Reuters World News - Haley’s hawkish strategy, Mexico’s future woman in charge, fact checking Burning Man

Episode Date: September 9, 2023

Nikki Haley wants to stand out in the crowded Republican field – will her hawkish foreign policy help her? Mexico looks set for a female president as two women lead in the polls. And we look at fact checking some of the wilder claims from this year’s muddy Burning Man festival. Plus floods in Hong Kong and Danny Masterson jailed.   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, Nikki Haley's hawkish strategy, Mexico's future woman in charge. The Rugby World Cup kicks off in France and debunking the Ebola myth at Burning Man. It's Friday, September 8th. This is Reuters World News, with everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes every weekday. I'm Kim Vinal in London. First, the headlines making news around the world. Hong Kong has been swamped by the heaviest rainfall since records began 140 years ago. At least one person has been killed and scores injured as floods inundated the financial hub.

Dozens have been killed in Mali after Islamist militants attacked a military camp and a riverboat in the northeast of the country. Around 50 militants were killed in the clash of the camp. Even if they don't put me and Donald Trump, in prison. They want to bankrupt us. Former President Donald Trump's trade advisor, Peter Navarro, after being found guilty of contempt of Congress. A jury convicted Navarro after he refused to testify or turn over documents to a House panel investigating the January 6th Capitol riot. He plans to appeal. That 70s show actor Danny Masterson has been sentenced to 30 years to life in prison for raping two women.

The case drew attention in part because Masterson met the woman through the Church of Scientology, and they said the organisation discouraged them from contacting law enforcement. The Church of Scientology have denied that claim. Hundreds of rescuers are racing to reach an American man who fell ill and became trapped some 3,000 feet underground during a cave expedition in Turkey. 40-year-old Mark Dickie was on an international exploration mission, in the Torres Mountains when he began suffering gastrointestinal bleeding. It's time now for markets with Carmel Crimmons. Carmel, what's going on today?

Well, US-China tensions are dominating equity markets. So we've had these reports that China is clamping down on iPhone use by state employees. That's seen $200 billion wiped off Apple's market share in two days. And its suppliers are also suffering. Apple is also facing another challenge from China? That's right. So its Chinese rival Huawei seems to have scored a big win. with its latest smartphone. And that's a big deal for Beijing and the company. It's been produced

using Chinese chips and suggests China is making headway despite US sanctions. In Mexico, the two leading candidates for president are women, which means barring the emergence of a sudden outsider, Mexico will soon have its first female president. It's a transformative moment. So we called up Dave Graham, who's in Mexico City. Dave, tell us about these trailblazing women. So the ruling party candidate, Claudia Scheimbaum is an environmentalist. She's a physicist. She's a close ally of President Andreas Manuel Lopez-Aprador, and she has been regarded by political insiders for quite a long time

as the most likely person to be the candidate for the ruling party. Sochil Galdes is regarded as something of a maverick. She was a businesswoman in tech before she entered the political realm. She's been very effective at grabbing headlines over the years by pulling what might be regarded as political stunts. One of those involved dressing up in a dinosaur costume to express her concern about an electoral law, which she saw as a regression to the bad old days. So what will having a female president mean for Mexico, which is known for having a machismo culture? It'd be hugely symbolic to have a woman president. The laws have been changed to encourage

female representation in the federal Congress. But in other walks of life, there are still pretty stark inequalities with statistics showing that over the past seven or eight years, despite a slight improvement in the last year and a half or so, femicides or gender-related killings of women have pretty much doubled. In the US, Republican Nikki Haley hopes to become the country's first female president. But she's running forth in most polls in a crowded field of primary competitors. One way she stands out is foreign policy. Unlike her Republican counterparts, she's vowed to double down on sending weapons to Ukraine.

She also wants to send special forces to Mexico to wipe out drug cuts. tells and wouldn't rule out sending troops to Taiwan. We need to let China know that there'll be hell to pay if they touch Taiwan. Graham Slattery spoke to Haley about all this in New Hampshire earlier this week. So, Graham, how do Haley's hawkish views fit into the modern Republican Party? Well, it's interesting. Many of her views on foreign policy, particularly those with respect to Ukraine, are no longer the majority view within the party.

A lot of Republicans, more Republicans, and Democrats, in fact, think that the U.S. should be disengaging from Ukraine. And Haley, very much is a different view on that. And she's very vocal about this on the trail. So as we mentioned, you spoke to Haley this week. What did she say when you asked her about all this? So how do you win this race when so many Republicans disagreed? Her point was that when she talks about foreign policy,

it's an issue that a lot of voters aren't totally familiar with. I don't know the details are not personally affected by it. If you go to my town halls, you hear me talk about it. And the reason I talk about it is because I want Americans to have all the facts. So she looks at that as more an opportunity to expound upon her view and educate voters. What's the political calculus here? So we talked to a couple of strategies close to Haley. And their argument from a purely political standpoint is, look, the people who are in favor of supporting Ukraine and feel strongly about that, they're preponderantly.

very strong Trump supporters and they're not likely to be peeled off from Trump. So there's really no point in trying to appeal to those. And if you look at the voters that are open to moving on from Trump, if you look at just that cross-section, then that's a much more pro-Ukraine part of the party. That's their argument. When torrential rain pommeled this year's Burning Man Festival, it caused muddy chaos, but also a deluge of wild and false claims. Nick Hardings is from our fact-check team. Nick, what sort of things have you had to debunk?

We've seen all sorts of claims. Some of them have been quite simple to fact-check. Others have been quite wild and have proved a lot more difficult to check. Some old footage of cars stuck in mud, photos of flooded tents. Some of those that we've seen have been from past events such as Glastonbury Festival in the UK. We even saw one video of Valenciaga's mud show segment at Paris Fashion Week last year, being shared as if it was from this year. But some of the really wild claims that we've seen and some of the more damaging are things such

as there being virus outbreaks, Ebola virus, monkey pox, Marburg virus, some people claiming that there's been a national emergency declared at Burning Man Festival. And there's even been wild, unsubstantiated claims about cannibalism at the festival. Some of these just appear to be fake headlines, perhaps created as a joke.

How do you check this out when it's happening in the middle of a desert? We've had to approach numerous public agencies, for example, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC, the Bureau of Land Management who operate the land, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, and all of them have told us that they've not heard any cases of Ebola. We're heading into a weekend jam-packed with sports. At the US Open, tennis stars are battling. extreme heat, while the National Football League kicked off its season with the Detroit Lions beating the defending Super Bowl champion, Kansas City Chiefs. Over in Europe, the Rugby World Cup

starts today in France. The tournament is taking place against the backdrop of a concussion lawsuit brought by some former players. Our sports correspondent Mitch Phillips is in Marseille and explains what sort of measures are being taken to reduce the injury risk to players. What they're doing is they're trying to cut out or minimize the amount of head-and-head collisions and impacts. They're making it illegal to tackle above the chest, and they're really penalising anyone who comes in head height. If there's any shoulders to heads, they're immediate red cards now. They're really trying to referee those out of the game. How might these changes affect the gameplay that we see this weekend?

Well, in many ways, people say that it's good for the game, because if they're now being forced to tackle below the chest, the ball carrier can offload the ball, keep the move going, and it kind of opens the way for more exciting rugby. The bad outcome is that we're likely to see red cards in major games, just from slight miscalculations. And no one really wants to see big games changed by red cards, but that's very, very likely to happen. That's it for today's episode of Reuters World News. We'll be back with a weekend episode looking at the legacy of the Oslo Peace Accords 30 years on. To make sure you know what's going on in the world, listen in for 10 minutes every weekday.

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