Reuters World News - A tale of two borders, Biles' return and the Peace prize. Plus deadly Ukraine and Syria strikes.

Episode Date: October 6, 2023

The Biden administration's surprise announcement on the border wall comes as Slovakia joins other European nations in clamping down on migrant crossings. The Nobel Peace Prize goes to a jailed Iranian rights activist as mourners in Syria and Ukraine gather to bury the dead from bloody strikes. Our columnist and former gymnast dissects Simone Biles’ triumphant return to the Worlds. Plus Prada in Space? Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, grief and mourning in both Ukraine and Syria after deadly strikes. The Biden administration reverses its policy on building up the border wall with Mexico as European nations get tough on their own frontiers. The Nobel Peace Prize goes to a jailed Iranian activist, and Simone Biles triumphs over the Twisties. It's Friday, October 6th. This is Reuters' World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, every weekday. I'm Jonah Green in the Hudson Valley.

And I'm Carmel Crimmons in Dublin. A 10-year-old boy is the latest victim from a series of Russian missile strikes on residential areas in Ukraine. His death comes a day after a devastating rocket attack on a village wake. In one of the bloodiest attacks on civilians since the start of the war, a missile slammed into a cafe in Rossa, where mourners had gathered after a local soldier's funeral. Ukraine says its troops are making headway in their counteroffensive in the east. Moscow did not comment on the attack. It denies deliberately targeting civilians.

The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to a jailed Iranian activist. Nargis Mohamedi, serving a 10-year sentence in a Tehran prison, has campaigned for women's rights and the abolition of the death penalty. The head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee started her speech in Farsi. Saying the words for women, life, freedom, a slogan of the protests in Iran. The Pentagon says a U.S. jet shot down an armed Turkish drone operating near its troops in Syria. It's the first time Washington has brought down an aircraft of NATO ally, Turkey. A Turkish defense official says the drone did not belong to the Turkish armed forces,

but did not clarify whose property it was. Meanwhile, Syria declared three days of morning as funerals began for the scores killed in a drone attack in Homs. The strike on a graduation ceremony for new officers, was one of the deadliest hits on Syria's military in more than 12 years of civil war. WHO scientists warned that dengue fever will take off in the U.S. South, parts of Europe and new parts of Africa due to climate change. Warming temperatures create the perfect conditions for the mosquitoes carrying the infection. Alabama has been ordered by a federal court to use a new congressional map

that would likely flip a seat to the Democrats in next year's election. The order came after the court found, for the second time that congressional lines drawn by the Republican-dominated state legislature likely violated the Voting Rights Act. Britain's Labour Party is claiming a seismic victory for a parliamentary election in Scotland, raising expectations for their performance in the UK's 2024 general election. The opposition took back a seat from the Scottish National Party. And NASA's astronauts are going to be flying in style.

Italian fashion house Prada is helping design spacesuits for the 2020. Moon Mission. Handbags, presumably, won't be part of the kit. Elon Musk and the Securities and Exchange Commission have clashed kind of regularly over the years, but things have just got a whole lot worse. The Wall Street regulator is suing the Tesla boss to try and compel him to testify in a probe into his purchase of Twitter shares. They're investigating whether he broke securities laws when he built up a 9% stake in Twitter. The SEC says Musk failed to appear to testify last month, and now they're asking a judge to force him to. The Biden administration says it will build more of a border wall

to help stave off record migrant crossings from Mexico. The policy reversal had former president and 2024 rival Donald Trump taking to social media to demand an apology from Biden. Dana Beth Solomon was in Mexico when the news broke. There, U.S. officials, including the Secretary of State, Attorney General, and the New York mayor, are meeting with officials to talk security. So, Dana, build the wall is now a Biden policy, huh?

Yeah, this was really surprising because Biden had said very clearly that he did not want to build a border wall. At the same time, the Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that he thought there is a need for physical barriers in the border area to stop unlawful entries into the U.S. So it's a very complicated issue, and I think the Biden administration is feeling a lot of pressure to do something. What was Mexico's response? The Mexican president came out very strongly against the idea of building more of the border wall. He said it would be a step backwards. The timing of this announcement is interesting because there are a lot of high-ranking U.S. officials in Mexico, right? Yes.

some very senior U.S. officials began meeting on Thursday with their counterparts in the Mexican government, and they're set to talk about drug trafficking, trade, investment, and, of course, migration. We are at capacity. The mayor of New York, Eric Adams, also came to Mexico, and this is before he then is scheduled to go to Ecuador and Colombia, and really trying to send the message that New York City is not able to accommodate all of the thousands of people who have been coming into the city. It is just not sustainable. This flow, New York now is getting approximately 10,000, a minimum of 10,000 migrants a month.

On the other side of the world, European countries are also tightening their borders. This week, Slovakia imposed temporary controls on its border with Hungary to stop asylum seekers from the Middle East and Afghanistan. That follows similar moves by Poland, the Czech Republic, and Austria with Slovakia. Christina Tan visited a border crossing to see how the new controls are affecting the flow of people. This morning, we drove up to the Hungarian-Slovakian border, and we crossed to Slovakia at Shahi,

which is the Slovak name for the border crossing. And then there we basically wanted to see how the police is checking vehicles which cross over from Hungary to Slovakia. And what we saw was that yes, they were checking those vehicles. What makes this border unique? Why is it so popular amongst European migrants? This Slovakian route has become popular because this is a long green border. So there is no fence. There is a river. which runs here, the Ipel River. It's a small river which can be crossed on foot.

It's really shallow. So basically, smugglers can just drop their groups of migrants on the Hungarian side, leave them there, and then at night. And then they can just cross the river either using a bridge or just walk through the river. Did you get a chance to speak to any of the migrants who were coming into Slovakia today? Yes, I did get a chance at the police station. the group were largely men, but there was one family there. A mother with three kids, twins and a younger boy. And they were from Syria, and now they are hoping to go to Germany

and get better schooling for their kids and better living conditions there. Simone Biles didn't just return to the world stage this week. She stormed it. The gymnast led the US to its seventh consecutive world title and made history with some of her moves. Karen Braun is a Reuters reporter, but also a former competitive gymnast. Karen, Simone Biles made headlines this week

when she performed this very difficult vault at the World Championships. Can you talk us through the move? Yeah, so it's called a Yerchenko double pike, and the Yerchenko entry vault is where you see the gymnasts do a roundoff onto the board, a backhand spring on, and normally they just do a twisting flip off.

What Simone does is, is the roundoff onto the board, backhand spring onto the vault. And then she blocks really high and does two flips in the air in a piped position. And this is a vault that is competed mostly by men, but only a handful of men perform it because it is that difficult. Biles had to pull out of the Tokyo Olympics because of the Twisties. You were a competitive gymnasties for over a decade and you've first-hand experience of the Twisties. What does it feel like? Yeah, you know, it's very, very depressing because just one day something goes wrong and you get in your head and you suddenly don't know where you're at.

It can become dangerous to continue doing these skills that should be so easy to you. For Biles to go from experiencing the twisties, taking two years off to protect her mental health and then just rip it up at the World Championships, how incredible is it that Biles has come back in this way? It just shows how much of a fighter she is and just how talented she really is. That experience could scare anybody, of course. It scared me a lot when I had my episode of The Twisties, and I really never came back from it. I just decided to do other skills instead.

So to see her come back and be so strong is just proof that she truly is probably the best to ever do it. That's it for today's episode of Reuters World News. We'll be back on Saturday with a special weekend episode, taking stock of the global economy ahead of next week's meetings of the IMF and World Bank. To make sure you know what's going on in the world, listen in for 10 minutes every weekday. And don't forget to subscribe on your favourite podcast player or download the Reuters app.