Reuters World News - McCarthy’s budget pitch, Kansas City’s doorstep shooting and India’s migrant millions

Episode Date: April 18, 2023

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy takes his debt ceiling plan to Wall Street. But will Republicans rally to his plan? A Black teenager is shot after ringing the wrong doorbell in Kansas City. China bounces back from zero-COVID with consumers in a cost-conscious mood. We take you to Delaware for Day 1 of the Fox News defamation trial and to Mumbai, where India’s migrant millions compete for jobs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy ups the ante in a standoff over the debt ceiling. Without exaggeration, American debt is a ticking time bomb that will detonate unless we take serious, responsible action. China's economy bounces back after zero COVID, but it's not all planes sailing ahead. And we travel to Mumbai, one of the cities bearing the brunt of India's population growth. It's Tuesday, April 18th. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes. I'm Kim Vennel in London. We start off with the newsmaking headlines in the US.

In Kansas City, an 84-year-old white man has been charged with two felonies after shooting a black teenager who rang his doorbell. 16-year-old Ralph Yarl is recovering at home after being shot in the head and the arm by Andrew Lester. Yarl was going to pick up his younger twin brothers and knocked on Lester's door by mistake. In Ohio, meanwhile, a grand jury has voted against indicting eight Akron police officers who fatally shot an unarmed black man last year. The officers pursued 25-year-old Jalen Walker on foot after an attempted traffic stop last June and shot him 46 times, including five times in the back.

Elon Musk has announced a challenge to Google and Microsoft in the war over AI. He's to launch what he's calling Truth GPT. Musk had called for a pause in the development of AI because of the risks he says it poses, but he says truth GPT would be the best path to safety that would be, quote, unlikely to annihilate humans. day in the biggest media trial in decades. Dominion voting systems, $1.6 billion defamation suit against Fox News, kicks off in Delaware. Our very own L. DeCretzer is on site following the case.

I'm standing outside the Leonard L. Williams Justice Center in Wellington, Delaware. High profile hosts at Fox News, as well as the Murdox, are expected to take the stand some time this week. Whether they will settle before that testimony is a big question right now. Before we get to testimony, however, they need to choose the jury. Lawyers for both sides will have a chance to reject jurors, and it'll be interesting to see who Fox rejects versus who Dominion rejects. One of the questions in Vodour was what television used the jurors watch,

and it will be interesting to see who makes it to the jury based on their answers. This is Leila de Kretzer in Wilmington, Delaware. Now a look at the major headlines from around the world. In Sudan, fighting between rival military factions continues, despite a UN plea for it to stop. At least 185 people have been killed since Saturday, and residents in the capital Hathoum are hunkering down under a clamour of airstrikes and artillery fire.

The European Union said its envoy to Sudan was assaulted in his residence. U.S. Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, also confirmed a U.S. diplomatic convoy was fired upon on Monday, although no one was injured. Vladimir Putin has made a rare visit to Russia-controlled Ukraine. The Russian president was shown on state TV, getting out of a military helicopter, and greeting senior military commanders. The Kremlin hasn't said when the visit took place.

Meanwhile, there's been international. criticism of Moscow for jailing the Putin critic Vlarmerkaramurza. He was found guilty on a number of charges, including treason, and sentenced to 25 years in prison on Monday. His wife, Evgenia, condemned the sentence and praised her husband's bravery. They're so afraid of him, and they hate him so much for his consistency, for his courage, that they want to lock him up for a quarter of a century. to the city of New York. This nondescript office building in the heart of bustling Chinatown and lower Manhattan

has a dark secret. That dark secret, according to federal prosecutor, Breon Peace, is to do with China. Officials claim Beijing was operating a secret police station in the building. Two people have been arrested. Staying with China, how's the country doing after all those COVID lockdowns? Investors got their answer today. The economy grew 4.5% in the first three months of the year, beating expectations. Our Shanghai Bureau Chief, Brenda Go, breaks it down for us.

So the numbers are much better than what people were expecting. Consumption was especially strong. I mean, you do see on the streets outside, people are traveling, domestic travel has rebounded to pre-COVID levels, the shopping malls are full. But at the same time, there are still some reasons to be worried and cautious on the year going ahead. Factures are still saying that orders are down. Unemployment figures are still pretty high. And also the property market. It's showing some signs of recovery, but it's not really a very

solid level of footing yet. The real question is whether it will be able to sustain this momentum for the rest of the year. We believe that consumers are spending again, but they're also quite cautious on what they spend, and they're looking for more budget items that are becoming We pick here on what they buy. We have the example of Yum China that owns Pizza High. KFC, they're introducing more budget items to that menu because they see customers being more cost-conscious. All right, Brenda, thanks so much.

Speaking of worries about where the economy is going. Let me be clear. Defaulting on our debt is not an option. But neither is a future of higher taxes. After months of deadlocked negotiations, the highest ranking U.S. Republican has unveiled a proposal to avoid a potentially catastrophic default. However, A no strings attach, debt limit increase will not pass. So what are the strings? Washington

correspondent Andy Sullivan joins us now. Hi, Andy. Hey Kim. How you doing? Great. So McCarthy went to the New York Stock Exchange to unveil his plan. Tell us about it. So McCarthy laid out a few conditions that he wants to see in order to raise the debt ceiling. And these are largely not as dramatic as Republicans were suggesting earlier this year when they said they wanted to try to balance the budget within 10 years. So instead, what McCarthy is proposing is restraining the growth of some domestic spending programs. All without touching Social Security and Medicare. Interesting. Okay. But can McCarthy rally his caucus to support this? The Republicans had a really hard time getting.

their act together at the beginning of this year, took 15 separate votes in order for them to agree that McCarthy should be their leader. So there's a lot of concern among people I talked to in Washington that Republicans are not organized enough to agree in a coherent position. The United States could enter into state of default if Republicans can't really line up behind an agreement of their own. But the fact that McCarthy is out here saying in public, like these are our demands, is a sign that they have coalesced enough behind these ideas. that they're confident enough to put them forward. Thanks, Andy. India is set to overtake China as the world's most populous nation this month. Every year, millions of rural migrants head to major centres like Delhi, Kolkata and Bengaluru

in search of a better life. But cities are feeling the strain, as jobs and accommodation are not easy to find. Our reporter Sunil Kataria followed Sujit Kumar on his journey, to Mumbai, the so-called city of dreams. Sujit Kumar is a 21-year-old young man from Barwa village in India's northern Uttapradesh state because there are no job opportunities for him in or around his village, so he wants to go and work in Mumbai. Sujid took a night train to Mumbai from a place close to his village, and he believes that Mumbai is the land of opportunity. Sujit was lucky.

He has a place to stay in Mumbai with his sister and brother-in-law, and he has also found work immediately in his brother-in-law's small factory manufacturing rubber sealants for pressure cookers. I'm afraid the future for other rural youth hoping to make it in the big city is not terribly bright. It's a massive struggle. It's a massive challenge. Mumbai is bursting at the seams because of non-stop influx of workers from all across the country, making it one of the most densely populated places on earth,

forcing a large number of people to live in cramped shanties, travel in overcrowded trains and spend hours in commute, putting a severe strain on its sparse resources. I'm Sunil Kataria, based in New Delhi, India. A blacked out car arriving at a military base in South Korea with a very important new recruit on board. Jay Hope of Grammy-nominated K-pop sensation BTS beginning his mandatory military service.

He's the second member of the group to do so. Before arriving, he messaged fans saying, I'll be back later. We'll be back later too on Reuters World News, I mean, later being tomorrow. Remember, you can follow us on your favorite podcast platform or download the Reuters app.