Reuters World News - Inside a liberated Ukrainian village and Trump’s not guilty plea

Episode Date: June 14, 2023

Reuters exclusively gained access to a newly-liberated village in southeastern Ukraine – the first independent confirmation that Ukraine is advancing in its counteroffensive. But elsewhere in Ukraine, there are fears about water levels needed to cool Europe’s largest nuclear plant. Plus, former President Donald Trump pleads not guilty to federal criminal charges. 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, our journalists are the first to reach the front lines of Ukraine's counteroffensive, finding corpses of Russian soldiers but no residents in a newly liberated village. Former President Donald Trump pleads not guilty to federal charges that he mishandled classified documents. We're at the Miami Courthouse for this historic arraignment. Plus, the Ukrainian nuclear power plant slap bang in the middle of a war zone, now at risk from a potentially dangerous water shortage. It's Wednesday, June 14th. This is Reuters World News with everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes every weekday.

I'm Carmel Crimmons in Dublin. And I'm Christopher Walgesper in Chicago. One of the most outrageous and vicious legal theories ever put forward in an American court of law. A defiant Donald Trump, fresh from pleading not guilty to federal criminal charges in Miami. He's accused of unlawfully keeping national security documents when he left office and lying to officials who tried. to get them back. Are you ready? Are you ready?

Food for everyone. Before he addressed supporters at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, Trump met supporters in a Miami restaurant. Today is the former president's 77th birthday. Inside the court, Trump didn't speak during a 47-minute hearing, where 37 counts were laid out. Our legal correspondent, Jack Queen, was at the courthouse. Jack, after all the drama, what happened to the court? what happens now?

It's unclear what exactly Mr. Trump's defense strategy is going to be at this point. I've spoken to a lot of legal experts who say that the government's indictment is really strong. They appear to have a lot of evidence in these people's opinion. And they suspect that Mr. Trump's strategy might be trying to drag this case out until the 2024 election potentially, in which case he could potentially pardon himself or the DOJ might have to drop the case if he becomes president. because DOJ policy holds that it can't prosecute a sitting president. So that might be his best strategy, and he does have a lot of mechanisms that he could use

to delay the trial, different appeals, and a lot of different motions and so forth. But ultimately, it seems unlikely that he could delay it that long, especially since Jack Smith has made it clear that prosecutors are going to try to get to trial as quickly as possible. Now for the other news making headlines around the world. Dozens of people have drowned and many others are missing after an overloaded boat capsized in the north of Nigeria.

The boat was ferrying people across a river after a wedding ceremony. An 18-year-old Japanese soldiers been arrested after two people were killed in a shooting at a military facility. One person was also injured in the incident at a shooting range in Gifu City. Counterterrorism police in England are helping an investigation into a series of attacks in the city of Nottingham. Three people died in a stabbing while three others were struck by a a stolen van, allegedly driven by the attacker. No link to extremism has been confirmed.

Stephen King has described Cormick McCarthy as maybe the greatest American novelist of my time, after his death at age 89. McCarthy was little known for many decades, but rapturous reviews of his 1992 All the Pretty Horses changed all that. The book was made into a movie, as were 2005's No Country for Old Men, and 2006's Pulitzer Prize winning. the road. Markets are largely treading water waiting to see what comes out of today's Fed meeting. Persistent inflation is keeping investors jittery, except in Japan. There, the NICAid jumped to a fresh 33-year high. Investors are fully confident that the BOJ will keep its ultra-loose monetary policy, despite inflation and wages creeping higher. The BOJ and the European Central Bank both hold policy

meetings on Thursday. The Federal Reserve is expected today to skip a June rate hike, but consumers shouldn't get too comfortable. Most investors expect it to increase borrowing costs again next month. The problem? Inflation. It's still stubbornly high. Howard Schneider, our resident Fed Watcher, is here to explain. Howard, what is the Consumer Price Index or CPI telling us? CPI, listen, they got a good surprise at a headline, the top line rate, which went up on an annual basis, 4%. That's the lowest read since March of 2021. So that's a good number for them. It's coming down fast. But a lot of this was driven by food and energy prices. Those are volatile prices subject to commodity shocks, things like that. The rest of the stuff, including housing, including some sort of revenge spending categories like food away from home, even hotels a little bit, are still going pretty strong. 5.3% annual rate, and it's not coming down very fast. Now, some analysts, inflation analysts, expect this part of services. to crack pretty soon going into the summer.

But people have been saying this for a while. It hasn't happened yet, and the Fed's going to be watching that closely. So what can we expect from the Fed after this week's meeting? I think they're starting to develop some confidence that this is moving in the right direction. I would expect Powell to engineer what they're calling a hawkish pause. Yeah, they're going to stay on hold in June, but the bias is going to be towards going higher

because they don't want to get caught behind. An armored vehicle rolls past in Nez Kuhna, a newly liberated village in southeastern Ukraine. A Reuters team exclusively gained access to the village. They were the first to independently confirm that Ukraine has been advancing in the early phase of a counteroffensive against Russia. In Nez Kuhna, a yellow and blue Ukrainian flag fluttered in the breeze over the ruins of a grocery store. No villagers could be seen. The hamlet was silent, except for Bersong and artillery fire in the distance. Arter, a Ukrainian soldier who didn't give his surname, said they chased the Russians out three days ago.

These are Ukrainian lambs, he says. Further west, on the banks of the Denepro River, Europe's largest nuclear power plant sits at the center of the war zone, and an enormous dam breach. Water from the reservoir at Nova Kakova supplied separate cooling ponds for the reactors and for the spent fuel. The reservoir has lost nearly three quarters of its water since the dam was destroyed. since the dam was destroyed on June 6th. Authorities say the plant's cooling ponds remain stable and high enough. I spoke to our Europe editor, Rachel Armstrong,

about the dangers of this water shortage. It is worth noting that the reactors at the moment, five out of the six ones there are what's called cold shutdowns. They're not nearly as hot as if they were in full operation. But if it can't access water from the reservoir and it can't instantly access alternative water sources, there is still the risk there. They could be a meltdown if they are not kept at the correct temperature.

I think it's important to stress, though, that the risk for now seems relatively slight. What about the spent fuel? So there is this dry spent fuel storage facility at the plant, which is used for fuel that has already been used for producing nuclear power. So if there's not enough water there to keep the spent fuel cool, that can cause a rise in temperature. risking a fire and that's the disaster that we saw at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant in 2011. UN nuclear chief Rafael Grossey is set to visit the plant to check levels, but his trip has been

delayed, right? Grossey has been trying for months to agree on an exclusion zone around the plant to ensure that there is not fighting within a certain distance of the plant. And more than a year into that effort, he's yet to get an agreement on that. So he still has his diplomatic work. cut out here, trying to make sure that there is at least an agreement on the water supply. In the middle of a forest, four miles from Olympia, Washington, sits an old-fashioned phone. It's not connected to a telephone line and looks out of place, but this therapeutic tool has become a literal lifeline for people to speak to lost loved ones.

The forest wind phone was inspired by a Japanese original. Since the installation of Olympia's own wind phone, creator Corey Dembeck estimates there's now 50 across the United States. The moment you pick it up and you feel silly, it just feels so awkward. And then you pick it up and you just, it's like therapy. But like it's also in a weird way, hard to like face the things that like, the people that you're never going to see again. That's it for this edition of Reuters World News.

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