Reuters World News - Ukraine’s gains, the great US labor reshuffle and Berlusconi dies

Episode Date: June 12, 2023

The situation on the ground as Ukraine reports small gains in a counteroffensive against Russian forces. In the United States, jobs have bounced back – with therapists up and food service staff down. Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is reported dead. Plus, the German soccer league for overweight players. 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, Ukraine reports early gains from its counteroffensive. Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has died. And the great reshuffle of the US Labor Force. Find out who's doing what post-pandemic. It's Monday, June 12th. This is Reuters World News, with everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes every weekday. Kim is having a well-deserved break this week, so you've got two different voices. I'm Carmel Crimmons in Dublin.

And I'm Christopher Waljohn. Jasper, in Chicago. We start in Ukraine, where heavy battles are raging as Kyiv's counteroffensive accelerates. Max Hunter is on the road in the south, where Ukraine is attempting to push back against Russia. How are things progressing, Max? Ukraine said it's already taken at least four villages here on the southern chunk of that front line, and it seems to be having the best progress. in a location a couple of hours east of where I am currently, where the front line

pivots from horizontal to vertical around there. What can we say about these early gains? They signify that Ukraine can break through the first lines of Russian defense. I think the big question now is if they will be able to continue that progress through the second and third Russian defense lines, which are pretty seriously dug. because Russia's had those positions for over a year. And they've constructed some pretty mean lines. Like, even Western equipment has a point of failure.

And we've already seen that with leopard battle tanks and Bradley, armored vehicles, getting knocked out of action. So I think we just have to see over the course of this and next week, if that progress continues at a steady pace, then that's looking very good for the Ukrainians. Now, you recently visited the Kherson region, How bad is the situation there after the flooding? Can you describe what you saw?

Just absolutely devastated people sat on the riverbank, having been rescued, but had their home wrecked. Also, really heavy artillery shelling. I mean, it's actually part of the horror of Krason of last week was that you would have quite vulnerable people being pulled out of water sometimes several meters deep, and it would be done under pretty nasty artillery fire. We came under fire once. It was pretty close. It was pretty frightening. You just hear the cracks of both outgoing and incoming artillery.

For people who just come in to the city, it was pretty shocking. But for people who lived in Karsan, they didn't really bat an eyelid because that's just been their daily reality pretty much since November, since Ukraine, retook Kerson. Now for the rest of the headlines making news around the world. Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has died. The billionaire businessman created Italy's largest media company before transforming the political landscape. Berlusconi, who was 86, had been suffering from leukemia for some time

and had recently developed a lung infection. The ridiculous and baseless indictment of me by the, the Biden administration's weaponized Department of Injustice, will go down as among the most horrific abuses of power in the history of our country. Donald Trump in attack mode following his federal indictment over the handling of classified documents. His lawyer, Evan Corcoran, has become a central figure in the prosecution's case. Some of the most potentially damning evidence comes from Corcoran's notes. Prosecutors were able to seize them after a judge ruled they were not protected by attorney-client

privilege. Corcoran was not charged in the indictment. Former Scotland leader Nicholas Sturgeon has maintained her innocence after being arrested and held for seven hours as part of a police probe into party funding. Police are looking into what happened to more than $750,000 of funding for Sturgeon's pro-independence Scottish National Party. It was supposed to be ring-fenced but may have been used for other purposes. Sturgeon was released without charge. At least 10 people have died and 25 left injured after a bus carrying wedding guests rolled off a ramp in Australia. The driver of the bus in New South Wales has been arrested.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese paid tribute to the victims. For a joyous day like that in a beautiful place to end with such terrible loss of life and injury is so cruel and so sad and so unfair. On Broadway, the show has gone on despite the Writers Guild of America Strike. The Tony Awards leaned heavily on musical numbers to fill the time. Kimberly Akimbo, about a teenager who ages in reverse and Tom Stoppard's autobiographical Leopoldstadt, were among the big winners. Jay Harrison Ghee and Alex Newell also made Tony Awards history as the first two openly non-binary actors to win. Investors are in a nervy mood today. We have the three major central banks meeting, that's the Fed, the ECB and the BOJ.

And we've had some stunning upsets last week with the Aussie Central Bank and the Bank of a Canada. of both increasing rates. Now, most people are expecting the Fed to stand firm this week, but we do have inflation data out on Tuesday. So there's always a risk of a surprise there and maybe a late sting in the tail. No surprises are expected in Europe and Asia. Investors are betting that the ECB will raise rates by 25 basis points and the BOJ will stick to its ultra-loose monetary policy. The US job markets bounce back from the COVID pandemic, but there's been a massive reshuffling of who does what. Howard Schneider and DC has been sifting through the the figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Howard, what are your key takeaways from this data?

The thing that's different is the composition of jobs, who's doing what in the economy. And there, two things leap out to me. We do more jobs managing and shuffling things from one place to another than we do making and serving anymore. Office and administrative staff, service staff there have fallen off, food service, fallen off. What you've got is a big logistics boom. Thing is, some of that's associated with the pandemic in our minds, but some of those trends, were really well entrenched before the coronavirus hit the U.S. shores. There were some interesting nuggets as well. Like there's more therapists?

We've got more HR professionals. Yeah. So that's an interesting part as well. Yeah, a lot more solar panel installers, for example. A lot more therapists. Well, that makes sense. Everybody was going through struggles during the pandemic. So we got a lot more counselors out of that.

And when you think about it, the job mix is really what the economy demands, what people want. So, yeah, a lot of money came on the table to, tax credits and things like that to put in solar panels. And lo and behold, big jump from 2019 to 2022 in the number of solar voltaic installers. What does all this mean for the Fed? So I think two things. It's kind of like bittersweet in a sense, I think. In terms of an immediate policy consideration, the fact that the economy is still spitting out 339,000 jobs a month with wages at what, 4.4 or 4.5% a year growing that way. It means they are.

are not there yet in terms of the loosening they need to see. I think if you look at J. Powell's rhetoric back in 2020, he loved that labor market. They all love that labor market. They wanted to get back to it. And arguably, they have, today's conditions are better than or as good as back then, for the most part. But now they have to kind of crack it open a little bit. And I think that's what they're struggling with right now is how far and how fast and how deep does the slowdown in labor and jobs and hiring have to get to bring down inflation. So for anyone out there who might be considering a career change or who's actually starting out in their career, what does this data tell us?

Where should they be focused on? If you're not interested in becoming a chatbot coder or a chatbot best friend, then skilled trades certainly, something that also isn't going to go away anytime soon. Healthcare, not going to go away anytime soon. What the next big thing is out there for someone who's mid-career and worried about a white-collar job getting roboted away? Ah, man, that's a roughie. It was quite the weekend of football in Europe,

Manchester City winning its first UEFA Champions League. But in the German town of Bork, they have a weightier title to consider. Forget UEFA. How about UFL? That's the German soccer league specifically for overweight players. There are six clubs taking part so far, including the heavy kickers of Bork, that you can hear training behind.

behind me. Games are played with seven players and a goalkeeper, and each half lasts just 35 minutes rather than the standard 45. Heavy kickers also have a rule that the BMI of any new player must be over 31, but if they lose weight as they play, they can stay on the team. Manager Mike Krause says it's important for everyone to have a chance to play. That's it for this edition of Reuters World News. We'll be back tomorrow. To make sure you know know what's going on in the world, don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast player or download the Reuters app.