Reuters World News - Anger on Maui, Pyongyang's racism claim and reporting a 'campaign of fear' in Georgia

Episode Date: August 16, 2023

A Reuters journalist talks about the reporting that revealed the involvement of three people charged in Georgia over efforts to overturn the election. Biden vows to visit devastated Maui as locals describe their frustration at relief effort. North Korea claims U.S. soldier Travis King fled across the border because of racism in the army. Plus, PayPal enters the world of crypto – will its own stablecoin change the conversation? 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. *The podcast incorrectly referred to three men being charged in Georgia over efforts to overturn the election. The podcast was updated to reflect three people being indicted instead. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, North Korea claims a U.S. soldier took refuge because of racism in the American military. Traumatized Maui residents grow wary of relief efforts. PayPal tries to convince regulators its stable coin won't go the way of Facebooks. It's Wednesday, August 16th. This is Reuters World News with everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes. Every weekday. I'm Kim Vinal in London. Joe Biden has promised to visit Hawaii as soon as he can to review recovery efforts

after criticism of the response to the devastating wildfires. My wife Jill and I are going to travel to Hawaii as soon as we can. That's what I've been talking to the governor about. I don't want to get in the way. I've been to too many disaster areas. But I want to go and make sure we've got everything they need. I want to be sure we don't disrupt the ongoing recovery efforts. But a visit from the president is.

isn't the focus of those left traumatized by the tragedy. It's not just me, lost everything, everybody. Everything's gone. 56-year-old taxi driver Kietmar fights back tears as he describes losing his home and the devastation that now surrounds him. He says the response has been chaotic and disorganized. 1,300 people are still missing with at least 106 confirmed deaths. More than 2,000 buildings have been destroyed.

Community relief centres have been set up, providing water, food and hygiene and medical products. One of the workers, Paella Keir-Khcona, is worried about people exploiting the tragedy on an island where the median property price is a million dollars. Some of the things that's already been happening is realtors are calling families who lost everything, offering them to buy their property and their home.

for pennies on the dollar, just pennies on the dollar. Now the top headlines from around the world. North Korea says U.S. soldier Travis King was fleeing racism and abuse in America when he crossed the DMZ. Pyongyang broke its silence a day before the UN Security Council is due to meet to discuss human rights abuses in North Korea. North Korea's government has long highlighted racial discrimination in the U.S. as what it says is an example of Washington's hypocrisy.

Analysts say North Korea is likely to use King's case to resist pressure over human rights. H&M has told Reuters it's looking into 20 alleged instances of labor abuse at garment factories in Myanmar. The world's second largest fashion retailer said it was following up allegations of unfair dismissals, inhumane work rates, enforced overtime, made in a report by the NGO business and human rights resource centre.

Russian airstrikes have damaged facilities at a key Danube Riverport, according to the governor of Odessa. The facility is a major site for grain shipments, with silos and warehouses attacked. Photos show destroyed metal walls and piles of scattered grain. Intel will terminate its 5.4 billion. dollar deal to acquire an Israeli chipmaker because it didn't secure approval from Chinese regulators in time. The American multinational says it will instead pay a breakup fee. The development underscores how US-China tensions are spilling over into corporate dealmaking, especially for tech companies. Fed Minutes are sure to garner attention on markets today, as the will they or won't they

discussion over rate hikes continues in the West. Investors will try to gain more insest. into the Fed's thought process after US retail sales jumped higher on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Britain's July inflation slowed as expected to its lowest annual rate since February 2022, but services surprised to the upside. Sterling rose slightly against the dollar on the back of the latest data, reinforcing expectations that the BOE will press on with interest rate hikes. Central to the indictment of Donald Trump and 18 others is an alleged plot to intimidate election workers in Georgia. In a series of reports in 2021 and 2022, Reuters revealed efforts to keep Trump in power. Linda So was one of the reporters on the story.

Linda, take us back to before you published in 2021. What did your reporting find? Sure. Well, it became clear soon after the 2020 election that Trump's baseless voter fraud claims were having devastating real-life consequences on U.S. election workers. These civil servants, they were being threatened and intimidated so severely that some actually had to flee their homes and go into hiding. And that's what happened to a Georgia election worker named Ruby Freeman. As part of our reporting, we uncovered how Ruby and her daughter, Shea Moss, who was also an election worker, faced a torrent of threats and harassment. They were falsely accused by Trump and his campaign of illegally counting phone email in ballots to tip the election for Joe Biden.

And as a result, the two women faced unrelenting death threats, racist taunts, and threats of lynching. I've been having terrorist emails and they came out and made a police report. Ruby Freeman, she received hundreds of racist threats. She repeatedly had to call 911 as strangers started showing up at her house and harassing her. and she eventually had to flee her home and go into hiding for two months. And now somebody's spamming on the door. And he's screaming. They are on the way, ma'am.

And so these threats turned into real-world confrontations, which are now laid out in the indictment. Tell us about who was charged here. Sure. What we uncovered through our reporting was that among the strangers who were showing up at Ruby's home and others who contacted her were actually people connected to Trump's campaign. Our reporting revealed three central figures.

in this alleged plot to get Ruby Freeman to try to falsely admit to voter fraud. And they were Trevi and Cootie and Harrison Floyd. Both were prominent black supporters of Trump and Stephen Lee, a chaplain from Illinois. And we now know they have all been charged as co-conspirators in this latest indictment against Trump. And they're accused of being part of a larger scheme to harass election workers into corroborating Trump's false election claims. Couty, Floyd, and Lee did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday. Trump has denied all the charges and says it's a politicized effort to keep him from regaining the presidency. If you want to read more from our Campaign of Fear series, head to Reuters.com.

Most cryptocurrencies have a major problem with price volatility. What goes up, can go down and up again in a short period of time. Enter the stable coin. This crypto subcategory is designed to maintain a constant value. value. PayPal has just got in the game with the launch of a stable coin pegged to the US dollar. Its next job is to convince investors and regulators that it won't go the way of Facebook, the other global giant, to dip into the stable coin. Tom Wilson in London covers all things crypto. Tom, Facebook failed spectacularly when it tried to do a stable coin. How will this be

different. This time, however, PayPal, they're launching a stable coin. It's a completely different environment for crypto. Crypto regulation is still pretty much unclear, but there have been steps made across the world to introduce a regulatory framework for this. But one thing is for sure, PayPal is a much more established company in the financial world than Facebook. Quite a few governments have looked at launching their own digital tokens. How is that a factor here? In many ways, they're doing this to preempt the rise of privately issued stable coins. Lots of central banks worry that if you have a giant international corporation issuing its own money, essentially its own stable coin, that users will stop using traditional currencies and start using privately issued cryptocurrencies.

That would obviously cause problems for states at a wide level in terms of how monetary policy is set in terms of financial stability. Tax? Tax, exactly, privacy, many other elements. States essentially would see their control over money being eroded. That's it for today's episode of Reuters World News. We'll be back with our daily headline show on Thursday. To make sure you know what's going on in the world, listen in for 10 minutes every weekday.

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