Reuters World News - Trump’s target letter, US soldier in North Korea and an AI BTS?

Episode Date: July 19, 2023

Former President Donald Trump says he received a letter saying that he is a target of a grand jury investigation into efforts to overturn his 2020 presidential election defeat. As a US soldier flees to North Korea, our reporters describe what it’s like in the demilitarized zone (DMZ). Plus, South Korea’s largest music label HYBE, which manages hit boy band BTS, releases a new multilingual song generated by AI. 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 could be facing another criminal indictment, this time over efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat. A US soldier crosses the demilitarized zone into North Korea. We look at how that could even be possible. Controversy erupts over a British policy to send migrants to Rwanda. And how AI might supercharge the next global K-pop hit. It's Wednesday, July 19th. This is Reuters. world news with everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes every week

day. I'm Kim Vinal in London. Former President Donald Trump says he's received a letter from special counsel Jack Smith saying he's a target of a grand jury investigation into efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat. It's the clearest sign yet that Trump could face federal criminal charges around attempts to stay in power. It's one of many cases swirling around the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. I didn't know practically what a subpoena was and grand juries and all of this. Now I'm like becoming an expert. I have no choice. His legal woes are not hurting his nomination chances.

A poll out today from Reuters Ipsos shows Trump growing his lead with 47% support within the party, well above 19% for Florida governor Ron DeSantis. An American soldier is in North Korean custody after running across the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas. Private Travis T. King was facing disciplinary action by the US military and was meant to be flying home to his unit this week. But while at the airport in South Korea, instead of boarding a plane, he decided to flee and joined a civilian tour of the demilitarized zone.

His crossing throws Washington into a fresh. crisis in its dealings with Pyongyang. The American soldier could become a valuable propaganda tool for the nuclear-armed state. How exactly he managed to cross one of the world's most heavily fortified borders is something of a mystery. So I call that my colleague Trevor Honeycutt, who recently went to the DMZ. Both you and I have been, and I think it helps to understand a little bit of just how kind of bizarre this is. You can go to viewing areas, you can see all the military reinforcements. But then there's the Joint Security Area, which is where the soldier went and where you went. Tell us about that. So the Joint Security Area is one of the weirdest places

on Earth. You basically have a Western military outfit that is led by U.S. forces, but has forces from South Korea and from other places as well that are attempting to keep the peace in this old Cold War battlefront. Vice President Harris was traveling to the region and she was touring the facilities. This is probably the most restrictive and most sensitive area we are going to go to. And they were insistent with us not to make a misstep, not to go where we weren't told. You take one step, you fall down that hill, you are going to be in enemy territory. And basically to follow instructions very carefully or else there could be serious consequences. Let's talk logistically how someone would actually go across the border because it's fortified

all the way along. So how could someone actually get across? There are points in some of the tours that are given from military officials where somebody could theoretically, you know, run across, try to jump a fence. I remember when we were there, we saw, you know, cats moving from one side of the border to the other. And so there are ways it takes some ingenuity and some fence climbing, but there are ways to get across, especially if you have some access. And now for the other stories making headlines around the world. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has asked for permission from the International Criminal Court not to arrest Russia's Vladimir Putin when he visits South Africa. To do so would amount to a

declaration of war, according to Ramaphosa. The ICC has an arrest warrant out for Putin, accusing him of the war crime of deporting Ukrainian children to Russia. As an ICC member, South Africa is obliged to arrest him should he turn up for a planned summit they're hosting next month. Thailand's constitutional court has ordered a temporary suspension of prime ministerial hopeful Peter Limgeronratz as a lawmaker, giving its order just as Parliament convened for what could be his final shot at becoming premier.

On the eve of the vote, Peter told Reuters that whatever happens, he's in it for the long haul. It's not a sprint. It's a marathon. And I have the stamina to run for a long, long time. And now to markets with Carmel Crimmons. In Carmel, there might be some good news for Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, right? Yes, now, this is going to sound counterintuitive because Goldman is actually reporting results today, and they're expected to be pretty bad. We're expecting a steep drop in trading revenue. We know we've had a weak M&A market. But our Wall Street team is reporting that Solomon himself is winning over his board to his strategy. You might remember he's come under a lot of pressure because he oversaw a disastrous foray into consumer banking. And he's now trying to unwind that, cut costs.

Focus Goldman on its traditional Wall Street business. In Britain, the government has approved plans to send people entering the country illegally to Rwanda. It's a hugely divisive policy. But the government wants to stem a rise in migrants crossing the England. English Channel. Last year, almost 46,000 people crossed it illegally, a record number. Andrew McCaskill is in London. So Andrew, why is this so controversial? I mean, it's been heavily contested, both in Parliament and in the courts. Essentially, some politicians, lawyers and human rights groups argue that you're taking some people who have fled war and persecution,

and you're dumping them halfway around the world in a country that has a questionable human rights record. The government, on the other hand, says ever-grown numbers of people are arriving on these small boats on the southern coast of England and we have to do something. Their policies modelled on what Australia did, where it processed people's asylum claims offshore and this managed to almost reduce the number of people arriving in small boats to zero. Even though this has been passed now by both houses of Parliament, it's not a done deal though, right? So it's gone all the way up to the Supreme Court and we're expecting in the next few months, Britain's top court will make a ruling and Israel had a similar plan to deport people to Rwanda and its Supreme Court said that

it was not legal. So there are some parallels there that will make the government quite nervous. Why is this such an important policy for Rishi Sunec? He's staked in some way, some of his political future to whether he's able to stop the people arriving. He's trailing in the opinion polls. Many people think he will probably be removed from power next year. But his hope is that if he's able to show actually he's got a policy that's able to stop this, people think here's a prime minister who's able to follow through on what he said he would do. South Korea's largest music label, Hib, which manages hit boy band, BTS, recently released a song in six languages, Korean, English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese.

They did it using AI. The track, Masquerade by singer Midnard, is the latest sign of the growing influence of AI in the music industry. Hjonsu Yom is covering the story. So Hjonsu, what does this AI do? So this multinational pronunciation correction technology smooths out the pronunciation of foreign lyrics in a song. So you could hear when we were given that before and after comparison by Hybe

that some was in Midnacht's case, It sounded quite unnatural. Yeah, not much magic a roll prank, yeah, no matter to let me inventa sin the technology was applied, it sounded very fluent, which made it a lot more radio-friendly.

The way it works is he sung the song in the studio in every single, each of the six languages, and then the company had native speakers come in and read out the lyrics. They did not sing the song, they just read out the lyrics, and then they were able to extract the pronunciation bit from the recordings, and then they attached that onto the original recordings done by the singer, and the end product is midnight, singing his song in six languages

and sounding a lot more fluently and naturally. 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 every weekday, and don't forget to subscribe on your favourite podcast player or download the Reuters app.