Reuters World News - Cuba boat shooting, Nvidia and Pentagon v Anthropic

Episode Date: February 26, 2026

Cuba says it’s killed four heavily armed exiles who attacked a patrol boat from a Florida-registered speedboat. Nvidia's quarterly earnings beat Wall Street expectations again. The Pentagon is pressuring Anthropic to bend its rules over what the military can do with its AI model, Claude. And Trump’s pick for U.S. surgeon general sidesteps vaccine questions.  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 Thursday, February 26th. Today, Cuba says it's killed exiles who sailed into its waters on a Florida-registered speedboat and started shooting. AI-Darling Nvidia beats earnings estimates again, while Anthropic gets new orders from the Pentagon. And the woman who wants to be America's top doctor gets quizzed on vaccines. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, seven days a week. At least four Cuban exiles have been killed and another six wounded on board a speedboat. Cuba says the speedboat registered to Florida entered Cuban waters and opened fire on a patrol vessel. Cuban government television, reading an official statement, said the people on board were carrying a

assault rifles, handguns and Molotov cocktails. The deadly confrontation is bound to raise fresh tensions with the U.S., testing an already volatile relationship. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the speedboat has nothing to do with Washington and that the U.S. is trying to verify the details of the incident. Reuters Daniel Trotter is in Havana with what we know so far. According to the Cuban government, a group of 10 Cuban exiles formed a commando and attempted to infiltrate Cuba, in their words. They came into Cuban waters on a speedboat from a vessel registered in Florida.

When they came across Cuban authorities, a Cuban patrol, they opened fire, according to the Cuban government, in which case the Cubans returned fire, killing four people and injuring six others. According to the Cuban government, these were known Cuban nationals, at least two of whom had been wanted on charges from Cuba previously for plots to attack the country. You have to understand the Cuban exile community in Florida has long dreamed of overthrowing the Cuban government or seeing it fall. Cuban exiles have been involved in a number of paramilitary operations over the years. most famously, the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, which failed to topple the Castro government at the time. The timing is particularly sensitive. This is taking place amid a time of super heightened tensions between the United States and Cuba.

Since the Venezuelan operation, President Donald Trump has increased his rhetoric against Cuba, essentially threatening Cuba, using language that Cuba has to change or could face severe consequences. is. Invidia's quarterly earnings have beaten Wall Street's expectations again, but that might not be enough for investors who closely follow the chipmaker as a bellwether of the AI boom. Here's Reuters tech correspondent Stephen Nellis on the key takeaways from Nvidia's latest numbers. The top line from these results is that they are still phenomenally good by any historical standard, but only a lukewarm response from investors

who have now seen Nvidia beat its estimates and raised its guidance for something like 14 quarters in a row. So it's hard to argue that these are great results by any standard, but people are just expecting more and more and more from the world's most valuable listed company. I think these results tell us two things about the AI boom. One is that it's still not over in as much as now that the market,

models have been trained and businesses are starting to put them to use, there's still a lot of computing power that has to be built out to use them. The other big thing that this says about the nature of the AI computing boom is it has changed how computing happens. One of the reasons that Invidia's results look so impressive is they're rolling a whole bunch of computing that used to happen among several different companies, you know, maybe Apple for computing that happened on your phone, to Intel for computing that may have happened on a PC. And they're rolling kind of all of that up into one company that's providing a lot of the dominant computing power for it. So it looks really big. For more on how markets are

digesting in video's latest, make sure to listen to today's episode of our sister podcast, Morning Bid. Meanwhile, Anthropic, the company behind the AI assistant Claude, has been given an ultimatum voluntarily remove user restrictions for the US military, or the government will take the legal route to force it. That's the message after a meeting between Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth and Anthropics CEO and founder Dario Amadeh. Anthropics says it's committed to safety and security, and there are certain red lines that it won't let its AI tools cross. But as other AI companies agreed to the Pentagon's requests. Our Space and Defense reporter David Gene says this standoff could have larger implications for how AI is used in war.

Anthropic hasn't wanted to stand down on allowing its AI products to be used in relation to autonomous weapons or domestic surveillance. And the Pentagon and Pete Hegstaff really underscored that they still want to use Anthropics AI, but they want to use. it without the usage policies. They don't want to be on military operations and having to call up the AI companies, have been like, can we please do this? That's what the Pentagon has said. As a result of this meeting, Hexeth gave Anthropic until 5pm this Friday to come back to it without its usage policies. It raises questions about what's going to come next. If the Pentagon does take the action that it has threatened against Anthropic, it's not hard to imagine that

Anthropic is probably considering its legal options. And this is coming at a time when the Pentagon is writing the initial foundational contracts of how AI is going to be used in the future of warfare. The US and Iran are resuming talks in Geneva today in the hopes of hammering out a nuclear deal. The stakes are high, with the US sending a huge military deployment to the region to pressure Tehran, and Tehran warning of counterattacks. if Washington acts.

Wellness influencer Casey Means is a step closer toward being confirmed as Surgeon General, America's top doctor. Apparing before the Senate Health Committee, Casey declined to disavow the debunked belief that autism is linked to vaccines, instead voicing her support for more research. And until we have a clear understanding

of why kids are developing this at higher rates, I think we should not leave many stones unturned. There's been a lot of evidence showing that they're not implicated. Do you not accept that evidence? I do accept that evidence. I also think that science has never settled. The 38-year-old, who is a qualified but non-practicing doctor,

did, however, voice support for vaccines specifically against measles, which is surging across the country. One of the places battling a severe outbreak is South Carolina. But the expert help that they're bringing in is from a non-prisoning. profit, not from the centers of disease control. Reporter Chad Tehoun, who's been reporting from Spartanburg at the epicenter of the outbreak, says that's raising questions. When we asked the South Carolina health officials, they said the CDC just didn't really

fit their staffing needs. Sometimes CDC is on a shorter deployment. Other people commented that they thought there might be some politics at play. South Carolina is a deep red state. They have had much opposition to COVID-era policies, in terms of lockdowns and vaccine mandates. The Republican governor there has certainly championed personal choice on vaccines. And Chad says that personal choice ethos may have helped to fuel the current outbreak.

I spend a lot of time with doctors and nurses, and they are seeing a wide variety of reasons, why parents are hesitant about vaccines. And some of these parents gave vaccines to their children and maybe they're newborn, now they have questions. I know like the vaccines is a very controversial thing. And you know I've asked you a lot of questions. Yeah, they've talked a lot.

A lot. And, I mean, that's great. Absolutely. This could be what they're hearing from fellow parents. It could be things that they've read from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who's now U.S. Health Secretary, who's been a longtime critic of vaccines. scenes. And so these doctors and nurses now have to spend that time in the exam room and try to

answer all those questions. And finally, we usually like to end the podcast on something upbeat, but today a statistic has been released that we feel is really important to share. The Committee to Protect Journalists says a record 129 journalists were killed in 2025. It is the second year in a row that press killings have set a record, and it's the second year in a row that Israel is responsible for two-thirds of them. A statement from the IDF said it strongly rejects the claims in the CPJ report. For more on any of the stories from today, check outrouters.com or the Reuters app. Don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast player. If you're listening on a smart speaker, just ask for the latest news from Reuters seven days a week.

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