Reuters World News - Grounded Boeings, Congress spending, US in Iraq and Oppenheimer triumphs

Episode Date: January 8, 2024

Boeing is under pressure after a plug door blew off a plane mid-flight. Congressional leaders have reached agreement on overall spending levels – but Black Americans fear any cuts would disproportionately affect them. Plus, Iraq wants to remove the U.S.-led international military coalition from the country and Oppenheimer wins five Golden Globes. 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, Boeing back in the hot seat after the Alaska Airlines mid-air blowout. The social program's likely to lose out as Congress looks to avoid a shutdown. Iraq looks to get US troops out of the country, despite the threat from azanic state. And Barbie loses out to poor things as Oppenheimer dominates the Golden Gloves. It's Monday, 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 Kim Vinal in Wanganui, New Zealand. And I'm Carmel Crimmons in Dublin. A terrifying call between crew and air traffic control after part of an Alaska Airlines plane blew off mid-flight.

The audio, courtesy of live ATC.net. The plug door tore off following takeoff from Portland, Oregon, depressurizing the plane and forcing pilots to turn back and land safely. The force of losing the part was strong enough to blow open the cockpit door. The missing plug door has since been found in the backyard of a Portland school teacher. The incident has put Jetmaker Boeing under huge pressure. The Federal Aviation Administration has grounded nearly 200 planes of the same 737 Max 9 model. David Shepardson is in Washington, D.C. So this is a big setback, right, for a company that, on the one hand, this plane really struggled.

There were two fatal crashes. The plane was grounded in 2019 for 20 months. through it. Incredibly rigorous review, got safety upgrades. And now is Boeing's best-selling plane, it has thousands of orders and delivered airplanes. And really, Boeing's biggest problem has been keeping up with demand. So the question for this incident is, is this a one-off? Is this a production error that's not systemic? They don't find similar problems when they inspect the other max-9s in the fleet. And if it is systemic, if they do find other problems, then it could be much more damaging to the company.

What are investigators looking at? The discovery of the door plug is important, right? That will provide an awful lot of clues to what happened. And then, right, they're scrutinizing the plane itself and maintenance records, what happened to this plane the days before, as well as, I think, other carriers. Has anybody else experienced any sort of pressurization issue with a new max-9 door? Up on 60 seconds into the flight, everything looking good. A brand new rocket is set off to try for the first US lunar soft landing in half a century.

It's some positive news for Boeing. The rocket was built by a joint venture between it and Lockheed Martin. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken will hold talks in the UAE and Saudi Arabia today, before heading to Israel to try and stop the war in Gaza from spreading. In Qatar on Sunday, he warned the situation is volatile. This is a conflict that could easily catastrophize, causing even more insecurity and even more suffering. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has said he takes full responsibility

for the secrecy surrounding his hospitalization. The 70-year-old was admitted to an intensive care unit on New Year's Day after experiencing severe pain following a still undisclosed elective medical procedure. His hospital stay was kept secret, even from his own deputy, for days. The Pentagon has yet to say when he will be discharged. Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has swept to a fourth straight term in power. Her party won almost 75% of the seats in a general election that was boycotted by the main opposition and drew a low turnout.

Mexican authorities are investigating a massacre in part of a remote desert where rival criminal groups have been fighting for control. Police say they found five burned bodies, while local media say at least 30 people died from a drone attack. Footage showed armed men in military clothing piling bodies, some of them mutilated onto a pickup truck. Oppenheimer has landed five honours of the Golden Globes, but summer blockbuster Barbie surprised with just two wins. Gothic comedy Poor Things won Best Movie Musical or Comedy, which had been widely expected to go to Barbie. In television categories, Succession was named Best Drama and led all series with four wins, including a leading actor honour for Kieran Culkin.

It's a risk-off mood on markets today with that warning from Blinken about a wider conflict in the Middle East. Asian and European stocks are lower and US stock futures are in the red. Price cuts by top oil exporter Saudi Arabia have helped offset some of the geopolitical tension. Those moves have helped push oil prices down by more than 1%. She just kept getting real sick. And I was like, what is wrong with my baby? Ionee Brennan didn't know what was wrong with her young daughter loyalty. One day she was like out of it.

Eventually, she would eat, she wouldn't drink you. Eventually, she learned her daughter had elevated levels of lead in her blood, which has caused significant developmental delays. When her grandmother, Charla Plains, saw the toll lead paint took on her granddaughter, she was able to get the hazardous substance scrubbed from her home thanks to a federally funded program. But that program is the target of proposed cuts from House Republicans. While House and Senate leaders on Sunday agreed to a spending deal worth almost $1.6 trillion,

the details still have to be hashed out. And such proposed cuts to social services disproportionately affect black Americans. Richard Cowen is in Washington, D.C. The budget fight in Congress that also involves the White House really has to do with a very narrow set of programs, and that is largely social programs. The reason is because for political purposes and practical purposes, members of Congress don't want to go after defense spending at a time of tense relations in the world. And they don't want to go after Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid programs that are

retirement and health care programs. Those are very difficult to cut and take away, especially during an election year. And so what are you left with? you're left with mainly social programs. And because of long history of race relations in the United States, black communities are vulnerable to cuts in these social programs. This is not to say that only black communities and black people who would be hit by some of the budget cuts that Republicans are proposing.

For example, there's a nutrition program called SNAP, which is more widely known as food stamps that helps low-income people buy food, at the supermarket. And for example, that program, the largest group of beneficiaries are white people. And so they too would suffer under the budget knife if some of these programs' cuts were to be enacted. There are two and a half thousand U.S. troops in Iraq. Now, the Iraqi government has started the process to get them out. The soldiers are there as part of a U.S.-led international military coalition, trying to prevent the resurgence of Islamic State. But with the current regional instability,

Iran is seeing an opportunity. Philip Stewart is in Washington, D.C. Philip, what does it all mean? Iran and the group sitbacks, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Gaza, militia in Iraq and Syria, the Houthis in Yemen, are looking at this moment in history with a war raging in Gaza and anti-American sentiment rising and seeing a real historic opportunity to have accomplished a goal of evicting the United States from the region. And the battleground for that has long been in Iraq.

Why is it happening now? What we're really seeing now is a stark example of kind of the spillover from the Israel-Hamas war, where you have pro-Iran militia in Iraq who supported Prime Minister Sudanis bid for office a year ago and who are aligned with Hamas and blame the United States for Israel's actions in Gaza. And they've been carrying out wave after wave of attacks in Iraq against U.S. troops over the past couple of months. and the U.S. retaliated with a strike in Baghdad last week against a militia leader, and that created a big backlash, and here we are. Islamic State has just claimed responsibility for a bombing which killed almost 100 people in Iran.

What might this mean for the group? I think depends on who you ask. Iran, Syria, and increasingly vocal critics in Iraq see independent U.S. military operations on their soil as violations of their sovereignty. But in the view of the U.S. military, the mission against Islamic State is essential. The U.S. military still conducts dozens of missions against the group every month. And in Syria, it supports these Kurdish fighters who are securing the prisons for over 10,000 Islamic State fighters in detention facilities there. So there are frequent plots to break those

detained ISIS fighters out. And as we saw last week's bombing, the group still poses a regional threat, even to governments that are hostile to the United States. What's the timeline for the withdrawal? Well, that's unclear, and it's also unclear if the withdrawal will happen. Did the prime minister set this up, set up this committee to absorb some of the political tensions following the U.S. strike in Baghdad last week? Will the committee actually follow through on all this? One other factor to consider is U.S. politics. We're in an election year here in the United States.

And so there is a question about selling this kind of remnant of the global war and terror to voters. So, you know, if the Iraqis push too hard, they may find they're pushing on an open doors. get closer to election day. That's it for today's episode of Reuters World News. We'll be back tomorrow with our daily headline show. To make sure you know what's going on in the world, listen in for 10 minutes every weekday. And don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast player

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