Reuters World News - Why the next pandemic may come from bats

Episode Date: May 16, 2023

Humanity’s intrusion into bat habitats is ramping up the risk of global health disasters. A Reuters investigation identifies the places where disease outbreaks are most likely to occur. Not a wrinkle in sight -- the British skincare company embracing the four-day week. Could it catch on? Plus, Johnny Depp, Ben Affleck and Natalie Portman set to hit the red carpet as Cannes kicks off. 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 Reuters special investigation into whether it's just a matter of time before the next big pandemic from bats. Fewer hours, same pay, more productivity. We visit a business embracing the four-day work week. And all the action from opening day at Kahn. It's Tuesday, May 16th. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes. I'm Kim Vinal in London. The familiar sound of a rocket blast above Kiev, as Russia launches an air attack described by

Ukrainian officials as having exceptional intensity. Ukraine said it shot down all 18 of the missiles launched by Moscow on Monday night, including six hypersonic missiles, a super weapon Moscow has described as unstoppable. And now to the other headlines making news around the world. The FBI has been strongly criticized for its investigation into Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. Special Counsel John Durham's long-awaited report says the FBI lacked actual evidence when it looked into potential links between the campaign and Russia. Florida Governor Ronda Santis has signed into law a bill which bans tax dollars being used in state colleges for diversity, equity and inclusion programs. He's criticized the programs for increasing discrimination. The law also places new restrictions

on classroom discussions on race. At least six people have died in a hostile fire in New Zealand. Eleven people are still missing. An investigation into the cause of the fire in the 92-room building in Wellington is underway. Now to tell us what's going on in the markets, we have Carmel Crimmons. Hey, Kamel. Hey Kim. What's going on today? Well, there's a lot going on about the debt ceiling. Joe Biden is meeting congressional leaders later today, but I'm kind of sick of talking about the debt ceiling. Can I talk about something else? Can I talk about meme coins? I get it. Yes, you can. Please go ahead. Okay. So, meme coins are the highly speculative end of crypto, if you can actually imagine that. So they have no practical use whatsoever. This is pure gambling. Anyway, they're back in the spotlight because the latest meme coin, Pepe, hit the market last month. It's inspired by an internet meme character, Pepe the Frog, and its website says that it is completely useless and for entertainment purposes only. So, investors have been warned. So how do Pepe do? It left 7,000% in price in the first 17 days, hitting a record high over $1.6 billion. Now, it's down 60% from its May 5 peak, but it still has

a market cap of nearly $740 million. And its daily trading volume actually exceeds that of bigger meme coins like Dogecoin and Sheba, which you may remember, started out as internet jokes referencing a Japanese dog breed. I do remember very well. Yeah. I forget. You know what my colleagues who cover crypto say about all this, Kim? You tell me.

Every frog has its day. Oh, Carmel, that's awful. We'll leave it there. Thank you. You've got to love that Monday to Thursday grind, am I right? The four-day working week is gaining momentum, with businesses keen to tackle slowing productivity in Western economies. Here in Britain, the workforce is still slightly smaller than before the pandemic, and job vacancies are a third higher.

Some companies who've tried the four-day week say it's increased pressure. But Reuters-Sera Young reports from Five Squirrel's Skin Care to find out how for them, working less means increased productivity. These industrial machines are mixing together different chemicals and formulas to make face-creas. and syrums and sun cream and all the different things that they sell here. But the machines only work four days a week. On a Friday, everything is switched off. No one answers the phone and all the employees have the day off. Shifting to a four day week at five squirrels required a lot of changes to be made.

They had to become much more strict about their scheduling and people would only do one time. only do one type of job in one period of time. So instead of switching between labelling bottles and packing boxes, they would only do labelling for two hours, and then they would pack all the boxes. And they found that by dividing the jobs up in that way, it made them much more productive.

By only working four days a week, the owner, Gary, says his staff is so much more energized, that there have been many, many fewer mistakes made with orders and different labelling issues, that that has been part of the rise in productivity. They used to spend a lot more time fixing mistakes because people were tired. And he says those mistakes just don't get made anymore. Actually, people were smashing through their targets and they were getting much, much higher. Overall, we had a 40% increase in all the metrics that we were measuring.

I'm Sarah Young reporting for Reuters from Hove on the south coast of England. Last week, the US ended its COVID-19 emergency declaration. China has loosened its restrictions as well, and many have settled into a, quote, new normal. But a team of Reuters journalists has been looking ahead to the next possible pandemic. Our reporter Deb Nelson explains how the next pandemic could be around the corner. It all starts with bats. They are crucial to the global ecosystem

and in many local economies because they pollinate flowers, scatter seeds, eat insects. But they also harbor tens of thousands of viruses. For millennia, they and their viruses weren't a danger to anybody. But in the last century, we're cutting down trees to dig mines, to raise crops, to harvest timber. that disrupts the bats, and it brings them into closer contact with people.

Then some of these viruses can make the leap, the humans. It's how pandemics can start, and it's what keeps scientists up at night. Even though they are relatively rare events, we're talking about highly deadly pathogens that the World Health Organization says under the right circumstances could set off an outbreak that kills thousands, even millions. So we set out to identify the places on Earth where spillovers, those leaps, are the most likely to happen. We found about 1.8 billion people live in those areas. And the risky areas, which we are calling jump zones, are expanding in some really densely populated areas like India.

I talked to a man in Kerala who lost two brothers, his father, and other family members to Nipa. They think one of the brothers may have inadvertently eaten fruit that had been. contaminated by bat saliva. NEPA is a virus carried by flying foxes. They're huge bats with dog faces. They shed the virus as they fly, eat fruit, and drop it on the ground. The first known cases came from pigs who had eaten bat-contaminated fruit in Malaysia. And Bina George, the Nkirala health minister, told me just how dangerous an infection can be. The fatality rate in the liquor is very high. It's from 70 to 100 percent. And the transmission rate from human to human, it's also very high. It's multiple times more than COVID. So these things are also happening in West Africa,

developing areas that are rich in natural resources. And those resources often are heavily exploited by governments and people to raise living standards and companies to raise profits. They're mining gold and iron ore and bauxite and growing cocoa and harvesting timber to grow economically. But that very activity disrupts bats and incredibly deadly viruses like Ebola and Marburg are cropping up in places they've never appeared before. We had a finance minister in Liberia tell us that talking about disease risk assessments scares away investors. Meanwhile, there have been seven new outbreaks of Ebola and Marburg in West Africa since 2020. So today these viruses represent biological minefield in 113 countries, every continent except Antarctica.

Scientists fear that it's just a matter of time before one sets off the next pandemic. Now, are you red carpet ready? It's opening day at the Cannes Film Festival. 21 films are in consideration for the prestigious Palm de Orr with a record seven female directors in competition. Reuters Mindy Barrow's, told us the ones to watch.

This year's CAM film festival is set to be super busy with stars like Johnny Depp, Natalie Portman and Ben Affleck descending on the red carpet from Tuesday. Some of the action-packed Fortnite's highlights will include Harrison Ford's return to the role of Indiana Jones in The Dial of Destiny, 15 years after the last film in the franchise, and Martin Scorsese star-studded Killers of the Flower Moon, which includes Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert DeNiro among the cast. Also premiering in Cannes is TV drama The Idol,

written by the weekend and directed by Sam Levinson, with Lily Rose Depp stepping into the lead role. All that is if they managed to keep the lights on, of course. France's CGT Power Union has threatened to cut electricity to the festival as part of ongoing protests against Emmanuel Macron's pension reforms. Zutalor! And that's it for this edition of Reuters World News. We'll be back tomorrow.

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