Reuters World News - Tesla's secret team, Africa's Russia demands, Meloni in D.C. -- and mourning Sinead

Episode Date: July 27, 2023

A Reuters report finds Tesla overstated the distance its cars could drive. The Wagner mercenary group and food supplies top the agenda as African leaders meet Vladimir Putin in Moscow. Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Joe Biden try to find common ground at the White House. Plus, a coup in Niger and the the world mourns Sinead O’Connor. 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. A military coup in Niger triggers alarm bells in Washington. African leaders are in Russia for a summit with Vladimir Putin, with the Wagner Mercenary Group and Food Insecurity Front of Mind. Italy's Prime Minister heads to the White House. Can George Maloney and Joe Biden find common ground? And a Reuters report finds Tesla overstated the distance its cars could drive. It's Thursday, July 27th. This is Reuters World News, with everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes. Every weekday. I'm Kim Vennel in London.

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We start with the news making headlines around the world. Military officers in the West African nation of Niger

in an address on national television saying they have ousted the country's President Mohamed Bazoum.

Nigerian is an important an important ally for the West in tackling jihadist insurgencies, and the military coup throws that partnership into doubt. Anthony Blinken called for Bazoum's immediate release. I spoke with President Bazoum earlier this morning and made clear that the United States resolutely supports him as the democratically elected president of Niger.

Israel's Supreme Court says it will review a contentious new law that curbs some of its own powers, pitting it against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyioum. Mr Benjamin Netanyahu's push for an overhaul of the judicial system. The court will hear the case in September. Hunter Biden's proposed deal with prosecutors has hit a snag after the judge in the case said she needed more time to review their agreement. US President Joe Biden's son was set to plead guilty to tax charges and avoid a gun charge.

The news means that the younger Biden's legal woes will continue to dog the president as he campaigns for re-election in 2024. Ireland and the global music industry is reeling following the death of Irish singer-songwriter, Shaney O'Connor. Known for her powerful voice and outspoken views, O'Connor burst onto the global music scene with a mesmerizing version of the Prince song,

Nothing compares to you. Her criticism of the Catholic Church foretold a shift in Ireland's move away from Catholicism, and she changed the image of women in music with her shaved head in singular style. And I think when we judge, when we see something in something, usually that's something that's within ourselves. Shaneda O'Connor was 56. And now for markets with Carmel, Crimmons, Carmel, the Fed did what we expected it to do, raised rates by 25 basis points. Are we done now?

Markets seem to think so. Shares are rising. They've been boosted by Fed chair Jerome Powell saying the Fed, no longer expects a US recession, but he made no promises on the interest rate front. The next meeting is eight weeks away. All eyes, of course, are now turning to the ECB today. They're all but certain to raise interest rates by a quarter percentage point. So the focus is going to be on ECB President Lagarde's outlook and tone for what happens next. President Vladimir Putin hosts African leaders at a summit in St. Petersburg today,

continuing Russia's diplomatic push in the region. African nations have largely remained neutral on the Ukraine war, but cracks in their relationship with Moscow could be starting to show over the conflict's latest developments. Mark Trevelyan is following the diplomacy in action. I think the number one issue for the Africans will be food supplies because the summit is taking place 10 days after Russia pulled out of the Black Sea Grain initiative and the consequence has been that the price of food has arisen,

and the Africans will want to know how Russia is going to help them in that situation. And Moscow has said that it will supply Russian grain to them, including some grain free of charge, but we don't know yet how much grain, how that will be arranged, and how quickly it will get to African countries. Some of these African countries have a large Wagner presence, which helps to prop up the governments in those countries, so that they may have concerns about the fact that Wagner went rogue in Russia

and whether something similar could happen in their countries. What is Russia looking for here? I think it's quite an important moment for Putin. Remember that Putin is quite limited in where he can travel around the world. He rarely leaves Russia and he's subject to an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court. So it's important for him to be able to show, look, I can put on an event and leaders of an entire continent will show up because they want to talk to me and do business with me.

Vladimir Putin isn't the only world leader on hosting duties. Joe Biden will meet Italian Prime Minister, Georgia Maloney, at the White House today. The two leaders are on opposite sides of the political spectrum, as Maloney heads the most right-wing Italian government since Benito Mussolini during World War II. So why would a progressive president roll out the red carpet? I asked our White House correspondent Trevor Hunnicott. So this is a really important opportunity for Joe Biden to get on the same page as a person he might not normally be aligned with politically. But Joe Biden has really made working with European allies a key part of his foreign policy.

And so this is going to make for an interesting relationship. And they may find that despite the fact that they have different views on domestic political issues, that when it comes to foreign policy, they actually have a lot in common. Like what? They are tough on Russia. They have a tough stance against Russia's invasion of Ukraine. They both believe that it's important to maintain economic ties with China while competing with them and not being totally kind of overtaken by China. economically, and they probably will have a number of initiatives that they can do around climate, around migration.

Italy has a lot of issues in terms of migration coming from North Africa. And so those are probably areas where they could forge some kind of agreement. New reporting reveals that Tesla overstated the distance its cars could drive. When customers booked in for a service to fix what they thought were faulty batteries, what they didn't know was that the company had created a special team to try and thwart their complaints. Steve Steklo in London is the investigative reporter on the story. Neither Tesla nor Chief Executive Elon Musk responded to detailed questions from Reuters for this story. Steve, tell us what you found out about Tesla.

I guess in multiple ways, but one of the big findings of our investigation was that about 10 years ago, when they only had two cars for sale at the time, They wrote algorithms that presented to the drivers, what one source told us, was rosy estimates of how far the car could go before it would run out of battery. So what happened when drivers complained? So what we found was that about a year or so ago, Tesla was getting inundated with complaints from Tesla owners. We were saying that they weren't getting the promised range of their vehicles. So they started booking service appointments, which can be quite expensive for Tesla. So what it did was the company created a secret team in Las Vegas, whose sole purpose was to

try to cancel these appointments the Tesla owners had made. And it was known as the diversion team because they were trying to, quote unquote, divert all these appointments. And as time went on, they were canceling hundreds of appointments every week. The employers were rated on how many cancellations they did a day. And when they did a cancellation, at this team, they had a xylophone with metal keys. And someone would strike the xylophone every time that appointment was canceled. Some people would stand on their desks and they would applaud.

So they would celebrate this because they believed they were saving Tesla about $1,000 every time they'd canceled a service appointment. What does outside testing reveal about the actual range? So we found a number of studies that have been done. There was one in April where they tested 21 different brands of electric vehicles. They found on average that these cars fell short of their advertised ranges by 12.5%. But in the case of Tesla's, they averaged 26% below their advertised range. In addition, the company was fined in South Korea,

and Tesla was required by the South Korean regulators to post a notice. on its website, which it did, and Elon Musk's nickname is on it, saying that they had falsely advertised the range of their cars. Since the 2020 model year, the EPA has required Tesla to reduce the range estimates it wanted to advertise for six of its vehicles by an average of 3%. The agency did not identify the gap as a problem, telling Reuters that it expects some variations between the results of various tests conducted by automakers and the agency. That's it for today's episode of Reuters World News. To make sure you know what's going on in the world, listen in every weekday.

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