Floridians evacuate or hunker down ahead of Hurricane Milton. China imposes temporary anti-dumping measures on imports of European brandy, after the EU's tariffs on Chinese EVs. Hezbollah officials drop a Gaza truce condition for reaching a ceasefire in Lebanon. And a Virginia congressional candidate keen to debate has created an AI chatbot to stand in for the incumbent - as a Nobel prize winner for physics cautions of the dangers possible from the artificial intelligence he helped create.
Sign up for the Reuters Econ World newsletter here.
Listen to the Reuters Econ World podcast here.
Find the Recommended Read here.
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, Floridians evacuate as a monster storm barrels toward the coast. Beijing slaps tariffs on European brandy in response to Texas on Chinese EVs, and a congressional candidate creates an AI chatbot to stand in for his opponent at a debate. It's Wednesday, October 9th. It's Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in ten minutes, every weekday. I'm Sharon Reisch-Garson in New Jersey, and I'm Tara Oakes in Liverpool. Don't freak out, but monster tacos are back at Jack in the Box. Classic monster tacos are back with a crunchy, cheesy vengeance, and you can get two for three dollars, or try the new three-dollar mummy-wrapped monster taco. Loaded with nacho cheese and bacon wrapped in a soft flour tortilla. Kinda makes you wish all mummies were this delicious, and cheesy. Order now at Jack in the Box. Residents of Florida's Gulf Coast are racing against the clock to clean up debris and evacuate before Hurricane Milton hits later tonight. The monster storm is forecast to slam the Tampa Bay Area, where more than one million people have been ordered to evacuate. Scott Pepperman and his partner Sandra White are cleaning up debris from their yard, left over from Helene. "So all this is going to be pretty much missiles coming through, if it's the amount of wind that's going through with this hurricane coming in, it's going to, I'm not staying for this." Ahead of the next storm, they're gathering personal belongings before evacuating. "So God, did you give us a second chance to get a lot of these photos and things out of here?" Our video producer Julio Cesar Chavez is in the path of a storm. "I'm in Tampa Florida right now, and the effects of Hurricane Milton are starting to be seen. Not in the weather just yet, but driving around and interviewing people. At Home Depot, people are grabbing all the plywood that they can in order to board up their houses, and at just one block away from that same hardware store, there are cars lined up around the block, hoping to fill up their gas tanks, and make sure that they can join the thousands that are driving out of Tampa into safer areas." The roads leading out of Tampa have been choked with bumper-to-bumper traffic. Motorists waiting to fill their tanks in lines snaking around gas stations have found that some were out of fuel. U.S. President Joe Biden has urged residents to heed evacuation orders, calling it a matter of life and death. "If you're under evacuation orders, you should evacuate now, now, now. You should have already evacuated." In the Middle East, a video message from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the Lebanese people. "We've degraded Hezbollah's capabilities. We took out thousands of terrorists, including Australia himself and Australia's replacement." The Defense Minister Yohov Galant says that Hashhem Safyadim is probably eliminated. He was the man expected to succeed Hezbollah's assassinated leader, Hassan Nasrallah. Netanyahu's message was released hours after Hezbollah left the door open to a negotiated ceasefire. "Lil mukar, mafifu los tien walugnan walmintaka." Hezbollah deputy leader Naim Qasem, saying in a televised speech that Hezbollah would drop a Gaza truce as a condition for a Lebanese ceasefire. It's a row back from the group's promise to keep fighting until Israel halts his offensive against Hamas in Gaza. U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to speak with Netanyahu today. Boeing has halted talks and withdrawn its pay offer to striking union members. Boeing says that no further negotiations are planned with the union reps. TikTok is facing new lawsuits filed by 13 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. Accusing the popular social media platform of harming and failing to protect young people, TikTok said on Tuesday that it strongly disagreed with the claims, calling many of them inaccurate and misleading. The FBI has arrested an Afghan man in Oklahoma for allegedly planning an attack on election day in the name of Islamic State. According to the indictment, the 27-year-old has been living in the United States after entering on a special immigrant visa. The United States is considering a breakup of Google as part of a landmark monopoly case. Kamal Kremens has more. So the Justice Department has told a federal judge it's considering recommending Google be forced to sell off part of its business, including its chrome browser and Android operating system. It's among the proposals the DOJ is looking at. These will be potential remedies for judge Amit Mehta to consider after he ruled in August that Google had built an illegal monopoly in online searches. So what happens next? So the DOJ is expected to file a more detailed proposal with the court by the 20th of November and Google will have a chance to propose its own remedies by the 20th of December. Now, Google has already said it plans to appeal the judge's decision, but it has to wait until he finalizes a remedy before doing so. The company said in a blog post on Tuesday that the proposals from the DOJ were radical and go far beyond the specific legal issues in the case. And if you're interested in markets and the economy, do check out this week's episode of my podcast, Reuters Econ World. It's all about the carry trade and how Japan looms large over world markets. That later today on Reuters.com, the Reuters app, or wherever you get your podcasts. In a sign of rising trade tensions, China is imposing temporary anti-dumping measures on imports of brandy from the European Union. The move comes just days after an EU vote for tariffs hit Chinese-made electric cars. The security deposits will make it more costly up front to import brandy from the EU, hitting French brands like Raimi Martang and Hennessy. Tinting the Ang is a bar owner in Shanghai. If the price really goes up much more, I don't think we can keep on using a very expensive brandy. Greater China bureau chief Kevin Krolliki is following this story. China is trying to signal here they don't want an escalating trade war with Europe. They're looking to try to negotiate some kind of settlement to the issue of EV exports to Europe and really pushing towards some form of trade diplomacy and a solution on that front. Has Beijing indicated what sort of settlement it's hoping to negotiate? What China is proposing and what the EU officials people tell us are considering is some kind of unusual arrangement in which Chinese EV makers would set a floor for pricing. They would promise not to discount below that level in order to avoid tariffs. And we've been told that China had suggested that maybe an appropriate floor would be a close to 33,000 US dollars. The EU rejected that, but these negotiations continue and they're talking about a range closer to $40,000 is kind of a minimum price for EVs and exported to Europe. It's still north of what EVs sell for in China. So there's some profit in it for the Chinese companies and it's still substantially less than the average selling price for an EV now in Europe. So there's a savings potentially for consumers. When we get things more intelligent than ourselves, no one really knows whether we're going to be able to control them. That's scientist Jeffrey Hinton, widely credited as the father of artificial intelligence, warning of the potential dangers of AI just hours after being announced as a co-winner of a 2024 Nobel Prize in physics. Hinton made headlines when he quit his job at Google last year to be able to speak more easily about the dangers of the technology he had pioneered. Really yet? Or think this is all sci-fi? Well, in the US, a software engineer running as an independent for Congress and Virginia's 8th District is already showing how AI can have a role in elections. Bentley Henssel is so determined to face off against democratic incumbent Don Baier that he's created an AI chatbot to stand in for him in a debate. He built the AI chatbot himself without Baier's permission and plans to stream the debate on October 17th. Greg Ben Singer had a chance to ask the Don Baier or candidate GPT as it's known a few questions. The point of creating an AI in a congressional race like this seems to be, in part, really to raise the stakes and also really to get attention for a campaign that is all but decided. This won't fool anyone, this version of it, but what's obvious is that it is headed in the direction of very convincing deep fakes, very convincing likenesses of other people. If that gets better and better, I think people are very likely to fall for it and you can affect the vote in a major way. You can affect policy, you can affect people's opinions. Now, is there any regulation to prevent people from using AI in this way? It's mostly the Wild West right now. There's very little regulation that would stop anyone from deploying AI in this way. Hitting the road this summer? When you download the Fuel Forward app, you save up to 20 cents per gallon on your first fill up at Fill Up 66, Conoco, and 76 stations. Because that's what the app does. A simple, straightforward way to keep you moving forward. Fuel Forward. 20 cents is a combined savings of five cents every day off for gallon plus an extra 50 cents off for gallon for first-time users up to 30 gallons. Offer valid once for a new Fuel Forward app user through 1231-2024 or just fitting locations only. Before we gallop out of here, for today's recommended read, a goodbye. The Singapore Turf Club held its final horse race on Saturday and will hand the land back to the government for housing development. You can read more and see some of the photos in a link in today's description. And for more on any of the stories from today, check out Reuters.com or the Reuters app. To never miss an episode, subscribe on your favorite podcast player. We'll be back tomorrow with our daily headline show. [MUSIC]
