Reuters World News - US shutdown looms, Travis King back in the US and weight-loss drugs scrutinized

Episode Date: September 28, 2023

The United States is heading towards a partial government shutdown after Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy rejected a stopgap funding bill. What does gridlock in DC mean for the rest of the world? Private Travis King is back in the United States after being expelled from North Korea. New weight-loss drugs including Wegovy are facing regulatory scrutiny over reports of suicidal thoughts. Plus, the Republican debate, Meta’s celebrity-inspired chatbots and a year in space. 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, a 23-year-old U.S. soldier is back home after trying to defect to North Korea. Five members of the same family are shot dead in northern Israel. How Gridlock in D.C. could take its toll on the rest of the world. And regulators examine complaints about weight loss drugs and suicidal thoughts. It's Thursday, September 28th. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, every weekday. I'm Carmel Crimmons in Dublin. And I'm Christopher Walgesper in Chicago.

We start with breaking news in Israel, where an Arab family of five has been shot dead in their home. The killing the latest in a wave of crime and murders in the Arab community that has reached a new peak this year. Arab mayors have accused the government and police of ignoring the bloodshed and deliberately neglecting their neighborhoods. The country's far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Givir, has rejected the accusations.

Donald Trump looked to be the winner in last night's Republican debate. He once again skipped the chance to spar with party rivals, but none of his seven challengers secured a breakout moment to upend the former president's lead. House Republicans hold their first hearing today in an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. The hearing seeks to tie Biden to his son Hunter's foreign business dealings. The White House says Biden has done nothing wrong and Republicans have no basis for an impeachment inquiry. Meta is launching new AI-powered personal assistance. based on celebrities. The chatbots include Snoop Dog as Dungeon Master, who helps with adventure games,

and Roy Choi as Max, a sous chef. Here's Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg talking up their skills. Yes, if you want to find a way to sneak some broccoli into your kids' dinner, Max has got you. It's time now for markets, and China heads off for a week-long public holiday with the future of China Evergrand Group hanging in the balance. Its shares have been suspended after a report that its chairman had been placed under police. police watch. Broiders couldn't immediately verify that report, but it certainly adds to the company's woes. This is the world's most indebted property developer with more than $300 billion in liabilities. That's roughly the size of Finland's annual economic output. And Evergrand's plan to restructure those liabilities is stuck. It's saying it can't issue more debt because of an investigation

into its main domestic business. That's roiling markets and raising the risk of liquidation. The soldier who wandered over the DMZ line to defect North Korea is back in the United States. White House reporter Trevor Honeycutt is in D.C. with the latest on private Travis King. Trevor, what do we know? So this was a huge surprise and a huge operation here by the United States government working indirectly to come to an agreement essentially with the North Koreans, which is something that hasn't happened in years. So that's pretty important to take a note of. What we know now is that, that Swedish officials helped the United States get their army private out of North Korean territory.

The Swedish government took custody of Private King in North Korea, brought him across the border with China, where U.S. officials received him, brought him to a military installation in the region. And so this is a huge kind of diplomatic coup considering the fact that the United States and North Korea have extremely frosty relations right now. So what happens now to Private King? So before Private King fled into North Korea, he was facing some disciplinary issues with the U.S. Army. He had already had two allegations of assault during his time serving in South Korea, including pleading guilty to an instance of assault and destroying public property. And so it's clear that there are going to be some administrative actions that are probably going to be taken against this army private. But a U.S. military official tells us that they are going to be going to let him get reintegrated first, give him a few weeks perhaps to talk to his family and get on what they said is solid footing before they take a look at what they're going to do

in terms of any administrative action or potential court-martial. Congress has just three days to fund the government before it shuts down, which looks at the moment increasingly unlikely. The deadline's not yet, and we'll work it. We'll work late into the night. But we've watched what's gone on. Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is facing resistance from hardline members of his own party who rejected a spending deal he negotiated with Biden in May. A handful of them have also threatened to remove him as Speaker if he passes a spending bill that requires any Democratic votes to pass.

Andy Sullivan is in Washington, D.C. Andy, what's going on here? So Republicans in the House of Representatives think the government's spending too much money, They think we're racking up too much debt. And so they're pushing for really dramatic spending costs to a wide range of government programs. And that's below the level that they agreed to with Biden this spring. They're also saying we need to really tighten up our immigration policies. And so they're threatening to not pass any government funding at all if they don't get those things. So border security is a big sticking point.

But so is funding Ukraine's defenses. So there's a number of balls in the air here. One of them is funding for Ukraine. President Biden has asked Congress for more money to help Ukraine fight Russia. A lot of House Republicans are saying, look, we spend enough, we don't want to spend any more money on this war. What does it have to do with us? They have enough money to carry them through for the next 45 days in Ukraine. But why does that take presidents over what's happening on the border?

The Senate has attached $6 billion in aid for Ukraine. They want to pass that along with a... temporary spending bill. A lot of Republicans are not going to like that over in the House, so we don't know at this point how that's going to play out, but it is one of the issues. A warning that some listeners may find this next segment upsetting. A handful of drugs that can produce dramatic weight loss have skyrocketed in popularity in recent years. But with them comes new complaints about people experiencing suicidal thinking and behavior. Regulators are now asking whether these could be side effects of the drugs.

Health care reporter Robin Respaux in San Francisco spent time with some of the people taking these medications and filed this report. Don Heidelbaugh is a 53-year-old Ohio real estate agent. Don took Ozempic, which is a weekly shot to control her pre-diabetes. When she took her Ozempic shot every Sunday, she began to notice a disturbing pattern. But I knew by Tuesday that I would be laying on the couch and just very listening. She would have suicidal thoughts and really disturbing feelings, dark feelings. I remember driving in the car and I would remember thinking to myself, my family would be so much better off without me because I was so, just so depressed.

And she would say that by Thursday, generally those feelings would lift and by Friday, she would be back to her normal self. And then on Sunday, she would take the shot again. We analyzed FDA adverse event reports and found more than 250 patients or their providers describing suicidal thoughts or behaviors while taking either Ozempic, Wagovi, or similar medicines. So Novo Nordus, the maker of Ozempic and Wagovi, told us in a statement that they are monitoring these reports and they remain confident in the benefit risk profile of these therapies and that it's, their own safety monitoring has found no causal association between the drugs and thoughts of self-harm. In July, European and UK health regulators announced they were initiating safety reviews of these drugs. As far as the FDA, the regulator in the U.S., the FDA told Reuters that it is evaluating these adverse event reports and will decide on what action, if any, to take after doing a thorough review.

OZempec was first approved as a diabetes drug, but doctors and patients noticed it also produced weight loss. Wagovi uses the same active ingredient in a higher dose and is FDA approved specifically for weight loss. Touchdown. Touchdown confirmed at 6.17 a.m. Central time. U.S. astronaut Frank Rubio and two Russian cosmonauts landed in Kazakhstan on Wednesday after more than a year on the International Space Station. Rubio broke the record for the longest continuous spaceflight by an American. Fantastic. Yeah, everybody did really well. You looked very well. Thank you.

That's good to be home. The three men are six months late to return because their original spacecraft sprang a leak. A replacement had to be sent up to get them back, which unexpectedly extended the mission. Rubio, a married father of four, said he'd have turned down the mission if he'd known it would go on so long. but he felt honored and looks forward to the quiet of his backyard. That's it for today's episode of Reuters World News. We'll be back on Friday with our daily news show. 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 favorite podcast player or download the Reuters app.