Reuters World News - California wildfires, Greenland, Meta and Jean-Marie Le Pen

Episode Date: January 8, 2025

Wildfires rage in Los Angeles forcing tens of thousands to flee while the strong, dry winds fuelling the blaze are forecast to worsen. President-elect Donald Trump refuses to rule out using military or economic action to take Greenland and the Panama Canal. Meta ditches its U.S. fact-checking program and loosens restrictions on discussions around hot topics. And Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of France’s post-war far right, has died.  Sign up for the Reuters Econ World newsletter here. Listen to the Reuters Econ World podcast here. Find the Recommended Read here. 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. Wildfires rage in Los Angeles, forcing tens of thousands to evacuate. Donald Trump won't rule out force to take Greenland and the Panama Canal. Meta drops fact-checking from its U.S. social media sites. And we look at Jean-Marie Le Pen's lasting impact on French politics. It's Wednesday, January 8th. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes every weekday. I'm Christopher Waljasper in Chicago. And I'm Carmel Crimmons in Dublin.

Firefighters battle a wildfire roaring to the affluent Pacific Palisades neighborhood in Los Angeles. At least 30,000 people have evacuated the area, home to several Hollywood stars, with traffic jams forcing some to flee on foot. I have never seen anything. Fires were this close to the cars. People left their cars in the Hall of States Drive, burning up the hillside. Cindy Festa, speaking from her car as she evacuates the area. And the firemen are great, but you can only do so much. Bulldozers are pushing abandoned vehicles from the roads so that emergency vehicles can pass.

We are not out of danger. The National Weather Service has predicted that the winds are going to pick up and get worse. L.A. Fire Chief Anthony Maroney says dangerous conditions are expected through the week. So it's incumbent that everybody have a wildfire action plan for their home. Donald Trump is ramping up his campaign to expand the United States' global footprint. In a freewheeling hour-long press conference on Tuesday, the president-elect said he plans to rename the Gulf of Mexico. We're going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America,

which has a beautiful ring that covers a lot of times. He says Greenland and the Panama Canal should be under US control. We need them for economic security. And he's not ruling out using economic or military coercion to achieve that. It might be that you'll have to do something. Trump is suggesting he would impose tariffs on Denmark if it resists his offer to purchase Greenland, which he says is vital to US national security. Now, the sparsely populated autonomous territory of Denmark is not up for sale.

But on Tuesday, Trump's son, Don Jr., arrived in Greenland's capital for what he described as a private visit. Jakob Grunholt Peterson is our chief correspondent in Denmark. The U.S. interest in Greenland dates back decades. I mean, even Harry Truman tried to buy it back in the 50s. And, of course, famously, Donald Trump offered to buy it back in 2019 and was rebuffed by the Danish prime minister calling the offer. absurd. Greenland is of great interest to the United States because it's sort of the shortest route from Europe to North America, so any missile attack would go via that island. The United States has an airbase up in northern Greenland to detect incoming missiles from Russia or from China.

It's famously known that Greenland is basically a black hole in terms of surveillance, numerous spottings of Russian submarines in the deep fields of eastern Greenland is a concern. And also with climate change and as the ice melts and shipping routes are opening up, it's also opening up for more possibilities in terms of extracting mineral resources and oil and gas. So in that sense, Russia and China have been very active in the Arctic and the United States is trying to catch up. A U.S. judge has temporarily blocked Special Counsel Jack Smith from releasing a report on his

investigations into President-elect Donald Trump. The report details the mishandling of classified documents and attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. And in New York, an appellate judge has denied Trump's request to delay sentencing in his criminal hush money case. That's set to take place on Friday. A new job plan for Matt Gates? The former congressman says he's considering a run for governor in 2026 in his home state of Florida.

A rescue operation is underway in Tibet after Tuesday's 6.8 magnitude earthquake. More than 400 people trapped by rubble have been rescued, with an unknown number still unaccounted for. At least 126 people are dead. Meta is ditching its fact-checking program in the US. Instead, the social media company will use a community notes model. similar to X to moderate content on Facebook, Instagram and threads. And we've reached a point where it's just too many mistakes and too much censorship. CEO Mark Zuckerberg explaining the decision.

The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech. So we're going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms. Our reporter Katie Paul has been looking into the company's reversal. It seems that at least an element of this is due to the political climate in the U.S. Mark Zuckerberg has been reaching out all of branches to the new incoming Republican administration. He's been trying to mend fences with Donald Trump with whom he's had tensions over the years, particularly after META suspended Trump's accounts in the wake of the January 6th riots at the U.S. Capitol.

And so this is coming as part of a succession of changes in the past several months, including changing the head of global affairs last week and elevating a prominent Republican executive at Meta to the post. How effective is this community notes model in combating misinformation? A lot of people say that it's not sufficient on its own, right? It's part of a kind of broader system of checks and balances that should exist. on social media platforms, including fact-checking. The oversight board said that community notes can be something that really promotes free speech and free exchange of ideas. The fact-checkers seem to have been blindsided by it, so they're expressing dismay.

And also challenging the assertion that Zuckerberg and others have made from Meta, that there were cases of mistakes or bias. For now, Meta is only planning the changes for the U.S. market. Reuters partners with Meta's fact-checking program and has declined to comment. An icon of France's political far-right has died. Jean-Marie Le Pen founded France's far-right National Front Party in 1972 and spent decades contesting five presidential elections with blue-collar populist support. Elizabeth Pino is in Paris.

Elizabeth, how has... Le Pen's political career left an impact on French politics. It's really the end of an era in France. He was a real figure, a character in the political landscape. And it seems that he's been here forever, really, because he was always in the background. When he was young, he was a soldier in the colonial wars. And then he founded the national rally.

And at first, it was very, very radical. And little by little, he just made his way in the, French political landscape, handing in 2002 when he just finished second in the presidential election. Hundreds of thousands of French people came on to the street to protest because he was really linked with racism, a fight against immigration, white France, patriotism, anti-Semitism also. And he liked to be very provocative and even very controversial. He said that the whole Holocaust was a detail of a Second World War, and he was convicted for that. And when Marine Le Pen is thought, she's now a very important figure in France politics, but Marine Le Pen had to cut the links with her father. She said enough with controversy, and she changed the name of the National Front. Jean-Marie Le Pen disliked that, and he said that it was a betrayal. But she kept on changing the content also of the program. of the national rally.

And it works because the two last presidential election, and Macron won. But she's not far from being elected one day. And this was kind of impossible with Jean-Marie Le Pen because he was too radical. But really, he prepared the path for his daughter because some of his ideas of French first, patriotism, fight against immigration.

These are ideas that Marine Le Pen still has today. For today's recommended read, We look at how Iran manages to move oil around the world, skirting Western sanctions by relying on a shadow fleet of tankers, as well as willing buyers in Asia. A link to the story and graphics is in today's pod description. For more on any of the stories from today, check out Reuters.com or the Reuters app.

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