Reuters World News - Canada retaliates, robot runners and Ebola spread

Episode Date: August 23, 2026

Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney promises "dollar for dollar" tariffs on some U.S. goods in retaliation for 50% ​levies ordered by President Donald Trump. A Chinese-made humanoid robot beats Usain Bolt's 100m world record. IndyCar’s Freedom 250 Grand Prix will zoom through Washington, DC. And the UN warns over the rapid spread of Ebola. 📲 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 Tara Oaks in Liverpool. It's Sunday, August 23rd, today. Canada says it'll retaliate with dollar-for-dollar tariffs on US goods after trade talks collapse. Chinese robots beat Usain Bounce 100-meter world record. And the Freedom 250 IndyCar rally roars round Washington, D.C. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need. need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, seven days a week. Two and five Canadians will hear the words you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters.

On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk. Challenge yourself, friends and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcf walk.ca.ca. Canada will match Washington's new tariffs, dollar for dollar, in order to protect Canadian workers, farmers, families and businesses. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney there, responding to 50% levies ordered by US President Donald Trump on Canadian products after trade talks broke down. The tariffs on imports of US steel, electronics and other products are safe.

let take effect on September 8th. Ontario Premier Doug Ford gave his own blunt assessment after Trump's new tariffs, saying the US president, quote, can't be trusted. President Trump is a type of person that would steal your lunch money the first day. He'd steal the took off your head the second day, and the third day he'd steal your running shoes. US trade representative Jameson Greer has called the breakdown a missed opportunity for Canada to partner with United States and adds there are no new talks planned. In a post on Truth Social, Trump says that Canada wants state benefits without being a state. The United States and Iran are exchanging

increasingly hostile messages ahead of a new round of U.S. sanctions due to be announced on Monday. Treasury Secretary Scott Besson has promised what he calls the toughest sanctions in history on Iran, with measures expected to target Tehran and its trading partners, including China. Iran has condemned the planned sanctions, calling them a violation of international law. Elsewhere in the region, Syria's foreign minister has told Reuters that they expect negotiations to resume soon with Israel over a security deal, in the hope it will lead to Israel's withdrawal from Syrian land. Speaking days after Israel bombed a Syrian airbase,

Foreign Minister Assad al-Shabani urged Israel to seize what he calls a historic opportunity, but added that, quote, we do not trust Israel currently. That's the moment a Chinese humanoid robot ran 100 meters faster than the men's world record held by Usain Bolt. Tian Gong Ultra, developed by the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation, Center ran 100 meters in 9.39 seconds, beating smartphone maker Honors Lightning Bot, which also finished faster than the human record. The two robots lacked bolts flare, though, with Tian Gong stumbling wildly into the sidelines, forcing onlookers to move out of the way. Lightning was carried away on a stretcher after collapsing to the ground.

It's not just China's humanoid robots drawing focus right now. Recently, Chinese-made robotic dogs have been displayed on state TV, alongside Chinese troops and a robot firing a mounted assault rifle. But what's raising alarms for some is not the gun-toting robot, is that these robodogs are using US-military-funded research to dominate the global market. China-based unitary robotics has sold tens of thousands of robots, while American companies struggle to scale production. Our foreign policy reporter, Michael Martina, explains. Some of the researchers that we spoke to actually broke down early Chinese robots and said that actually the measurements, you know, often down to the millimeter, were the same as the ones published, particularly at MIT,

with their groundbreaking mini-chita robot. So we interviewed a number of researchers that were involved in these programs under the Army Research Laboratory. And what we heard from them was that, of the course of number of years, U.S. researchers actually came up with these novel ways to enhance robotic movement and then publish the research publicly. And then Chinese companies, including Unitri, were able to glean, you know, important takeaways from that research and just basically capitalize and mass-produced robots in a way that U.S. companies failed to do. It's important to note that while Unitri did not respond to our request for comment, they have stated previously that they don't see themselves as a military company and that they, They aren't producing robots to essentially harm people or be used in the military. Robotics experts say the Trump administration's attempts to address the disadvantage by banning

the import of foreign robots may not be enough. A lot of the analysts we spoke to were pretty clear that doing that type of ban was only, you know, half a solution. And that really the U.S. needs to do more, actually, in terms of industrial policy, to kind of stand up important U.S. supply chains like those in robotics. Two and five Canadians will hear the words you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk.

Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcf walk.ca.ca. Russia's president Vladimir Putin there saying that Kiev has opened Pandora's box with its strikes on Russian economic targets and that Russia would hit back at Ukraine's most sensitive economic sectors. Ukraine has this summer escalated a campaign of drone strikes targeting Russian economic infrastructure,

including oil refineries and online retail. as warehouses. Ukraine's president, Bologda Me Zelensky, says they believe Russia is planning to mobilize an additional 300,000 troops for its war effort after parliamentary elections in September. Yeah, it's going to be chaotic. Like, it's a street course. It's new. It's 250 miles. Like, there's huge bumps, like huge, huge. So it's going to be tough. Like, it's going to be chaos.

That's driver Alex Palu, after he took poll position for today's freedom. 250, the seventh poll of the IndyCar season. The race roaring through the streets of Washington, D.C. is part of the U.S.'s 250th anniversary celebrations, touted by President Trump. The final race today will spin down historic Pennsylvania Avenue, around the National Archives and weave through some of the country's leading cultural institutions. The event was originally planned as 125 laps, but officials extended it. it to ensure that the 250 miles aligned with the celebration theme.

The trophy is a crystal pyramid featuring a 3D model of a US Capitol dome. Trump will wave the green flag at the start of the race and take a lap around the course in the presidential limousine. And those in town for the race may notice National Guard troops still patrolling in the nation's capital. A year since President Trump deployed the Guard to D.C. to deal with what he was describing as a crime crisis. The troops outnumber local police.

But according to our reporter Brad He, the soldiers are mainly deployed in tourist areas and aren't actually fighting much crime. The soldiers are mostly not doing policing kinds of things. They are walking around. You see them in touristy neighborhoods. You see them by the subway. Occasionally they stop people.

But for the most part, I think the military and the administration has described their role as like a presence patrol. They're there to deter crime. Brad says that despite Reuter's reviewing every publicly available charging document filed in Superior Court, figuring out the actual impact of a deployment remains difficult. Crime had been going down in D.C. before the National Guard showed up. Crime has continued going down in some ways in D.C. after the National Guard and additional federal agents appeared in the city. You know, then again, crime is going down in almost every part of the country.

You know, the murder rate in Baltimore is reaching modern lows, as in a lot of cities. And those are places where the administration hasn't sent soldiers. The White House did not respond to questions about the soldiers' work. The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is spreading rapidly, according to the UN. In the last three months, 2,500 people have died. and half of those in the last 20 days. That's the UN Julian Arnais, saying working conditions for emergency workers are brutal

and funding to stop the spread is running short. A reporter Jessica Donati has more. Responders are catching up after cases are believed to have spread in the community undetected for months because they were testing for the wrong strain of Ebola because some samples were mishandled. Now they're trying to test an existing vaccine for a different strain to see if it offers protection.

At the moment, the case fatality is around 50%, which means one in two people dying of Ebola at the moment. And so health workers are dealing with additional challenges. In addition to the risk of getting Ebola, they also face attacks. They face patients running away. They face families trying to gain access to healthcare centers to try and regain the bodies of loved ones. And so all of these things are compounding the difficulty in bringing the outbreak under control. Health authorities warn that unless war is done, this could become the worst outbreak of Ebola ever.

after the West Africa's outbreak in 2014-16. For more on any of the stories from today, as well as more analysis and 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. Don't forget to followers on your favourite podcast player. If you're listening on a smart speaker,

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