Reuters World News - Breonna Taylor, EU’s ‘nuclear option’ and Golden Dome

Starting point is 00:00:01 Today, a former Kentucky police officer is jailed over the Breonna Taylor raid. The European Union ramps up retaliation plans as hopes of a US trade deal fade. And the space-based Golden Dome Project looks for new partners. It's Tuesday, July 22nd. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes every weekday. I'm Kim Vinal in Wonganui, New Zealand. Louisville, Kentucky now, where former police officer Brett Hankerson, who was convicted of violating the rights of Breonna Taylor, has been sentenced to two years, nine months in prison.

Starting point is 00:00:55 The judge made the ruling despite the Justice Department asking for a sentence of just one day. Taylor, a black woman, was killed in 2020 when police used a no-knock warrant to enter her home. Her boyfriend thought that they were intruders and shot at the officers with a legally owned, firearm. Taylor was killed by the officers when they returned fire. We caught out with our legal reporter Jack Queen as he traveled back from the hearing in Louisville. Jack, why did the Justice Department ask for a lesser sentence? So the prosecutor who came out from California specifically to argue the government's position in this case because we're told that local prosecutors would not go along with it. What he was emphasizing was that none of the 10 shots that Hankinson

Starting point is 00:01:38 fired actually hit anyone, that he therefore did not cause Brandon Taylor's death. And he emphasized that, you know, in the Justice Department's opinion, there were no similar cases like this where a police officer was charged in this way for violating someone's civil rights in a case where they were turning fire. Because, remember, Brianna Taylor's then boyfriend fired the first shot at police officers, according to what the cops say about that incident. And he also notably emphasized that the Justice Department under Joe Biden's Attorney General Merrick Garland brought this case, which to the judge suggested that there were political considerations at that. play here potentially because what she said in response to that was that she was, she found a lot of these arguments by the government very inappropriate, that she thought it seemed like they were minimizing the severity of the crime, that they were sort of invalidating the jury's verdict almost because, you know, the jury, while it was a partial verdict, they acquitted on one count,

Starting point is 00:02:32 but they convicted them the other. Hundreds of people gather at the site of a plane crash in Bangladesh's capital, Dukkah. At least 27 people are dead after the Air Force training jet crashed into a college and school campus. The government announced a day of morning with flags at half-mast and special prayers at places of worship. Hunter Biden is suggesting that his father's disastrous debate against Trump, which led to the Democrats standing aside as a presidential candidate,

Starting point is 00:03:10 was because of Ambien. Ambien is a medication used for short-term treatment of sleeping problems. Hunter made the comments in an interview with YouTube creator Andrew Callahan. He said Joe Biden was given the medication to sleep after a lot of travel. Joe Biden's office has not yet responded to a request for comment. The organ transplant system in the US is being reformed after a probe found premature attempts to get people's organs while they still showed signs of life.

Starting point is 00:03:42 The investigation examined hundreds of cases where organ donation was authorized, but not completed. It found more than 70 patients had shown, quote, neurological signs, and at least 28 patients may not have been dead at the time organ removal was started. The European Union is looking at its retaliation plans if it can't agree a trade deal with the United States. Some countries, including Germany,

Starting point is 00:04:23 are considering the nuclear option, so-called anti-coercion measures. Mark John is our economics editor for Europe, and is here to explain what they are. So this is the anti-coorussian instrument, and what it does is it allows the EU to consider retaliation far beyond simple tariffs. So, for example, it could exclude from any public tenders in Europe,

Starting point is 00:04:49 those bids which included a certain content of US goods or services. It could curb US investment into the European Union, bearing in mind that the United States is actually the biggest investor in Europe. And it could even, in theory, go into the realm of services. Remember that for the time being, this whole trade row has been about goods services. Well, this goes into services. And it could in theory actually allow the EU to clamp down on digital services, financial services, all those things which actually the United States has a trade surplus with the European Union on.

Starting point is 00:05:29 And to some more stories we're keeping an eye on today. Harvard is battling the Trump administration in court, urging a judge to order the government to restore about $2.5 billion in cancelled funds. The administration says the cancelled grants reflect a government priority not to send money to institutions that practice anti-Semitism. Harvard says it's taken steps to ensure its campus is welcoming to Jewish and Israeli students. The Pentagon says 700 active duty marines are being successful. sent home from Los Angeles.

Starting point is 00:06:05 The Marines were deployed after protests erupted over a series of immigration raids carried out at workplaces by ICE last month. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky saying the first peace talks with Russia in almost two months are set to get underway tomorrow in Turkey. He quoted a senior Kiev official in his video statement. The Kremlin says it's waiting for confirmation of the date, but that the two sides remain diameters. metrically opposed on how to end the war.

Starting point is 00:06:46 Donald Trump's Golden Dome, a space-based missile defense system that would cover the whole of the U.S. is expanding its search for partners in the wake of Trump's feud with Elon Musk. Mike Stone covers the defense industry. Mike, how has the Golden Dome project been affected by Trump's fallout with Musk? Well, the fallout certainly didn't help. But even before the very public TIF, the administration was looking into alternatives. satellite makers for the Golden Dome project. SpaceX can make satellites very quickly and very cheaply. That led the administration to believe that they might get into a situation called vendor

Starting point is 00:07:27 lock, which means you become Coca-Cola only or Pepsi Cola only with one company taking over so much of the technology with a proprietary set of parameters on it that no one else can break in. So is this opening up opportunities for other companies? So by approaching companies that are big enough and scaling enough, such as Amazon's Project Kuiper, what they're trying to do is they're trying to get, I'm not going to put any numbers on it, but like a third, a third, a third, or, you know, 25, 25. They're trying to get this thing into percentages so that other folks have a way to compete. What's the timeframe for getting even some portion of the, you know,

Starting point is 00:08:11 Golden Dome operational? Okay. Some portion of, the answer, it's operational today. There's a thing called a ground base mid-course defense system. It's a series of tubes in Alaska and Vandenberg in Southern California that are meant to shoot down incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles from rogue nations such as North Korea. That exists. Then there's going to be another layer you're going to start seeing, I don't know what the year

Starting point is 00:08:37 is for this, but you're going to start seeing Patriot batteries get put up around. I don't know. Think of like population centers, you know, Los Angeles, San Francisco. Then you're going to see THAAD batteries, which is a terminal high altitude defense mechanism that, you know, would intercept in the terminal phase of an intercontinental ballistic missile flight. So you'll see that cover sort of a region, a couple, two, three states. But the big butt on that, Donald from wants this thing to be up and going by the end of his administration. So it puts it three and a half years from now. And for today's recommended read,

Starting point is 00:09:16 We head to Tunisia. Once a beacon of democratic hope in the wake of the Arab Spring, the country is grappling with new repression under President Kais Sa'it. Hear about how the government is rounding up people, like activist and new mother, Cherifa Raihi, who was arrested two months after giving birth. We'll put a link to that story in today's podcast description. For more on any of the stories from today,

Starting point is 00:09:40 check out Royters.com or the Reuters app. Don't forget to follow us on your favourite podcast player. We'll be back tomorrow with you. our daily headline show.

Reuters World News - Breonna Taylor, EU’s ‘nuclear option’ and Golden Dome

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