Reuters World News - Biden provokes Beijing, now what?

Episode Date: June 21, 2023

China hits back after Joe Biden compared Xi Jinping to a “dictator”. The remarks rekindle tensions that both sides had been trying to curb. A year after Roe v Wade was overturned we follow one Texas doctor who’s moved states to keep providing abortions. Plus, undersea sounds heard in the hunt for the Titanic tourist sub, Jerome Powell’s appearance in Congress and all the deals from the Paris Airshow. 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 compares President Xi Jinping to a dictator, prompting a furious reaction from Beijing. Underwater noises have been detected in the search for the Titanic tourist sub. A year after Rovi Wade is overturned, we follow one Texas doctor who's moved states to keep providing abortions. And we visit the Paris Air Show and the big deals being made behind the scenes. It's Wednesday, June 21st. This is Reuters World News,

with everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, every weekday. I'm Kim Vennel in London. Absurd, irresponsible, and a serious violation of China's political dignity. A furious response from the Chinese Foreign Ministry, after Joe Biden compared Xi Jinping to a dictator, during a political fundraiser in California.

The unscripted remarks couldn't have come at a worse time in U.S.-Chinese relations. America's top diplomat, Anthony Blinken, has just wrapped up a mission to Beijing to try and ease tensions between the two countries. Ryan Wu is in Beijing. So, Ryan, this reaction is very strong, to say the least. The Chinese foreign ministry, they were totally irate. And I think that the foreign ministry probably felt that it needed to make a strong stand here because Biden's labeling of Xi as a dictator is tantamount to almost like a personal attack.

How badly does this setback relations between Washington and Beijing? Time will tell. It's hard to say for now. But I mean, what we can see is that the friction that Blinken was trying to smooth out is now threatening to reemerge again in a different way. And that is definitely another obstacle to more stable, sign of U.S. relations, I would say. Here's the rest of the stories making headlines around the world. Underwater noises have been detected in the search for a tourist submersible

that vanished while on a voyage to the Titanic. The U.S. Coast Guard didn't say what type of sounds were detected or how they were picked up. The submersible was built to stay underwater for 96 hours, giving the five people inside until Thursday morning before air runs out. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promising to settle the score after Palestinian gunmen shot dead four Israelis near a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank. The shooters opened fire at a roadside restaurant and gas station.

Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack. They say it's in response to a raid in Janine the day before, where six Palestinians were killed. Desperate relatives of inmates outside a women's prison in Honduras waiting to hear if their loved ones survived a deadly riot. 41 people were killed, some from burns, others from gunshots. Republicans are fuming over the results of a federal investigation into the president's son. Hunter Biden has agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanors for tax evasion on $1.5 million worth of income.

He's also entered a plea deal on a gun charge that could avert jail time. Former President Donald Trump called it a traffic ticket. And Trump's Trump's Trump. in the classified documents case gets a court date. US District Judge Eileen Cannon has set an initial trial date of August 14th in Florida. If it holds, the date would put Trump on trial nine days ahead of the first Republican presidential debate. Fed Chair Jerome Powell heads to Capitol Hill today for two days of congressional hearings. Howard Schneider is here to fill us in on what to expect.

OK, Howard, you've got 30 seconds. It's likely going to get a lot of questions on financial regulation. Remember, we're just a couple months from a huge bank failure, Silicon Valley Bank, as well as a couple others that went down, caused some frictions in the financial sector that the lawmakers are probably going to want to know more about. Maybe it some questions usually does on crypto regulation, things like that. But on the economy, probably people are going to bore in on inflation. How much farther is this fight going to go?

When are price is going to return to normal and what the effect is going to be on the job market? Now for what's happening in the markets, here's Carmel Crimmons. Markets are anxiously waiting to hear what Jerome Powell has to say. Expectations of hawkish comments about higher interest rates have pushed the dollar and oil prices higher already. In the UK, meanwhile, inflation is still stubbornly high. Data for May show that it held steady at 8.7%. That means Britain has the highest inflation rate of any advanced economy. That's putting the Bank of England under more pressure to keep raising rates.

It's expected to increase rates to 4.75% tomorrow. But markets are now pricing in interest. rates hitting 6% by December. The world's largest air show is back for the first time since the pandemic. At the Paris Air Show, companies show off their civilian and military wares. And as Alison Lambert found out, this year buyers are flashing the cash, with India leading the charge. The big takeaway of the show this year is that flying is back, demand is back.

It's back almost completely on global basis. It's very close to pre-pandemic levels. And there's a lot of enthusiasm that you see in the halls from the smallest supplier to the big OEMs. People want to travel. They want to see family and friends. And they're willing to pay quite high fares in the West, for example, to travel on vacations.

India was the star of this year's show because the two main orders announced at this show are coming from Indian carriers. There's 500 jets for indigo, 400 jets for air India. So that's sort of creating a lot of enthusiasm around India, and questions now are brewing as to whether India could play a bigger role in aviation. On the flip side of that coin, however, is the supply chain story. In other words, there's lots of demand for these planes.

There's not right now enough people to build them. There's a lot of concern that the parts are coming too slowly to build the planes. And so the aircraft makers, while they're excited to see all this interest, they are a bit concerned that they're not going to be able to produce as many planes as they want to meet that demand. It's been a year since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, stripping away the nationwide right to abortion. The ruling has led to confusion and upheaval across the country. And for abortion providers in red states, it's a struggle to continue.

But one father and daughter pair from Texas decided not to give up. Here's Gabriel Aborta. Okay, so here's your pill. I'll get you some water. Dr. Alan Braid has been providing abortions since 1972. And when the Dobbs decision came down last year, he and his daughter, Andrea Gaiugos, who had managed his clinics in Texas and Oklahoma,

had to stop providing abortions in Texas and Oklahoma because those states banned abortion. Is this your first time being pregnant? So they decided to move their operations to states where abortion is still legal. So they now operate in New Mexico and Illinois, which are hundreds of miles away from their homes in San Antonio. I wasn't ready to quit. Braid told me that he did not see any option to retire. He thought retiring now would have been quitting.

And he refused to give up providing abortion. just because Rovi Wade was overturned. Okay, so I can see the pregnancy. I'm going to get some measurements. When photographer Evelyn Hawstein and I were in Albuquerque, New Mexico, visiting Dr. Braids Clinic there, we met a 19-year-old named Caitlin, who had traveled from Houston, Texas,

and she was five weeks pregnant. I literally thought I was going to be forced to have this kid. That's what I thought. And Caitlin told us that she was already a mother of two, and she said there was no way that she and her spouse could, financially support three children. So she felt the abortion was necessary, even though she had to go very far out of her way. I can't have a third kid right now. I'm only 19. I cannot have a third baby. So it's been a year now, and Braid and Gaiigos have both decided to leave Texas. So Braid has moved to

New Mexico with his wife, and Gallegos is in the process of moving to Illinois with her family, her husband and young kids. So after a year of doing this crazy commute of hundreds of miles, they have made the bittersweet decision to leave Texas, where they've lived for a very long time and start new chapters in these new states. That's it for this edition of Reuters World News. We'll be back tomorrow. To make sure you know what's going on in the world, remember to subscribe on your favorite podcast player or download the Reuters app.