Reuters World News - Musk’s trillion, Meta’s scam ads, Christmas Island and weight loss drugs

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi, I'm Carmel Crimmons in Dublin. It's Friday, November 7th. Today, Tesla shareholders Greenlight Elon Musk's one trillion dollar paycheck. A Reuter's special report finds Meta is making a fortune on fraudulent ads. Google plans an AI center on a tiny Indian Ocean Island, and Trump cuts a deal with two big pharma companies to slash their weight loss drug prices. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know. from the front lines in 10 minutes, seven days a week. The world's richest man is about to get even richer. Tesla shareholders have approved a $1 trillion pay package for Elon Musk. It's the biggest corporate payout in history, and it got over 75% support from investors. A delighted Musk bounded to the stage of the company's annual meeting, accompanied by dancing robots. Tesla's future and valuation hang on Musk's vision.

Starting point is 00:01:06 of morphing the EV-maker into an AI and robotics juggernaut. Robotaxies, it's called the cybercap. It doesn't even have pedals or steering wheel. And shareholder anxiety that Musk would quit if the pay proposal wasn't approved outweighed governance concerns around the deal. Sticking with the corporate world, a Reuters review of previously unreported internal documents

Starting point is 00:01:31 shows that Meta projected it would earn about 10% of its total revenue in 2024 from ads for scams and business. banned goods. That amounted to about $16 billion. Tech correspondent Jeff Horwitz says the documents also show that the company only bans advertisers when it's 95% certain, they're scammers. They actually have fairly good insight into the overall state of play of scam activity on their platform. The company has metrics on everything. This is a data-driven business. They had categorized it down to the level of determining the higher risk and lower risk scams in terms of the

Starting point is 00:02:11 company's legal exposure. And the higher risk bucket was estimated to be as much as $7 billion a year. That's what scammers are spending to recruit people. Presumably, people are losing a lot more than that if the scammers are going to have any payoff. And just the sheer volume, right? I mean, 15 billion exposures to paid scam attempts every day. Just unmet as platforms. It's a lot. The company pointed us toward a SEC disclosure stating that it does think that efforts to address illicit advertising could have an impact on our revenue in the future, and that could be material.

Starting point is 00:02:50 That said, the documents that we've seen from inside the company seem to approach scams as not good, but something that needs to be viewed in the context of meta's revenue and in the context of regulatory pressure. So, you know, the question being, are regulators going to make meta address this and how will cracking down on it affect meta's revenue? Christmas Island is best known for its asylum secret detention center and its annual migration of millions of red crabs. But now, a Reuters exclusive reveals tech giant Google, Google has a plan for a new AI data center on the tiny island. Kirstie Needham and Sydney has more.

Starting point is 00:03:37 So this is still cloaked in secrecy. Google are not giving precise details. This is a tiny island, 1,500 kilometres from the Australian mainland. It's closer to Southeast Asia than it is to mainland in Australia. And it's increasingly been seen by the Defence Force as a valuable location for monitoring Chinese submarine activity in the Indian Ocean. We know that Christmas Island is becoming increasingly important to Australia's defence plans because a tabletop war game was held recently involving Australian, US and Japanese military,

Starting point is 00:04:16 gaming how they would respond to a Chinese attack on Taiwan. As part of that, Christmas Island was identified as an important frontline defence defence position for Australia. In response to Reuters reporting, Google is playing down the size of the Data Hub project on Christmas Island. They're saying this won't be a large artificial intelligence data center and it's part of their work to boost subsea cable infrastructure and boost digital resilience in Australia and the Indo-Pacific area. A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to fully fund food aid for 42 million low-income Americans by Friday, rejecting the government's plan to provide only partial SNAP benefits during the shutdown.

Starting point is 00:05:05 The judge says the administration's partial funding plan failed to comply with his earlier order requiring full or partial benefits no later than Wednesday. The ruling escalates a legal battle that's already seen food banks overwhelmed and millions of Americans scrambling to figure out how to feed their families. The Supreme Court says the Trump administration can require sex designations on U.S. passports to align with sex assigned at birth. The order blocks transgender and non-binary Americans from choosing markers that match their gender identity. The policy reverses decades of practice. Since 1992, the State Department had permitted

Starting point is 00:05:46 passport sex designations to differ from sex assigned at birth with medical documentation. In Medicare and Medicaid will finally cover the cost of these weight loss drugs or millions of patients. suffering from obesity. President Donald Trump announcing a deal with weight loss drug makers, Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk. All of these drugs will be available directly to the consumer at Trumprx.gov. Trump, you know what do you use my name? Trump, it better be good. Trumprx.gov. The plan will slash prices for popular weight loss drugs for Medicare and Medicaid patients, as well as for those paying out of pocket. The two programs offer health insurance for people over 65 and low-income residents, nearly half of all Americans.

Starting point is 00:06:36 Patrick Wingrove covers the pharma industry. Medicare enrollees will get the drugs for a $50 copay, that's guaranteed. And these drugs are already available to cash payers for around $500. They are hoping that will reduce or drop over time to about $245. dollars. Patrick says the deal could add new demand pressure to the companies, which have only just recently recovered from supply shortages. Lily and Levo Naudas have been doing their best to ramp up manufacturing. The shortages of the drugs that were around for much of last year and the year before ended, according to the FDA towards the end of last year, the beginning of this year.

Starting point is 00:07:21 it's unclear whether this deal will lead to the kind of volumes that will put extra constraint on supplies. And of course the companies also come away with some benefits of their own. They've both been given a three-year tariff exemption. And of course they get access to Medicare, Medicaid patients potentially in a way they didn't have before. So theoretically, they could sell more of the drug even though the price has decreased. China's exports suffered an unexpected slump in October. It comes after months of front-loading U.S. shipments to beat President Trump's tariffs and signals a tough fourth quarter ahead for the world's second largest economy,

Starting point is 00:08:09 despite its efforts to diversify trade with non-U.S. markets. The UN Security Council has lifted sanctions on Syria's president, who's set to meet President Trump at the White House. House on Monday. Ahmed al-Shar's visit will be the first by a Syrian head of state in decades. It comes as a Reuters exclusive reports that the US military plans to establish a presence at an air base in Damascus, a sign of Syria's dramatic realignment since the fall of Bashar al-Assad last year. And for today's recommended read, how grassroots leagues have revived China's soccer dream. An amateur soccer league, organized by farmers, students and factory workers,

Starting point is 00:08:56 has unexpectedly drawn millions of fans and inspired big cities to form their own. You can read more by clicking on the link in the pod description. And tomorrow we'll have the latest episode of our long-form On Assignment podcast out, all about Ukraine's changing front lines. You'll be able to listen to that on Saturday wherever you get your podcasts.

Starting point is 00:09:17 For more on any of the stories from today, check out reuters.com or the Reuters app. Don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast player. If you're listening on a smart speaker, just ask for the latest news from Reuters seven days a week. We'll be back tomorrow with our daily headline show.

Reuters World News - Musk’s trillion, Meta’s scam ads, Christmas Island and weight loss drugs

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