Reuters World News - Gaza, tariffs, Musk’s exit, Chinese students and Sinners

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

The U.S. proposes a 60-day ceasefire for Gaza with a hostage swap. President Donald Trump’s tariffs are back on, after an appeals court temporarily reinstated them. Elon Musk’s departure from the Trump administration caps a turbulent tenure. The U.S. says it will start revoking visas for Chinese students. And the hit film ‘Sinners’ heads to the cinema-less Mississippi city where it’s set.  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, the US proposes a 60-day ceasefire for Gaza. Elon Musk's time heading up Doge officially comes to an end. The latest in the fight over international student visas. And a special screening of sinners in the Mississippi town where it's set, which has no movie theatre of its own. It's Friday, May 30th. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes every weekday.

I'm Tara Oaksin Liverpool. And I'm Christopher Walgesper in Chicago. First to some breaking news on Gaza. A US plan for the enclave seen by Reuters proposes a 60-day ceasefire. It starts with the release of 28 Israeli hostages alive and dead in week one, along with the release of more than 1,200 Palestinians

and the remains of dead Palestinians. The document says, as soon as Hamas signs off on the deal, aid will be sent into the strip, and that the plan is guaranteed by US President Donald Trump, as well as Qatari and Egyptian mediators. The White House says Israel has agreed to the deal, and Hamas says it's reviewing the plan. Hold onto your hats people some more tariff turbulence to end the week, as a federal appeals court temporarily reinstates them. That decision coming 24 hours after, After a U.S. trade court ruled the president had exceeded his authority in imposing the import taxes and ordered a block.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington says it's pausing the lower court's ruling so it can weigh the government's appeal. After a tumultuous few months, Elon Musk is out of the White House and returning full-time to his many companies. During his stint in Washington, the billionaire upended several federal agencies, but ultimately failed to deliver the monumental savings he had promised. Nandita Bose covers the White House. What's really interesting about his exit is just how quick and unceremonious it still feels. And that is because of what we saw happen over the past week, which is Musk deciding to criticize President Trump's tax.

bill. His signature legislation, so he went on television and called the bill too expensive. He said it undermines the work that Doge has been doing, and it adds to the budget deficit. And that just did not sit well with top eights at the White House. My reporting shows that a lot of them in the chief of staff's office, including Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, they were really pissed that Musk would break the way he did. from the White House and go on the air to publicly criticize President Trump's bill. This departure was really planned at a senior staff level. Musk did not even get a chance to discuss his exit on the final day with President Trump.

How do we think Musk's legacy at Doge will be viewed? Right. So he came in talking about $2 trillion in savings. You know, he was brandishing this red chainsaw. And the last time I checked the Doge website, he has... claimed to have cut about $175 billion, which in the grand scheme of things really trims with a pair of scissors and not really the chainsaw to bureaucracy that he was kind of promising all along. What he ultimately did was append a lot of federal agencies that led to hundreds of thousands of people losing their jobs, but he failed to deliver on the savings that he promised.

And going forward, what will be interesting to watch is how Doja's work continues under these different federal agencies. Harvard University can continue enrolling international students for now. A federal judge says she'll issue an order that would continue to block the Trump administration from immediately revoking the Ivy League school's ability to enroll non-US students. But while there's a momentary reprieve for Harvard, Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the U.S. will start aggressively revoking visas of Chinese students across the country.

Reporter Michael Martina covers U.S.-China relations in Washington. There have been concerns for a number of years within Congress and the U.S. government, that Chinese government exploits the open U.S. education system to conduct espionage or steal technology and intellectual property and use it to advance its military and technological rise. Rubio says this will be an aggressive effort. Do we know how broad this will be? Right now, the State Department is basically refusing to provide details on how this will be implemented,

how broadly it will be implemented. But in Secretary Rubio's announcement, he did mention Communist Party-affiliated students or individual studying in critical fields. What impact might this have on universities in the U.S.? There are hundreds of thousands of Chinese students in America, and we don't know exactly who would be impacted or how many would be impacted. At the tail end of the first Trump administration, they came out with a similar measure that said they revoked more than a thousand student visas. So we don't know if this will be targeted in that scope or if it will go much beyond that. Of course, with so many Chinese students attending U.S. universities, they provide actually a major source of revenue for U.S.

U.S. universities. Oftentimes, these are more affluent students from China that can afford to come over here and pay full tuition. And they often make up large portions of the foreign student body on many campuses. And so, frankly, it could hit universities' bottom line. The homicide case against Diego Maradonna's medical team has been declared a mistrial. After a judge in the case resigned over allegations of an ethical breach, the Argentine soccer star died. in 2020 from heart failure while he was recovering from surgery. Seven members of the medical team were on trial for negligent homicide. And in France, smoking will be banned on beaches, in parks and outside schools from July 1st. The health minister told the West France newspaper

that the measures are to protect children. Café terraces and electronic cigarettes will be exempt. This is where the blues began. This is where it didn't start with a band or anything. It was out in the fields. They were doing hollers, and, you know, and they had the fife and drums. Musician DeKarp is talking about Clarksdale, Mississippi. Home to legends like John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters.

The town's also the fictional setting of the Hollywood summer blockbuster film, Sinners. There are legends of people with the gift of making music so true. It can call it. plunged spirits from the past. The movie stars Michael B. Jordan and is set to become a summer hit, already raking in more than $330 million worldwide.

But for the people of Clarksdale, the movie means something more. There's no movie theater in Clarksdale for people to see it. So local activists petitioned Sinners' director Ryan Coogler and Warner Brothers to bring a public screening to the town. One of our National Affairs editors, Donna Bryson, is in Clarksdale. I'm not just in Clarksdale, but I'm standing on the street right in front of Messengers, which is a juke joint, a bar that's mentioned in the movie. You can still hear live music at Messengers every once in a while,

but it's mostly a pool hall these days. How are people in Clarksdale responding to this film? I talked to a lot of people this week who have already seen the movie many times. You know, it's set in Clarksdale. There are a number of Clarksdale musicians who appear in the movie and who also helped with the music for the movie. But it was filmed in Louisiana, neighboring Louisiana, in part because Louisiana has infrastructure that Mississippi and Clarksdale lack. The movie has been described as suspense, their super natural elements. It's a pretty intense film.

Has there been any pushback from the community in response to the film? What I've heard from people, you know, there's a legend about Clarkdale. It's where Robert Johnson, the blues singer, sold his soul to the devil so that he could become the guitar player he was. So there's a bit of supernatural spirit here anyway. It's intense in that it's about an intense and really painful period in American history. It's set during Jim Crow. And I think the horror of it is a metaphor for the horrors of racism. We have a recommended read and listen combo for you heading into the weekend.

On Saturday, we'll have a special episode of the pod out looking at how a gender war is dividing Gen Z at the ballot box. And while you wait, there's a link to a story on the same topic to read in the pod description. For more on any of the stories from today, check out roiders.com or the Reuters app. Don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast player. We'll be back on Monday with our daily headlines show.