Reuters World News - Hilary hits California, Russia fails but moon race goes on and Ukraine dusts off old tanks

Episode Date: August 21, 2023

Tropical storm Hilary has lashed southern California with flash floods, prompting some to flee. Russia’s first lunar mission in 47 years ended in failure. But the new space race is still on, with India set to make an attempt this week. Ukraine welcomes mothballed Leopard 1 tanks due to low supplies of newer equipment. Plus, China’s workers turn to driving for ride-hailing apps – making it more difficult for longstanding drivers to make ends meet. 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, a year's worth of rain is expected to hit mountains and deserts in California as tropical storm Hillary bears down. Russia crashes and fails, but the new space race to reach the moon goes on. China's worsening economic woes have the unemployed turning to ride-hailing apps for jobs. And we visit the German training ground where the mothballs are being dusted off tanks for Ukraine. It's Monday, August 21st. 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.

Tropical Storm Hillary has made its historic arrival in California after barreling through Mexico's Baja California Peninsula with deadly force. The first tropical storm to pelt Los Angeles since 1939 triggered from, flash flooding in the San Gabriel Mountains, east of the city, and coastal areas to the northwest in Ventura County. Mountain and desert areas could get as much rain as they typically see in a year. In Victorville, Juan Pfeiffer and his mother spent Sunday nervously watching floodwaters inch closer to their home. They decided it was better to be safe than sorry and evacuated,

leaving their house in the hands of Hillary. It sucks and see it go. but lives can't be replaced. Material objects can. Now let's take a look at the rest of the headlines making news around the world. Anti-corruption crusader Bernardo Arrivalo has been voted in as president of Guatemala,

preliminary results from Sunday's election show. Voters chose the 64-year-old diplomat in the hope of ending graft and authoritarianism in a country plagued by violence and food insecurity. In Ecuador, meanwhile, the son of a prominent prominent banana businessman came top in the first round of presidential voting over the weekend. Anti-corruption candidate Fernando Villavicencio's name appeared on the ballot after he was assassinated earlier in the month. The candidate who replaced him came in third. Donald Trump says

he will skip the upcoming Republican primary debates. He cited his large lead in opinion polls as evidence he was already known and liked by voters. President Joe Biden and his wife Jill are due in Maui today. He's expected to tell residents in the resort town of Lahaina that they will be in charge of how they rebuild. Jubilation in Madrid, as Spain's women's soccer team beat England 1-0 to become world champions for the first time. But for some, the victory was marred by a kiss. The Spanish Soccer Federation president has come under criticism for kissing player Jenny Hermoso on the lips. The gesture was criticized on social media as symptomatic of the sexism

plaguing Spanish soccer. It's time for markets now, and it seems like for investors, another day brings another disappointment from China, this time in the form of weak stimulus. China chose to trim its one-year benchmark lending rate by 10 basis points and leave the five-year rate unchanged. That surprised analysts who had looked for cuts of 50, 15 basis points in both. Western investors are still hoping that Beijing will buckle and launch massive fiscal stimulus to juice the economy, as it has done in the past.

Job losses have gotten so bad in the world's second largest economy that increasing numbers of people are making a living driving for ride-hailing apps. So many new drivers have signed on in China that many say the incomes are going down. Shanghai driver, Zhang Jiam, says he now works 15 hours a day to earn the same money he was making only a few months ago working a regular shift. Driver Zhugemin says he earns 400 to 600 yuan, that's between $50 and $80 a day,

ferrying passengers from early morning to late at night. A raft of recent data highlighted how China, economy had slowed further in July, and more than 21% of Chinese youths were unemployed as of June. Russia's first lunar mission in 47 years smashed into the moon in failure. The Lunar 25 space mission had raised hopes of Russia reversing the post-Soviet decline of its once mighty space program. Instead, India will now attempt to be the first to land. at the Lunar South Pole, with its Chandrayan three spacecraft expected to arrive on Wednesday. China and the United States also both have advanced lunar ambitions.

Joey Roulette is covering the new space race. Joey, why are so many countries invested in these moon missions? Space has always been a symbol of a country's technological achievements and advancements and status in the world. and there's really no other way to best demonstrate that than landing something on the moon, putting people on the moon. So the United States, China, Russia, they all are trying to reap the scientific benefits of going to the moon, but they're also, of course, engaged in this new space race where they're competing politically to set up certain technologies there and forge different partnerships with each other on the moon. Are we returning to a Cold War era like space race?

It's a little different. It is a space race, but it's a little different. It is a space race, but it's a little different than it was like in the Cold War where it was very bilateral between the USSR and the United States. Now we have a few more players here in a play. NASA, the United States has its Artemis program, which involves the Europeans, Canadians, Japanese, and then China has its own moon program, which is pretty independent, but they have said that they have accepted Russia as a partner too. So there are, there's a bit of a triangle here. Russia used to be a major partner for the United States, it still is on the International Space Station, where Russia's participation is required for it to survive. But there's been a lot of breakdowns in the U.S.-Russia

cooperation in space. Russia has now pivoted toward China for the moon program. So we do see these blocks forming, all targeting the same regions of the moon. Are we in danger of tensions on Earth spilling over to the moon? Pretty much everyone acknowledges that there's going to have to be some regime of cooperation and coordination, whether China and Russia join what the U.S. has called the Artemis Accords, which is like a body of standards for behaving on the moon, that's uncertain. A lot of people will say it's unlikely. So it's really unclear how all these nations will coexist on the South Pole of the moon, but it does seem inevitable. Western nations had pledged to send Ukraine several dozen modern Leopard II tanks, but they're in

short supply, so I've been supplemented with refurbished leopard ones dating from the 1980s. Sabina Seibold went to go and see the troops dusting off the old kit in Germany's cleats. Cleats training ground, it's some 100 kilometers from Berlin, but it does actually feel like it's at the end of the world and then just around the corner maybe. And in the distance you can see wooden targets that are there for the tanks to shoot at them. to fire at them. You have to imagine some of these tanks had been mothballed for like 20 years before they were taken out for this war now.

It's one thing for the industry to actually refurbish these tanks because I mean they're huge hunks of steel. So you can do that and what they did, they actually brought these tanks to a level, to a version that equals the version that was delivered in the 80s. But there was another challenge because they also had to find the trainers. So what they did was they went back to reservoirists and did ask them for their knowledge and basically sort of relearned their own skills in operating these old tanks. The trainers told us it's actually not as bad as you might expect from the age of the tanks.

What they told us is the modern leopard two tanks are much, much more advanced. But they also told us that many of the capabilities you will have in the modern leopard two tank are actually already there in the leopard one. And what he also told us is that the Leopard 1, in this version, which is like a 1980s version, is still up to or equal to Russian tanks such as the T-72, which is one of the main tanks they are using in Ukraine at the moment. Convierte your passion in a business with Shopify and bathe records of ventas with the form of pago with a better conversion of the world. Has you been? The mejor conversion of the world.

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