Reuters World News - Death, displacement and diplomacy in Gaza, Ozempic counterfeits and Trump flippers

Episode Date: October 25, 2023

Listen to senior correspondent Nidal al-Mughrabi in Khan Younis where mass displacements have followed mass destruction, despite attempts by diplomats around the world to push Israel to pause its bombing of Gaza to let in aid. Trump and Cohen face to face in New York as Jenna Ellis pleads guilty in Georgia. Plus, suspected counterfeit Ozempic lands several people in hospital and the latest House Speaker nomination.  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, UN agencies beg for aid to be let into Gaza as the death toll mounts. We are appealing, we are pleading, we are on our knees. Trump's former lawyers turn against him in New York and Georgia. Authorities hunt for counterfeit OZemPEC as users grow ill. And Groundhog Day for House lawmakers as yet another Republican bids to be speaker. It's Wednesday, October 25th. 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.

Footage from the Palestinian Red Crescent shows families crowding into their damaged headquarters in Gaza's Khan Yunus. The city was meant to be a refuge after Israel ordered civilians to evacuate the north. but southern Gaza is now also under heavy Israeli bombardment. Thousands of civilians have been killed, and those left behind struggle to care for the living. Seated in a tent she shares with four other families, So Jude Najim said the children in the camp were all sick, and that during her nine days in the tent,

she'd been unable to bathe her children due to a lack of water. Our reporter, Nidal al-Mukrabi, is in Khan Yunis. Nadal, I can hear in the background, I guess, is it your family? What's your situation? Is Khan Yunis where you live? Or what's your situation now? No, I live in Gaza City, where our office is well in Gaza City. But we have moved to Khan Yunus to stay with the friend at his house

because there's been a warning to everyone in Gaza City and the north to leave the site and heads out. So we have taken our families, those of our team who live in Gaza City, and we're all squeezed in one place where we work and where we are sheltered. It's been the bloodiest day yet in Gaza. How are families trying to cope with the sheer numbers of people who need to be buried? That's actually a dial-in. In the past two weeks, we have witnessed in like hundreds of people being buried in mass graves and given numbers.

because like how people and relatives fail to recognize them because of the intensity of the bombing that damaged the bodies and made them unrecognizable. So disparate people have tried some means in order to get the bodies identifiable if in case of death. Like today with the story about the family, the father divided his family into two parts. He sent his mother and four children to Gaza City and he stayed in Han Yunus with three others of his children, and he offered them bracelets made of bread like fabric, you know, thread. So the reason he said, first of all, he said I divided my family in two, so if there is a bombing, we don't all die together.

And in case there is a bombing, and members of the family who die get dismembered or their bodies unidentifiable, other members of the family can identify them from the bracelets on the rest. So it's shocking and it's sad as it sounds. International pressure is mounting to allow more aid into the strip, with both the US and Russia calling for a pause in fighting between Israel and Hamas. At the United Nations, Secretary General Antonio Guterres said the killing of Israelis by Hamas on October 7th did not justify what was happening.

in Gaza. And those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people. His comments sparked a fierce backlash. Israel's UN ambassador called on Guterres to resign. And Foreign Minister Eli Cohen rebuffed requests for a ceasefire while young children and babies are still being held in Gaza. How you can agree to a ceasefire with someone who's vote to kill and destroy your own existence. How? So this is, we are again back to where we started. Republican Representative Troy Nell's expressing frustration at his party's torturous House leadership fight.

Republicans have chosen Mike Johnson as their latest nominee for Speaker, the fourth this month after ousting Kevin McCarthy. The off-duty pilot who tried to shut the engines of an Alaska Airlines flight says he was on mushrooms. He told an officer that he had taken psychedelic mushrooms for the first time and been depressed for the past six months and believed he was having a nervous breakdown. Hurricane Otis has made landfall near the beach resort of Acapulco in Mexico as a category five hurricane.

The storm could bring up to 20 inches of rain and trigger floods and mudslides. Chinese President Xi Jinping has said China is willing to cooperate with the US. He made the remarks in a letter delivered at an annual dinner of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. He also said finding the right way of getting along will be crucial to the world. And Xi's calls for more stable bilateral ties comes as we have some good news from China in the markets. Kamel Krimmins is here to fill us in on what's going on. Yes, investors are happy with Beijing today. The government has stepped up support for the economy by issuing more debt and raising the budget deficit.

So markets are happy about that stimulus. Over in Silicon Valley, we've had some big earnings. So Google, Parent, Alphabet and Microsoft both reporting, and it was definitely a tale of two companies. So Microsoft beat estimates with strong performances at its cloud business and its PC business. Google, on the other hand, disappointed. Its cloud business missed revenue estimates. It was a showdown years in the making.

This is not about Donald Trump versus Michael Cohen. This is about accountability, plain and simple. Trump's former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, testifying in the civil fraud case against him. It's the first time the two men were in the same room in roughly five years. Meanwhile, in Georgia... If I knew then what I know now, I would have declined to represent Donald Trump in these post-election challenges.

Jenna Alice, another former lawyer for Donald Trump, pleaded guilty to helping the then-presidents' efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat. As part of the deal, she's agreed to testify against Trump if called upon. She's the third member of Trump's legal team to reach a deal with Georgia prosecutors in the last week. Jack Queen has been following all of Trump's cases. So Jack, Trump has had a lot of people flipping on him. How dangerous is this for him? With typical criminal defendants, you would think that that really ups the pressure to cut a deal and plead guilty. But Trump is not a typical criminal defendant, and nobody thinks that he is going to take a plea deal in any of these cases that he faces.

He seems totally determined to go to trial and all of them. And so in that sense, it doesn't really change his strategic calculus in terms of whether or not he's going to take a deal as it would with most defendants. Several people were hospitalized in Austria after using suspected fake versions of OZemPEC, the diabetes drug often used as a weight loss treatment. It's the first report of harm to users as online offers of counterfeit OZempic surge. Michelle Gershberg is our global health editor.

Michelle, how are people getting these drugs? Do they even know what they're buying is a fake? There is a tremendous interest in the drugs. It's coming against the drugs. the backdrop of a global obesity epidemic. They need to be prescribed by a doctor and dispensed at a pharmacy. However, there is a universe of online pharmacies and sellers, and a consumer may not know which of these are legit and which of these are not,

and that's part of the confusion. So what a regulate is doing about it? What we've seen recently is in a number of countries, warnings are being given to both pharmacies and pharmacies. consumers to say, be careful, look at the packaging, see if it looks strange, or if it's from an unauthorized vendor. In Europe, they have a digital tracking system for drugs. In Germany, for example, they looked through the stocks and pharmacies and said they don't have evidence that fake drugs are coming through the pharmacies, but they're also warning consumers, beware of where you're buying the drug

from. And finally, let's turn away for a moment from the drama of the global stage to The drama of the Opera House. Opera is a passionate medium, but it's Eta O'Brien's job to make sure those passions are expressed safely. She's the newly installed intimacy director for Barcelona's Opera House, brought on to ensure performers are comfortable

taking part in passionate scenes. So there, they might go stand here, move here, kiss there, rape here, love here. And in that place, lots of intimate content was happening without any consideration. The role's creation comes after the hashtag Me Too movement rocked the movie industry, but also the opera world with sexual harassment accusations.

It's a first for Spain and a rarity for continental Europe. Are you happy for your face to be touched? Where are you happy to be touched down your back? So all of that's checked out. And we're inviting the performer to really tell us your boundaries. And that's a big shift in the industry. That's it for today's episode. We'll be back on Thursday with our daily news show.

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