Reuters World News - Iraq PM on US exit, Trump back on Fox, Ecuador violence and eating disorders at the Olympics

Episode Date: January 10, 2024

The Iraqi prime minister tells Reuters why he is calling for the U.S. military to withdraw. A TV station is stormed by an armed gang as violence escalates in Ecuador. Donald Trump appears live on Fox News for a townhall ahead of the Iowa caucuses – what is his relationship with the network like now? Athletes raise concerns about eating disorders in climbing and call for action ahead of this year’s Olympics. Plus, Lloyd Austin’s health and Bitcoin’s false alarm. 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, gunmen storm a TV station in Ecuador as the country reels from gang violence. We sit down with Iraq's Prime Minister on why he's calling for US troops to withdraw. Fox and Trump rebuild a rocky relationship as primary season kicks off. And athletes demand action on eating disorders ahead of this year's Olympics. It's Wednesday, January 10th. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, every weekday. I'm Kim Vinal in Wanganui, New Zealand.

And I'm Carmel Crimmons in Dublin. A horrified viewer watches as a live TV show in Ecuador is interrupted by masked gunmen. They force people to lie on the floor. Police later freed all those being held and arrested 13 gunmen. Ecuador has been plunged into crisis since the apparent escape of a powerful gang leader

from jail over the weekend. On Monday, President Daniel Noboa declared a 60-day state of emergency. The military has been called in to try and control overrun prisons. On the streets, violence has been reported across the country. The unrest has led Peru's government to declare an emergency along its border with Ecuador. The top Republican candidates will square off in another televised debate tonight, but the frontrunner won't be there.

Instead, Donald Trump will be attending a Fox News town hall. But covering Trump is a challenge. for the network, which settled a nearly $800 million defamation suit over its coverage of false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election made by Trump and his lawyers. That says the network is facing a similar $2.7 billion lawsuit from a voting technology firm. So what's the relationship now between Fox and Trump? Helen Costa is our media correspondent. So for a long time, Trump and Fox had a mutually beneficial relationship. But that relationship began to sour in 2020 when Trump grew unhappy with Fox's coverage of him. He became further enraged when Fox was the first network to project

that Joe Biden had won the swing state of Arizona on election night. And so after the election, Trump started to ramp up his criticism of Fox, and he urged his supporters to watch more right-leaning alternatives such as Newsmax and One American News. And thanks to Trump's support, those networks saw some reading gains after the election. It seemed like Fox was tacking away from Trump. But now he's a frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, and both Fox and other media outlets have no choice but to cover him. But doing so is challenging because of Trump's tendency to repeat falsehood,

especially about the 2020 election. That election was the topic du jour at a Washington appeals court, which questioned Trump's claims that he is, immune from criminal charges for trying to overturn his defeat. Trump looked on as his legal team sought to convince a panel of three judges that former presidents should not be prosecuted for actions they took in office. And so in your view, could a president sell pardons or sell military secrets? The judges, including Judge Florence Pan, were skeptical.

Yes or no question. Could a president who ordered Sealed Team 6 to, assassinate a political rival who was not impeached, would he be subject to criminal prosecution? If he were impeached and convicted first, and so? So your answer is no. The court could take several weeks to rule, and Trump is due to go to trial and march on federal charges of election subversion.

An emergency air raid alert interrupts a news conference by Taiwan's foreign minister, Joseph Wu. It was a false alarm prompted by the launch of a Chinese satellite, causing major embarrassment to the ruling party days ahead of a general election. President Joe Biden only found out the reason for Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's hospitalization minutes before the public was told. He was not informed until this morning that the root cause of that hospitalization was prostate cancer. National Security spokesman John Kirby.

Austin has been in hospital for treatment of prostate cancer since January 1st. The Pentagon didn't tell the White House or Congress he had been hospitalized until the middle of last week, triggering major backlash. A massive winter storm moving across the eastern half of the US has knocked out power to more than 800,000 homes and businesses. Twelve states have been hit ahead of a brutal freeze expected to blanket the region this weekend.

Over on markets, it's been quite the roller coaster ride for cryptocurrencies. Their prices swung sharply on Tuesday after a post appeared on the Securities and Exchange Commission's X account, saying the regulator had approved the first ever US-spot Bitcoin Exchange traded fund. Q, euphoria for crypto enthusiasts. But it turns out the post was a fake. Just over 10 minutes later, the SEC chair, Gary Gensler, posted that the SEC account had been compromised

and an unauthorised tweet had been posted. The SEC is now investigating the hack. Iraq's prime minister surprised many with his call last week for U.S. troops to leave the country. Now, in an exclusive interview with Reuters, he's doubling down. But the timing is bad. The soldiers are there to keep Islamic State at bay and have in recent years largely been successful. But a recent bombing claimed by the militants killed almost 100 people in Iran. And Tehran is also flexing its influence. Timor Azari traveled to Baghdad to interview the Prime Minister, Mohamed Shia al-Sudani.

So Timor, what did Al-Sudani say about the withdrawal? So the Prime Minister said that he prefers a quick, orderly and negotiated exit of the US-led military forces in Iraq. He declined to set a deadline, but said that the quicker the exit, the better, because they have become a target for attacks, but they have also engaged in attacks on Iraqi soil. which has increased tensions in the country. It's important to note that the Prime Minister said the end of the coalition does not mean the end of cooperation

with international partners, including the US. And he said during our interview, quote, the US is not an enemy to us and we are not at war with it. But if these tensions continue, it will definitely impact and create a gap in this relationship. So he's making a plan but not setting any dates. what's going on here? So a lot of this is about Iran-backed groups in Iraq.

There are many of these factions, some more moderate, some more hardline than others. And in the past months, they've been launching attacks at U.S. forces on a near daily basis. The U.S. have been responding to those attacks. And this has really raised the specter of Iraq becoming a theater for regional conflict. Sudani wants to avoid that. And he sees that the best way to do that is to get rid of the target, i.e. get rid of the U.S. forces who are being shot at all the time. If you get rid of those forces, you remove an excuse for any faction, Iran backed or other, to attack them, and by doing that, you reduce the potential

for involvement in regional conflicts. Is that playing into Iran's hands? Definitely. I mean, it's been a longstanding interest of the Iranians to see U.S. forces have a reduced presence in the region, in Iraq, but also in Syria. And so this is music to their ears. Kai Leitner, an elite climber, taking part in a recent indoor event. A previous youth world champion, he was a teenager when his liver was close to failure and he fractured his spine in two places. It was then he realised the restrictions he'd put on eating to pursue success had spun dangerously out of control.

He's among a group of climbers who want to stop unhealthy athletes competing, including at this year's Olympics. Rachel Savage is an avid climber and has spoken to Kai and others in the sport to understand what the issues are. Kai Leitner is 24 years old now. He is extraordinarily impressive, accomplished climber. He's also tall for an elite competitive climber at 6'2 inches. And he told us that when he was a teenager,

he was told by coaches that he had junk in the trunk. As he grew older and changed his relationship to food and to being an athlete, he decided to speak out about what he saw as. ingrained issues with weight in the sport of climbing. The obsession with thinness in our sport is so pervasive that it doesn't seem out of place. Losing weight in climbing is always seen as a good thing. So climbing is a weight to strength ratio sport. They are fighting gravity.

And so if their strength to weight ratio is higher, then they will be able to get up the wall more easily. and the thing is climbers like Kai Leitner often unfortunately find it easier to lose weight quickly than it is to gain strength. And when they lose weight initially, they find it easier to climb and they find they make performance gains faster. So we spoke to the president of the International Federation of Sport Climing,

Marco Scalaris, and he said they have promised stronger regulations for 2024, but he said that they want the regulations to be able to withstand legal challenges. So their argument is we do care about the health of athletes, but we want to get the regulations right. That's it for today's episode of Reuters World News. We'll be back tomorrow with our daily headline 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 favourite podcast player or download the Reuters app.