Reuters World News - Ukraine aid standoff, Murdoch's legacy and covering catastrophe in Libya

Episode Date: September 22, 2023

President Joe Biden promises more aid for Ukraine but must overcome opposition from Republican hardliners. Automakers risk a wider strike from union workers. Rupert Murdoch steps down as chairman of Fox and News Corp. Go behind the scenes of Reuters' coverage of the Libya floods. Plus, we visit the flea market in L.A. where striking actors and writers look for other ways to pay the rent. 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, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky's plea for more aid bumps up against a budget standoff on Capitol Hill. Conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch steps down from Fox, what happens now to his media empire. We hear about the challenges reporting on the catastrophe in Libya. And we visit a flea market where out-of-work Hollywood crew members are trying to make ends meet. It's Friday, September 22nd.

This is Reuters World News with everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes every weekday. I'm Kim Vennel in London. First, the news making headlines around the world. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenskyy wrapped up a whirlwind trip to D.C. with reassuring words from President Biden in the White House. Mr. President, we're with you and we're staying with you. But Biden's pledge for more aid for Ukraine's war with Russia is at risk from a budget fight with Republican hardliners.

Asked how to overcome the opposition, Biden said the only way was approval by the U.S. Congress. Counting on the good judgment of the United States Congress, there's no alternative. Automakers have hours left to head off a wider strike. The United Auto Workers Union has said it will extend its industrial action to more plants unless a deal is reached with Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler parent Stalantis by noon today. Celebrations in Brazil after the Supreme Court blocked efforts to strip back Indigenous land rights.

The ruling rejected a restriction sought by the powerful farm lobby to prevent indigenous communities claiming land they did not live on in 1988. It's time now for markets with Carmel Crimmons. Carmel, what's going on? It's a happy day for Microsoft. It looks like their deal for Activism Blizzard is going to clear its last major, regulatory hurdle. This is the biggest deal in video gaming. Britain's antitrust watchdog had blocked it

back in April. It said the takeover would give Microsoft too much control of the cloud gaming market. The regulator is now saying that Microsoft's move to sell its streaming rights addresses its concerns, paving the way for the deal to be cleared. Media mogul Rupert Murdoch has stepped down as the chairman of Foxen News Corp. In a memo to staff Thursday, the 92-year-old wrote that, quote, Our companies are in robust health, as am I. It ends more than a seven-decade career in which Murdoch created an empire spanning Australia to the United States.

His son, Lachlan, will take over. So what does this all mean for Fox? Dawn Chimalesky is covering the story. Dawn, was this a surprise? In some respect, this was a surprise to the media reporters who have been covering Fox. But in many ways, it is an expected outcome. Lachlan Murdoch has been set up as the successor to his father, Rupert Murdoch.

Murdoch is in his 90s. And while he has a reputation as being very hands-on, few would imagine that he would remain active in day-to-day operations until he reaches the age of 100. What will be Rupert Murdoch's legacy? He is one of the last remaining media moguls, what he has accomplished over his life. from a business perspective, truly staggering. He began with a single newspaper in Australia and built

out a media empire that its apex had a film studio, a television studio. He founded a television network here in the United States. He has scores of newspapers across the globe. But obviously, Burp and Rodox legacy is a complex one. Fox News being a primary example, its critics will argue that Fox News has amplified divisions in our society and helped create a toxic political culture. Thousands dead and the center of a once bustling city swept into the sea. The scale of the floods in Libya has shocked the world. Labib Nasr is our chief producer for visuals in the Middle East and North Africa. We decided to send a crew that would leave Benghazi, which is four hours drive to Dernah,

leaving at 2 a.m. so they can be there at first sunlight, and then we would be able to gauge the scale of it. And the outskirts of Dernah before arriving, they sent us some very strong video of cars piled up and some water flooding the areas, and it seemed to be bigger than we had expected. We did not hear from them for several hours, three, four hours. So it was really nerve-wracking. In the meantime, the news was more and more clear that there's actually thousands, possibly dead and others missing. So we knew the scale was going to be huge. What were some of the challenges specific to Libya?

This is a country that's politically divided. How did that affect covering a disaster in the eastern city? The crew in the West, they wanted to go and to cover the East. They wanted to be part of this catastrophe, and they didn't care about all the rift and all the politics behind it. And they were working shoulder to shoulder with the crew from the East, something they had not done for years and years. What's the impact being on the team?

So it was a very, very tough story for our local Libyan crews to cover. You're walking in mud that half a foot high throughout the day and you're seeing all this death around you and carnage and misery and sadness. So taking care of the crew's health, whether physical or mental, was also big on our radar and there were open conversation that helped us tackle this and we continue to tackle this as we move forward and look forward to the next chapter in this story. Hollywood crew members have been out of work for months. With productions shut down by both the

writers and actors' strikes, they're now looking for other ways to pay the rent. On a recent Sunday, some of them held a parking lot flea market in Los Angeles. Lisa Richhine was there. There are about 65 people at this flea market, and they were costume designers, prop makers, people who work behind the scenes in Hollywood to make film and TV shows. And they had come together to try to earn some extra cash. All of them are hurting after months of these strikes, and they're not even on strike. But they are calling themselves the collateral damage of the strikes because they haven't been able to work.

Anybody that could tell me that they were out of work because of the film industry shutting down was in. I spoke to one person there, Greg Gilday. He was the organizer of the event, and he's also a prop master, and had set up his own table trying to sell some items from his personal collection to raise some money. What kind of stuff are you selling? I'm selling. It's just the coolest stuff at the place. It really is.

A lot of Star Wars toys, this gigantic seven-foot-tall mirror that I hope some prop maker, or some prop house rather, will buy. Many of the sellers had signs above their booths explaining their situations. One of them said she was a set decorator for 20 years, a single mom of 15-year-old twins, and now she was struggling to pay the bills, especially her mortgage. She was selling baked goods, cupcakes and cookies, something that she normally does as a hobby, and she was nearly in tears explaining that she'd stayed up all night

to make baked goods to try to keep going. It's unclear how long the strikes are, going to last and when everybody might get back to work. Right now, the writers and the studios are talking again, which is seen as a sign of progress since they hadn't talked for weeks. There are not any talks going on between the actors and the studios at the moment. So even if the writers get a deal, Hollywood won't get fully back to work until the actors can also reach an agreement. This weekend, a NASA spacecraft will plummet back to Earth after a journey through our solar system.

Three, two, your mission, and back. The traces of hydrogen and oxygen molecules that Osiris gathered off the asteroid 200 million miles away

could offer clues as to why Earth was able to sustain life. We're looking for clues as to why Earth is a habitable world, this rare jewel in outer space that has oceans, it has a protective atmosphere.

That's Dante Loretta, principal investigator for the Osiris mission. We think all of those materials were brought by these carbon-rich asteroids very early in our planetary system formation. Literally, maybe representatives of the seeds of life that these asteroids delivered at the beginning of our planet that led to this amazing biosphere, biological evolution, and to us being here today to look back on that amazing history.

Osiris' samples are expected to drop into a remote part of Utah on Sunday morning. That's it for today's episode of Reuters World News. We'll be back on Saturday with a special weekend episode, delving into the diplomatic conflict between Canada and India. 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 favourite podcast player or download the Reuters app.