Reuters World News - Obamas at the DNC, Trump’s policy focus and India cricket rights

Episode Date: August 21, 2024

Former U.S. President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle Obama have urged Americans to back Kamala Harris in her presidential bid against Republican Donald Trump. Meanwhile, Trump says he would open "dozens and dozens more" U.S. power plants, ending what he called the "anti-American energy crusade." In the biggest setback so far to Disney and Reliance's plans to strike a $8.5 billion India merger, the country's antitrust body has reached an initial assessment that the deal harms competition due to their power over cricket rights. Find our recommended read here. Sign up for the Reuters Econ World newsletter here. Listen to the Reuters Econ World podcast here. Find the Recommended Read 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, the Obamas steal the show at the Democratic National Convention, while Trump pivots to policy. And how cricket rights are proving a headache for a massive Indian merger. It's Wednesday, August 21st. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes every weekday. I'm Tara Oaks in Liverpool. And I'm Christopher Waljasper at the DNC in Chicago. Let's kick off in Chicago, where Chris was watching Tuesday's appearance by the Obama's. Thank you, thank you.

Last night's speeches by Michelle and Barack Obama just felt different in tone from Biden's speech on Monday. While President Biden's crowd was admiring and encouraging, Tuesday's energy was more charged, as the Obama's spoke a lot about hope and unity. Michelle's remarks had almost the cadence of a sermon. The crowd was calling back to her throughout the speech. She rarely called Trump by name, but had pointed remarks for the former president. Who's going to tell him that the job he's currently seeking might just be one of those black jobs. Now, during Barack Obama's speech, he did call out Trump, but he really focused the conversation on Harris.

It felt almost as if he was a little. he was expanding on her platform, saying she has a plan for things like reproductive rights and environmental protections. Harris has been criticized for a campaign that so far seems to be light on concrete policies. Now, where Michelle alluded to Trump, Barack dug into the former president more pointedly. There's the childish nicknames, the crazy conspiracy theories this weird obsession with crowd sizes. He challenged Democrats to listen to their neighbors and avoid condemning the other side.

It was a stark contrast to a lot of the name-calling we've heard during this election cycle. And at the end of the speech, Obama talked about returning to an America where people looked out for each other and restored kindness. It was almost as if he was taking Trump's idea of Make America Great Again, but using it to advocate for a more civil, political climate.

While the Democrats rally around Harris in Chicago, Donald Trump has been busy pushing out a counter-programming campaign in battleground states. In Michigan, he attacked Harris' record on crime and safety in a town where white supremacists rallied last month. On Monday, Trump campaigned in Pennsylvania, focusing on energy policy and and electric vehicles. And I'm a big fan of electric cars, but it's going to be a smaller, much smaller market. They don't go far enough, and they're very expensive. David Shepardson was in Pennsylvania covering the event.

So, David, how is Trump adjusting his message to counter Harris's recent momentum? I do think President Trump's effort to talk more about specific policies, whether it's rescinding the Biden power plant rule or revoking the even. tax credit or incentivizing more nuclear production or oil production is about trying to send a more concrete message to voters, especially when it comes to energy prices, certainly a core component of inflation, what Americans have felt over the last few years, higher prices, and about shifting the debate away from sort of the personal attacks and more toward the policy side.

Trump plans to campaign throughout the week, while Harris gets ready to accept the Democratic nomination. And while a compilation of national polls by the political polling analysis site 538, has Kamala Harris ahead of Trump by three percentage points, future forward a super PAC backing Harris says that her path to the White House is not as sure as the data might suggest. White House reporter Jarrett Renshaw has been reporting on what future forward says that path might look like. The best way I think to understand it is they said that Harris has yet to meet Biden's 2020 benchmarks amongst the coalition that he built. So where was Biden with black voters,

Hispanic voters, young voters? So she has sprung back and helped rebuild that coalition, but it's not fully intact yet, meaning it has yet to hit the levels that Joe Biden won with in 2020. So that is their benchmark. They didn't tell us how short she is of those numbers. They just said, listen, it's not as rosy as the public poll suggested it. So where does the Harris campaign need to focus its energy to rebuild that support? What polls have showed and what the Super PAC talked about is that the Sun Belt states are now in play. North Carolina, Arizona, Nevada are now in place for Harrison. So there's multiple paths now. She has to win one of three states. She has to win,

North Carolina, Pennsylvania, or Georgia. Pennsylvania is the one where she's most competitive. But even in that state, they said it's close. Moscow's mayor says Ukraine launched one of the largest ever drone attacks on the Russian capital on Wednesday. Russian air defense units destroyed 11 drones flying towards Moscow. There were no injuries or damage reported in the aftermath of the attacks. At least 28 people have died after a bus carrying Pakistan.

Pilgrims overturned in central Iran. It happened in the province of Yazd and was caused by a technical defect in the bus braking system according to preliminary investigations. Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck are getting a divorce. That's according to TMZ and other media outlets. The Hollywood stars rekindled their romance and married two decades after a high-profile split, but it wasn't to last. Lopez submitted divorce papers two years to the day after,

to the pair held a lavish wedding celebration in Georgia. Taylor Swift has wrapped up the European leg of her ERAs tour with a special gift appearance from Florence Welch. Welch, a British indie rock band Florence in the Machine, joined Swift in London for the first live performance of their song, Florida. ERAs is the first tour to surpass $1 billion in revenue. And whether you're a die-hard Swifty or an Econ nerd, or both, Check out today's episode of Econ World with Carmel Crimmons and a special guest appearance from me.

We'll be talking Swiftonomics and Beatlemania. It'll be available later today wherever you get your podcasts. To India, where the country's antitrust body has warned that an $8.5 billion merger of Reliance and Walt Disney harms competition. And the reason for its concerns? Cricket. Reliance is owned by Asia's richest man, Makeshambani. and agreed earlier this year to merge digital streaming and television assets in India with Disney. But the company's grip over rights to broadcast India's most popular sport are an issue. Aditya Kalra has been working on this exclusive.

Aditya, what's happening here? These two companies would end up controlling experts, say, most of the cricket streaming and television rights, which, from an antitrust perspective, the regulators are not happy about. The regulatory authorities, which is the Competition Commission of India, has sent a kind of a warning notice to the companies now. The companies would now need to explain why they think that this would not harm competition because the regulators disagree. How big a deal is cricket and the IPL for these broadcasters? It's like Indians are crazy about cricket.

And times have changed. There was a time when Indians used to just primarily rely on television. Now it's the age of streaming. Netflix, Hot Star, which is the Disney platform, and the Reliance Geocinema streaming platform. If you take IPL, for example, the rights are roughly $6 billion. Reliance has one set of rights and Disney has the others which would combine. If I give you some context, Disney's Hot Star streaming platform became India's number one platform by users because they started offering cricket matches for free once upon a time.

Reliance's streaming platform has done something very similar recently. So both companies have taken the strategy of free cricket matches to lure consumers to their platform. What happens next with this proposed merger? So a couple of options that could possibly be on the table are that the companies decide we will sell some of the rights. It could be Amazon who's interested. It could be Sony who's interested. The other option would be to give advertising rate commitments, right? The companies could say, we are not going to raise advertising ad rates for the next few years. you please do not trouble us with the cricket rights and let the deal go through.

So we are looking at some sort of delay, but a lot will depend on the solutions that the companies are willing to offer on the table and how the regulator reacts to them. Before we wrap up for today, it's time for our recommended read, all about rotten-tail kids. That dubious title is the social media buzzword in China, where rising unemployment is pushing millions of college graduates into a tough bargain, with some forced to accept low paying work or even subsist on their parents' pensions. There's a link to it in the pod description. If you want to hear more about any of the stories we featured today, check out Reuters.com or the Reuters app. We'll be back tomorrow with our daily headline show. And to never miss an episode,

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