Reuters World News - US-Iran detainee swap, China's disappearing leaders and Ukraine and Russia face off at Hague

Episode Date: September 18, 2023

Five Americans are expected to be freed today in a swap deal with Iran. The disappearance of China's defence minister is the latest in a string of upheavals in the country's top ranks. What does it all mean for President Xi Jinping's rule? Russia goes head to head with Ukraine at the U.N.'s highest court. Plus, desperate homeowners in China resort to desperate measures and Drew Barrymore backtracks. 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, Russia and Ukraine go head to head at the Hague, why China's disappearing top brass is becoming a diplomatic liability for Xi Jinping, and the real-life liability of China's property crisis. We visit an unfinished apartment complex where desperate owners live among bags of cement and broken wires. It's Monday, September 18th. This is Reuters World News, with everything you need to know, from the front lines in 10 minutes every weekday. I'm Kim Vinal in London.

First, the headlines making news around the world. Five Americans jailed in Iran are expected to fly home today as part of a swap deal between Washington and Tehran. The agreement involves Iran releasing the five Americans who also hold Iranian passports in exchange for five Iranians held in the United States. The deal removes a major source. of friction between the US and its old adversary, Tehran.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has vowed to crack down on people smuggling during a visit to the Italian island of Lampedusa. I came here to say to all of you, again, migration is a European challenge and it needs a European answer and solution. More than 7,000 migrants arrived on Lampedusa last week, more than the island's permanent population. Britain's BBC says it's urgently looking into issues raised by allegations of sexual assault made against British comedian and actor Russell Brand. Brand, who denies the accusations, worked on BBC radio programs between 2006 and 2008.

I deeply apologize to writers. I deeply apologize to unions. Drew Barry Moore has dropped plans to bring back her daytime talk show while strikes in Hollywood continue. The proposed return of the Drew Barrymore show drew picket is from the striking writers and actors unions when taping resumed last week. A letter found in the Vatican archives complicates the narrative around what the Holy Sea knew about the Holocaust and when.

According to the typewritten letter, Pope Pius X. new details about the Nazi attempt to exterminate Jews as early as 1942. That conflicts with the Holy See's official position at the time that the information it had was vague and unverified. It's time for markets now with Carmel Crimmons. Carmel, what are we looking at this week? A central bank bonanza. We have the Fed on Wednesday, that's the biggest one to watch.

But Thursday has a whole roster of monetary authorities meeting. The UK, Switzerland, Sweden, Turkey, just some of the... the country's in focus. And the Bank of Japan rounds things off on Friday. So what can we expect? The Fed is widely expected to keep rates steady, but a hawkish tone from Fed Chair Jerome Powell could hurt stock prices. The Bank of Japan is a wildcard this week. Markets are looking for any sign that the BOJ could be moving away from its ultra-loose monetary policy faster than previously thought. Governor Wade made some hawkish comments recently that have pushed up the yen and bond yields. Russia and Ukraine square off today before the

International Court of Justice. Moscow is objecting to a case Kiev brought to the United Nations highest court just days after the invasion last year. Kiev argues Russia is abusing international law by saying the invasion was justified to prevent an alleged genocide in eastern Ukraine. Stephanie Vanderberg covers the Hague. Stephanie, can you explain the case a bit? What are the legal arguments here? Well, what happened is when Russia invaded Ukraine, Putin gave a speech where he basically said that he needed to invade Ukraine to stop genocide in eastern Ukraine. Now, Russia and Ukraine both signed the genocide convention and the legal argument Ukraine is making is that Russia couldn't invoke genocide as a legitimate reason to invade Ukraine. Obviously, the Ukrainians say that genocide wasn't happening in eastern Ukraine at the moment, but also the very pure legal argument is that. is that even if that was happening, the genocide convention does not actually provide a basis for an invasion if genocide happens. And this case is then Russia saying the court shouldn't look into it because it doesn't have

jurisdiction. So they say Ukraine is using a kind of legal loophole to get a verdict on the invasion as a whole. But there's actually not a court that can prosecute that. What power does the Hague have over Russia? The court has at the same time a lot of power and very little. It is literally the institute that makes international law and its rulings are final and without appeal and basically kind of everybody should follow them. However, they have no way of enforcing it. So why then is this case important? It's not like Russia is listening to international guidance on its invasion.

Well, they're not listening to international guidance at the moment, but these cases This take many years, usually to come to an end and governments change. And if this court eventually decides in favor of Ukraine, it paves the way for a case that would possibly see Russia pay damages to Ukraine for the invasion. Dozens of home buyers in an unfinished complex in Tongtuan city, northwestern China, shout, we want our house. Some say they've been waiting eight years for their homes to be completed. and now they've moved in anyway, either out of necessity or to draw attention to the problem.

It's part of a nationwide campaign to pressure authorities to deal with so-called rotting homes, the legacy of a real estate boom turned bust. Laurie Chen is in Beijing. So, Laurie, can you just describe these unfinished properties? What do they like? You see several very tall, very tall. abandoned blocks in front of you. The exterior is finished and the windows are installed and there's exterior painting stuff. But as soon as you go inside, it's really, really dark and there are bags

of cement on the floor. There's layers of dust and gravel on the floor. There's no electricity. There's like broken electrical wires on the floor. And for the beds, that is just two blocks of concrete and a piece of plywood and a small mattress. What hopes do the homeowners have of getting them fixed or finished. The reason they moved in is because they're so desperate and they feel like they have no other resort, but to live there in these awful conditions and kind of post about it on social media hoping that they would attract the notice of the local government so they could do something about it. But the developer of this project, they can't get hold of them at all. The developer could not be reached for comment. Tongtuan's city government and China's

housing ministry did not immediately respond to a request for their comment. As China grapples with its property crisis, its leaders are going MIA. Defense Minister Li Shang Fu has not been seen since late August, and the country's foreign minister, Zhenggang, vanished with little explanation in July. Don Durfey covers foreign policy. Don, first off, why did China's top brass keep vanishing? So we don't know for sure. China has said very little about this, and in truth, it's what happens in the senior leadership

is really a black boxed outsiders. But the best bet is that this is related to corruption. We reported last week that Li Shangfu, the defense minister, was under investigation for corruption related to procurement of defense equipment. Xi Jinping has had a really aggressive crackdown on corruption underway for about 10 years, and a lot of the officials that have been removed have been taken away for that purpose. From one perspective is a good thing, right? You want to get rid of corruption in any kind of society. Inevitably, it's always used for two purposes. One is to actually get rid of corruption. The other is to remove your political rivals.

Experts say this is becoming something of a diplomatic hazard for China. Why is that? So there's a couple of reasons. So one thing is that if you are a diplomat and the people that you work with on the Chinese side, and have spent time building up relationships with and communications, if you know that those people can suddenly disappear, it really undermines your ability to get things done and your confidence that you're talking to the right people. Another thing that analysts worry about is military communications. China's never been enthusiastic about communicating with other countries, especially the United States about its military actions or intentions. But there's real worry, especially as China gets more aggressive in the East China Sea around Japan

and the South China Sea around the Sproutly Islands and some of China's neighbors, there's real worry that there's going to be some sort of an accident. And if you don't have good military communications, things can really spiral out of control quickly. That's it for today's episode of Reuters World News. We'll be back with our daily headline show on Tuesday. To make sure you know what's going on in your world, listen in for 10 minutes every weekday.

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