Reuters World News - Title 42's final hours and the U.S. government rift over China

Episode Date: May 11, 2023

The divisions inside the U.S. government over how to deal with China in the wake of the alleged spy balloon. We join thousands of migrants rushing to the U.S. border as a tough migration policy is set to expire - hear about the people risking life and limb to jump aboard cargo trains as Title 42 ends. Plus, a fight over feeding homeless people in Houston and all the latest news from Gaza and Pakistan. 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, Title 42 ends at midnight. Border crossings are expected to top 10,000 daily before a new law effectively bars most from seeking asylum. Our correspondence are on both sides of the US-Mexico border, as officials grapple with a deluge of asylum seekers. In one of those border states, the debate over homeless spaces plays out at a Houston library. Plus, Google flexes its AI muscle, and George Santos pleads not guilty in a Long Island court. It's Thursday, May 11th. 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.

We start with new Reuters reporting about a rift inside the US government over how to deal with China. After an alleged spy balloon floated over America, many bureaucrats were confident the US would be galvanized to take tough measures against China. Instead, it held off on certain sanctions and actions because it didn't want to further damage relations with Beijing. The delay has alarmed some officials and revealed a divide between China Hawks and doves in the US government. You can read the full report on the Reuters app. As the US debates how tough it wants to go, Beijing has launched its own sweeping crackdown on consultancy and due diligence firms. That is damaging investor confidence in the world's second largest economy.

Asia financial editors, Sumit Chatterjee in Hong Kong, has been monitoring the fallout. What China is currently doing with information security and tightening will make it very tough for some of the foreign companies, many of these consultancies and due diligence firms work for foreign financial firms. So what effectively this means will be that they will not be able to access the information that they were getting which were helping them to make their investment decisions. And that would make some companies with existing operation in China either to pause their plans in the near term.

And the others who were thinking of entering into China will have to think about whether they could get in some kind of a data crack, on in future or whether they would really get the real picture of the market potential without availing services of any of the consultancy and due diligence firms. It's time for our look at markets now. And sticking with China, we've had weak consumer inflation data out of there today. It's reflecting a patchy post-COVID recovery. In fact, investors wanting to trade China's post-COVID economy are getting more bang for

their bucks by buying European companies with a focus on China rather than Chinese companies themselves. And staying in Asia today, finance ministers from the world's sales. wealthiest democracies are meeting in Japan. Janet Yellen is expected to get a lot of questions from her peers about how Washington is going to avoid a US debt default. Japan's going to be paying close attention to that. It's the world's biggest holder of US debt.

Now, the headlines making news around the world. Israeli airstrikes have killed a fourth Palestinian militant commander in Gaza, raising the death toll from the latest fighting to 24. Palestinian militants have launched hundreds of rockets across the board, setting off sirens as far away as Tel Aviv. Israel has hit more than 130 targets in Gaza and the worst outbreak of violence in months. In Pakistan, the government has called in the army to help end deadly protests sparked by the arrest of former Prime Minister Imran Khan. Senior leaders of Khan's party have also been taken into custody and schools and offices in two of Pakistan's four

provinces are closed due to the unrest. We are reimagining all our core products, including search. You will hear more. Alphabet CEO Sunda Pichai, unveiling more artificial intelligence in Google products. At its annual I.O. conference, Pichai said Google is integrating generative AI into its namesake search, Gmail and Google photos. Microsoft's update to Bing has put Google on the defensive. and the race to bring AI to internet search.

Donald Trump's repeated his false claims about the 2020 election in the first televised town hall of the 2024 election. He told the CNN audience that he would pardon many of his supporters who were convicted over the January 6 riots. Trump also mocked E. Jean Carroll's sexual abuse claims and called the moderator, Caitlin Collins, a nasty person. Trump is the front front. runner for the Republican nomination, which means he may well be going head to head once again

with Joe Biden. And speaking of Joe Biden, the president staged the first of his two campaign fundraisers, hosted by wealthy donors. Wall Street billionaire Tony James held a $25,000 a ticket event in New York, while Greek shipping magnate George Logothetus hosted another. We all have questions. Embattled Congressman George Sassiz. Santos addressing reporters after pleading not guilty to charges of fraud, money laundering and theft of public funds. Remember, this is the lawmaker who famously fabricated almost every aspect of his resume. A 13-count federal indictment charges Santos with defrauding prospective political supporters by laundering funds to pay for his personal expenses and illegally receiving unemployment benefits while he was employed.

The reality is, it's a witch hunt because it makes no sense that in four months, four months, five months, I'm indicted. It also accuses him of making false statements to the House of Representatives about his assets, income, and liabilities. Are you planning on running for re-elections? Yes, I am. And why should anybody believe you now? Well, like I said, I will prove myself innocent and then we'll move from there. A freight train rumbles through a town. just north of Mexico City.

When it comes to a stop, hundreds of migrants climb aboard to sit on the top of the train in a dangerous scramble to reach the U.S. border. The rush north has intensified ahead of the end of Title 42, a COVID-era policy that allowed the U.S. to rapidly expel migrants back to Mexico.

Dana Beth Solomon spoke to those risking the journey. We got to Wehwetoka after driving in about an hour. a half from Mexico City. And at midday, it was baking sun. There was no shade. Just a few trees where the migrants had all clustered trying to get some shade and the smell of this huge trash jump. When the train finally comes by to take them up to northern Mexico, they climb aboard the roofs of the train cars and there's these metal grates that they can sit on and put their belongings on top of.

The people I spoke to told me they were rushing to get to the border because they heard that something was going to change on May 11th. And a lot of them weren't entirely clear on what was going to change or what that would mean for them. But they knew that something called Title 42 was going to change and they wanted to get to the border as soon as possible so that they could figure out what was going on and have the best shot at getting across.

to the U.S. On the other side of the border in El Paso, Texas, Venezuelan migrant Jorge Luis Benetiz says he's turning himself in to seek asylum. He says it's not an easy choice and that he has no idea if he'll be expelled, deported or let in. On Wednesday, the U.S. rolled out a new regulation that will deny asylum to most migrants crossing the US-Mexico border illegally, a key part of President Biden's enforcement plan.

But Biden this week acknowledged the challenges ahead. So, but it remains to be seen. It's going to be chaotic for a while. As South and Central Americans hope to find a home in the US, hundreds of thousands of American citizens are unhoused. And in major cities across the country, there's a debate over what public spaces the whole homeless can occupy. That debate is the subject of a federal lawsuit out of Houston, Texas.

Since March, the Houston chapter of the non-profit food not bombs has racked up $40,000 in fines for feeding the homeless in front of the city's central library. Evan Garcia has the story. In March, the city began ticketing volunteers for violating this 2012 city ordinance that essentially prohibits people from feeding groups of more than five people on public or private property without the property owner's consent. So this ordinance was enacted more than 10 years ago by the current Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner's predecessor, but Turner told me he directed police to ticket those feeding the homeless in front of the library due to the area deteriorating in his eyes. Families, parents are now more reluctant to bring their children. We are not going to lose

this asset, the Central Library. One of the volunteers actually filed a federal lawsuit against the city over this food sharing law, challenging the constitutionality of it. So now that case is ongoing. And in the meantime, the group is planning to continue feeding four nights a week in the same location and receiving tickets. I'm Evan Garcia in Houston, Texas. That's it for this edition of Reuters World News. We'll be back tomorrow.

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