst of a major hiring binge this year, onboarding an average of 1,400 new workers a day and solidifying its power as online shopping becomes more entrenched in the coronavirus pandemic.
• With the US suffering its most rampant transmission of Covid-19 yet, and with Europe again under lockdown, prospects remain grim for a meaningful worldwide recovery before the middle of next year, and far longer in some economies.
• In a blistering decision, a Philadelphia appeals court ruled the Trump campaign could not stop or attempt to reverse the certification of the voting results in Pennsylvania, reprimanding the president’s team by noting that “calling an election unfair does not make it so.”
• Despite months of planning, many US hospital systems face a staggering swell of coronavirus patients, no available beds, and widening shortages of nurses and doctors—and are turning away transfer requests for patients needing urgent care or incoming emergencies.
• Britain asked its drug regulator to consider AZN’s coronavirus vaccine for emergency approval despite considerable uncertainty about the vaccine’s effectiveness, as the government tries to manage a pandemic that has killed more than 66,000 people in the country.
• When Purdue Pharma agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges involving OxyContin, the Justice Department noted the role an unidentified consulting company—which turned out to be McKinsey— had played in driving sales of the addictive painkiller.
• India’s economy shrank 7.5 percent in the three months that ended in September compared with a year earlier, underscoring the deepening of India’s severest recession since at least 1996, when the country first began publishing its GDP numbers.
Sunday
• The killing of Iran’s top nuclear scientist is likely to impede the country’s military ambitions, but its real purpose may have been to prevent president-elect Joe Biden from resuming diplomacy with Tehran.
• The GOP in Washington may have indulged Trump’s false assertions about election fraud, but at the state and local level, Republicans played a critical role in resisting the mounting pressure from their own party to overturn the vote.
• China completed construction of a new village high in the mountains where Tibet meets the kingdom of Bhutan, and hundred people moved into two dozen new homes—but the territory is a mile into what Bhutan considers its territory.
• Tens of thousands of people protested across France Saturday to protest a security bill that would restrict sharing images of police officers and strengthen government surveillance tools, the latest sign of opposition over recent cases of police violence.
• As Joe Biden fills out the rest of his team, the task will become more complicated, requiring him to navigate tricky currents of ideology, gender, racial identity, party affiliation, friendship, competence, personal background and past employment.
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Weekend
• “The pandemic has reshaped the holiday shopping season, with fewer people hitting stores on Black Friday and many retail chains holding the line on discounts because they are sitting on lean inventories.”
• Market volatility is dropping to levels not seen since February, the latest sign of optimism about a stock rally that lifted major indexes to fresh records this week after stocks rose in response to enthusiasm about the potential for a coronavirus vaccine.
• Florida voters’ approval of a $15 per hour minimum wage is fueling the hopes of advocates who aim to pass similar measures in other states, though still-elevated unemployment and lower costs of living in rural areas pose challenges.
• State leaders are weighing possible cuts to Medicaid services and health-care benefits to offset rising costs due to a surge of enrollees who have lost jobs and need health coverage as the coronavirus pandemic has intensified.
• Some people in Covid-19 vaccine trials say they may drop out if a vaccine gets authorized and they believe they received a placebo, a move that could hinder the collection of data needed to complete studies on the vaccines’ effectiveness.
• The renewable energy sector expects the Biden administration to be more friendly to its needs than Trump, and lobbyists representing solar and wind industries are already pushing detailed ideas that wouldn’t require congressional action.
• Europe’s Covid-19 crisis is moving eastward, from the wealthiest and best-prepared countries on the continent into the poorer ones that have exported doctors for decades—and as cases soar, the results of that exodus are becoming clear.
• The European Union approved a sanctions regime similar to the US Magnitsky Act on human rights, ending a decade of political fighting and giving EU governments a new tool to coordinate sanctions with Washington.
• Positive on GM: The automaker will apply for a banking charter to allow it to accept deposits and expand its auto-finance business—the FDIC and the Utah Department of Financial Institutions, which grants the majority of such charters, would supervise it.
•OPEC and its Russia-led partners are leaning toward extending oil production cuts for another two to three months, according to officials familiar with the discussions, a move they hope will keep markets tight even as prices start to recover.
• Lawmakers next week are likely to force Chinese companies with shares traded on American exchanges, including tech giants such as BABA, to finally comply with audit-oversight rules—or leave US markets altogether.
• H.O.T.S.: Cars are “going digital,” but Detroit has much work to do to “turn your next vehicle into a giant smartphone”; The latest research on US and China real estate markets suggests that long booms may drag on the productivity of the economy; Ant Financial’s initial public offering may have crashed, but JD Health, an online health-care spinoff from e-commerce company JD, could raise up to $4B in its listing.
FINANCIAL TIMES
Weekend
• Front page story reports “Global stocks are on track for their best month on record, propelled by a series of Covid-19 vaccine breakthroughs and optimism over Joe Biden’s victory in the US presidential election.”
• Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zirif suggested that Israel was responsible for the assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist, an event that will escalate tensions in the region during the final weeks of Trump’s presidency.
• China is set to impose tariffs on wine from Australia as a trade and diplomatic dispute between the countries grows—Chinese winemakers complained that Australian producers flooded the market with cheap wine between 2015 and 2019.
• Big Read story says “Often criticized for the pricing and marketing of its drugs, the speed at which the pharmaceutical industry responded to the pandemic—producing three viable vaccines in 10 months—could change political and public opinion.”
• Lex Column: In South Korea, strong demand for luxury goods reflects that the impact from the pandemic has been modest, and that younger people are “flexing” with displays of wealth; “Small, unloved” British bank TSB is not a great asset, but nor is it a terrible one; Processed food companies have done well during the pandemic, yet Kraft Heinz’s US sales rose only eight percent year-on-year in the six months up to the end of September.
• Comment: “A global rotation into value is really another strand of vaccine-related trade because it reflects the performance of companies strongly linked to economic fundamentals,” says Merryn Somerset Webb.
NEW YORK POST
Saturday
• Retail experts predict record-shattering spending during the Christmas stretch, citing robust trends and the fact that many consumers have more money saved than usual because of the pandemic.
• +/- SNE: Hordes of gamers desperate to get their hands on Sony’s new Playstation 5 poured into malls and shopping centers on Black Friday in search of the hard-to-find console.
Sunday
• New York City’s public elementary schools will return to partial in-person learning December 7, but middle- and high-school students must remain all-virtual for now, mayor Bill de Blasio said Sunday.
• Dr. Anthony Fauci on Sunday warned that Americans should brace themselves for a Covid-19 “surge superimposed” on the current one after many traveled for the Thanksgiving holiday.
• The number of shoppers who in retail stores on Black Friday plunged 52 percent below what it was last year, according to Sensormatic Solutions, a retail analytics provider—Shopper foot traffic also fell 45.2 percent for the week compared to same period last year.