Trudeau’s exit, Musk v Starmer, Nvidia’s new tech and Biden’s drilling ban
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Today, Justin Trudeau blames infighting for his resignation. Elon Musk puts Britain's PM on the defensive. Nvidia's stock surges as it unveils new video game chips. And we look at the impact of Biden's oil and gas drilling ban.

It's Tuesday, January 7th. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the frontlines in 10 minutes every weekday. I'm David Spencer in London. And I'm Jonah Green in New York.

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This country deserves a real choice in the next election and it has become clear to me that if I'm having to fight internal battles, I cannot be the best option in that election.

Canada's Justin Trudeau announcing, as expected, that he is stepping down as Prime Minister. In a subdued statement outside his home in Ottawa, he has also announced that Parliament will be suspended until March 24 as Canada prepares for an election that must be held by October.

Trudeau's former finance minister Chrystia Freeland, who quit the government last month, and former central banker Mark Carney were among those being touted as replacements. A powerful earthquake has hit close to one of Tibet's most sacred cities, with the epicenter around 50 miles north of Mount Everest. Dozens of people have been killed, and tremors were also felt in Nepal, Bhutan, and northern India.

Louisiana has reported the first bird flu-related death in the United States. The patient, who was over 65 with underlying health conditions, was hospitalized with the H5N1 virus in mid-December.

Rudy Giuliani has been found in contempt of court for failing to provide information to two Georgia election workers who he accused of trying to help steal the 2020 election for Joe Biden. The missing information could determine which of his assets can be turned over to pay off their $148 million defamation judgments.

Over the last few weeks, Elon Musk has been wading into European and particularly British politics. His recent criticism of Prime Minister Keir Starmer has been about when he was Britain's top prosecutor, with Musk claiming that Starmer had failed to prosecute gangs who sexually abused girls when he was in the role. Musk's criticism has placed the scandal from over a decade ago back in the spotlight and put the PM on the defensive.

Elizabeth Piper is our UK political editor. So, Liz, we in the US have become quite familiar with Musk as a potent political force. What's been his effect on British politics? Well, he's enabled some of the opposition parties to really intensify their criticism of Starmer, who, since winning the election in July, has had a bit of a rocky ride. What are some of the things that you've noticed about him?

What are Musk's main critiques here? It does seem to be his main interest at the moment is immigration and multiculturalism. I don't want to put words into his mouth. I haven't interviewed him. But he does seem to feel that Britain has failed in multiculturalism by not calling out instances such as the sexual abuse scandal, which dates back actually to 1997.

when men mostly of a South Asian background were found guilty of systematically grooming and then raping young girls in parts of Northern England. On the question of Elon Musk, look...

Starmer has been trying not to engage directly with Elon Musk at all. But on Monday, it was clear he was incredibly angry that Musk had brought into doubt his time as the director of public prosecutions, which basically is Britain's top prosecutor. And he was that between 2008 and 2013.

which overlapped with some of these cases. And he used a press conference when he was meant to be talking about the health service to actually address this criticism head on. Those that are spreading lies and misinformation as far and as wide as possible, they're not interested in victims. They're interested in themselves.

It was very interesting to see a man who is normally quite placid. He was visibly angry and frustrated that it had come to this point. And if there's one thing the British prime minister is very proud of and continually references is his time as the director of public prosecution. Here it is.

Our brand new GeForce. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang kicking off the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas with a raft of new product announcements. The chipmaker's stock had already hit a fresh all-time high even before Huang spoke. So what did he unveil? Max Czerny is in Las Vegas for CES and has all the details.

Nvidia announced a series of new video game graphics chips that will increase the performance significantly and the new graphics chips will improve the visual quality of images once video game developers start to implement it. Nvidia announced a sort of enterprise AI system that will allow developers to see

simulate the real world when they're teaching robots and autonomous cars how to move around the world and interact with the world more effectively. The idea being if NVIDIA can successfully simulate the real world and experience for these robots and autonomous cars, it would avoid the researchers and companies who are working on these problems from driving millions and millions of real world miles and potentially damaging or breaking expensive robots

What else can we expect from CES this week, Max? Well, as usual, bigger televisions. It's kind of a little bit of a joke at this point, but every TV maker like Samsung and LG, they all show off the latest and greatest TVs. And CES has become probably the largest auto show in the United States at this point. And so every major automaker will show off some new prototypes or capabilities in existing vehicles and so on.

And if you're interested in AI and what the future might hold for us humans as the robots get smarter, do check out an earlier episode of our Econ World podcast. We'll put a link to that show in the description of today's pod. President Joe Biden is banning new offshore oil and gas development along most U.S. coastlines.

The move is mostly symbolic as it covers areas where our drillers don't have significant prospects, including the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. However, it could block any moves by the Trump administration to expand offshore drilling.

Reporter Nicola Groom has been looking into the impact of the ban. This will affect 625 million acres of ocean and will effectively ban offshore drilling on the entire East Coast and the West Coast, in addition to a couple of other areas as well. These are not areas where offshore drilling is happening right now.

And they're not really areas with high potential for oil production, and they're not areas that the industry is actively seeking to lease or drill on currently. But it does mean that these areas will be off limits in the future. And so what might Trump do or what can he do?

Well, he came out quickly after the announcement was made and called it ridiculous and said he would, quote unquote, unban it immediately. But it's not going to be that easy for him to do that. The law that gives presidents the authority to withdraw areas from offshore drilling is a 70-year-old law and it's

It was tested a few years ago, actually, by President Trump himself. Former President Barack Obama had withdrawn some areas right before the end of his presidency, and Trump tried to reverse that when he came into office. And...

A federal judge in 2019 said no, that the same law that gives presidents the authority to withdraw portions of the ocean from offshore drilling does not expressly give them the authority to reverse those decisions by their predecessors. So it would likely take an act of Congress to reverse this decision by Biden. So it's unclear whether Trump himself could do very much.

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And for today's recommended read, we're looking at housing in Hong Kong and the tiny and cramped properties people are living in due to sky-high prices, where four families might share a single toilet and kitchen. A link to the story and an incredible set of photos is in today's pod description. For more on any of the stories from today, check out Reuters.com or the Reuters app. Don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast player.

We'll be back tomorrow with our daily headline show.