Reuters World News - Chocolate shops to save the planet and Senegal on edge for rape verdict

Episode Date: June 1, 2023

How a meat magnate and sponsorship of a German soccer club helped push Russian President Vladimir Putin's agenda in Germany. Chocolate shops to combat global warming? Hear about the surprising projects declared as “climate financing”. Plus, Senegal's opposition leader faces rape trial verdict. 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, Senegal awaits a verdict in the rape trial of one of its leading presidential contenders. We delve into the Anything Goes world of climate financing and the meat baron who helped shape Germany's relationship with Russia. It's Thursday, June 1st. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes. I'm Kim Vennel in London. First, the newsmaking headlines around the world. We start at the House of Representatives and that key vote on the debt ceiling. Yays are 314, the nays are 117.

The bill is passed. Mike Rogers confirming that the bill to suspend the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling is on its way to the Senate. It needs to get to President Biden's desk before Monday's deadline to avoid a campaign. catastrophic default. Three people, including an 11-year-old girl, have been killed in an early morning missile attack in Kiev. The Russian attack on International Children's Day is the 18th on the capital since the start of May. Amazon has agreed to pay millions to settle privacy cases against its Alexa and ring doorbell services. A former employee of its ring unit spied for months on female customers with cameras in bedrooms and bathrooms, the Federal Trade Commission said.

To a courtroom in Sydney. The Federal Court of Australia is now in session. Where one of Australia's most decorated soldiers has lost a defamation lawsuit after he was accused of involvement in the murder of six Afghans while serving in Afghanistan. Ben Robert Smith received Australia's highest military honour, the Victoria Cross, and numerous other accolades, including Father of the Year. But three Australian newspapers accused the former SAS corporal of being involved in execution and murder in Afghanistan. In a case that lasted 110 days and cost around $16 million,

a judge has ruled the claims were substantially true. Nick McKenzie was one of the journalists involved in the story. I'd just like to say today is a day of justice. It's a day of justice for those brave men of the SAS who stood up and told the truth about who Ben Robert Smith is, a war criminal, a bully and a liar. Ben Robert Smith has not been charged with any offences. A lawyer for him told reporters they will consider the judgment

and look at issues relating to an appeal. It's time for Mark. markets now with Carmel Crimmons. Kamel, how are the markets looking this morning? They're in a pretty good mood. There's a sense of relief out there because of the debt deal passing through the House of Representatives. And investors are also betting that the Fed is going to hold firm at its next rate meeting. That's because we had a couple of policymakers come out and actually talk about skipping a hike at the June meeting.

There's also been some rare positive economic news out of China. There's been an upswing and factory activity there. So that's also helping the mood. In Senegal, the verdict is due in a trial that could have a huge impact on the presidential election there. It's seen as one of West Africa's most stable democracies, but there's been regular violence over the arrest of popular figure Osman Sogsonko on rape charges. Sonko has strong support among the youth and plans to stand in February's election. But a guilty verdict will rule him out.

Ngura-Gion is in Dhaka to explain the case. He is a Senegalist politician who was the youngest candidate to run in the 2019 presidential election here in Senegal. Sanko is accused of sexually assaulting and making death threat to a woman, Adisar, who was working at a massage parlor in 2021. He has denied the charges saying there are a scheme by presidential salt to disqualify him from the next election. And also, Makisal denied that. And since the beginning of this situation, in 2021, Sunco is calling for resistance, which caused demonstration against the government.

The situation is very complicated, because if he is found guilty, he might go to jail and not be able to represent for the next election. And also, if he is not found guilty for rape and death threat, the prosecutor also asked for the judge to charge Songko about youth corruptions. Goudajon reporting for waiters in Dakar. Italy funded chocolate and gelato stores in Asia.

The United States offered up a loan for a hotel expansion in Haiti. Japan financed a new coal plant and an airport expansion. And Belgium backed a romantic movie set in the Argentine rainforest. These may not sound like ways to combat global warming, but the two.

$2.6 billion spent on these projects counted as climate finance when they were reported to the UN. With no official guidelines, the UN Climate Change Secretat says it's up to countries themselves to decide what qualifies as climate financing. Emma Roomney in London dug into some of the loans being counted toward an ambitious $100 billion target to help poorer countries reduce emissions. So Emma, what did you uncover? So we found that it's really difficult to tell how much money is truly going towards efforts that tackle global warming. Develop nations aren't actually required to provide details of the projects. You did follow the money in a few instances, and you discovered some pretty surprising things.

Yeah, so when we started looking into this, we found a number of projects that either increased emissions when they said that they would reduce them or just kind of lacked relevance. So those included a whole range of projects just unrelated to global warming, including counter-terror and crime-fighting programs, and projects aimed at the control of sexually transmitted diseases and a whole lot of other stuff. And in some cases, chocolate stores? Yes. So Italy reported an investment in an Italian chocolate company, which was used to help that company open own brand stores across Asia. What did the governments in question say about all of this? So in some cases, nations agreed that they had made a mistake in their reporting of the project, but more often the developed countries stood by their reporting.

And some explained to us in detail why they believed it was justified to report that project. Others, however, in particular Italy and Japan, declined to discuss individual projects in any details. German meat magnate, Clemens Tunis, was a friend to Russia for two decades. jerseys for his soccer team, Shalka, were emblazoned with the logo for Russia's state-owned gas company Gazprom. He used to give Vladimir Putin pork knuckles whenever he saw him. Christian Lowe in Paris is part of the investigative team who revealed how to on us helped shape the Russian-German relationship in the lead-up to the war. So, Christian, how did they push Putin's agenda exactly? So the obvious way that they did that is through the sponsorship of Shalka. This

top-flight German soccer team. So that gave them visibility, all the obvious stuff, marketing opportunities, Gazprom's name on the shirt. But beyond that, what we discovered, which is quite interesting, is that Gazprom's Germany unit had a team of people, quite a big team of people, and they took it really seriously, whose job it was to draw up lists of influential Germans that they wanted to invite into the VIP box at Chalka Home Games. This created a valuable opportunity for Gazprom representatives. to get in the same space as influential Germans in a kind of ungoverned, unregulated space and talk to them.

What do we know about Clemens Ternus? He is from a family of butchers in rural Germany. His first step into the big time was when he took over from his own brother, his late brother, as chair of Shalker. And then he took a further step into the big time when he helped negotiate this deal with Gazprom, which meant that he was bringing in lots of Gasparal money into Shalka, raised his profile. And then from that, he started mixing in quite exalted circles.

He was getting invited to Russia. He had audiences with Putin. He spent time with other really powerful influential Russian people. And that gave him a certain amount of kudos. So he says that when they met, he would bring a cured pork knuckle, the reference to where he makes his money, which is butchering pigs, essentially. How did Gazprom and Ternus respond to the story? Gazprom said that they were interested in sponsoring Shalka for marketing purposes.

Shalker said, if we knew what we knew now, we would have done this differently, and maybe in hindsight, Gazprom was not the best partner for the club. Turner said at the time, all that he and his company were doing was exactly what many other German companies were doing, and they were acting with the knowledge, and blessing of the German government, who were keen to promote the relationship with Russia at the time. And he said, of course, things look very different now from the perspective of the war. That's it for this edition of Reuters World News. We'll be back tomorrow.

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