Reuters World News - Trump’s day 1 plans, UAE and Sudan and Ukraine’s teen dilemma

Episode Date: December 13, 2024

Time magazine names President-elect Donald Trump ‘Person of the Year’ - and his accompanying interview gives clues about his day one plans. Cargo planes from the UAE have been landing at a small airstrip in Chad that some U.N. experts suspect is being used to funnel arms across the border into Sudan. And the dilemma facing Ukrainian teenage boys ahead of their 18th birthdays.    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, he's Time Magazine's Person of the Year again. We look at Trump's plans for a raft of executive actions on day one. What mysterious United Arab Emirates' planes landing in the Chad Desert could mean for the war in Sudan. And the dilemma facing young Ukrainian men on whether to stay or go. It's Friday, December 13th. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes every week.

I'm Christopher Waljeper in Chicago. And I'm Tara Oaks in Liverpool. Chance of USA broke out on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday as President-elect Donald Trump rang the bell. Trump was there to commemorate being selected as Times' person of the year. To say, Time magazine getting this honor for the second time, I think I like it better this time, actually. The issue features a wide-ranging interview with Trump, where he sharply criticized the

Ukraine's use of U.S. supplied missiles deep into Russian territory. He said he would discuss ending childhood vaccination programs with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and vowed to enact a virtual closure of the U.S. Department of Education. White House correspondent Steve Holland has been speaking with those in Trump's orbit to get a sense of what he might try to tackle on day one. What we're hearing is that President-elect Donald Trump wants to make a big splash on his first day in office, and he's planning a blizzard of more than 25 executive orders and directives as he seeks to dramatically reshape U.S. government policy.

A lot of these orders will have to do with immigration, which he's very committed to putting some stops on illegal migration across the southern border. So we're hearing that many of the orders will have to do with that. He also wants to increase energy production. He sees increasing energy production as a way of lowering prices, bringing inflation under control, make it easier to get permits for drilling and fracking and all these ways of producing energy.

A Trump inauguration invite is a hot ticket, and Chinese President Xi Jinping has one. Experts say he's not likely to attend, calling the invitation to a top U.S. geopolitical rival, diplomatic theater. President Joe Biden says he's pardoning 39 people convicted of nonviolent crimes and commuting the sentences of nearly 1,500 others who were serving long prison terms.

The pardons and clemency come over a week after the president signed an unconditional pardon for his son Hunter. A senior judge has been assassinated in the Mexican resort city of Acapulca. Edmundo Romano-Pinzon was gunned down on Wednesday afternoon in his car, according to images of the crime scene shared in local media reports. South Korea's opposition leader says the best way to restore order in the country is to impeach the president over his botched attempt and martial law. Yun Suk Yul faces a second impeachment vote on Saturday after surviving last weekends. And a party gone royally wrong. Buckingham Palace says staff are facing an investigation

following an after party at a bar which British tabloid the Sun reported ended in a punch-up and a barboral. Markets now and the rush of rate cuts over the past few days, with outsized 50 basis points move in Switzerland and Canada, and the 25 basis points easing by the European Central Bank, has helped to turbocharge the U.S. dollar. Markets are still confident of a cut by the Federal Reserve next week, but they have all but given up on a move in January, which is priced at just a 20% chance. Since the Civil War in Sudan began in April of 2023, dozens of cargo planes from the United Arab Emirates have landed on a small airstrip in,

neighboring Chad. What those planes have been doing out in the desert has become something of a mystery. One that our visual investigation reporter Reid Levinson in London has been looking into. So the UAE says that they are helping Sudanese refugees. They say they have delivered at least 10,000 tons of relief supplies, medical and food supplies, to Eastern Chad for Sudanese refugees. U.S., British diplomats and UN experts suspect that those flights are not moving humanitarian cargo, but moving weapons and arms to support the RSF in Sudan.

Okay, so how did this little landing strip raise people's suspicions? The airstrip is in the middle of the Chad Desert. It's also many days journey from where the refugee crisis is really centered at the moment. So people started focusing on what are all the... flights doing. And for this story, we obtained video that was taken on the ground at Amdras Airport, which has not been previously reported. And in this video, you can see two pallets on the tarmac, both with crates. Some of the crates have UAE flags on them. They're long and kind of thin. And we spoke to three different weapons experts, two of whom have worked as UN investigators.

they said that the crates in the video appear to be metal and they're stacked low on the pallets and based on that, that they're highly probably ammunition or weapons. How have these shipments potentially impacted the course of Sudan's civil war? The experts we've spoken to said that the war would not have continued with this intensity that the RSF wouldn't have been able to make the gains and do the attacks that they have been doing,

especially recently without help from foreign countries. and that includes the UAE. Now, how have the two sides in this conflict responded? So the RSF has denied receiving any outside support. They say that they have used weapons and ammunition produced at factories in Sudan. But the Sudanese army said that Emirati arms to the RSF is a tangible fact. They said the flow of weapons and equipment from the UAE in this way to the rebel support militia has not stopped since the outbreak of this war.

In a statement sent to Reuters, the UAE denied supplying arms to the RSF via the Chad airstrip, calling the claims baseless and unfounded. Ukraine should consider dropping the age of military service for its soldiers from 25 to 18. That's according to senior U.S. administration officials who say that Kiev isn't mobilizing or training enough new soldiers to replace those lost on the battlefield. It speaks to an agonizing decision facing Ukrainian boys in their late. 18s, stay or leave before they turn 18. That's when a ban on men leaving the country takes hold.

Anastasia Malenko in Kiev has the story of two young men who made very different decisions. Román Beletski is a native of Kiev. He was 15 years old when Russia's full-scale invasion began. He finished his high school education here, and then he got into a Ukrainian university. But then as his 18th birthday was nearing, he was agonizing over the decision of whether to go or to stay. And then he told me that he made the decision to go when the opportunity arose in February of 2024. And he left about a month before his 18th birthday. And now he's studying in Slovakia and adjusting to his life there.

He's been only able to see his mom and his sister. two times since he left and he has not been able to see his father since his dad can't leave the country because of the limits on men leaving the country at the moment. Our team also met another Ukrainian man, Andreikotik. He joined up with Ukrainian military when he was 18. He's currently 21 and he's serving with Hartia Brigade in the infantry fighting vehicle unit. When I was talking to him about the decision, he recalled talking to his friends who were also facing the same decision. And then at some point they just went outside into the smoking area and asked each other,

should we sign? And then all four of them ended up signing. And then he recalled the moment he had to break the news to his mom when he called her and asked for his passport details to sign the contract with Ukrainian military. And she started crying. But he told her no and said that he had to defend his homeland. And he actually kept on friendly terms with a classmate who went abroad after the full-scale invasion broke out. He said that sometimes it did feel a bit hurtful because he's been serving for almost three years now. And him and the guys in his unit are really tired and all need to be replaced. Today's recommended read is a deep dive into how Bashar al-Assad's army collapsed in Syria.

with testimony from former soldiers on the poor morale and low pay which led to desertions and military collapse. There's a link to the story in the pod description. For more on any of our stories from today, check out reuters.com or the Reuters app. Don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast player. We'll be back on Monday with our daily headline show.