Reuters World News - Trump trial date, vacationing in a conflict zone and France's Muslim abaya ban

Episode Date: August 29, 2023

Trump gets a trial date – smack in the middle of the 2024 campaign. The tourists heading to Crimea for summer vacation despite the sound of rockets over the beach. A French ban on robes worn by Muslim girls in schools draws applause and criticism. Plus, Florida braces for Storm Idalia and Hollywood’s young actors see career dreams deferred by strikes. 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's D.C. trial to kick off in the thick of the GOP presidential fight. Controversy in France of the banning of full-length Muslim robes in state schools. We hear from Russian holidaymakers in Crimea, and actors in the US putting their dreams on hold as the Hollywood strikes drag on. It's Tuesday, August 29th. This is Reuters World News, with everything you need to. to know from the front lines in 10 minutes every weekday. I'm Kim Vinal in London. First, the headlines making news around the world. Donald Trump's criminal trial for trying to

overturn his 2020 election defeat will start on March 4th, the day before Super Tuesday. Judge Tanya Chutkan's scheduling decision means Trump will likely have to stand trial in at least three separate criminal cases while campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination. On Super Tuesday, Republican voters in more than a dozen states decide on their nominee. Florida is bracing for tropical storm Idalia. Idalia is expected to slam into the state's Gulf Coast as a category three hurricane on Wednesday. Evacuations are underway in some vulnerable areas, while some people are hunkering down. Here's Chris Dozel in Gainesville.

Take it seriously and be prepared. Even though we're not in the cone or might be in the cone depending on which newscast you listen to, be prepared. A county in eastern China is offering couples set to marry a reward of a thousand yuan. That's about $130 if the bride is aged 25 or younger. The move is designed to incentivize young people. to get married amid rising concerns over a declining birth rate. Rapper Eminem has asked Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramoswami to stop using his music at campaign events.

Ramoswami's campaign told CNN it will comply with the request. It's time now for markets with Carmel Crimmons. Carmel, what's going on? Well, markets appear to be fairly buoyant ahead of the release of some key data this week on inflation and jobs. But one stock is really fizzing, and that's VinFAST. Have you heard of VinFast, Kim? I have not. I have not. Well, it's an unprofitable Vietnamese electric carmaker, and its shares have risen around 700% since its IPO two weeks ago, making it a third most valuable car maker in the world. Why is it so popular? Well, it's caught the eye of retail investors,

and it also only has a small number of shares outstanding, so that turbocharges its stock moves. Options on the stock started trading on Monday, and that gives traders the opportunity to make leveraged bets on its rally. But it's got a lot to approve. It's expected to sell up to 50,000 vehicles this year. That compares to Tesla's $1.8 million. Now, only 137 of its vehicles have actually been registered in the US through June of this year. For listeners of this podcast, Crimea may evoke images of conflict, the site of a long struggle for geopolitical dominance. But for some Russians, it's still where you go on vacation. Kyiv's counter-offensive is deterring plenty of tourists.

Overall numbers are expected to be down between 20 and 30% this year, but not everyone is put off. Sanctions have severed flights to the west, and the weakness of Russia's ruble has raised the cost of trips to other popular destinations like Turkey or Thailand. Ben Tavener has the story. Ben, I'm watching this video on vacationers, and it sounds like a fighter jet is flying overhead.

So the sound that you can hear at one point in the video, the Reuters team there couldn't see exactly what it was. They thought that it was probably maybe a rocket being sent up from the Russian air defense systems, which are, of course, located across Crimea and across the peninsula. and Crimea is a very important strategic location for Russia to wage its military campaign in Ukraine. It's not just a political and symbolic thing. So who are these people summering here?

So it's worth saying that Crimea has always been a very popular destination for holiday makers throughout its history, no matter who's been in control of the peninsula. The people that we spoke to in Crimea had gone from. from as far east as the very far eastern regions of Russia, catching a plane from Vladivostok, a eight-hour flight to Moscow, and then an arduous 30-odd-hour train ride down to the peninsula. So these are people that are clearly very keen on going there, and clearly people haven't been put off by the fact that this is now an active military conflict zone. Did these vacations say they were concerned about what's going on just a few miles away?

So we spoke to one family in the town of Yevpatoria, a family with two children who said that they had calculated the risks and thought that it was still worth bringing their two children there, despite the fact that, in fact, the area around Yevpatoria has been hit by shelling and targets blamed on Ukraine by the local Moscow-installed authorities. Other people said that they were slightly put off by the idea of going by car because of the attack. on the Crimean Bridge. When French schools resume next week, one thing may be missing, the abeyer. The loose-fitting full-length robe worn by some Muslim women and girls has been banned from Staten's schools. Juliet Javchiro is in Paris

and explains why the government is introducing this rule now. So the French education minister said they're doing this now because they have seen an increase in pupils wearing abayas at schools. It also happens within a French context of strict secularism, which is called laicite. 20 years ago, France banned Muslim headscarves in school, and ever since, it's been an ongoing controversy. What sort of impact will this have on female Muslim students?

We knew that after headscars were banned from school in 2004, it created privately owned Muslim schools that some students turn to. So we could see a similar trend here where, because Muslim students maybe will feel discriminated at public schools, they might turn to private schools. There is also the possibility, according to some researchers, that this will only deepen a feeling of being discriminated against within the French Muslim community. So should we expect this directive to face legal challenges? Big question is this new policy will actually be enforced or not because there's no new law for now. It's just this announcement made by the minister and it could also be a bit of a political announcement and we will need to see what happens

in the next few months. The challenge is to really pin down what makes an abaya, whether there is a legal ground for it to be considered a religious outfit and that, you know, some people, actually a scholar that I talked with said that technically the abaya is, It's not per se a religious symbol of anything. Every aspiring actor dreams of coming to Hollywood to make it big. But these days, that dream is on hold as strikes by writers and actors drags on. Productions are shut down. There's no work.

Yeah, you threw your life upside down. You came to the dark side of the moon to say something, or you're trying to hold yourself back and you fail. So we can try a couple of different takes of what that moment is. And even in good times, says acting coach Jessica Payne, unless you're an A-lister, it's a struggle. And I just know less and less and less people who are making a living as an actor.

And this is not about being rich. This is about affording a one-bedroom apartment. Payne works out of West Hollywood and says inflation is making the game even harder. If you were to have great success, you're probably looking at 80,000 to 100,000 for most people. The thing is, that's insane success, but that's not 99% of us. One of Payne's students is 24-year-old Yasame Panganabanaban. She's had some success playing named roles in TV shows like Hawkeye and First Wives Club,

but money worries are never far from her mind. Any amount of money seems like a lot to you, but it happens pretty quickly where you start to realize, oh, I can't pay rent this month with what they paid me. Yeah, it gets pretty scary, pretty fast. That's it for today's episode of Royce's World News. We'll be back with our daily headline show tomorrow. To make sure you know what's going on in the world,

listen in for 10 minutes every one. weekday. And don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast player or download the Reuters app.