Reuters World News - AI slowdown, Trump's Houthi problem, Irish unity and the US Open

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi, I'm Carmel Crimmons in Dublin. It's Sunday, September 13th. Today, AI rivals agree they need to slow things down. The Houthis put President Trump in a bind. Sweden votes in an election that could bring the far right into government. And, Rebecca Kina wins the U.S. Open for the first time. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, seven days a week. Leaders of the world's biggest AI companies are calling for a slowdown in the pace of model development. In a lengthy blog post, Dario Amade, the chief executive of Anthropic, says his company will introduce new safety steps, including having independent evaluators with permanent access to its models.

Starting point is 00:00:57 OpenAI chief Sam Altman quickly pledged to adopt Amaday's suggestion. While on X, Elon Musk wrote, Dario is right. Altman told Fortune magazine that OpenAI won't go public this year due to AI safety concerns. While all three CEOs have warned of the risks of AI over the years, an actual coordinated slowdown has little precedent in Silicon Valley, where vast amounts of money are riding on staying ahead. The call to action comes after reports of AI agents going rogue and some high-profile warnings from inside the AI industry

Starting point is 00:01:33 about the threat the technology poses to humanity. Those set off alarm bells on Capitol Hill, with growing numbers of US lawmakers now calling for new rules to govern AI systems. A lightning offensive by the Iran-Allied Houthis is causing big problems for Saudi Arabia and President Trump. The Houthis capture of an island in the Red Sea this week means that it could potentially disrupt

Starting point is 00:01:57 yet another key shipping route in the Middle East. That heaps pressure on Saudi Arabia, which increasingly relies on the waterway to export its crude, and on President Trump, who doesn't need energy prices to go any higher ahead of the November midterms. But that doesn't mean the US is going to join its ally Saudi Arabia in fighting the Houthis.

Starting point is 00:02:18 In fact, President Trump has already rebuffed a request from Saudi's crown prince, Muhammad bin Salman, to get involved. Our Pentagon correspondent, Adri Sali, impacts the trade-offs for the White House. heard so far from sources is that President Trump has said, militarily, the U.S. is not going to help for now. Look, that can always change. We know President Trump changes his mind at a whim. But for now, his statements actually do make sense about why the U.S. would not get militarily involved. And the main reason for that is the U.S. military, while being the best funded in the world,

Starting point is 00:02:50 has limited resources. Many of those resources are being used in Iran. And some of those key resources, which is air defense interceptors and some of the more high-end munitions and weapons and bombs are in really limited supply. So if the U.S. were to get involved militarily, it would stretch a military that's really already been used extensively against Iran. It would bring down stock munitions that have really been a problem for the United States as the war is dragged on. And the simple math is the U.S. can do operations in Yemen, but it would come at a huge opportunity cost in not just the Middle East, but what's in the future, is the U.S. going to try to counter, and it is trying to counter China in the Indy Pacific. What about Russia and Ukraine?

Starting point is 00:03:32 And so it creates all sorts of dilemmas that I think the president and his administration don't really want to get involved in right now. One area President Trump is getting involved in, verbally at least, is the question of Irish unification. Shortly after stopping off in Dublin, on route to his Irish golf resort, Trump told reporters it would be fantastic if Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland unified. Porig Halpin, our chief correspondent in Dublin, tells us how those comments went down in Dublin, Belfast and London. So I think the initial reaction was surprise. He said he'd look to see it. He said it would be

Starting point is 00:04:09 fantastic. And that surprises principally because the United States, which played a key role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland, has been officially neutral on the issue for successive administrations. Now, there was a very swift response from pro-British politicians, whose reason for being essentially is to remain part of the UK, the largest unionist party, the Democratic Unionist Party, some of whom whose lawmakers, interestingly, have been supporters of Trump down the years. They dismissed the comments. There was a similar response in London. There was a guarded welcome among Irish nationalists and supporters of unity. that's partly because many of those politicians are among the most outspoken critics of President Trump's policies in Ireland, indeed the largest nationalist party.

Starting point is 00:04:59 Sinn Féin were gathering in central Dublin to help lead a large anti-Trump protest through the centre of the city while he was making those comments nearby. And as far as the government in Dublin, it's important to remember this is a slow-moving debate and President Trump's intervention doesn't move the dial or suddenly speed up the timeline on that. But the debate is moving. And the government in Dublin are coming under a little bit of pressure from proponents of United Ireland, indeed from senior members of the ruling coalition, to at least start thinking about what one might look like.

Starting point is 00:05:35 So, you know, this may add a little bit of momentum to that slow-moving debate. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is pursuing a risky pivot to Europe. According to the Wall Street Journal, Carney is seeking to make Canada an associate member of the European Union, informally locking Canada into Europe's single market to offset the impact of its trade war with the US. A US judge has ruled that the Trump administration broke the law

Starting point is 00:06:10 by ordering the Federal Emergency Management Agency to cut its workforce in half. District Judge Susan Ilston says the US Department of Homeland Security under cut FEMA's authority over its own personnel. The ruling doesn't include remedies or penalties. Ilston says those would be addressed in a separate ruling next month. Britain's anti-immigration reform UK party is a wash with cash after landing nearly $100 million in donations from two cryptocurrency traders in under 48 hours. The donations are a record in British politics

Starting point is 00:06:46 and come as reform is facing allegations about irregularities in its funding, which the party denies. Swedes vote in an election today that could see the far-right Sweden Democrats party entered government for the first time. The current right-wing government is hoping its tough stance on migration will help its secure re-election. Prime Minister Ulf Christerson's right-wing government is offering some non-EU residents up to 350,000 Swedish crowns, about $37,000, to leave the country. Nicholas Pollard is in Stockholm. It is going to be a much, much closer election then looked likely to be the case even weeks or days ago.

Starting point is 00:07:31 That's what all opinion polls suggest. And that's kind of a reflection of the fact that the main fault line in Swedish politics that is the Sweden Democrats and how to address them in a sense. The party have the hardest line by far over time as regards immigration. And the political landscape is defined by this. And for Ulf Christashon, the answer is quite easy. He's going to bring them into government. For the parties on the center left,

Starting point is 00:08:14 who really don't see eye to eye on a number of issues, it is to keep them out of power. And finally, Elena Ribakina is the new Queen of the US Open after beating two-time defending champion Arina Sabalenko with a 64-5762 win. It's the world number one's first US Open title. For more on any of the stories from today, as well as more analysis and news shaping our world,

Starting point is 00:08:47 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. Don't forget to follow us on your favourite podcast player, and if you're listening on a smart speaker, just asked for the latest news from Reuters seven days a week. We'll be back tomorrow with our daily headline show.

Reuters World News - AI slowdown, Trump's Houthi problem, Irish unity and the US Open

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