Reuters World News - Comey indictment, West Bank, tariffs and Sarkozy

Starting point is 00:00:01 Today, former FBI Chief James Comey is charged. A vow from Trump that West Bank annexation won't happen. Hexeth orders hundreds of top brass officers to a Virginia meeting. Drugs, trucks and household furniture are the latest in the tariff firing line. And France's former president, Nicola Sarkozy, is sentenced to five years in jail. It's Friday, September 26th. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, seven days a week. I'm Tara Oaks in London.

Starting point is 00:00:53 My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump. And the cost for former FBI Chief James Comey is criminal charges. It's a dramatic ramp up in President Donald Trump's campaign against his political enemies. Comey, facing charges of making false statements and obstructing a congressional investigation. And if he's convicted, he could face up to five years in prison. My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system, and I'm innocent. So let's have a trial. I will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank.

Starting point is 00:01:37 Nope, I will not allow it. It's not going to happen. A promise from Trump, landing as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in New York to address the UN. Trump's rejecting calls from Israeli far-right leaders who want to expand their control over the West Bank, where settlements have grown a number and size and snuff out hopes for a Palestinian state. Netanyahu's office says the Prime Minister will wait until he's back in Israel before addressing Trump's remarks. Defense Secretary Pete Higseth is summoning senior U.S. military officers from around the world to an urgent meeting next week. The rare last-minute gathering at Quantico Marine Base in Virginia

Starting point is 00:02:22 has admirals and generals scrambling to change schedules and coordinate flights. One official says the lack of clarity is creating uncertainty among senior commanders. This comes after HECSeth has already fired dozens of top brass this year, including the chairman of joint chiefs, and promised major cuts to the officer ranks. A Pentagon spokesperson did not respond to questions about the purpose of the meeting, or why HECSeth called it so abruptly. Idrisa Lee covers the Defense Department. The scale of what Secretary HECSeth is doing is quite rare, not just because of the number of people who could potentially be involved in this, right? We're talking about generals and admirals from around the world, but also the short-term

Starting point is 00:03:12 nature of this. The notice went out only a few days ago, which doesn't leave a whole lot of room for some very important people to get their travel plans ready. For a lot of these people, you know, their schedules are set in stone in many cases, weeks in advance, right down to the minute. In some cases, they have a military to run to keep bases operational, and that goes for your place. in South Korea that goes for places in the Middle East, in Europe. And so convening them all in one place in Quantigo, Virginia, is raising a lot of eyebrows amongst military officials because they actually don't know necessarily what they're meaning for. The latest tariff announcement from Trump might just put a dent in your weekend shopping plans

Starting point is 00:04:01 if you're in the market for some new kitchen cabinets. He's slapping a fresh round of tough taxes on imported furniture, heavy-duty trucks and drugs, and they're set to kick in in less than a week on the 1st of October. Shares in Asia slid with pharmaceutical companies hit hard in the face of a whopping 100% tariff on branded drugs that can only be dodged if ground is broken on a US factory. As a government shut down looms in the US next week, President Trump and Republicans need support from Democrats in Congress to fund the government for another fiscal year.

Starting point is 00:04:44 But as our congressional reporter Bo Erickson says, Democrats are doing the math and weighing the cost of a shutdown against the potential cuts Republicans are trying to pass. The Democrats are picking this fight because they think at the end of the day that because President Trump's in office

Starting point is 00:05:03 and both chambers of Congress are run by Republicans, that the public, when they tune into this larger fight about funding, will be blaming the Republicans for not coming to the table and negotiating some of these issues that they want to address. And Beau says it's unclear if Democrats will stand together. The decision of whether or not to vote for funding the government will come down to each individual senator

Starting point is 00:05:30 because there are a few Democrats specifically who are in more moderate states and they don't want to be seen as obstructing government. With that being said, though, last March when we had the previous funding fight, Democrats broadly were a little bit more skittish. They were worried that if the government shut down, they would be more to blame. There's a lot more metal this time because they can be a little bit more on offense saying, you want our votes for government funding, you are going to have to come along and support XYZ issues. And a lot of those issues right now are on the health care lines.

Starting point is 00:06:09 The FBI says the man who killed one migrant and seriously injured two others at a Dallas immigration facility this week was trying to, quote, terrorize ICE agents. That's according to notes found in his apartment. But as our immigration reporter Ted Hessan says, information about the victims of the shooting is still unclear. Right now, we still know very little about them. And among those two that were seriously wounded, the Mexican government has, has said that one of them was a Mexican citizen. Otherwise, we don't know the nationalities of the other two. We don't know what they were doing in the U.S., what their immigration status was.

Starting point is 00:06:50 We do know that ICE says that they were picked up in targeted enforcement operations. But we have no details on what those operations were, where they were arrested, and what they might have even been doing when they were arrested. It's fairly standard for U.S. federal authorities to contact the families of victims before disclosing their identities. That said, it's more complicated here because you're reaching out to families who may not be in the United States and potentially dealing with different foreign governments as you do it. So that said, I think if this stretches on for more than a few days, I do think people will start to raise questions about why more information isn't being provided.

Starting point is 00:07:31 France's former president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has been sentenced to five years in jail for criminal conspiracy. is for trying to raise campaign funds back in 2007 from Libya during the rule of late dictator Muammar Gaddafi. He'll be the first former president in France's modern era to serve time in prison. Gabriel Stargarde is a deputy bureau chief for France. This is a first in modern day France, the fact that he's actually going to do jail time. I mean, I think what you're seeing is a demystification of the presidency, and it's kind of being cut down to size to a certain extent.

Starting point is 00:08:06 Gabriel says the sentencing shows a crackdown in political corruption. What we're seeing increasingly is that the French judiciary is getting very much more aggressive. To a certain extent, they're responding to a desire from the population to punish political corruption, be more robust with it. This is sending shockwaves through the political class, which are kind of used to using this appeals process to string out the criminal cases that they have against them over the course of years. Sarkozy's conviction also highlights his role as a. socialite. His wife, model and singer-songwriter Carla Bruni, has pledged to stand by her husband as he faces time in prison. Tarkazi was a high-profile French president. He liked the finer things in life. He was always kind of a tabloid figure to a certain extent, and there was

Starting point is 00:08:55 a certain glamour over his presidency, which now has aged. But certainly, you know, he's someone who still exerts a certain political influence in France, one of the first acts of the French Prime Minister Sebastian Le Corneau, who was a Sarkozy protege. He went to visit Sarkozy at Sarkozy's offices, which I always thought was a remarkable thing, because you've just become the Prime Minister of France, yet you traips across town to go visit Sarkozy. And he's also been making links with the far right National Rally Party. So he's someone who, whether he's been trying to, or arguably succeeding in kind of having this lingering political influence, we're still seeing that. And I think that, you know, this is going to

Starting point is 00:09:36 really send tremors through the political landscape in France because this is the first and I think it shows that politicians are not going to be getting away with the same things that they're used to. And for today's recommended read, it's your weekend listen. It's almost a wrap on this year's UN General Assembly and our very own Jonah Green takes you on assignment to dig into everything we've learned about the role of a United Nations in the era of Trump. That episode of on assignment drops tomorrow. For more on any of the stories from today, check outroiter's.com or the Reuters app. Don't forget to follow us on your favourite podcast player. And if you're listening on a smart speaker, just ask for the latest news from Reuters, seven days a week. We'll be back tomorrow with our daily

Starting point is 00:10:29 headline show.

Reuters World News - Comey indictment, West Bank, tariffs and Sarkozy

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