Reuters World News - Prague shooting, Swiss cocaine, European soccer and Mariah Carey

Episode Date: December 22, 2023

The historic Czech capital is left reeling after the country’s worst-ever mass shooting. A court ruling puts a soccer Super League back in contention in Europe. Switzerland’s capital considers trialling sales of cocaine for recreational use. Plus, how Mariah Carey scored a rare modern Christmas hit. 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 Czech Republic mourns the victims of its worst ever mass shooting. A court ruling puts a soccer super league back in the spotlight in Europe. Switzerland considers selling cocaine for recreational use. And the real reason why Mariah Carey's Christmas hit just keeps coming back. It's Friday, December 22nd. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes. every week day. I'm Kim Vennel in Wanganui, New Zealand.

And I'm Carmel Crimmons in Dublin. Went through the crowd, not realizing what actually is really going on because there's probably a lot of people, I was just ready to admit that something like that could happen in Prague. Evil Haverneck, witnessed to a university shooting that killed more than a dozen people in the Czech capital. The shooter, a 24-year-old student, shot dead his father before the kill.

killings at Prague University. Authorities are investigating whether the shooter's own death was a suicide, or if he was killed by police who returned fire. The country is called a day of morning for December 23rd. The United States has said it's ready to support a United Nations Security Council resolution that will call for more aid to enter the Gaza Strip. A vote on the issue has been delayed until today. The move comes as the UN has warned that Gazans are at risk of famine if the war between Israel and Hamas continues. Trucks are bringing aid from Egypt, but the UN says the quantity of food is just 10% of what is needed. In 2021, some of the top football clubs in Europe considered breaking away from the existing

Union of European Football Associations, or UEFA, to create a European Super League. UEFA was not happy about it and threatened sanctions on the clubs. Now, a European court has ruled those threats violated EU law. But does that mean a European Super League is back? on the table. Mitch Phillips is in London. Well, that's the question everybody's asking. Does it mean the return of the Super League or not? The ruling is that the UEFA were wrong in law to punish the clubs were doing it, so there is a window of opportunity for it to happen. They also said that it doesn't guarantee that it

will happen. So it remains up in the air and both sides have come away saying, oh yeah, this is great, we can do the Super League and the other side is saying, no, it's never going to happen. There was some significant fan backlash when this was first proposed. Are these clubs thinking about how it's going to be received by their fans if they go ahead? Yeah, absolutely. The outpouring of fury from the fans in 2021 pretty much scuppered it. And some of the clubs, or most of the clubs, said they were quite shocked by the level of opposition. And within hours of the announcement, some of the biggest clubs in Europe, including Man United, including by Munich,

Roma in Italy have come out and said, we're staying with the Crescestrus, Crow. And then UEFA had the clubs and the major European leagues put out a joint statement, very unusually saying that they're absolutely against it. And they've got this new phrase, earn it on the pitch, because one of the fans that I was aimed at the fact that once these teams were in this league, there was going to be no promotion and relegation. It kind of went against their whole ethos. So, yeah, the fan reaction, the club's got burned last time.

And it would be a very, very brave club to put its head above the parapet and said, Do you know that Super League sounds a good idea? Donald Trump's former lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, has filed for bankruptcy. It comes days after he was ordered to pay $148 million to two former Georgia election workers. He falsely accused of fraud after the 2020 election. In the filing, Giuliani said he had between $1 to $10 million in assets and between $100 and $500 million in liabilities.

Top US and Chinese military officers have held a virtual meeting for the first time in over a year. The video teleconference followed an agreement to resume military-to-military ties cut in 2022 after then House of Representative Speaker Nancy Pelosi went to Taiwan. Ukrainian air defences firing as more than two dozen Russian drones target Kiev in the early morning. Officials have said that two people were injured in the attack, part of a larger drone swarm aimed at parts of central, southern and western Ukraine. Over to markets now, Beijing has put the gaming sector back on the naughty list. It's come out with a raft of new measures designed to curb the amount of time and money players spend online.

Online games are now banned from incentives like giving players rewards if they log in every day. The restrictions took investors by surprise. A previous crackdown on the sector formally ended last year. Shares in Tencent, the world's biggest gaming company, fell as much as 16%. And its rival, NetE's, dropped 25%. Switzerland's capital is examining a pilot scheme to allow the sale of cocaine for recreational use. It's a radical approach to the war on drugs not thought to have been tried elsewhere. Parliament and Bern has supported the idea, which still needs to overcome opposition from the city government,

and will also require a change in national law. John Revel is in Zurich. So, John, why do campaigners think the scheme is a good idea? Switzerland has had quite what they've called an evolutionary drugs policy in recent years. For example, they have consumption rooms for heroin, where people can come and take drugs in safe and clean places. And currently at the moment, there's a trial on for the legal sale of cannabis. Also, Switzerland has a very high use of cocaine, I mean, it's a very wealthy country. Use is increasing and prices are going down.

So now it's about $11.5 for a snort, a line of cocaine. which is obviously very cheap and is not much more expensive than a beer in Switzerland. In Bern, the campaigners are saying that the war and drugs has failed. The people at the bottom of the chain, the users are being criminalised and they're suffering, but the big fish, the suppliers, are not being punished. And do we have any indication of how this would work in practice if it does go ahead? It's very early days at the moment. They talk about possibly something similar to the cannabis scheme where cocaine would be sold

through pharmacies or special centres. Because the whole point is cocaine as a recreational drug. It's not as a medical treatment for people already on cocaine or want to get off it. So that's the kind of rough outline, but the details are so far unclear. We are talking about also pharmaceutical cocaine they would use. Switzerland's got a massive pharmaceutical industry, so I'm sure they could find a company that could make it. I doubt they'll be sourcing the stuff from Colombia, for example, or Latin America.

What have critics said about the possibility? People against it are very worried that cocaine is very different to other drugs. They say how addictive it is, how much more addictive it is than cannabis. And so the consumption could be much more. And also the health problems can be massive. It's linked to heart disease. It's linked to psychological problems. It's also linked to social problems as well.

So they're worried about that. If you've turned on a radio over the past month, you've probably been inundated with Christmas music. But one song stands out, both in popularity but also pervasiveness. All I want for Christmas is you. I still love it. I get festive to it. Mariah Carey's Christmas hit is nearly 30 years old and continues to dominate the charts.

And that got our Reuters graphics team thinking, what is it about All I Want for Christmas is you that makes it a modern Christmas classic? Graphics reporter Sam Hart breaks down why it just works. During our research, we really found out that the song incorporates a lot of musical elements that are common in a lot of older nostalgic Christmas songs that people also go back to every season. But it also incorporates a more upbeat rock and roll sort of vibe that other Christmas songs incorporate if you think maybe more like rocking around the Christmas tree, you know, you have plucky chords, It's a little faster, choir in the background, stuff like that, high production.

So there are a lot of Christmas songs also from that era. And Mariah's song kind of incorporates elements of both of those times in music history. I always listened to Michael Bouble this time of year, which made me wonder, is Mariah the only modern Christmas song making the charts? Two other standouts that I saw are underneath the tree by Kelly Clarkson and Santa Tell Me by Ariana Grande. In more recent years, they're coming back up and kind of slowly approaching maybe the top 20, top 10 again. So what are the decades that have given us the most Christmas hits? So I have some specific numbers for you.

I think you have 142 songs that have charted for more than 10 weeks since 2011. 41 of those are from the 30s and 40s and 44 from the 50s and 60s. And then after that, you kind of have a very light period in the 70s and 80s. A big exception to that rule would be last Christmas by Wham from the 80s, which is still consistently present on the charts. That's it for today's episode of Reuters World News. We'll have a special pod on Saturday looking at the prospects for interest rate cuts in the US and Europe next year.

So tune in if your wallet has taken a bit of a beating this festive season. Happy holidays from everyone on Reuters World News. We're taking a break, but we'll be back with our daily headline show on Wednesday, December 27th. To know what's going on in the world, listening to for 10 minutes every weekday and don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast player or download the reuters app