Reuters World News - Meghan and Harry’s NY paparazzi chase and Russian scientists accused of treason

Episode Date: May 18, 2023

Prince Harry accuses photographers of nearly killing him, Meghan and her mother after a car chase in New York. In Russia, three scientists known for working on hypersonic missiles have been arrested in a treason investigation. Israelis are celebrating Jerusalem Day while Hamas looks to build legitimacy. Plus, flooding in Italy, Deutsche pays out over Epstein and Montana bans TikTok.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, Prince Harry and Megan Markle's warning after a high-speed paparazzi chase that's eerily reminiscent of his mother's death. Harry and Megan are extremely polarising figures and if you look at the response, people's attitude to it pretty much falls into those two categories. Nationalist Israelis celebrate Jerusalem Day, while Hamas positions itself for succession. Plus why Russia has arrested three rocket scientists for treason. It's Thursday, May 18th. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes. I'm Kim Vinal in London. But first, here's what we're watching today.

This is northern Italy, where massive floods have killed at least nine people, and thousands more have been evacuated from their homes. The life-threatening conditions means Sunday's Formula One Grand Prix in Imola has been cancelled. Some areas have received half their average annual rainfall in the last three days. Deutsche Bank has agreed to pay $75 million to settle a lawsuit by women who say they were abused by Jeffrey Epstein. That accused the German bank of facilitating Epstein's sex trafficking. He was a Deutsche Bank client from 2013 to 2018. Montana has become the first U.S. state to ban Chinese-owned TikTok.

It means it will be unlawful for app stores to offer TikTok within the state, but individuals will not receive penalties for using it. The ban will take effect on January 1st, but will almost certainly face legal challenges. Four children have been found alive in southern Colombia, more than two weeks after the plane they were traveling in crashed in thick jungle. Three adults, including the pilot, died in the crash, but the 13, 9 and 4-year-olds survived, as well as an 11-month-old baby.

Prince Harry is accusing photographers of nearly killing him, Megan Markle and her mother. They issued a statement describing a high-speed chase through New York City on Tuesday night. They called it a near catastrophic car chase, with police confirming an incident had taken place, and that photographers made their transport challenging. The drama involved taxi driver Sukharen Singh, driving the Duke and Duchess of Sussex for about 10 minutes as they tried to shake off the photographers.

So I was going down 67th Street. I see a guy in a suit, Hail Me. A few minutes later, I see three people hop out of a black car right into my cab, and it was Prince Harry and Megan, and there was another woman with them as well. All of a sudden, paparossis came out of nowhere and started flashing, and Prince Harry and his wife, and the other lady, they were nervous and they looked scared.

We can speak now to our reporter Michael Holden. You broke this story. How did this come about? I got a call from Harry's spokespeople yesterday afternoon, UK time, and then they sent me the statement through, and so we happened to get it before anyone else did. So what does the statement tell us about the couple, I guess, and their experience with the press? Well, this is all part of a long-running back. that they've been fighting with the media. Ever since they got together, they see the media

as a campaign to intrude into their lives, harassing them, write negative stories about them, lie about them. And so this is all forms part of that sort of background. And I think on this, they feel that once again, the paparazzi photographers went too far, put their lives in danger, felt they'd put their lives in danger. How has this been received?

As usual, there's been no official comment at all from any of the royal family. That's not a surprise. They never normally talk about these things in public. This fits into a narrative that a lot of the right-wing press in Britain have, where culture war is a big deal. Basically, they're the sort of face of woke for a lot of them. And the criticism is that they are using this, they're milking this for their own purposes, that they complain about all this stuff. And the reason they do it is to make money out of it. They can draw attention to themselves because they're still playing as they see it on their royal background, even though they've spent the last few months attacking the royals and the rest of Harry's family.

Everyone is making comparisons, obviously, to Princess Diana. You covered the inquest of Princess Diana's death. How are you seeing what's playing out now with Harry and Megan? Well, it's obviously not quite the same. Princess Diana faced unbelievable amounts of press interest everywhere she went, she would be followed by possibly dozens of photographers. I mean, Harry very much sees that being completely responsible for her death. They don't face quite the same sort of interest. There's not the same, that sort of level of paparazzi hounding that was that she faced. But I think from Harry's point of view, that doesn't matter. Any kind of similarity, any kind of treatment of Megan that falls into

that sort of category is just unacceptable. The arrest of three scientists in Russia has sparked accusations of treason. We don't yet know what these literal rocket scientists have been accused of. Here to unpack this mysterious story is Mark Trevelyan. Mark, the accusation of treason is extremely serious. Do we know the specifics of what they're actually accused of? We don't because the details have not been made public, But what the colleagues of these scientists have done is they've gone public in an open letter protesting the innocence of these men.

Their understanding is that the accusations are based on presentations and articles that the three scientists have made in various international forums. These presentations have been used as the basis for accusations that they've betrayed sensitive information. And the scientists are sounding a note of real sort of desperation and alarm saying just, Suing advanced science can lead us into situations where we're accused of grave crimes against the state. The timing of this raises a lot of questions, though, doesn't it? The timing, I think, is slightly coincidentally because for the first time Ukraine said that it was able to shoot down half a dozen of these Kinjal Russian hypersonic missiles, which was at first for Ukraine. However, these arrests predate this latest military developments. So I think it's coincidental that the case has become public just at this moment.

What might this mean for Russia's war in Ukraine? Well, Russia's facing a lot of challenges, isn't it, in this war? Because Ukraine is constantly getting access to more and more sophisticated weaponry from the West. And so Russia's technological edge potentially is being eroded here. And therefore, to arrest and make serious accusations against its leading scientists would appear to be self-defeating. I just don't understand why Russia would try to penalise scientists for advancing Russian weaponry systems.

It just, it feels like something doesn't add up here. I mean, it is confusing, but looking at the bigger picture here, we are seeing a degree of scapegoating. Certain people at this point are becoming casualties of Russia's failures. in the war, that I think one could argue reflect the Kremlin's frustrations and disappointments, that it hasn't been able to make it, on paper, superiority over the Ukrainians in terms of military technology and sheer numbers. It hasn't been able to translate those into victory in Ukraine. Hamas official, Mushir Masri, at a protest on Wednesday, ahead of the head of the

the flag march in Jerusalem. Tens of thousands of Israeli nationalists will march through the old city, including the Muslim quarter on Thursday, in an annual event that has raised fears of renewed violence. In 2021, Islamist group Hamas fired rockets into Israel during the march, triggering an 11-day war. Another round of fighting between Israel and Gaza militants ended only last weekend, but this time Hamas was not driven.

directly involved. James McKenzie as Bureau Chief for Israel and Palestinian territories. He explains what the recent fighting in Gaza tells us about Hamas's ambitions. How is Hamas positioning itself right now? It seems to be building its legitimacy as leader of the Palestinian cause. That's certainly it's objective. A lot of that's focused around Alaksa Mosque in Jerusalem. That's a holy site are both Muslims and also Jews. It has armed fighters in the West Bank, particularly in places like Janine or Nablus.

It has a sort of varied web of charities and companies and financials assets of one kind and another that support its activities. It also receives help from outside from countries like Iran. So it's using that power to sort of build its position. Why is Hamas trying to set itself up for succession in the West? Bank. Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, is 87, but he isn't showing any signs of going anywhere. Well, that's where it's really anyone's guess, because nobody knows what's going to happen

when Abbas goes. There's no clear succession procedure. They could theoretically hold elections. That's not very likely. They haven't held elections for many years. Or there could be a sort of rather chaotic fight for supremacy. That could mean taking part in any kind of political manifest political demonstrations or even fighting. That's it for this edition of Reuters World News. We'll be back tomorrow. To get all our shows in your podcast feed, make sure to follow us on your favourite platform

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