Angela Merkel, Tamil Nadu, Iran: Your Wednesday Briefing
• Documents emerged that cast a new light on the phone call last week between President-elect Donald J. Trump and Taiwan’s president.
The papers show that former Senator Bob Dole, 93, and his lobbying firm worked for months to forge high-level contacts between Taiwanese officials and the Trump campaign, earning $140,000 since May to promote Taiwan’s interests in the Republican platform and arrange the call.
• Mr. Trump’s latest disruption involves one of the most hallowed symbols of the American presidency.
On Twitter and in follow-up comments, Mr. Trump suggested that he could cancel a pending order to upgrade Air Force One, accusing Boeing of inflating development costs. Before the election, he had criticized the aerospace giant for plans to open a 737 plant in China.
Mr. Trump’s threat to punish United States companies that move jobs overseas with 35 percent tariffs is meeting resistance from House Republicans whose help he’ll need to enact his agenda. “I don’t want some kind of trade war,” one said.
Later, Mr. Trump met with Masayoshi Son, a Japanese billionaire who haspursued grand, Silicon Valley-inspired visions, and announced that Mr. Son’s SoftBank conglomerate had agreed to invest $50 billion in the United States, aiming to create 50,000 jobs.
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One way to gauge what Mr. Trump is thinking is to look at who and what he’s insulting on Twitter. His criticism of Republicans has shrunk of late while barbs at journalists and the news media have spiked.
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• “America is our enemy; we have no doubt about this.”
Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, took a harsh tone, under pressure from hard-liners who argue that the United States cannot be trusted to keep its end of a landmark nuclear deal.
Mr. Rouhani insisted that Iran would not allow Mr. Trump to rip up the deal and warned of consequences if President Obama signed a 10-year extension of sanctions approved by the Senate last week.
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• An impeachment vote appears inevitable in South Korea, despite President Park Geun-hye’s offer to step down in April over a corruption and influence-peddling scandal.
A Friday vote for impeachment would not immediately force Ms. Park from office, but her powers would be suspended while a constitutional court took up to six months to decide if the move was warranted.
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• Saudi Arabia has voiced support for American efforts to nourish Afghanistan’s democracy, but it has also lavishly funded Sunni extremismunder various guises.
The Times’s special report examines how the kingdom manages to be on both sides of the conflict.
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• The southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu is bracing for civil unrest as grief sweeps through a population of some 78 million over the death of the revered and queenly leader known as Amma, or Mother.
Jayalalithaa Jayaram, 68, died of a heart attack in her fifth term as chief minister, a reign in which she quelled all competition, leaving no obvious successor.
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Business
• The United States Supreme Court unanimously backed Samsung in its high-profile patent design dispute with Apple, potentially sparing the South Korean smartphone giant penalties of nearly $400 million.
• One of China’s celebrity investors, Xu Xiang, has pleaded guilty to insider trading and stock manipulation in a case believed to be the start of a government crackdown on the financial sector.
• China released data on its foreign exchange reserves, of particular note after Mr. Trump’s criticism of Chinese monetary policies.
• The Reserve Bank of India is expected to cut interest rates, aiming to lift an economy stalled by the cancellation of large denomination notes.
• United States stocks were up. Here’s a snapshot of global markets.
MARKET SNAPSHOT View Full Overview
- NIKKEI+0.4%CLOSED
- SHANGHAI–0.31%
- S.& P. 500+0.34%CLOSED
In the News
In Oakland, ‘Like a Fireball That Was Moving’
Nikki Kelber and Carmen Brito describe seeing entire walls and a hallway engulfed in flames before escaping from the burning warehouse.
By ELSA BUTLER and THOMAS FULLER on December 5, 2016. Photo by Jim Wilson/The New York Times.Watch in Times Video »
• The “Ghost Ship,” the California warehouse where 36 people died in a fire last week, was a motley art space with a troubling history. [The New York Times]
• Singapore has the highest-ranked education system in world, replacing Shanghai and leading Japan and Estonia in the latest PISA assessment. [BBC]
• Secretive investigations using threats, pressure and torture to secure confessions have tarnished China’s anticorruption campaign, according to Human Rights Watch. [The New York Times]
• Radiation in fish caught off the coast of Fukushima Prefecture in Japan fell below detectable levels for the first time since the 2011 nuclear disaster. [Asahi Shimbun]
• Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany should ban full-face veils and protect its borders, a bid to ease criticism of her immigration policies as she seeks re-election. [The New York Times]
• South Korea blamed North Korea for hacking its military’s intranet, leading to leaks of state secrets. [The Korea Herald]
• In Hong Kong, a pair of rainbow-colored lions have stirred up a debate over L.G.B.T. rights. [South China Morning Post]
Noteworthy
• The TWA terminal at New York’s Kennedy International Airport, a cathedral of modernist architecture, will become the entrance to a hotel in a $265 million project.
• Beyoncé, with nine nods for her album “Lemonade,” leads the nominations for the 59th annual Grammy Awards. Other nominees include Adele, Drake, Rihanna and Justin Bieber.
• Whether a woman’s name changes after marriage can be a personal choice, but also a matter of culture, political environment and law.
We’re asking women around the world to let us know if they kept or changed their names, and why.
Back Story
The standoff over an oil pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in the American Midwest took a turn this week when the Army Corps of Engineers said it would reconsider the pipeline’s route.
The Corps has helped shape American infrastructure since its establishment in 1802 as the “world’s largest public engineering, design and construction management agency.”
As a part of the Department of the Army, its early projects involved forts. But the Corps’ most notable legacy may be making Great Lakes harbors safer and reducing river obstacles, a boon to the growing nation’s economy.
The Standing Rock protest stems from the pipeline’s planned routing under the Missouri River, raising Native American fears of an environmental catastrophe. When those happen, the Corps often responds, as it did in the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska in 1989.
The Corps has often been credited with a marvel that it didn’t actually build: the original Panama Canal, which transformed global trade.
The canal’s construction was, however, overseen by a famous member of the Corps, Gen. George Washington Goethals.
When he died in 1929, officials called the canal “a monument to one of the world’s greatest engineers.” He was buried at the United States Military Academy in New York, overlooking the Hudson River.
Sean Alfano contributed reporting.
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P.C: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/06/briefing/asia-briefing.html
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