Reuters World News - NATO's opportunity, a green energy backlash and France's streets

Episode Date: July 3, 2023

As NATO reshapes its strategy in response to Russia’s campaign, access to new member Finland and hopeful applicant Sweden opens ways for allies to watch and contain Moscow. In Texas, a local government effort to build a federally subsidized clean hydrogen hub is sparking opposition from environmental groups worried about the project’s voracious water demand. Plus, Pacific countries worry about a planned water release from Fukushima and the latest in France. 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, tensions in France begin to show signs of easing as a grandmother calls for riots to end. Sweden and Finland's NATO membership offer the alliance new opportunities to contain Moscow. A green energy project with billions faces pushback from residents along the Gulf Coast of Texas, while Pacific countries worry about water release from Fukushima nuclear plant. It's Monday, July 3rd. This is Reuters' world news, with everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes. Every weekday. I'm Kim Vinal in London.

In France, the grandmother of the teenager shot dead by police calls for nationwide rioting triggered by his killing to end. The rioters are using 17-year-old Nahal's death as an excuse to cause havoc, says the grandmother, identified as Nadia by French media. Nahal's death has fuelled anger over police violence and systemic racism in the suburbs that ring major French cities. In the Olnay-Souwa suburb of Paris, mothers marched with signs

echoing Nadia's call for an end to the violence and asking for justice for victims. President Emmanuel Macron postponed a state visit to Germany to deal with the crisis. Many tourists in Paris remain undeterred by the riots. Jacqueline Balmaine from Chicago said it was reminiscent of the U.S. in the wake of the George Floyd killing. So we live in Chicago and there was a lot of that there.

So now watching France go through their own version of it is interesting because, yeah, we've already been through it once. And now let's take a look at the rest of the headlines making news around the world. Israeli air strikes on the West Bank City of J. Janine have killed at least three Palestinians. The strike set off a gun battle with the militants inside the city's largest refugee camp that lasted well into the morning. Until two weeks ago, the Israelis had not used drone strikes since 2006. Ukraine's counter-offensive has seen its forces gain some ground along eastern and southern fronts

in heavy fighting with the Russians. But a deputy defense minister called the situation on the battlefield, quite complicated. Ukraine said it had reclaimed about 14 square miles of territory. Elon Musk's move to temporarily cap Twitter posts could undermine efforts to attract advertisers, say marketing experts. Musk started limiting how many tweets per day users can read to discourage what he called extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation. Our usual markets guru, Carmel Crimmons, is off for the week, so I'll be in the hot seat. But the big question for the day is how will investors greet Tesla's record for deliveries?

Investors will also be keeping an eye out on manufacturing and services data out today for any further signs of a slowdown. And already economists are predicting that the Supreme Court's ruling on student loans could hit the economy. Michael Derby in New York has been reporting the fallout, especially for young Americans. Sometime later this year, they're going to have to start paying back the loans that they were not having to pay back. So in terms of the impact on the overall economy, economists do see, you know, they see there's going to be some range of impact in terms of consumer spending because, you know, if you're having to pay back debt, that's money you don't have to spend on other things. Armoured vehicles on maneuver during a recent NATO exercise in Finland.

Sweden too hopes to join soon, and their membership would offer the alliance new opportunities to monitor and contain Moscow. Orna Calrainen in Helsinki has been reporting there many ways Sweden and Finland could help the West in its battle to contain Russia. So, Ona, geography really matters here, right? NATO would be able to send troops and equipment

from across the Atlantic right up close to the Russian border. That's probably even more important for NATO than the actual military assets. Just the fact that in case of a conflict, NATO could use infrastructure of all the Nordic countries to get close to Russia's nuclear bastion in the Kola Peninsula. That makes a huge difference for NATO, I think. What about the sort of military hardware that Finland and Sweden can offer? Well, Finland has a quite strong military force to offer. It's quite well equipped.

It kept a conscription army throughout all these years, so it kind of never let its guard down. Swedish membership of NATO would really boost the alliance under the sea, right? So the really new asset that Sweden's membership would bring to NATO would be their submarine fleet. They are renewing that fleet, and once that renewal is finished, I think they will have five really capable submarines. in the Baltic Sea, whereas Russia at current only has one. So what Sweden really can offer here to NATO is to monitor the undersea movements in that area. President Biden's clean energy efforts are facing backlash in Corpus Christi, Texas. The city is vying for a billion dollars in federal money to build a low-emission hydrogen production hub.

But as energy and environment reporter Valerie Volkovici discovered, that's not as easy as it sounds. Hydrogen can potentially decarbonize a bunch of different industries, including transportation and large industrial manufacturing facilities. One thing that hasn't been discussed as much is the fact that it does require water and it requires clean waters. So even though Corpus Christi is on the Gulf of Mexico, So its salty water can't be used directly for the hydrogen production process.

So it first needs to be desalinated. And there are concerns among some locals that discharge that is the result of the desalination process could be damaging to their marine life in the Corpus Christi Bay. And this is not just a challenge that Corpus Christi is facing, right? Sure. So in the United States, nine of the roughly three dozen hydrogen hub projects that have been shortlisted by the Department Energy are located in highly water-stressed areas. So in addition to Texas, you've got Southern California,

places like New Mexico or Kansas, areas where they're facing drought. Hydrogen is a big part of the Biden administration's green energy plan. Can it overcome these obstacles? Well, I think like many aspects of the Biden administration's big clean energy push, there are going to be tradeoffs. In this case, this embrace of clean high. hydrogen will force communities to take a hard look at their water supply. Whether it can be done in the United States,

will depend on whether communities will push back against the desalination projects that might be needed and how much they're willing to put their own water supply at risk. Speaking of energy and water, South Korean shoppers are snapping up sea salt, as Japan is due to dump more than one million metric tons of tree. radioactive water into the sea. That water was used to cool damaged reactors at the Fukushima power plant in 2011. Japan says the water is safe. But South Korean fisheries authorities say they'll keep a close eye on salt farms for any rise in radioactivity. Are they justified? Here to explain

is Sakura Murakami. So nuclear power plants around the world do release tritium. laced water regularly. So in terms of the actual release of the water, it's not anything particularly out of the ordinary or new, but I think what's different this time is that the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has experienced a disaster. It has gone through a tropical meltdown. So I think that adds to the concern. Another, I guess, important social factor to take into account is that There's a sense of distrust against the operator of the nuclear power plant TEPCO as well because they've had scandals in the past. That's why the government has commissioned the International Atomic Energy Agency to vouch for how safe the plan will be. I think the bigger risk for Japan and surrounding countries is the reputation risk, basically.

That's the real problem. Are there any risks to not releasing the water in this plan? way. There is 1.3 million tons of water standing in these tanks and they have various levels of radioactivity because some of them have been treated and some of them haven't. And Japan is a very earthquake prone country and the question is what happens if another earthquake hits the area? There could be spillages, they could be damaged as tanks. It's safely stored now, but you don't know when the next earthquake is going to happen. That's it for today's edition of Reuters World News. We'll be back tomorrow with our daily news show. To make sure you know what's

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