Reuters World News - Hollywood deal, Kosovo monastery siege and ethnic Armenians flee Nagorno-Karabakh

Episode Date: September 25, 2023

Hollywood writers reach a preliminary labor agreement with major studios. Thousands of ethnic Armenians flee the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh after Azerbaijan takes control. In Kosovo, Serb gunmen on the run after deadly monastery siege. Plus, why another US shutdown appears imminent. 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, Hollywood writers reach a deal with studios. Exodus from Nagorno-Karabakh as ethnic Armenians flee. A siege in a monastery, Kosovo and Serbia, blame each other. And warnings from the White House as a shutdown deadline looms. It's Monday, September 25th. This is Reuters World News, with everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes. Every weekday.

I'm Kim Vennel. First, the newsmaking headlines around the world. We start in Los Angeles. Where screenwriters and studios have reached a tentative deal, they would end a month-long walkout. But it's not business as usual yet. Even if this new deal is ratified and writing resumes, Hollywood actors remain on strike.

French President Emmanuel Macron has said that France will pull its soldiers out of Niger following a July coup in the West African country. The decision to leave marks a huge blow to French influence and counterinsurgency operations in the Sahel region. Russian drones and missiles have hit the Ukrainian port of Odessa in an overnight attack. It marks the first major assault on Odessa since Ukraine started a new route to ship grain out of the Black Sea.

Mafia boss, Matteo Messina De Naro, described as the last godfather of the Sissimilar, civilian mafia has died. Donato was being treated for cancer at the time of his arrest in January and was moved from prison to hospital last month. He had spent 30 years on the run. The Speaker of Canada's House of Commons has apologized for honoring a man who served in a Nazi unit during World War II.

Speaker Anthony Rota recognized 98-year-old Yaroslav Juncker as a Ukrainian hero, shortly after Ukrainian president, Volodymes Zelensky, addressed the Canadian Parliament. Lawmakers gave Hunker, who was seated in the gallery, two standing ovations. It's time now for markets with Carmel Crimmons. Carmel, what's happening today? Well, that tentative deal between Hollywood riders and the studios has given a bit of a boost to US futures. But otherwise, investors are pretty subdued.

Traders are worried about inflation and the future interest rate outlook after the Fed signaled that rates are not going to come down anytime soon. Now, today, China Evergrand isn't helping matters. It said on Sunday that it was unable to issue new debt because of an investigation into its main domestic subsidiary. So its shares plunged 24% today because if Evergrand can't issue debt, then its debt restructuring plan is stuck. And if it can't restructure its debts, then what does that mean for the company and for the rest of the property sector? Evergrand is the world's most indebted property developer. And if it can't get its house in order, so to speak, investors are worried about contagion risk.

Dozens of ethnic Serb gunmen have fled a monastery after a siege in North Kosovo. They'd barricaded themselves inside the temple after storming a Serb majority village in armored vehicles. Monks and pilgrims hid inside as a shootout raged with police, killing three of the attackers and one police officer. Fatos Patici is on site near the village of Banska. Fatos, what's the latest? Yes, police had this still ongoing operations. So they are, what they're trying to do is they're trying to chase the shooters. They were inside the monastery. Apparently they left last night. But the police is saying that the shooters may have been infiltrated with local populations or they are trying to get out of the area, which is actually quite difficult in this part of the country because they're high mountains and it's quite difficult terrain. How could they get out of this monastery? How did they escape? I mean, based what police said, they were not, the police was not surrounding just the monastery.

Police was surrounding the whole village. So this is a quite also mystery here. How you have, like the prime minister said, there were more than 30 people inside. And suddenly they are not there anymore. Kosovo declared independence in 2008, but it's Serbian population have never accepted that. Serbia's president, Alexander Vuch, says this was a rebellion against Kosovo. What do we know? Well, it's quite difficult because there are different statements. The prime minister and the consular governments, they accused Belgrade of supporting these people who were talking yesterday, the police. Police said they found a lot of weapons and they said there were, it was something more big, but there was a plan for something much bigger and there were enough

weapons for hundreds of people. Why is this happening now? Can you just explain the context for us? I think this is some sort of the culmination of what was happening in the past months or even in the past two years. We saw quite a lot of violence in the first months of this year. In the next weeks and months, probably we will see more tensions. Because in this part of Kosovo where some 50,000 Serbs live, they don't accept Kosovo as an independent country. They see Belgrade as their capital. And because all the Serbs in this part, they left the institutions. So now they don't want to work with Albanians who came from all the regions, like police officers,

to guard this area, to patrol this area. A potential government shutdown is less than a week away. And President Biden is warning congressional Republicans of the consequences if they can't find a way out of the spending stalemate. So now everyone in America could be forced to pay the price. Scott Malone is our U.S. politics editor. Okay, Scott, so how likely is a shutdown this week? It does seem to be quite likely at this point, and there's a couple of reasons for that. Primarily, far-of-line Republican opposition in the House of Representatives to really any deal.

The other thing is that we are running short on time. Monday is a holiday for Congress. They won't be in. They come back on Tuesday. And it does take some time even once a deal is reached to get it into legislative language and pass it through the House and Senate. What needs to happen to avoid it? Right. So what they need to do at this point, given how short time is, is pass what's known as a continuing resolution. That's a short-term bill that keeps government funded for usually another month, another two months. And one of the challenges right now is that House Republicans are actually not working on that. What they're working on is trying to pass all 12 individual appropriations bills. And there's very, very little time to get that done. And what does this mean for Kevin McCarthy in his future?

This is a really big week for McCarthy. The reason that this has gone so long and gotten to this point is that as a condition of his winning the speakership in January, he agreed to a rule change that allows for any single member of Congress to call a vote for his ouster. And members of his caucus party hardliners have made it very clear that any concessions at all, the Democrats will cause them to take this step known as a moment. motion to vacate. And the challenge is that with Republican House and a Democratic majority Senate, nothing can pass into law without Democratic votes or be signed into law without President Joe Biden. To the Southern Caucasus is now, where thousands of ethnic Armenians are fleeing the breakaway

region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The exodus comes after a military offense have brought the region back under Azerbaijan's control. Azerbaijan says it will integrate the region, but the Armenians say they do not want to live as part of Azerbaijan and fear ethnic cleansing. Our breaking news correspondent Felix Light sent us this from near the border. I'm standing here in the main square of Goris in the far south of Armenia, very close to the border with Nagorno-Karabakh.

We've just seen hundreds of refugees unloaded from transports, from their own cars. They're coming here to the city theatre. They're the first to be evacuated, the first civilians to come over the border from Nagorno-Karabakh, their ancestral homeland, that they presumably now will not see again. They do not intend to stay to live under Azerbaijani control. Many of them don't know where they're going. We're seeing people who've come out from nine months of blockade, who are now facing the prospect of building new lives with the very, very few things they've been able to bring out with them. And that is all that they have in the world, just a few hold-alls clutched by families.

family members and that's really it. They're being licked after by the Red Cross in the city theatre and they face a very uncertain future now. Refugees Svetlana Haripetian said that in three wars over the region, they'd always come back. But now the future was uncertain. That's it for today's episode of Reuters World News. We'll be back on Tuesday with our daily news 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 or download the Reuters app.