Reuters World News - War resumes, Musk Vs Cybertruck and mystery dog illness

Episode Date: December 1, 2023

Fighting resumes in Gaza as either side blames the other for the collapse of a week-long truce. Elon Musk’s controversies overshadow the long-awaited arrival of the Cybertruck. The Democrats have no Biden backup plan for 2024. If he did have to drop out, what then? Plus, the latest from COP and the mystery illness affecting dogs in the United States. 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, war resumes in Gaza as the truce expires. Elon Musk's controversies overshadow the long-awaited arrival of his sci-fi pickup truck. Democrats have no Biden backup plan for 2024, and the mystery illness striking dogs in the U.S. It's Friday, December 1st. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes. minutes every weekday. I'm Kim Vinal in London. Air raid sirens boom across southern Israel, signaling the end of a week-long truce. Israel resumed its bombardment of Gaza on Friday, after accusing Hamas of breaching the temporary ceasefire. Israel's military said Hamas had fired rockets

at Israel. The Palestinian militant group said Israel was responsible for the resumption of fighting, accusing it of rejecting offers to release more hostages. Gaza's Hamas-controlled health ministry reported 32 people had been killed in airstrikes. Reuters could not independently verify that figure. In Khan Yunus, residents searched through the rubble of their homes. Israel dropped leaflets into the city, urging people to leave. Ummahman Kanenhu survived an airstrike and says she just wants to be. wants to live in safety.

Earlier in Tel Aviv, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said he had urged Israeli leaders to minimize civilian casualties. It's imperative that Israel act in accordance with internationally humanitarian law and the laws of war. That we have been able to achieve such significant milestone in the first day of this cop is unprecedented. UAE's Sultan al-Jabar, celebrating a deal to help the world's poorest countries cope with the cost of climate change at this year's COP summit. The conference has its first full day on Friday with addresses from Britain's King Charles and UN Secretary General Antonio Gutierrez.

We'll have a special podcast episode on the conference this weekend. A New York court has reinstated a gag order on former President Donald Trump. It means that he is once again banned from speaking out against court staff in his ongoing civil fraud trial in New York City. Russia's Supreme Court has declared the LGBT movement an extremist organization. Activists fear the ruling will put gay people at risk of arrest and prosecution for speaking out about discrimination. World stocks have just wrapped up their best month in years, defying the skeptics and fueling hopes of more to come. Is that hope misguided? Here's Kamel Crimmons with more. So Santa Claus has come early for investors, Kim, and they're gearing up for a bright start

to December. They're betting that central bankers will start lowering interest rates. And markets are now pricing a 46% chance of the Fed cutting rates in March. A week ago, that was seen as a 27% chance. Now, a fireside chat with Fed share Jerome Powell later today could spoil the party. Whatever he says or not will sway the markets. The cyber truck, that gleaming, election. electric sci-fi pickup from Tesla is finally being delivered. The future will look like the future.

Elon Musk at its rollout in Texas. The truck is two years behind schedule. The cheapest model costs $61,000 and its debuting as Musk is embroiled in controversy. Akash Riham covers tech and EVs. So Akash, what should we expect from this rollout? Musk in October, he said, CyberTruck has well over a million reservations. Some analysts have begged it to close to two million reservations, but that company can only make about quarter of a million trucks in 2025.

That's what they expect you to make. So if someone's got a reservation, there's probably going to be a really long wait time until they get the truck. That's sure to create a bottleneck of frustration, but why the delay? So the truck has a very radical design, and that is potentially, contributing to some production hurdles, it's probably a little bit difficult to manufacture a vehicle that has just been invented. It's what Tesla calls a new take on the pickup truck segment. The starter price for this truck is 50% more than Musk had touted back in 2019. And its high-performance model, the Cyber Beast, starts at $80,000. This is a niche product, right? It's well-heeled customers are with a pension for early adoption, are the ones who are going to be buying these trucks.

And does Musk's behavior impact Tesla? He cursed out advertisers for his ex-platform this week. He's gotten to a world of trouble over an anti-Semitic tweet. Yes. So Tesla as a company has been suffering from declining demand for some time now. And they had to cut prices quite steeply this year to stoke some demand. and in part the demand decline is because of Musk's behavior. And the cyber truck is expected to create some sort of a halo effect on the rest of the brand, that's Tesla.

And hardcore fans will love the truck. And that might stook some demand for other models that Tesla makes. But probably it's not going to be converting anyone that has been turned off by Musk and his behavior in the past year. President Biden turned 81 last week. But despite weak poll numbers and concerns about his age, he's running full steam ahead. But should that, for whatever reason, no longer be the case, what's the Democratic Party's plan B? Jeff Mason is a White House correspondent. Well, for starters, I think it's really important to underscore that President Biden doesn't plan to drop out.

He's running. He's going to be the nominee, almost certainly, unless there is some sort of a health scare or other unforeseen reason that would prevent him from. continuing with a campaign that he has already launched. But the answer depends a little bit on when he were to drop out. If the president dropped out during the primary race, then other Democrats might still be able to get in and get their names on the ballot and run for the nomination themselves. If he were to drop out after the primary race, which would be in June, then other delegates, or other candidates rather, would fight for delegates to vote for them instead. These would be the delegates that President Biden would have already won by winning the primaries. If he goes to the convention and the president were to drop out, then the delegates at the convention,

which is taking place in August in Chicago, would be free to vote for whichever candidate they wanted. And that would be what's called an open convention. Finally, if he were to drop out after the convention, then the Democratic National Committee would gather and meet and choose another candidate. It all sounds very messy. Are there any backup names being bandied about? Certainly his vice president, Kamala Harris, would run, although she wouldn't automatically get frontrunner status because the rules don't allow that.

But as far as other names, you see a lot from Governor Gavin Newsom of California. So if you were no longer running, then there probably would be a fight because there's not that much unity behind Kamala Harris. So you would see a governor Newsom, you might see a bunch of other candidates from the Senate or other governors or other Democratic leaders throw their hat in the ring. And that would be messy. A mystery respiratory illness is affecting dogs in at least 14 states. Dan Trotter is following the story. Dan, what do we know? This is a respiratory illness, which means that the symptoms are basically coughing.

The problem is this can last like four to six weeks in some cases, or in acute cases, it can last just a day or two and then evolve very quickly into pneumonia. So there's a couple of variations on it. And the main thing is that scientists still don't know what it is. They're calling it atypical disease for lack of a better term. Now, the ban around for several months, but it's only more recently become acute. And the other thing is they really don't know exactly how prevalent it is. It's been found in 14 states, but so far they only have a comprehensive report from Oregon

where they've detected some 200 cases. So it's really still in the early stages, and there's a lot that's not known about it. Do researchers have any idea what's causing it? That also is unknown, whether it's viral or bacterial. There is one lab in New Hampshire that thinks it may be a new bacterium, but they're still not sure. The other side of this is that so far, the disease has not responded well to antibiotics. So it's still in the early stages.

So what should an anxious dog owner do? If your dog is showing symptoms, keep it away from other dogs. And also be very cautious if you are traveling in the holiday season and you want to put your dog in a kennel, that obviously is a good place for the disease to spread. That's it for today's episode of Reuters World News. We'll be back on Monday with our daily headline show. Tune in this weekend for that special pod on the UN Climate Talks. To make sure you know what's going on in the world, listen in for 10 minutes

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