Written by Econintersect
Early Bird Headlines 13 May 2017
Econintersect: Here are some of the headlines we found to help you start your day. For more headlines see our afternoon feature for GEI members, What We Read Today, which has many more headlines and a number of article discussions to keep you abreast of what we have found interesting.
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Global
Oil Rally Fizzles as Focus Shifts to Output OPEC Can’t Control (Bloomberg) Oil’s rebound ran out of steam as investors focus on all the production that OPEC can do nothing about. Futures were little changed in New York as they capped the first weekly gain in a month. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries boosted estimates for growth in rival supplies by 64%, as producers in the U.S. shale patch, Brazil and elsewhere keep boosting production.
U.S.
White House Refuses to Say Whether Trump Tapes Conversations (Bloomberg) The White House repeatedly refused to say all day Friday whether President Donald Trump secretly records his official conversations, after Trump suggested in a tweet that he had “tapes” of discussions with former FBI director James Comey. There is still no clarification as of this update at 8:57 pm.
Ranking Democrat on House Intelligence Committee says if Comey ‘tapes’ exist, turn them over immediately (Business Insider) If President Donald Trump really recorded his private conversations with fired FBI Director James Comey, he should turn the recordings over “immediately,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) demanded Friday.
Donald Trump Threatens To Stop Holding Press Briefings (The Huffington Post) President Donald Trump on Friday lashed out at the media, threatening to stop holding press briefings.
White House Staff React in Real-Time as Trump Tweets: ‘Jesus (The Daily Beast)
Senior administration officials have grown accustomed to learning about their boss’s whims in unorthodox ways but it doesn’t mean they like it or are prepared for the sudden swings of emotion. For instance, one official was having a conversation with a Daily Beast reporter on Friday morning when the reporter interrupted the official to inform them that Trump was on Twitter again.
After a brief pause to check Twitter, the senior Trump aide informed of the unfolding rant, responded, “Jesus.”
Why Trump Really Fired Comey (Bloomberg) Timothy O’Brien says that two things have always driven the president: self-aggrandizement and self-preservation.
Trump himself has clearly been feeling the heat from the Russia investigation. A Politico report said he had pondered firing Comey for a week, that he had “grown enraged by the Russia investigation,” didn’t understand why he couldn’t control it and would occasionally “scream at television clips about the probe.” He has also spent several weeks routinely criticizing the investigation on his Twitter feed — in tweets like this:
EU
Germany
German Rust-Belt Voters Test Merkel in Last Election Warmup (Bloomberg) For someone who’s rooting for Angela Merkel’s election opponent, labor-union official Josef Huelsduenker has a lot of respect for the chancellor. Sitting in a cafe in the town hall of Gelsenkirchen, a rust-belt town in Germany’s Ruhr Valley industrial heartland, the longtime Social Democrat said Merkel’s relationship with the unions “improved hugely” after the financial crisis during her first term. He finds her far more approachable than any of her fellow Christian Democrat cabinet ministers. Polls indicate that Merkel’s CDU party may possibly pull out a win in Sunday’s North Rhine-Westphalia election. If that happens it will be only the second time in the last 50 years.
Spain
The Girls’ Soccer Team That Joined a Boys’ League, and Won It (The New York Times) Women’s soccer is not very big in Spain, but one 13-year old girls’ team may be a start to changing that.
Turkey
Call Turkey’s Bluff on Arming Syrian Kurds (Bloomberg) The White House’s announcement that it would start directly arming the Syrian Kurds fighting Islamic State was greeted as big news. It was no such thing for the Kurds themselves, who have been receiving U.S. weapons for more than two years, and opposition from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan shouldn’t deter the plan from going forward.
It’s not as though Turkey was unaware that U.S. weaponry was ending up with Kurdish Democratic Union forces, which Ankara considers a terrorist group allied with Turkey’s outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. But for the White House to announce that such shipments are now official policy, and will include heavier equipment such as mortars and armored cars, is a direct warning to Erdogan, who has become increasingly autocratic as a leader — and problematic as an ally — since he put down an attempted coup last summer.
Canada
‘Dinosaur Mummy’ Emerges From the Oil Sands of Alberta (The New York Times) The animal probably died as it lived – defying predators with its heavy armor and size – and after 110 million years, its face remains frozen in a ferocious reptilian glare. How the animal, a land-dwelling, plant-eating nodosaur, died is not known, but somehow its body ended up at the bottom of an ancient sea. Minerals kept the remains remarkably intact, gradually turning the body into a fossil. And when it was unearthed in 2011, scientists quickly realized that it was the best-preserved specimen of its kind.
