Reuters World News - The spiral of violence in the occupied West Bank

Episode Date: March 1, 2023

Lone wolves and revenge mobs foil hopes for Israeli-Palestinian peace. China’s demographic timebomb. Nigeria’s disputed presidential election. Supreme Court conservatives cast doubt on student loan plan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Spirling violence in the occupied West Bank as a new generation of Palestinians and Jewish settlers out for revenge ignore calls for peace. I would say right now the feeling there is a lot of tension and there is a lot of worry about it getting much, much worse. And we visit northeastern China to look at the demographic time bomb facing the world's second largest economy.

It's Wednesday, March 1st. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes. I'm Kim Vinal in London. First to Africa's largest democracy and the result of the presidential election in Nigeria. Tinibu Bola Ahmed of the APC, having satisfied the requirements of the law, the Sjaba declared the winner and is returned elected. Officials confirming Bolor Tinibu of Nigeria's ruling party as the winner. Tinebu here doing a victory dance shortly before an acceptance speech,

where he dismissed claims about the validity of the result. But those claims aren't going away. Here's Tim Cox, Reuters' chief correspondent for Southern Africa, with reaction on the ground. The Electoral Commission said Tineb got 8.79 million votes ahead of rivals, Atiku Abu Bakr and third place, Peter Obie. But the process were fraught with technical problems, many of them owing to the introduction of new technology that did not function well and seem to overwhelm Nigeria's notoriously bad

communications network. Both the Ticu's and Obis parties have cried foul and rejected the results. Tinibu commended the commission for running a credible election no matter what anyone says. This is Tim Cox in Lagos, Nigeria. Rescue teams working in the wreckage of two trains that crashed in central Greece, killing at least 32 people. Dozens more people were injured when the passenger train collided with a cargo train near the city of Larissa overnight. As daylight broke, the scale of the accident could be seen, with tangled and burned out carriages lying across the tracks and in a field. The regional governor says the trains were traveling at high speed in opposite

directions on the same track. College students rallying outside the Supreme Court, They have a lot riding on what's going on inside. The court is considering two cases that will make or break President Biden's plan to erase $430 billion in student debt. The plans hung up by lawsuits from conservative-leaning states. Reuters John Cruzel was at the Supreme Court and is here to explain. The strong signal that came out of this conservative-dominated court was one of real skepticism, skepticism that,

the administration actually possessed the authority to put this massive student forgiveness program in place based on authority delegated to it by Congress. It's basically saying, like, look, is the executive doing something that Congress is supposed to be doing? But there's also a question about whether the challengers here suffered the kind of legal injury that is necessary to, sustain a lawsuit. And we heard the three liberal justices, and even Justice Amy Coney-Barrant, one of the courts' conservatives, expressing concern that the six conservative-leaning states here may not have the kind of injury that is required under law from the Supreme Court. I'm John Cruzel with Reuters. To a South Korean court now, where a gay couple have won a landmark case.

So-Sung-Wok lost the health and should. he had through his partner, Kim Jong-min, and fought a two-year legal battle to regain the coverage. He calls the ruling a sign that same-sex couples are gaining ground in South Korea. It's a big win in a country where same-sex marriage is not legal. The couple celebrated 10 years together in January. Strong manufacturing data out of China has Asian stocks on a tear, and the exuberance is set to seep into Europe. No such buoyancy, though, for Goldman Sachs.

Shares in the investment bank slid 4% on Tuesday after it tried to convince investors that it had put its consumer banking flop behind it. Our finance editor, Lenan Ewan, was at the Investor Day in New York. Golden Sacks CEO, David Solomon, told investors that the company was considering strategic alternatives for its consumer business, which was called Marcus. Now, the consumer business has lost several billion dollars

over the last few years, and it's really been a drag on a company that's mostly known for being a powerhouse in trading and investment banking. A lot of the questions asked by investors and analysts were about Goldman's plans for the consumer businesses, and the investors talked about the lack of clarity coming out of the meeting and what Goldman was going to do with those businesses and how it was going to drive profits. Israeli protesters take to the streets to call for peace. ferocious violence in the occupied West Bank has smashed hopes a U.S. brokered summit can calm tensions. Reuters Ma'an Lubell explains why the situation has spiraled and the risk it could deteriorate further. Ma'yan, it seems like the agreement in Jordan to calm violence in exchange for a pause in building any more illegal Israeli settlements.

It seems like that was over before it even began. What went wrong? I think what the events showed us is that the security chiefs at this summit aren't necessarily in full control. So you had Palestinian security on one hand not being able to stop gunmen from shooting down Israelis, and you had then Israeli settlers rampaging through Palestinian villages. Israel has already had already made a pledge to the U.S. that they're not going to promote any new settlements, basically not recognize new settlements or promote new plans. That doesn't mean they're going to stop construction on the ground, which is already ongoing. Who are the actual Palestinian groups or factions carrying out this violence?

Is there any overarching authority who can tell them, hey, put an end to this? Short answer to that is no. And that's one of the big problems that Israel has in trying to counter the violence, is that many of the attackers in the wave of violence that has been going on for about a year now, are lone wolves. They don't belong to a militant group, so there's less information, there's less intelligence. How is the US likely to be viewing all of this? Are they going to be putting pressure on Netanyahu? The US is going to want to see Netanyahu stick to the pledge that was given at the Akaba summit. They're not going to want to see approval of new plans next four to six

months as Israel committed to do. They're watching what Netanyahu's government is doing to the Supreme Court, whether those changes are going to go through. They're going to want to see, I think, some kind of reining in of settler violence on Israel's part. So they're watching very closely the next few weeks. Thank you so much, Mayan Lebel. Thanks. China's birth rate has fallen so low, its population could soon start shrinking. The potential repercussions are immense for its economy, but also its political stability. Reuters Eduardo Batista visited the Rust Belt province of Heilongjiang, where the growing ranks of seniors are already struggling to get by.

Every day at 6 a.m., retirees in Harabin, the provincial seat of China's northeastern Heelongyang province, gather in the corner of Stalin Park to lift weights. Many of them tell Reuters on a cold February morning that everyone is between the ages of 60 and 80, A few hundred meters away, at the children's play yarn area, the snow-covered sea-so lay still. This contrast highlights the demographic crisis of China's northeastern Rust Belt, where low birth rates, large pension deficits, and slow economic growth, highlight the risks facing the rest of the country as its population begins what many experts regard as an inevitable decline. They could see the 1.4 billion population being halved by the end of the century.

70-year-old Wang Feng-Cin has lived in a small village on the outskirts of Hegang for the past 50 years. Heung is one of many cities in northeast China that has been hit hard by the departure of the young workforce for the richer coastal provinces to the south. Wang Feng-Cin holds back tears as she recalls years of hunger while working the fields during the 60s and 70s when China was a planned economy. hunger is no longer a problem for her, but she notes how much more expensive it is nowadays to raise a child and get them through school. This is why both her children never considered giving birth to a second child, a trend that has become common in the northeast, as well as other parts of the country. The consequences of this demographic crisis China is facing could cause it to lose its status

as a peer rival to the United States, and some even speculate this could push the country's foreign policy into a more aggressive posture. Increases in worker productivity and technological breakthroughs could help stole this demographic decline, but with the first recorded population decline in over six decades this year, China has entered uncharted waters. I'm Leonardo Baptista reporting for Reuters. That's it for this edition of Reuters World News. We're back on Thursday with more from around the world.

In the meantime, you can find more trusted news at Reuters.com.