Reuters World News - AI leaders divided, Kennedy Center, Montana and Lebanon

Episode Date: September 16, 2026

Top AI leaders are split over how fast to push development as safety fears clash with the race to stay ahead. The Kennedy Center goes dark and U.S. President Donald Trump threatens to pull the plug on a $257 million renovation. Montana pushes to ban corporate cash in elections. UN peacekeepers prepare to exit Lebanon, leaving residents anxious about what fills the void. And markets brace for a Fed interest rate decision. Podcasts, breaking news, and video analysis from the source. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Download the Reuters app here.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Listen to the Morning Bid podcast ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Sign up for the Reuters Econ World newsletter ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Listen to the Reuters Econ World podcast ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠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

Hi, I'm Kim Vinal in Wanganui, New Zealand. It's Wednesday, September 16th. Today, leaders of the AI world split on how the industry should advance. The Kennedy Center is abruptly closed, and Trump threatens to halt renovations. And as the end of a UN peacekeeping mission in Israeli-occupied southern Lebanon nears, residents fear for what comes next. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, seven days a week.

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for keeping it safe. Appearing at a San Francisco Tech conference, fresh after penning his essay, for the industry to pace its advance, Anthropics Dario Amode reiterated his concerns. AI models get smarter and smarter, the more compute you throw into them. And so we had a prediction of just how capable these models would be. But I think what we didn't appreciate is that it would lead to these companies growing so fast. Open AI's Sam Altman echoing that sentiment. And we have to be willing to pace our development of capabilities such that capabilities always such that alignment, safety and monitoring are always ahead of capabilities.

But one of the other AI giants, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, is pushing back. In a social media post, he says an industry-wide slowdown isn't needed and that it's up to the individual companies to ensure their technology is safe, adding that meta already does so. The disagreement comes as concerns grow that AI is advancing faster than humans, can keep up with, with some even warning that AI could wipe out humanity in the not too distant future. Staying in the US and the board of the Kennedy Center has voted to shut down the performing arts complex for up to two years while it undergoes major renovations. The decision

comes just hours after a federal judge ruled for a second time that President Donald Trump's name cannot be added to the building. Trump has been. Trump has to the building. since threatened to cancel the $257 million renovation project. White House reporter Bo Erickson has more. The Kennedy Center is a very old building by now. It was started by Congress in 1963. And when I was recently in the Kennedy Center going on a tour with some of the officials, looking at kind of the underground of the center,

there are a lot of things that need to be. fixed. I was shocked to see that water from the nearby river was dripping into the building underneath the public areas. And this was more than just one spot. It was actually pretty crazy to see. So that is why Congress in 2025 put forth this $250 million to do these types of renovations. Since then, though, the center has become a legal saga about what President Trump can and cannot do. So people may be asking what is happening at the Kennedy Center now. And really, it's not much. The renovations are paused. The center is saying that it needs these repairs to get the place in order and to make more money for the center. And now we are waiting for the president

to lock in these renovations or potentially to wipe his hands of the project entirely. The U.S. is planning an almost $3 billion weapon sale to Israel. According to an official, the package would include tens of thousands of two thousand pound bombs, munitions that Israel used in Gaza and Lebanon. The proposed sale has been informally communicated to members of Congress who review major arms transfers. Elsewhere on Capitol Hill, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant has tried to calm concerns about a sharp rise in government borrowing costs. Speaking to lawmakers, Bessent said recent treasury buybacks were a success.

And we then proceeded to have the two most successful treasury auctions that we've had in 20 years and the U.S. bond market, it continues during past month, since President Trump has come in, it has been the best performing bond market in the developed world. That's despite the benchmark 10-year treasury yield briefly topping 5% this week, its highest level since 2007. Analysts tie the US bond yield increase to higher oil prices and expectations the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates at its meeting later today. For more markets news, here's Elena Kassas, host of our sister markets podcast MorningBid.

The market see a rate rise from the Federal Reserve as more or less guaranteed for today. Now, that will put new Fed Chair Kevin Ward. she's only been in the job since May on a collision course with the president who appointed him. We know that President Trump wants lower rates, but everything in the US economy, especially higher inflation, points to arise. So all of that data may give Kevin Walsh cover to raise rates today

without attracting too much of the president's ire. You can catch morning bid wherever you get your podcasts. Montana voters will decide this November whether to make their state the first in the nation to ban corporate money in elections. The U.S. has seen an explosion in this kind of outside funding since the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, with corporate contributions going from $13 million in 2010

to $600 million this year. And what happens in Montana could set a critical precedent. Reporter Brad Brooks has been speaking with legal experts and voters. The state has a long history of, fighting against corruption in politics, money in politics, dating back more than a century. And I spoke with over a dozen voters across the western half of the state and of various ideological stripes,

and not a single one of them said that they want corporate money in politics. They all said that they would vote in favor of banning that money from entering the state's politics. What this is trying to do is go around citizens united, not smash into it head on. And it's doing that by saying that states, through the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, have the right to regulate corporations. They can determine what powers corporations have. Experts are watching this closely, legal experts and others,

thinking that it could set a tremendous legal precedent and could be something that will eventually go before the Supreme Court and have to be decided. In southern Lebanon, there's a swath of land now occupied by Israel. It's where, during the war with Iran, its troops advanced to fight Hezbollah, necessary, Israel said, to protect its border. Now, much of it is a ghost landscape.

To get there, we basically just drove along this very desolate road that runs parallel to the Lebanese-Israeli border and buildings on both sides of the road were completely smashed to pieces. That's Beirut Bureau Chief Maya Jabali, who got rare access during an embed with the UN Peacekeeping Force, Unifil. It almost felt like a very trippy scene

because you had things kind of flipped around in ways that felt unnatural. And there was not a single thing moving inside. And we were moving along this road. It was just dust and slabs of concrete and twisted metal. But deeper into the zone, there are those who stayed, 6,000 or so people living in a cluster of villages

and who rely on UNIFIL for food and fuel, basically to survive. But the forces mandate runs out at the end of this year, and it's not clear what happens next. They're discussing the possibility of a multinational force, the possibility of a European Union-supported training program for the Lebanese army. and the possibility of a new UN Security Council resolution.

But all of these options take time. It takes time to set up the budget for these forces. And that's what has residents freaked out as the clock ticks with about three and a half months left in Unifil's mandate. And Meyer says it's not just Unifil's humanitarian role that's at stake. So for the past 20 years, Unifil has really been the eyes and ears of the international community. So for that to disappear, for the access that they've been able to grant, not just journalists, but war crimes investigators and others,

in southern Lebanon, that's another major resource that we're going to lose by the end of this year. Before we go, I want to flag that a new episode of Reuters Econ world drops today. Post-Karmal Crimmons is tackling President Trump's retreat from EVs and what that means for jobs, manufacturing and the fierce competition with China. For more on any of the stories from today, as well as more analysis on the news shaping our world, check out Reuters.com or the Reuters app. There's a link in the description to download it and start getting pure news straight from the source.

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