Reuters World News - Trump indictment, Silicon Valley’s Harris wish-list, West Bank raid and Nvidia

Episode Date: August 28, 2024

Special Counsel Jack Smith announced a revised federal indictment against former president Donald Trump. Silicon Valley supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris’ White House bid want her to prioritize abortion rights. Israel’s military raids the West Bank in a major operation. Plus, as investors await Nvidia’s results, Intel struggles with how to compete. * This podcast has been updated. An earlier version had an August 2023 soundbite from Special Counsel Jack Smith which incorrectly suggested he had said it in August 2024. That soundbite has been removed.     Sign up for the Reuters Econ World newsletter here. Listen to the Reuters Econ World podcast here. Find the Recommended Read here.   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, Donald Trump faces a revised indictment in the election subversion case. Silicon Valley backers want Harris to prioritize abortion rights and pro-tech policies. Israel's military raids the West Bank in a major operation. And Envidia keeps investors on tenterhooks ahead of its results. It's Wednesday, August 28. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, every weekday. I'm Carmel Crimmons in Dublin. Federal prosecutors have issued a revised indictment against Donald Trump,

accusing him of illegally trying to overturn his 2020 election loss. The new charges are in response to a Supreme Court ruling that said presidents enjoy broad immunity from criminal prosecution. But, at a rally in Georgia, the Republican nominee for president dismissed the charges as a joke. It's a horrible thing for this country. I mean, the only good thing, thing about it is it's driven my poll numbers way up. Can you believe that? Donald Trump has always

denied election interference allegations. The revised indictment shows prosecutors narrowing their approach. It no longer includes allegations that Trump sought to pressure the Justice Department in his bid to overturn his election defeat. But James Sample, a professor of law at Hofstra University, says the basis of the charges remain the same. The four key components of the The case against the former president have not changed. It's more a matter of emphasis and evidentiary support. The case is unlikely to proceed to trial ahead of the November 5 election. In the latest Reuters Ipsos polling, Donald Trump's advantage over Vice President Kamala Harris

on the economy and crime has reduced. It shows former President Trump's approach to the economy and employment was preferred by 43% of registered voters compared to 40% for Harris. In late July, the polls showed Trump with an 11-point advantage on the economy. And sticking with polls, more than 200 venture capitalists are weighing in on why they're supporting Kamala Harris's bid for the White House. Jeffrey Daston has been digging into a survey from Silicon Valley to see what they want from whoever wins the election. A lot of these issues appear to be social ones, but the organizers of this survey frame them as actually important to business. So, for instance, at the top of the list for a number of supporters is access to reproduction rights.

And the organizers say women's rights in general are important to further their place at work, to not have their careers be hampered. And other things important to venture capitals are commonly of interest in the democratic platforms, be it climate change policy to maybe spur innovation or immigration reform, are more specifically allowing high-skilled workers to come join the ranks of tech companies. What's former President Donald Trump's relationship with venture capitalists? What was interesting about the origins of this poll is that it actually was a reaction to large or seemingly large tech support for former President Trump, Tesla CEO, Elon Musk,

or the namesake partners of Andresen Horowitz, Mark Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, coming out in favor of Trump as their candidate for innovation and their candidate for the tech agenda. So clearly there is interests in Silicon Valley not only for Harris, but these venture capitalists who took this survey and who signed this pledge to vote for Harris would like people to believe that the greater support, the silent majority, if you will, is supporting Harris. describes the Israeli raid which killed two of his children in the occupied West Bank. Palestinian authorities say at least nine people have been killed in a wide-scale Israeli offensive there. The raids come after Israeli special forces recovered a hostage from a tunnel in southern Gaza,

more than 10 months after he was abducted by Hamas. 52-year-old Quad-Farhan al-Qadi is a member of the Bedouin community in southern Israel, and he had worked as a security guard on a kibbutz near the Gaza border. He's in hospital and has been reunited with his family. Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelenskyy saying the war with Russia will eventually end in dialogue. Addressing a news conference, Zelensky said he would present a plan for ending the conflict to US President Joe Biden, as well as Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has said that talks were out of the question

after Ukraine launched a major cross-border incursion into Russia. Zelensky says that that incursion was part of its plan to end the war. An investigation has been opened by the UN World Food Program into two of its top officials in Sudan. They're accused of fraud and concealing information from donors about its ability to deliver food aid to civilians. The investigation comes as famine takes hold in the war-torn country. And the Paralympic Torch relay is on the last leg of its journey to Paris ahead of tonight's

opening ceremony for the Paralympic Games. are 549 gold medal events lined up before the closing ceremony on September 8th. There's only one show in town today on markets, NVIDIA's earnings. A beat or a miss from the darling of the artificial intelligence industry could either stoke or shatter the AI rally and bring the broader market with it. Nvidia is expected to report a doubling of second quarter sales, but investors have got used to blockbuster results, so they'll be expecting even more.

And speaking of expectation and disappointment, this week's episode of my podcast, Reuters Econ World, is all about that. We look at the plight of China's young graduates, who are locked out of the jobs market in a spluttering economy and are very unhappy about it. You can catch that pod later today on roiders.com, the Reuters app, or wherever you get your podcasts. Coming back to NVIDIA, it's hard to get away from it today, the pressure of having to compete against it is showing over a chipmaker intel. Its leadership has been dealing with differences in opinion over how the company should operate. Recently, a prominent veteran of the semiconductor industry, Lip Butan, resigned from Intel's

board. We spoke with our tech reporter Max Churny at a chip conference to find out what was at the heart of this divide. So we learned that disagreements spanned a number of areas at the company. Tan, for example, according to sources, thinks that Intel's culture has stagnated. Under Andy Grove, there was a sort of famous slogan that the paranoid survive. And what he means by that is that it's always important for companies to be vigilant about watching for new markets or new potential threats to their business. And Tan thinks that, according to sources, that ethos has slipped away from the company.

And then lastly, Intel has at this point failed to produce an AI chip that is competitive with or hasn't been a blockbuster. success in the same way that some of the products that Invidia and now AMD have produced. China's top diplomat Wang Yi, alongside White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in Beijing. We'll delve into a wide range of issues. They're holding talks this week, and on the trip with Sullivan is our White House reporter, Trevor Honeycutt. We caught up with him on the flight to China to find out what Sullivan hopes to accomplish. I think the idea here is to kind of move the ball forward a little bit. make a little bit of progress with China on having the military's talk, making a little bit of

progress on getting them to stop some of the production of fentanyl chemicals that end up in the drug supply in the United States, getting them to actually talk so that Xi Jinping understands the United States' worldview and reduces the likelihood of conflict. But they're not expecting any major breakthroughs in the relationship. And a lot of the work is going to be passed on to whoever the next president is to figure out how to deal with this difficult relationship. Before we head off, we'd like to point you to today's recommended read, which comes with stunning photos of one and a half-year-old Zeman. A Formosan black bear has just been released into the wild

after recovering from an amputated paw. Hunters and conservationists in Taiwan are teaming up to protect the Formosan black bear by designing new traps which won't amputate their limbs if they accidentally get caught in the snare. You can find a link to the story in today's pod description. And for more on any of the stories from today, check out Reuters.com or the Reuters app. To never miss an episode,

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