Reuters World News - Ukraine-Russia, Colorado, Poland and tax bill

Episode Date: June 2, 2025

Russian and Ukrainian officials are due to meet in Istanbul for a second round of direct peace talks, a day after Ukraine launched one of its most ambitious attacks of the war. Eight people have been injured after a man yelled "Free Palestine" and threw incendiary devices into a crowd in Boulder, Colorado. Nationalist opposition candidate Karol Nawrocki has narrowly won Poland's presidential election, delivering a major blow to the centrist government. The Senate returns today with one of its first priorities to tackle U.S. President Donald Trump's tax and spending bill.  Recommended read: Trump cuts threaten safety training for America’s most dangerous jobs Sign up for the Reuters Econ World newsletter ⁠⁠here⁠⁠. Listen to the Reuters Econ World podcast ⁠⁠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, peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul amid escalating war. What we know about the attack in Colorado at a demonstration to remember the Israeli hostages who remain in Gaza. And the U.S. Senate takes up Trump's big, beautiful bill. It's Monday, June 2nd. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes every weekday. I'm Tara Oaks in Liverpool. And I'm Christopher Waljasper in Chicago. First to the war in Ukraine and a sharp ramping up of fighting.

With weekend drone battles coming ahead of a fresh set of direct peace talks beginning today in Istanbul. A reporter Max Handa is in Kiev. You had the war's largest Russian drone attack on Ukraine. Almost 480 drones launched by Russia, Ukraine shot most them down. but that's an incredible number. And then we got from a Ukrainian security official that the Ukrainian domestic intelligence had, they said, conducted this huge drone attack

where they simultaneously attacked four Russian air bases. The furthest is, I think, over 4,000 kilometers from Ukraine. This is way further than anything Ukraine's been able to hit before. So we initially wondered how on earth is this possible? And we soon got an answer from our source, which is that these drones were hidden over the course of a year and a half. Ukraine, which snuck them into Russia, hid them in the roofs of wooden sheds. And then these roofs sort of retracted automatically as they were being transported on trucks and essentially just took off. The dozens of these drones then zoomed into Russian strategic bombers, which were thousands

of kilometers away from Ukraine and thought presumably they were rather safe from Ukrainian attack. And with all this as a backdrop, what can we expect from this round of negotiations? What Ukraine wants to see is a 30-day full ceasefire, as well as the release of all present. of war on both sides and the release of the children that Russia essentially took away from occupied areas of Ukraine. Ukraine says that it wants to see the current front line as the starting point for negotiations. And it also wants to ensure that all Russian territorial gains in Ukraine since February 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea illegally, Ukraine basically is keen for none of that, as well as the current occupation this war, to be recognised.

Russia legally recognises four Ukrainian provinces, all of which Russia mostly controls, but does not fully control. Russia sees those regions as fully its own, and I think Ukraine has perhaps included this point to push against that Russian line. Now to an election across the border from Ukraine that Kiev and much of Europe has been watching closely. Nationalist opposition candidate Carol Navrocki has won Poland's presidential election. Navrochi won the backing of U.S. President Donald Trump for his bid for Poland's top job. He campaigned on a promise to make sure economic and social policies favor polls over other nationalities, including refugees from neighboring Ukraine. His win is a blow to the reform agenda

of the pro-European government. An attack in Boulder, Colorado on Sunday is being investigated as a hate crime after a man attacked a crowd demonstrating and calling for the release of the remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza. Authorities have named the suspect as Mohamed Soleiman, who was hospitalized shortly after the attack. Alexander Alper's been covering the latest. So the details are still emerging, but what we know is that there is a regular demonstration. of people remembering the Israeli hostages that are still in Gaza, and it looks like a man threw an incendiary device into this crowd of people. An eyewitness saw about four women sitting

or lying down. One of them had burns that appeared so bad that she, it looked like she had been wrapped in a flag, perhaps to put out some of the burns. The man is in custody now, and we're told that he did yell free Palestine during the attack, and authorities. are now investigating it as a potential hate crime. And it comes sort of amid heightened tensions in the United States over Israel's war in Gaza. We've seen both an increase in anti-Semitic hate crime, as well as conservative groups led by President Donald Trump to brand pro-Palestinian protests as anti-Semitic and to detain protesters of Israel's war in Gaza and cut off funding to universities that allowed for those protests.

Gaza now where there are conflicting reports over a Sunday incident. According to the Gazan Health Ministry, more than 30 Palestinians were killed near a food distribution site, with witnesses reporting that Israeli soldiers fired on people trying to collect food. Israel denies the allegation. The U.S.-based Gaza humanitarian foundation says food was distributed in Rafa without any incidents. The ICRC says its field hospital in Rafa, Ruffer received almost 200 casualties with gunshot or shrapnel wounds, all of whom said they've been trying to reach an aid site. And OPEC Plus is increasing its oil output in July by 411,000 barrels a day as it attempts to wrestle back market share and punish over producers. The group of oil-producing nations has been increasing production since April.

It tripled its output in May and plans to continue. at that pace through July. The Republican-led Senate is back in session today, and one of its first priorities will be to tackle President Donald Trump's tax and spending bill. As it winds its way through the upper chamber, the bill is likely to change drastically, and whether it passes at all is still an open question. Trump has promised his tax cuts, which will add trillions to the deficit, will benefit working-class Americans.

But analysts say some of the more popular provisions, like tax breaks on tips, actually have few upsides for low-income Americans. Our reporter Andy Sullivan is in Washington, D.C. Problem is the tax break, as written, wouldn't actually help a lot of people, you know, those bartenders, hairdressers, people like that who rely on tipped income. And that's because a lot of these people basically do not make enough money to pay federal taxes to begin with. So a tax break wouldn't help them. You've got to make money above a certain threshold. You have to

declare it on your taxes. You've got to fill out forms, et cetera. And that's sort of broadly true of the tax bill as a whole. It expands a number of other tax breaks that are aimed at lower income folks, a tax break for if you have kids, for example, or if you're working and not earning that much money. But it adds a lot of new provisions in red tape. For example, it requires people to provide a social security number. That means fewer people would qualify. There's more sort of administrative barriers and hurdles to claiming these benefits that a lot of people might just throw up their hands and say, sorry, I can't do this. At the same time, it's getting harder to claim these benefits, Medicaid and SNAP, that help working people cover their bills, get health coverage, etc. Those

programs are being tightened. It's harder to qualify. Millions of few people will benefit from them in years to come. So at the end of the day, people might be paying more money out of pocket for health care, for groceries, and that would more than offset any tax savings they might get from the bill, according to several analyses we've looked at. Today's recommended read is on how the Trump administration's cuts threatened safety training for some of America's most dangerous jobs. Based on hours of interviews, our reporting shows that the safety trainings aimed at fishermen, loggers, farmers, and other workers could be scaled back or wound down entirely as soon as July.

You can read more by following the link in the pod description. For more on any of the 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 tomorrow with our daily headline show.