Reuters World News - What’s next for Trump and crypto’s uncertain future

Episode Date: June 9, 2023

More legal woes for Donald Trump after he's indicted on federal criminal charges for retaining classified documents. A regulatory clampdown is reshaping the future of crypto and how space messes with astronauts’ brains. Plus the latest on Kherson, Canada and a bull market. 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, Donald Trump is indicted over the handling of classified documents. Russia shells the flooded Kherson. The future of crypto is reshaped by a US regulatory clampdown and how space is messing with astronauts' brains. It's Friday, June 9th. 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.

I'm an innocent man. I'm an innocent person. Donald Trump has been indicted for retaining classified government documents after leaving the White House. He's the first former president to face federal charges and also the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination next year. Jack Queen in New York has the latest. So the next step is going to be Mr. Trump's first court appearance in Miami federal court. and that's going to happen on Tuesday. And we're not certain that that's going to be an arraignment,

but it most likely will. And that is going to be prosecutors explaining the charges to a judge, and that will probably be when the indictment is actually unsealed. What exactly has he been charged with? Mr. Trump's attorney has said that he has been charged with violations of the Espionage Act, which is the most important one, also obstruction of justice, and making false statements to investigators as well as conspiracy counts. We know it's a seven-count indictment, but we don't know the exact breakdown yet because we haven't

seen it. That document remains under seal and probably will remain under seal until Mr. Trump's arraignment. How significant is it that the case is going to be heard in Miami? It's important to note that the judges are very, very careful and so are the lawyers on both sides, too, to ensure that they get an impartial jury pool. So even though the jurors are going to be coming from a very red state and from where Mr. Trump lives, we wouldn't expect for that to be an issue for prosecutors. What about the political consequences?

The interesting thing about Donald Trump is that he has an ability to weather scandals in a way that other politicians can't. We saw an example of this when he was indicted in New York a couple of months ago for, allegedly falsifying business records about hush money payments he made to a porn star. And he actually saw his poll numbers rise after that indictment. And he was using it in campaign fundraising emails. And his campaign said that they actually saw a spike in donations after that indictment. And now let's take a look at the rest of the headlines making news around the world. Ukrainians paddle and wade their way out of flooded villages in Horson

after the destruction of the Novakakova Dam. Evacuation efforts have been hampered by Russian shelling. Artillery fire wounded several people as rescue workers and rubber dinghies tried to save families and pets. The floodwaters are peaking, and so is the humanitarian crisis. The Supreme Court handed a victory to black voters in Alabama,

giving a major boost to a bedrock civil rights law. The court's surprise ruling buttresses the power of the 1965 Voters Rights Act, which had seen protections rolled back in prior decisions. Conservative justices John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh sided with liberal judges in saying that Republican redistricting racially discriminated against black voters. Thousands of people have been evacuated from high-rise apartment buildings in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin, after large cracks appeared on nearby streets.

Geological experts said the fissures were likely caused by underground cavities. Building safety is a huge issue in China, with the government handing out hefty punishments for lax management of properties. International help is rolling into Canada to help battle hundreds of blazers still raging across the country. As a haze billows across the US, Canada's allies, including President Biden, have promised help is on the way. It's time for markets now with Carmel Crimmons.

And Carmel, we're technically in a bull market now. We are, according to some people's definition. But the issue is, Kim, there is no official or standard agreement on what is a bull market. So some people think that if it's 20% above a low, that's a bull market. And that's actually where the S&P is right now. 20% below, some people think that's a bear market. But who knows? And there's a lot of uncertainties going on right now. Of course, we have a, we have the Fed coming next week, and a lot depends on where the interest rate cycle goes. U.S. regulators are clamping down hard on the crypto sector.

If the SEC prevails, then an industry that has grown fat in an unregulated business environment could be in for some lean times. Tom Wilson, in London covers all things crypto. So Tom, this is a huge upset, right? How consequential is this? So these two lawsuits by the SEC against Binance and Coinbase, two of the biggest crypto exchanges out there, are going to be extremely consequential for the wider cryptocurrency industry.

Many cryptocurrencies, that means Bitcoin, Ether, XRP, other tokens. It's still not exactly clear under US law whether these are securities, whether they're commodities. The SEC has said this week that many of the tokens listed for sale on these exchanges are indeed securities. If eventually the US court agrees with the SEC that they are securities,

this is going to have an extremely big impact on how cryptocurrency companies operate in the US. So what's next then for crypto? Crypto at the moment has been at somewhat of an inflection point across the world anyway. some large economies such as the European Union are bringing in broad cryptocurrency-based rules. The UK is doing that too. So the SEC's lawsuit, how this pans out is really going to have a big impact on the development

of the crypto industry in the US especially. If the SEC wins in its lawsuit, it's going to make it much more difficult for cryptocurrency, investors, traders, even businesses to operate in the United States as they have been until today. Cryptoskeptics have said from the start, look, this whole thing is going to die out, this won't last. Is there any chance this could just be the end? The US is one of the world's most influential financial sectors, and that means the rest of the world tends to follow the US. So if crypto becomes more difficult to operate in the US, we might see other major industrialised democracies, especially following a similar route. Space is messing with

astronauts' brains. A new NASA-funded study examined exactly what happens physiologically when astronauts are in space. Will Dunham, our science guy in Washington, D.C., took a look at the findings. So, Will, what is actually happening to the brains of astronauts? What the researchers found is that astronauts who went into space for a certain period of time ended up with significant expansion of something called cerebral ventricles. And those are channels within the brain that contain an important fluid. And that's called cerebrospinal fluid.

The reason that fluid is important is that it acts to cushion the brain from sudden impact, and it also takes out waste matter from the brain. When you're in space, all of a sudden you have a lack of gravity. gravity and what that does is your brain actually is moving up in the skull. And as a result of that, you've got changes in these channels and everything is sort of, as I put in my headline, it mess with the brain. What do these brain changes actually mean for the person experiencing them? Like, can they tell something is going on? So right now, the researchers are looking to that very question. At the time it's occurring, they are not noticing any cognitive changes. The question is, what is the long-term

effect of having this ventricular expansion? The closest analogy on Earth is what has been observed in the elderly. So there's something called age-related ventricular enlargement. That's not caused by microgravity. That's caused by brain atrophy with age. And that has been associated with cognitive decline. So that's the concern. There is no evidence of that right now in the space travelers, but the researchers are saying that they're going to need more data points and to track this into the future. That's it for this edition of Reuters World News. We'll be back at the weekend with a special episode about Kosovo. To make sure you know what's going on in the world, don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast player or download

the Reuters app.