Reuters World News - Musk’s $1 million giveaway, Nebraska’s Senate race and Cuba’s outages

Episode Date: October 21, 2024

Pennsylvania's Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, has called on law enforcement to investigate Elon Musk for his promise to give away $1 million each day until Election Day. In Nebraska, the Senate election is being watched closely with Independent candidate Dan Osborn running stronger than expected. Cuba's electrical grid collapses again, the fourth failure in 48 hours. Plus, finance chiefs gather in Washington with the election adding even more uncertainty to the global economic outlook. Sign up for the Reuters Econ World newsletter here. Listen to the Reuters Econ World podcast here. Find our recommended read here. Listen to our weekend episode 'Abortion and reproductive justice on the ballot' here. 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, Elon Musk's $1 million a day giveaway comes under fire as the election race turns into a sprint. An unexpected Senate contest has the potential to shake up the chamber, as the race for the White House hangs over a meeting of global finance chiefs in Washington. And Cuba struggles to restore power after a weekend of electrical grid failures. It's Monday, October 21st. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you. You need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes every weekday. I'm Christopher Waljasper in Chicago.

The pace of the U.S. election campaign is picking up, with a little more than two weeks to go. Donald Trump will visit North Carolina today, with concerns from Republicans that turn out there by traditional conservative voters could be impacted by the damage from Storm Helene. Vice President Kamala Harris is expected in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. alongside former Republican lawmaker Liz Cheney. This is fun. I could do this old day. I wouldn't mind this job.

I like this job. I think I might come back and do it again. And on Sunday, Donald Trump made this campaign stop at a McDonald's in Philadelphia. As he dawned an apron and cooked French fries, the photo op turned into a mini press conference with journalists shouting questions through the drive-through window. Either way will you accept the results of

Yeah, sure, it's a fair election. That's a strange place to do a news job, wasn't that a strange place to do a newsclay? In Pennsylvania, Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro is calling for an investigation into Elon Musk's promise to give away a million dollars each day until election day. Musk is promising to give the money randomly to someone who signs a petition put together by his super PAC.

It allows the PAC, which is backing Donald Trump to get contact details for potential voters in battleground states. Shapiro called the move deeply concerning. Kamala Harris celebrating her 60th birthday with a visit to the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Stonecrest, Georgia. Financial records released on Sunday show she entered the final full month of the campaign, spending more than three times as much as Donald Trump. And if you're interested in not just the candidates, but the,

issues in the race for the White House, then check out our weekend episode. We delve into the fight over reproductive rights and how that could play a role on November 5th. Israel has attacked sites in Beirut, southern Lebanon, and the Baccaw Valley that it says are used by Hezbollah to finance its operations. Al-Qarad al-Hassan is the group which the U.S. has said is used by Hezbollah to manage its finances. It has more than 30 branches across Lebanon, half of which are in densely populated parts of Beirut. At talks to resolve the crisis, U.S. envoy Amos Haxtein will meet with Lebanese officials in Beirut today to discuss conditions for a possible ceasefire.

While Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, is aiming to kickstart wider negotiations following the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar as he visits the region. To Moldova and a too-close-to-call referendum. Half of Moldovans voted yes in Sunday's vote on the country's EU ambitions, according to early results. Hours earlier, partial results had shown 57% of voters were unwilling to commit to joining the EU. The Knife's Edge vote could put the small nation on a path towards joining the single market, despite pressure from Russia. And Brazilian president Luis Inacio Lula de Silva has called off his trip to Russia for the BRICS summit. He's following medical advice to avoid long-haul flights after a head injury at home that caused a minor brain hemorrhage.

Lula will participate in the BRICS meeting via video conference. People on the streets of Havana are banging pots to protest a series of blackouts. Cuba's electrical grid collapsed again on Sunday, plunging the island. into darkness. It was the fourth failure in 48 hours, the blackouts following weeks of rolling outages. Mayeris Soria saying the situation is challenging because without electricity, there's no way to cook or freeze food or do any work. Cuba's national grid crashed on Friday after the island's largest power plant shut down, leaving 10 million people in the dark. And complicating efforts to restore power is Tropical Storm Oscar, which made landfall Sunday

bringing powerful storm surge and rain to eastern Cuba. Now back to the U.S. election, this time to focus on the Senate. 33 seats are up for grabs, and one race in particular in Nebraska is being closely watched, as it could determine which party controls the chamber. Our U.S. political correspondent Bo Erickson tells us why. When people think of a competitive U.S. Senate races in the country, they normally don't think about Nebraska because it's a reliably Republican state. But Dan Osborne is appealing to Nebraska voters this year as an independent because he is kind of combining some of the most popular positions from both Republican Party and the Democratic Party. He supports things like abortion rights, but he is also a vocal gun advocate.

He is also really leaning into his union experience, and he is talking a lot about corporate greed. He is also trying to take kind of the incumbency effect against the current Senator Deb Fisher and say that she's focused more on Washington when he's focused more on Nebraska. Now, why is it that this particular Senate race stands out from others in the country? This is a change from how the chamber's current independent senators think like Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont. He is technically an independent, but he caucuses and kind of groups themselves in with the Democrats. So the Democratic Party can rely on his vote. Dan Osborne is not making a similar pledge to either the Democrats or the Republicans.

And the reason why this is an interesting question and a lot of people are tuning into this race is because, the U.S. Senate is predicted once again to be narrowly divided after this election. So he could be a true swing vote where it's kind of uncertain of how he would vote for some of the big issues that will face the U.S. Senate next year. Don't expect any victory parties. International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristolina Georgieva, speaking ahead of the annual IMF World Bank talks in Washington, D.C., this week. Her warning to global finance leaders comes after the latest forecasts for the global economy point to lackluster medium-term growth, rising trade tensions, and high levels of debt.

Economics editor Dan Burns is here to give us an idea of what to look for over the next few days. As it happens, these talks are literally on the doorstep at the U.S. election, and that's the elephant in the room. We're going to have 10,000 roughly official. and their deputies in Washington. And there's major wars still raging in the Middle East and Europe. The Chinese economy is in a difficult position, and they're trying to reignite it there. But we have this coin toss U.S. presidential election,

and the outcome could determine a lot about policies and whether we see a global trade war in 2025 and what the prospects are for continued multileged. collateral cooperation down the road. What sort of concrete business has to get hashed out this week? There's an end of October deadline for the group of seven, the wealthiest countries, to reach agreement on a $50 billion loan package for Ukraine that's backed by frozen Russian assets. And it's something that has been being worked on for quite a period of time. And there's urgency, again related to the election, because if the lack of agreement spills much later and Trump

were to win, it's not an agreement that he seems to favor. And for today's recommended read, it's been almost three decades since astronomers discovered the first brown dwarf, a body too small to be a star, but too big to be a planet. Now, fast forward 30 years, and there's been a development. Researchers have taken a fresh look, and it turns out it's not. not a single brown dwarf, it's actually two of them orbiting super close together while circling a small star. There's a link to this surprising celestial story in the podcast description. For more on any of the stories from today's show, check out reuters.com or the Reuters app.

To never miss an episode, subscribe on your favorite podcast player.