Reuters World News - Ukraine arms, Biden’s memory, Sudan war and OnlyFans

Episode Date: March 13, 2024

The Biden administration confirms it will send $300 million worth of arms to Ukraine as funding in Congress stalls. Former special counsel Robert Hur faces sharp scrutiny over his report on President Biden’s handling of classified documents and his remarks about Biden’s memory. The Sudanese army claims control of the national broadcast building in a significant advance against the RSF. And a Reuters investigation uncovers 120 cases of men and women complaining that explicit images of them have ended up on the OnlyFans platform without their consent. 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, the U.S. promises a $300 million weapons package to Ukraine as top Republican Mitch McConnell urges the House to vote on foreign aid. Reuters uncovers more than 120 cases where explicit images and videos showed up on only fans without the person's consent. Sudan's army makes its biggest advance in 11 months of devastating war. And a stark warning from Vladimir Putin. It's Wednesday, March 13th. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes.

Every weekday. I'm Jonah Green in New York. And I'm Carmel Krimands in Dublin. Vladimir Putin says that Russia is technically ready for nuclear war. He told Russian media he sees no need to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, but again warned that he would consider U.S. troops in the country an escalation. The interview comes just days before a Russian enemy. election, certain to hand him another six years in power. In Washington, the Biden administration

has confirmed it will send $300 million worth of arms to Ukraine. Patricia Zengarly covers foreign policy and national security. Patricia, first, where is this money coming from? This money is funding that the Pentagon apparently had, that at least some of it, they said that they didn't realize they had. It was because previous weapons orders for Ukraine. It turned out to cost less than they expected. The House still hasn't taken up the foreign security aid bill, which includes $60 billion for Ukraine. So how are its supporters trying to get that through? There are two main things that they're doing. One is they're just trying to convince the Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson to change his mind.

But the other thing that they're trying to do is to use a fairly obscure rule in the House that lets you force a vote on a bill against the will of the majority leader, the speaker, by collecting two. 218 signatures on what's known as a discharge petition. And discharge petitions are not common, but they have been used before successfully. The Biden-Trump rematch is official. In the latest round of state primaries, both picked up enough delegates to officially clinch their party's nominations. They now head to a repeat general election battle in November. A longtime age to Alexei Navalny is recovering from a hammer attack in the Lithuanian capital, Vilni. Leonoyd Volkov had his arm broken and tear gas sprayed in his eyes, according to a colleague.

The attack happened just hours after he was interviewed by Reuters. Our work is full of very complicated challenges, of enormous pressure of high individual risks for everyone in the leadership of the organization. Members of Navalny's political group, the Anti-Corruption Foundation, which includes Volkov, have based themselves in Lithuania since fleeing Russia. I did not sanitize my explanation, nor did I disparage the president unfairly. That's former special counsel Robert Herr, defending his report last month saying President Joe Biden had a poor memory.

My assessment in the report about the relevance of the president's memory was necessary and accurate and fair. The hearing also an opportunity for Democrats to highlight former President Trump's mishandling of classified information, as well as his own notable verbal gaffes. Andrew Gowd's word covers the Justice Department. So Andrew, reporters got their hands on the full transcript of hers interview with Biden. What did it show?

So I think the transcript showed a more nuanced picture than what either side maybe would depict. You don't read the transcripts and see a president who is failing to remember, you know, really basic information or who doesn't seem to have a clear grasp on. the issues in front of him. But there are certain things that came up. He struggled, for instance, to sort of piece together the timeline for when he left the vice presidency when former president Trump took over. And so it's a very kind of freewheeling interview where Biden is giving a lot of detail, though at times getting sort of sidetracked from the questions that are actually in front of him. Hotter than expected U.S. inflation and the risk of upside surprises elsewhere

is pushing back bets on rate cuts in much of the world. But there's growing speculation that Japan will end its experiment with negative interest rates as soon as next week. Rising wages are the main driver, reinforcing Japanese spending and confidence. In Sudan, this army video shows soldiers celebrating around burnt-out vehicles after the most significant advance against its military rival in nearly 11 months.

The army has captured the national radio and TV headquarters. Aidan Lewis is Bureau Chief for Egypt. and Sudan in Cairo. Aiden, how meaningful is this latest move? It's significant because the army has made a number of recent advances in Sudan's wider capital, which this capture of the broadcast headquarters builds on, and it means that it has now extended its control over old Omburman. Omburman is one of the three cities that make up the bigger capital around the River Nile.

the rival RSF, the force that the army has been fighting in a war for nearly a year now, still controls other parts of Andoman, but the army has regained some of its footing in a conflict where it had been struggling militarily up until now. So you mentioned we're nearly a year into this conflict. Is there any sign we're closer to some peaceful resolution? So far, all efforts to mediate a ceasefire in this war or find a resolution, a peaceful resolution, have come to little, and the fighting has continued. There has been a call recently last week, in fact, from the UN Security Council for a ceasefire

truce because the conflict has triggered a major humanitarian crisis. And one of the sites, the RSF, the paramilitary, welcomed that appeal, but the army suggested that it wasn't going to accept. So it seems like a truce or any kind of longer-lasting solution is still pretty far off. Only fans cast itself as a new breed of adult entertainment, where creators provide visuals to subscribers or fans for a monthly fee or one-off sales.

Now, a Reuters investigation has uncovered more than 120 cases of men and women complaining that explicit images of them have ended up on the platform without their consent. A spokeswoman for the company says that in the few examples where bad actors have misused our platform, only fans, quote, removed the content swiftly banned the user and actively supported investigations and prosecutions. Andrew Marshall is a reporter on the team that worked on this story. Andrew, you spoke with some of the victims. What's been their experience? For some of the woman we spoke to their appearance in a sex video on OnlyFans was truly

devastating. A woman called Keisha Blaze told us how she struggled to go out in public because she was terrified that people might recognize her from a sex video that her ex-boyfriend had sold an Onlyfans for $15. A woman called Adriana Prater told us how she had to install a home security system after being harassed by stalkers who saw an OnlyFans video of her that went violent. A woman called Sammy alleged that two men had raped her and then sold a video of the incident on Onlyfans. People have seen the face.

They put me in various positions and took turns. She is suing not just the men, but also Onlyfans and what might be the first case of its kind against the platform. After that happened, I was lost. A company saw me being raped. and they made money off of it. For some of the victims that we spoke to, they had a really futile fight for justice. One of them was Amanda DeCrosser.

She told us that her ex-boyfriend had secretly filmed them having sex and then posted these videos on Onlyfans. It was just, it was, it was really, really degrading. She complained to police, but was told her case couldn't be prosecuted because the videos didn't include, enough information that specifically identified her.

Of course, it's a male cop, like most of them are. So I'm, again, just taking my sex videos and just showing them to more people for them to turn around and tell me that there's nothing that they can do for me. What else did OnlyFans say about your reporting? Tampa Police said they spent five months investigating her case, but the evidence didn't meet the criteria for a criminal violation.

Even so, her friends got to know about the video, and assumed she was now doing porn. So she felt really angry and hopeless when she learned that the police couldn't do that much. OnlyFand says it's building the safest social media platform in the world. It also says it moderates 100% of its content and has a dedicated team that approves content creators. But the cases with Fownd suggests that there are significant gaps in that system.

And law enforcement officials tell us that it's nearly impossible to monitor OnlyFans on a sustained or systematic basis, partly because it's so big, but partly because of the subscription paywalls that surround its creators. You can read the full report on reuters.com or on our app. That's it for today's episode.

We'll be back tomorrow with our daily headline show. If you want to stay ahead on the big news from around 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.