Reuters World News - Hamas killing, Japan runway crash, Biden unplugged and clandestine cats

Episode Date: January 3, 2024

The killing of a senior Hamas leader in an Israeli drone strike in Beirut has raised the potential risk of the war in Gaza spreading. Japan begins twin probes into a rare runway collision in Tokyo. Harvard’s president resigns. Plus, how Joe Biden’s candor could impact his campaign and the Singapore residents who have been keeping a feline secret.  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 killing of Hamas's deputy leader in Beirut raises fears of a wider war. Investigators look into how two planes collided in Tokyo, why some donors want more of Joe Biden's off-the-cuff freewheeling, and Singapore's clandestine cats could soon be coming out of hiding. It's Wednesday, January 3rd. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes. Every weekday. I'm Carmel Crimmons in Dublin.

The deputy head of Hamas has been killed in an Israeli drone strike in Lebanon's capital, Beir. Salei al-Al-Ahriri is the first senior Hamas leader to be assassinated since the group's October 7th attack on Israel. His killing raises the risk of the war in Gaza spreading. Here's United Nations spokesperson, Florentio Soto-Nino. We again appeal to all members of the international community to do everything in their power to prevent an escalation to the situation. Maya Jabali is in Beirut. Maya, how significant a figure was, Ariri? Hariri was very significant.

He was the number two in the organization with a political portfolio for the past couple of years, but he was also a founder of Hamas's armdoing, the Qasan brigades, which are the brigades that carried out the attack on October 7th into Israeli territory. To give a sense of how important the Israelis find him as well, in a deck of playing cards that Israel made to help soldiers identify Hamas leaders, Adhrodi was depicted as the Joker. And he was quite elusive. You didn't see him come out on interviews. It's not like Esmail Haniyah, who's the head of Hamas, who would be out on TV making statements. He was much more difficult to get on camera and very difficult to meet.

And more recently, since October 7th, he was spending a lot of time between Qatar and Lebanon and was involved in talks mediated by Daoha, including on hostage negotiations. What are the potential ramifications of his killing? So this is what everyone wants to know. Will this trigger a wider regional war? Will it put negotiations on hostage releases on hold? The latter seems to be the case at this point, but the jury is still out on the former.

We don't know exactly how Palestinian factions are going to respond at this stage. They've vowed revenge. They've said across the board, Hamas, Islamic jihad, and others, even the Hufi movement in Yemen, that this is not going to just slide. And Lebanon's Hasbullah, it's said that it has its finger on the trigger signaling that it's ready for a response. I think the important part of this killing as well is that it sends a message to a lot of the actors that have been involved in this.

It's not just a significant hit to Hamas and its operations. It's also a pretty significant message to Hasbullah that in an area in the southern suburbs of Beirut, where it holds security control that such a strike can take place there, It sends a significant message to Qatar as well because I really was going back and forth between Lebanon and Qatar. The terrifying moment passengers shout to be led out of a burning plane in Tokyo.

The video was filmed seconds after the plane collided with a Coast Guard aircraft on the ground at Haneda Airport. All 379 people miraculously escaped the Japan Airlines jet. Five of the six Coast Guard crew died. They had been responding to a major earthquake that struck the country's west coast.

Japan Airlines passenger Aruta Uwama escaped the blaze and said he'd been scared to death. John Geddy is in Tokyo. The details of exactly the circumstances that led up to the collision are still not entirely clear. There are still many questions

as to what were these two aircraft doing on the same runway and that's really what investigators are now looking into and trying to unpick. And those investigators, do we know what exactly they'll be homing in on?

One investigation is being run by the Japan Safety Transport Board that is investigating the crash in participation with agencies from France where the Airbus plane, which was what the Japan Airlines plane was flying, was built. Alongside that, there's also an investigation by the Japanese police who, according to media reports, are looking into whether there was possible professional negligence contributing to what happened. This really was a remarkable escape for the passengers and crew, right? It was a miraculous escape in many ways. The plane sort of immediately erupted in flames as this collision happened, and it screeched down the runway. Images from inside the cabin showed it filling with smoke, but in less than 20 minutes,

all the passengers had been evacuated. And some eyewitnesses we spoke to said 10 minutes after that, there was a huge explosion on the plane. So, yeah, I mean, many aviation experts have said this looks like a pretty textbook disembarkation from what could have been a major tragedy. Harvard's president, Claudine Gay, has resigned. Her six-month tenure was marred by allegations of plagiarism and a backlash over her congressional testimony about anti-seminatism on campus. In a letter to the Harvard community, Gay said her decision to step down had been, quote, difficult beyond words. Former President Donald Trump has appealed a decision from Maine's top election official disqualifying him from the state's Republican presidential race.

He's currently barred from the ballot over his role in the January 6th attack on the US Capitol. US spy agencies believe that Hamas and another Palestinian militant group, Islamic Jihad, used Gaza's largest hospital to command forces and hold some hostages. That's according to declassified US intelligence. Israel's targeting of Al-Shefa hospital last November stoked international criticism over the fate of civilians and patients. Hamas had largely evacuated the complex before Israeli troops entered, according to the intelligence. Junior doctors in England have begun a six-day walkout. It's the longest strike in the state-run National Health Services' 75-year

history. The union is seeking a 35% pay increase, which it said is needed to cover the impact of inflation in recent years. To markets now, and it looks like China is in damage-limitation mode over its new gaming rules. It unveiled proposals last month that tried to curb the amount of time and money that gamers spend online, but the announcement backfired. Nearly 80 billion dollars was wiped off the value of two of its largest gaming companies. Now a top official has been removed from China's publicity department, which runs the country's gaming regulator. Sources have told Reuters that his departure is linked to the release of those draft rules, and the gaming regulator has struck a more conciliatory tone on those proposed rules. It has said it will improve them by, quote,

earnestly studying public views. This year's election campaign means dozens of fundraising events for Joe Biden. And that means plenty of opportunity for off-script remarks from the president. Trevor Honeycutt is our White House correspondent. Trevor, Biden has a reputation for freewheeling comments, but as president, he tends to be kept in check, right? That's true. He's got an entire organization around him. that's built to kind of keep him on script and on message. And these fundraisers are kind of the only opportunity that a lot of journalists have to hear what he really thinks. We've had some examples of Biden going off script at fundraisers in recent months.

What were some of the ones that stand out to you? So one of the big ones was when he first called Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, a dictator. And that kind of set off a firestorm in terms of, you know, relations with Beijing and trying to get that relationship back on track. And then he also uses these fundraisers as kind of a way to talk a lot about election themes and what he sees as the threats that are posed by former President Donald Trump. You know, and in one of those candid moments, he told donors that he might not even be in the race if Donald Trump wasn't running.

And so that kind of caught a lot of people off guard because here was a suggestion that Biden may not want to be in this race. Donald Trump is obviously famous for his off-the-cuff remarks. Do these unscripted comments from Biden serve an electoral purpose as he potentially goes head to head with Trump this year? When we talk to donors who support Biden's campaign financially, what they say is they'd love to see more of this Joe unplugged. They really think that one of the reasons that Biden is not getting attention or credit for some of the things he's done as president is because his White House is so scripted and because he's kind of constrained in what he's able to say. say and do. Shamir Osman prides himself on being a law-abiding Singaporean citizen. But he's harboring a fugitive in his apartment, Harley, the cat.

They live in defiance of a decade's old law, banning cats in government-built apartments, where most Singaporeans live. So we knew that rule existed, but that it wasn't actively enforced. Luckily for Harley, Singapore plans to scrap the ban later this year, freeing Shamir from the threat of a $3,000 fine, or his pets potentially. eviction. It's not clear what made the Singapore government change its mind, but the tipping point appears to be an official survey that showed the vast majority of respondents agreed that cats were suitable pets to keep, including in government-built flats. That's it for today's episode of Reuters

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