Reuters World News - Trump, Worldcoin, Ukraine ‘peace talks’ — and World Cup shocks

Episode Date: August 4, 2023

Donald Trump appeared in a D.C. federal court as new Reuters/Ipsos polling shows half of Republicans wouldn't vote for him if he's convicted of a felony. Regulators raise concerns about Worldcoin’s orb. Saudi Arabia holds talks on the Ukraine war. Plus, Hyundai and Kia recall and we are in Australia for a Women’s World Cup full of shocks and surprises. 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 pleads not guilty in a D.C. federal court as a new Reuters Ibsos poll finds half of Republicans won't vote for him if he's convicted. World coin hype turns from orbs to regulators. It's not your typical peace talks set in Saudi Arabia this weekend. And the Women's World Cup moves to the next stage with some shocks and surprises. It's Friday, August 4th. This is Reuters World News. with everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, every weekday. I'm Kim Vinal in London. First, a quick look at headlines from around the world. Two US Navy sailors have been charged with sharing national security secrets with China for money.

Petty officer Wang Hang Zhao is charged with conspiracy and bribe-taking, and US Navy sailor Jin Chau Wei faces charges of conspiring to send national defense information to China. South Korea's Hyundai and Kia are recalling 91,000 vehicles in the US because of fire risks. The recall covers several models made in the last year. The companies have urged owners affected to park the vehicle outside and away from buildings until they're inspected.

Pope Francis says people should be aware of the false happiness of social media. Speaking in Portugal as part of events for World Youth Day, he said God was not a search engine. The pontiff told thousands of singing and dancing young Catholics that the illusions of the virtual world are vain and superfluous. Less than a mile away from the capital, Donald Trump pleaded not guilty to charges that he orchestrated a plot to overturn his 2020 election loss.

Justice Department reporter Sarah Lynch was in the D.C. courthouse. Sarah, how did Trump appear? He did not smile as he entered the courtroom and sat chatting with his lawyer for about 15 minutes before the judge came in. Just a few feet away, special counsel Jack Smith was sitting very close to him. I could not tell if they had made eye contact or not, but they were sitting not too far apart from one another. How would Trump serve time if he's convicted? All presidents have secret service protection for life. So it really remains to be seen how we would deal with something like that.

This has never happened in American history. It's unclear if we could feasibly lock somebody up who has a secret service protection. How would that work? Where would he go? Would he have to be in some sort of solitary cell? Would he have to serve his time in home confinement with a ankle bracelet? Nobody knows this answer because we're in uncharted. territory. While Trump's legal battles have so far only seen his popularity rise for the

Republican nomination, some new polling shows he could be in trouble if convicted. A Reuters-Ipsos poll now shows about half of Republicans wouldn't vote for Trump if he was convicted of a felony. This is Nairobi, where thousands of Kenyans have been queuing up for their turn with a world coin orb. The orbs have been seen around the world as people rush to sign up for $50 of the cryptocurrency. But the 2023 equivalent of a gold rush has regulators worried. Finance and technology reporter Elizabeth Howcroft in London is on top of all the latest. Elizabeth, I feel like Worldcoin is everywhere. It's making a lot of headlines with this silver orb. Yeah, so World Coin officially launched last week and brought out its cryptocurrency, which it says it will give away for free to people

in various countries who sign up to get their irises scanned by this silver orb and get a kind of world coin ID. More than two million people have now signed up, although actually most of those were in a trial period during the last two years. What we're seeing now is that regulators and privacy groups are increasingly starting to express concerns about the project. The UK's data regulator told us that they're making inquiries in the EU. It's actually a state regulator in Germany that has jurisdiction. They told us they've been looking into it since November. And then on Wednesday, the government in Kenya actually said it's suspending WorldCoin's activities in the country completely. What are regulators' concerns exactly?

The common thread we're hearing from regulators is that they want to find out exactly what the company is gathering, what it intends to use that data for, whether it has the sort of technological capacity to handle that data safely and securely, but also whether people who are signing up actually understand what they're getting themselves in for. So we actually visited some of the Orb sign-up sites, and a lot of the people there said they were just signing up for the free money, they hadn't really heard of the project before, and they hadn't necessarily read the terms and conditions or the privacy policy. And I think that's the sort of thing regulators want to know more about. How is WorldCoin responded?

WorldCoin has pushed back against the privacy concerns that have been raised, so they say that their project is privacy preserving and that users can actually choose to either have their biometric data deleted instantly or stored in encrypted form. And they say that they're complying with all laws and regulations around biometric data collection around the world. Ukraine is hoping it can convince leaders around the world to support its blueprint for peace during talks in Saudi Arabia this weekend. Russia won't be there and China's presence is under question. So what's the point of these peace talks? European diplomatic and security reporter Andrew Gray in Brussels has some answers. The first thing maybe to say is that these are not

peace talks as we would normally know them. They're not talks between Ukraine and Russia. They are talks involving Ukraine and its key allies, the United States, the European Union, and a bunch of other countries, countries from what is sometimes called the Global South, so outside of Europe and North America. So we're talking about. We're talking about India, we're talking about Turkey, we're talking about South Africa. And these are countries that have not so clearly aligned themselves with Ukraine in the conflict. They haven't taken the steps such as sanctions that other countries have taken. But Ukraine hopes to win them over diplomatically to at least back Ukraine's vision of peace,

Ukraine's peace formula. So that's the aim of the meeting in Saudi Arabia this weekend. What is Ukraine's peace formula? What does it want to see happen? Right. Well, President Zelensky has presented a 10-point plan, quite a detailed plan that covers a range of issues, a range of criteria that Ukraine thinks should be met.

So one of them is, of course, respect of Ukraine's territorial integrity, also the withdrawal of Russian troops. And it also includes other elements such as nuclear safety, making sure that those nuclear plants are secure, the return of prisoners or others who have been held, captive. So it's a fairly comprehensive list of ingredients, if you like. What is Saudi hoping to achieve by hosting this? That's a really good question. And we don't know too much because Saudi Arabia has been

very quiet about this meeting, even though they're hosting it. What we hear from other officials, Western officials, is that Saudi Arabia does aspire to play a bigger diplomatic role, a role on the global stage. So this is a chance for Saudi Arabia to do that. Saudi Arabia is another country that has maintained lines of communication relations with Russia, but also has lines of communication with the West with Ukraine. There have been plenty of surprises or shocks, depending on whose side you're on. The Women's World Cup now moves out of the group stage. Laurie Ewing is covering all of the action on the ground in Australia.

So, Laurie, we're heading into the round of 16 now, and we've had quite a few surprise performances in getting here, right? Right. There's actually been a couple of really exciting finishes and maybe some unexpected teams that have gone through to the second round. South Africa eliminated Italy, which is obviously one of the Titans of Women's Soccer. And then another huge result was Jamaica knocked out Brazil. Brazil is the first time since 1995 that Brazil has actually been eliminated in the opening round. And of course, there was a lot of people that were really skeptical when the tournament expanded to 32 teams, thinking that when we were going to some massive blowouts. Four years ago in France, the U.S. defeated, well, they clobbered. Thailand, 13-0-0 in the first game. But we haven't really seen that here, which is kind of nice. Even the teams that were at the bottom of the groups weren't losing by massive scores. So that really shows that they did the right thing by expanding the tournament. We've also seen a shock loss, a particularly hard one for you, a Canadian, to witness.

Yeah, and I was actually at that game, and it was pretty sad. Yeah, so they lost to Australia 4-0 and the Aussies didn't even have their star player Sam Kerr playing. And of course, Canada was the Olympic champions. So once again, it sort of points to the depth in the field this time around. Like nobody was a given to go through to the next round. The United States, two-time reigning champions were like within a goalpost of being knocked out. They tied Portugal 0-0, but Portugal actually hit a goalpost in added time. they had scored, then the United States would be out. And of course, moments after I spoke to

Lorry, Germany was out of the World Cup after tying with Korea. That's it for today's episode of Reuters World News. 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 favorite podcast player or download the Reuters app.