Reuters World News - Biden and Xi talk, cheap turkey, hostage negotiations and Myanmar's rebels

Episode Date: November 16, 2023

U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping hailed tangible progress in their first face-to-face talks in a year. Qatari mediators try to broker a hostage deal between Israel and Gaza. Rebels are seizing military posts in Myanmar, posing a threat to the junta. What next for the UK’s Rwanda asylum plans? Plus, how much your Thanksgiving meal might cost this year. 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, Joe Biden and Xi Jinping vow to keep talking. Qatar works on a deal to free some of the hostages in Gaza. Myanmar's military rulers battle an insurgency on multiple fronts. And this year's Thanksgiving celebration is going to be a little easier on the wallet, if not the waistline. It's Thursday, November 16th. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes. Every weekday. I'm Carmel Crimmons in Dublin.

So we're back to direct, open, clear, direct communications on a direct basis. The U.S. president after his first face-to-face meeting with Xi Jinping in a year. Biden telling reporters the two sides had agreed to open a presidential hotline and revive military-to-military communications. We're reassuming military-to-military contacts, direct contacts. As a lot of you press know, follow this, that's been cut off and it's been worrisome. That's how accidents happen, misunderstandings. They're also going to work to curb fentanyl production.

The four hours of talks at a mansion south of San Francisco were heavily choreographed. But major difference remain between the two countries, particularly over Taiwan. And, in an off-the-cuff response to a reporter's question, Biden says he still looks on Xi as a dictator. Well, look, he is. Adding that he runs a communist country with a government different to the U.S. Biden didn't just have strong words for Xi. I made it clear to the Israelis, I think it's a big mistake for them to think they're going to occupy Gaza and maintain Gaza.

I don't think that works. As the fighting rages there, the fate of some 240 hostages hangs in the balance. Qatari mediators are trying to negotiate the release of 50 of them and a three-day ceasefire. Andrew Mills is in Doha. Do we know what either side thinks of this deal? We know that Hamas has agreed to the broad outlines of this deal. The Israelis, we know they are still negotiating. They're still working out the details with the Qatries,

but they have not yet said that they have agreed to this deal. There's been talk before in the last few weeks about hopes of a breakthrough in terms of releasing some hostages. Is there any sense that we're any closer with this proposed deal? There are few things, the few signs that I think we can look to. The last Thursday in Qatar, the country prime minister, met with the Mossad chief and the head of the CIA. And so there's a feeling that when the intelligence agencies

are kind of involved in the discussion, it's further along than when this is being discussed by others. The other thing I think that is a sign of hope is Biden spoke in San Francisco, and he also, for the first time, I think, was pretty hopeful. I'm doing everything in my power to get you out, coming to help you, to get you out. On the streets of Tel Aviv, Marev,

joined protesters calling on the government to get the hostages back, including her nine-year-old relative, Ohad. We came to tell the government and the Minister of Defense that we want our loving families back home now. We don't have time to wait. We're a week away from Thanksgiving celebrations in the United States. Our economics correspondent Howard Schneider has dug into what a Thanksgiving dinner might cost this year.

Every year the Farm Bureau sends out shoppers around the country. country to price a meal for 10. 11 goods, they look for turkey, of course, but cranberry, pumpkin pie mix rolls, the whole thing, and they come up with a price. Well, the last couple of years, that price has been skyrocketing. This year, nice shock for people, be about four and a half percent cheaper than it was a year ago. That's part of a whole, I guess, steadying of food price inflation, but a steadying of inflation overall. This is one where it's moving in the right direction, and it's not just food. Gas prices are lower this year than last year, airfares too, so you can get over the river, across the mountains, through the woods, whatever, to Grandmas' house a little

bit cheaper. So what does this Thanksgiving study tell us more broadly about food costs? Well, look, there's been a really demonstrable shift in the price level, you know, 15%, 18% jump in prices overall over the last three years. The message here is that ain't going away. The pace of change is going to slow. And in fact, you might see some localized price declines, some changes in relative prices like this. Pumpkin pie mix actually got more expensive. That's a more processed good, more labor costs involved, whereas cranberries, whipped cream, supply chains have evened out. We imported a bunch of cranberries, turkey, no avian flu this year. So the price for that dropped as well. So overall, it came down, even though relative prices changed. However, we're still over $60,

which is unusual compared to the last decade or so. You go back to 2011, 2019, that Thanksgiving meal, according to the Farm Bureau, that hung around $48 to $50. Pandemic hit, shot up, 25 percent in a couple of years. So, yeah, we're going to be living with that for a while. But on the other hand, wages will go up as well. People will adjust. They'll get used to it. Britain's Supreme Court has delivered a major blow to Rishi Sunak's immigration policy. The court ruling that the government's scheme to send asylum seekers to Rwanda to process is unlawful.

Senior correspondent Michael Holden is covering the fallout. Mike, what reason do the court give for their ruling? The essence of the court's decision was that you can't send someone who applies for asylum back to their home country where they may face the risk of torture or other ill treatment. And their conclusion was, having heard the evidence from a number of witnesses, including the UN Refugee Agency, that it would not be safe for people to be sent to Rwanda because they would be at risk of potentially being sent back to their homeland. Where does Sunak's government go from here?

So the government's not giving up on this. what it wants to do now is to establish a new treaty with Rwanda. Their argument is that this new treaty would deal with a lot of the concerns raised by the Supreme Court and would allow the original scheme effectively to go ahead. Whether that is going to be the case or not, I think, is waiting to be seen and I think we'd get more legal challenges should they try that. Why is the offshoring of asylum seekers so important to the Sunak government? There's a huge backlog of people claiming asylum. It's costing the country $8 million a day to house those waiting to have their asylum claims dealt with.

It's causing a lot of concern amongst some voters who think that these people coming should be stopped, that Britain should be able to control its borders. And it's therefore a big political headache for Sunak. So other countries are watching this closely, right? The UK isn't the only one looking at off-shoring migrants. Is that correct? Yeah, that Britain is no means the only country that's been looking at this actual deal resembled one that Israel had struck with Rwanda between 2013 and 2018. Germany's looking at what it can do to deal with its large number of asylum seekers.

Italy is also looking at schemes with Albania to try and address the problems that it's got with large influx of migrants there. It's across Europe, there's a real issue of people fleeing war zones from Africa, from, the Middle East, from Afghanistan, and the system is beginning to creak. It's causing unease amongst people in Europe, and it is leading to, in some cases, arise in issues with some far-right political groups. In Myanmar, generals who seized power two years ago are battling with insurgent groups, gathering momentum throughout the country. The rebels have captured some towns and military posts, including on the border with China. It's the biggest test yet for the junta, since the military took power in a 2021 coup,

ousting an elected government led by Aung-Sung-Suchy. Dev Jok Goshaal has been following the story from Bangkok. Dev Jod, what's the situation now in Myanmar? Essentially, rebel groups have taken control of several towns and over 100 military outposts in a matter of weeks and sort of unsettled the very powerful Myanmar military called the Tadmado. How much of a threat is this to the country's military rulers? So this is a powerful military.

country junta, but one that has faced constant resistance in different parts of the country in different ways at different levels since the 2021 coup. What's happening now is that you have a collection of these large established armed groups that are combining in some areas with the grassroots resistance and are coming together to take on the tadmaddor in this new offensive. But while the junta has been weakened, the diplomats we've spoken to. to set that the possibility of an imminent collapse of the armed forces was remote. The more likely scenario would be that they would continue to lose more territory as rebel groups sort of push out of the border areas and into the heartland.

This fighting is happening on the border with India and China. Is there a danger this could spread regionally? From people we've spoken to, from sources we've spoken to, the risk of regional escalation is quite low. So China and India both don't want instability along their borders. And they don't have any direct involvement in that sense with the fighting that's going on. That's it for today's episode of Reuters World News. We'll be back tomorrow with our daily headline show.

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