Reuters World News - The killing of a Reuters journalist, Tesla’s Scandi revolt and NZ’s Indigenous rights rollback

Episode Date: December 7, 2023

Israeli tank fire killed Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah in Lebanon. Hear about the Reuters investigation into his death. Elon Musk faces growing industrial action in Scandinavia. Protests in New Zealand over the new government’s rollback of Indigenous policies. Plus, Republicans block aid to Ukraine and insults fly as Nikki Haley’s rise makes her a target in the Republican debate. 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 Reuters investigation finds Israeli tank fire killed journalist Isam Abdullah in Lebanon. Republicans block aid to Ukraine. Tesla faces a growing revolt in Scandinavia and uproar in New Zealand over the new government's reversal of indigenous policies. It's Thursday, December 7th. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need. to know from the front lines in 10 minutes every weekday. I'm Kim Vennel in London. Republicans have blocked an emergency spending bill to fund the war in Ukraine. The move comes despite a warning from President Joe Biden that a Russian victory would leave NATO allies vulnerable.

Today's vote's going to be long remembered. And history's going to judge harshly, those who turn their back on freedom's cause. We can't let Putin win. Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy says he will leave the House at the end of the year. It caps a tumultuous nine months that saw the Republican win and then lose the role of Speaker. His departure could hamper the party's hopes of retaining its majority next year. The insults were flying in Alabama last night. Nikki Haley clashed repeatedly with Ron DeSantis in the fourth Republican presidential debate as the Florida governor sought to blunt her momentum.

The two are vying to become the chief alternative to Donald Trump ahead of the party's first nominating contest in Iowa. Israeli troops are fighting Hamas militants in the heart of South Gaza's biggest city. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says they have surrounded the home of Yaya Sinwa in Khan Yunus. He's Hamas's leader in Gaza. It's not known if he's there.

Israel has said it believes many Hamas leaders and fighters are hidden in underground tunnels. Saudi Arabia is asking the United States to show restraint and responding to attacks by Yemen's Houthis. Riyadh is seeking to curb any escalation after the Iran-backed Houthis attacked ships in the Red Sea. Police helicopters hover above the University. University of Nevada in Las Vegas. A shooter opened fire on the main campus on Wednesday, killing three people and wounding a fourth before being shot dead by police. It's time now for markets with Carmel Crimmons and Tesla has a fight on its hands in Scandinavia. That's right. So mechanics working for Tesla in Sweden have been on strike since October. They want the car

company to sign a collective bargaining agreement. Swedish dockers and postal workers have joined in. They're refusing to unload Tesla's destined for Sweden. and deliver license plates. Things escalated this week when unions in Norway and Denmark said that they'd also start blocking shipments of Tesla. And last night, when a Denmark's largest pension fund said it would sell its holdings in Tesla over the union dispute. What has Tesla said about all this? So Tesla has a policy of not agreeing to collective bargaining and says its employees have as good or better terms than those the Swedish Union is demanding. It's been nearly two months since Reuters journalist Isam Abdallah

was killed in Lebanon while filming cross-shelling by Israel. A Reuters investigation published today has found that it was an Israeli army tank that killed Isam and wounded six other reporters on October 13th. The Israeli tank fired two shells in quick succession that hit the journalists.

Reporters Anthony Deutsch and Maya Jabali have gathered evidence from the scene and they spoke to more than 30 government and security officials, military experts, forensic investigators and witnesses to piece together a detailed account of the incident. Maya, your bureau chief for Lebanon and worked closely with Isam. Tell us about that day. At around just before 6 p.m. and we had the live going in the office and we could actually hear the kind of soft thud of the shelling in the background of the live. And all of a sudden we hear a really, really loud crash. And we rushed over to the screen where this was happening. We could see that it had gone to gray.

And we could hear people screaming. In the background, we could hear somebody saying, my legs, my legs. We would hear a lot of cursing. And what had happened, actually, at the scene of the incident was that the position that the journalist had been in had been hit by a strike. And 37 seconds later, it was hit by a second strike. It must have been pretty terrifying to see happen live. Yeah. And I just remember kind of first not being able to process that had just happened.

And then immediately just went into the mode of calling Aisam. He didn't pick up. And then starting to call our two other correspondents who were there. Just to go back a bit, what were they doing there? Aisom Mahadnezzah, and Tha Arsudani, which were our three Reuters correspondents who were in the south, decided to set up a location in the afternoon on Friday of 13th to film cross-border shelling, particularly Israeli shelling on Lebanese territory. from a position that was an overlook above a town, a small Lebanese village called Al-Mashab. They were not alone filming there. They were accompanied by an AFP crew of two people and an Al Jazeera crew of two people, all of whom were wearing press jackets, all of whom were wearing helmets,

and the Reuters car also had TV taped, written on it and tape twice on the hood and on the roof of it. They were clearly identified as journalists, and they were there for about 45 minutes shooting a live broadcast from near the border. After you heard Isam being killed, I mean, you must have been devastated. What did you do next? You know, we had eyewitnesses, and of course, we had an idea. We thought that it had come from the direction of Israel, but we really wanted to have some independent analysis done. We wanted an outside party to examine all the material that we gathered, Maya and her team gathered and others from the scene, such as fragments from the crater, all the video, Assam's camera, flack vests, and we critically got our hands on a tail fin from an ammunition

round, which was found very close to Assam's body, and brought all that to the Hague, where an organization called T&O, which does analysis of munitions and weapons, and the findings that they have reached are that two tank rounds of 120 millimeters were fired at the group of journalists. They came from the same position and that they had been fired from across the Lebanese border. and the only party we know in that area in that conflict that has a tank that fires 120mm rounds is the Israeli Defence Forces. Reuters has presented the IDF with its findings and asked several questions, including whether Israeli troops knew they were firing on journalists. An IDF spokesman says it does not target journalists without providing further comment.

Reuters editor-in-chief Alessandra Goloni called on Israel to explain how this happened and to hold to account those responsible for Isam's death and the wounding of the six reporters. New Zealand's newly elected centre-right government is rolling back policies which support Indigenous Māori, and that's causing an uproar. Lucy Kramer went to a protest against the changes in the capital, Wellington. The protest was organised by Tipati Māori, which is a Indigenous. political party within Parliament. The protest was about the fact

that many of the policies are perceived to be anti-Mauri and to impact Maori more than they do the broader population. One woman I spoke to there was Mariah Rehari. We're very disappointed in this new government.

We feel like they're trying to erase us. She said she'd come to the protests because she was concerned about how the policies were going to impact indigenous people and her Mukapuna or grandchildren and children. We need to keep watch over these people.

This alliance of evil, I call them, that's come into Parliament. But it's not just Maori who are standing up and saying we don't agree with this. You're seeing a lot of other New Zealanders, particularly liberal New Zealanders, saying this is not what we agree to

and this is not what we believe in either. The actual policies being changed include a review of affirmative action policies aimed at improving outcomes for Indigenous people, such as closing the Maori Health Authority. There are plans to make government entities such as ministries use less Maori in the way that they refer to or documents that they process. And then there is also a proposed bill that will go through Parliament that will look at reinterpreting the principles of New Zealand's founding document, the Treaty of Waitangi. The Treaty of Waitangi was signed in 1840 between Māori chiefs and the British.

The government says it's doing this because it wants to improve outcomes for everyone in New Zealand. And while it's not saying that it's going to remove Maori language completely from day-to-day life, it wants it to be an English-first culture. in Altairua that allows us to live with some dignity. Māoris say they won't stop protesting and we're expecting to see bigger protests as we go through the sort of next three-year government term. That's it for today's episode of Reuters World News.

We'll be back tomorrow with our daily headline show. To make sure you know what's going on in the world, listen in for 10 minutes every weekday. And don't forget to subscribe on your favourite podcast player or download the Reuters app.