Reuters World News - Biden's Netanyahu U-turn, Russia's retaliation and AI assistants

Episode Date: July 18, 2023

Russia has attacked Ukraine’s Black Sea port Odesa, a day after exiting a grain deal and leaving poorer nations in doubt over how to feed their people. President Joe Biden has invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a visit to the United States – we look at why he’s changed course after months of the cold shoulder. Plus, tourists to Europe are considering new itineraries as traditional hot spots such as Italy and Spain are becoming too, well, hot. And the race to perfect the AI assistant. 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 reverses course and invites Benjamin Netanyahu to visit the U.S. As a rift over Israel flares among Democrats. Russia attacks Ukraine's Black Sea port of Odessa and triggers an international outcry over its withdrawal from a wartime grains deal. Mediterranean tourism takes a hit to sweltering heat. And Elon Musk's space-aged cyber truck is finally hitting the market. It's Tuesday, July 18th. 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. And I'm Christopher Walgessper in Chicago. Convierte your passion in a business with Shopify and bathe records of ventas with the form of pay with a better conversion of the world. Has you heard of well? The incredible system of pay for Shopify Facility the purchase in your site web, in the

social and in whatever that's music for your ears. No, let's more vultas. Your negotiation will be a super-exitto-com with Shopify. Empezae your period of proof for a euro at month in Shopify.es bar records. President Biden has reversed course inviting Israel's Prime Minister,

Benjamin Netanyahu, to visit. The goodwill gesture comes at a tense time for Biden's Democrats when it comes to Israel. A rift in the party reared its head of the weekend when Representative Pramila Jopal called Israel a racist state. After fury from colleagues, she walked back her comments. But some liberals plan to boycott a speech by Israel's president to Isaac Herzog when he visits the U.S. today.

Dan Williams is following the shifts in U.S.-Israel relations from Jerusalem. Israeli prime ministers, given the state of the alliance with the United States, have traditionally been invited in fairly short order to visit the White House. That has not happened with Netanyahu since his re-election in late December. In fact, we've had Biden saying explicitly and unusually a few months ago that he would not be inviting Netanyahu given the then state of constitutional reforms proposed by Netanyahu in Israel. Now, as a sort of a stopgap, kind of a surrogate measure, the Israeli head of state, President Isaac Herzog, was invited to Washington instead. This, one imagines, smarted for Netanyahu. And I think what happened is it's clear

that it was buttressed by decision by both leaders, Biden and Netanyahu, that I hold a publicized phone call with an overture by the United States indicating that Biden would indeed be meeting Netanyahu in the near future in the United States. Now, why has this happened? Biden is openly a friend of Israel. I imagine he was worried about giving the impression of cold shock. during an elected leader of Israel. There's also creaking within his Democratic Party by a number of members who have balked at attending Herzog's address to Congress. This is on the backdrop of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. It's possible that Biden or people in this circle thought that damage was being done on a fundamental basis to democratic or U.S. support for Israel by

the optics of not bringing in Netanyahu. So they decided to hold this phone conversation, and publicize it to redress that. Russia fired missiles and drones into southern and eastern Ukraine overnight. The attacks follow a pledge by Moscow to retaliate for Monday's strike on its only bridge to Crimea. The Black Sea port of Odessa has been damaged in the latest tit-for-tat. It played a central role in a wartime deal that allowed Ukraine to export its grains safely through the Black Sea. But Moscow has withdrawn. drawn from that deal, triggering dread in poorer countries that rely on it.

Michelle Nichols is in the United Nations. Michelle, what are the immediate implications of all this? Ukraine's president, Zelensky, a spokesman for him, said that they would like to try and see the corridor continue, even without Russia. But the difficulty there is that, along with Russia, withdrawing from the deal, they've also revoked their security guarantees and said they can't say. that ships travelling to Ukrainian ports would be safe. So what happens now?

Everyone would like to try and see this deal revived, but it's not really clear how that might happen at this point. Russia has said that if its demands are met, then it would consider resurrecting the deal, but that would almost involve negotiating a new agreement, I think, is what most diplomats believe. And now for the other headlines making news around the world. An experimental drug from Eli Lilly can slow progression of Alzheimer's in patients if administered as early as possible.

The drug, Donanimab, has been shown to slow progression of memory and thinking problems by about a third, but a new trial has shown that rate doubles to 60% if the drug is started when patients are only mildly impaired. More than 50 pilot whales have died in Scotland after being stranded. Attempts to refloat some of the pod were unsuccessful, and rescuers decided to euthanise the remaining whales on welfare grounds. For what's happening in markets, let's speak to Carmel, Kremens, Carmel. What are we keeping an eye on today? So China is really casting a pile over markets.

The weak economic data out of Beijing has blunted the mood, and it's definitely hanging over stock markets. Looking ahead, we're on the lookout to see what US retail sales data brings later today. Expectations are that sales will have grown by about 0.0.4. percentage points in June. And if it comes in around that level, that shouldn't stoke inflation fears and therefore should keep expectations level for the Fed to raise rates by 25 basis points this month. With Southern Europe buckling under yet another heat wave, some tourists are now starting to rethink their summer vacations. European company news editor Josephine Mason in London

is following how heat is reshaping tourism. Since the heat wave of last summer. The Mediterranean region has seen a drop in visitors and in turn places like Denmark, Ireland, Bulgaria, Chechia, where the temperatures are cooler, are seeing a spike in interest. You mentioned 40 degrees Celsius. That's more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit. And we've had two summers of these heat waves. Could this lead to a more permanent shift in where people vacation? That's the expectation. Travel experts see this as a long-term shift. People will start to also travel outside of the peak summer months for spring and autumn when the temperatures are cooler. Beach locations may change. We're expecting to see, for instance, northern Spain to become potentially more popular than southern Spain because it's a little bit cooler. Remember when Elon Musk unveiled that strange-looking metal box called The Cyber Truck?

Well, four years later, it's finally rolling off the assembly line. But who is it for? I asked Joe White, who covers the auto industry. So, Joe, this is a real car, huh? The cyber truck is a real thing. It's a very strange real thing. It doesn't look like any other pickup truck on the market. It looks like something out of a science fiction movie.

So it's going to be a real test of Tesla's brand power because they've got a vehicle that some people are just going to hate, but they need about a quarter of a million or more people every year to love it enough to buy it. And that's going to be the test. How far can Tesla go to really redefine a segment of the market that's over time proven to be very lucrative but also pretty conservative? Right. I mean, it's a very specific kind of car. Who is it for? Well, that's a great question.

Like the Detroit companies and a number of companies, they've positioned. the cyber truck is sort of an off-road adventure vehicle. The question is whether the people who buy it will actually be more urbanites or suburbanites who just want to have something that doesn't look like anything else, at least not until they get a million of them out in the road. They've got a very, very large factory in Texas that's going to be devoted to building these things. This is not meant to be a niche vehicle. This is meant to be a high-volume product. Exactly what the price of the cyber truck will be is unknown at this point. Tesla said years ago that it would start at just under $40,000. Elon Musk has hinted since then that the price is probably going to be higher,

and that will obviously have a big effect on how many they can sell. Billions of dollars are being poured into the race to create AI assistance. Often called agents or co-pilots, these are not chatbots, but rather autonomous helpers who can function without needing close human supervision. What could go wrong, right? Anna Tong has the story. Anna, what is an autonomous AI? So an autonomous AI can actually do things in the real world. Go into a web browser like a human, click on things, book flights, etc. So just do anything on the web that you could do. So what are some of the schools of thought around AI assistance in Silicon Valley right now?

So one group are companies that are trying to unleash this autonomous agent on the internet and let it do all the things for me. Schedule my meetings, buy my things on Amazon, book my flights, etc. There is a second school which recognizes that AI is not very reliable yet. And those people say like, hey, you know, AI right now, it's kind of like a baby. AI can suggest something for you to do, but a real human has to kind of review what it wants to do and actually trigger the action. What are the concerns here? So the concerns are with future versions of AI that are more advanced than they are today. And AI in and of itself has no morality.

So I could, for instance, give an AI a goal that said, make me as much money as possible. And the AI could find some maybe criminal or immoral way to attain that goal. And that's what people are afraid of. They're afraid of AI's just kind of going rogue and doing things that have unintended consequences. That's it for today's episode of Reuters World News. To make sure you know what's going on in the world, listen in every weekday. And don't forget to subscribe on your favourite podcast player or download the Reuters app.