Reuters World News - Food stamps, Canada's apology and US elections

Episode Date: November 1, 2025

Federal judges order SNAP benefits to continue, but it's unclear if payments will go through starting November 1. High-stakes elections in New Jersey and Virginia offer early signals for the 2026 midterms. Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney apologizes to Trump over an anti-tariff ad. Plus, layoffs hit major companies, some driven by AI. Listen to our latest episode of On Assignment 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 Sharon Reich Garson in New Jersey. It's Saturday, November 1st. Today, judges order food stamps to keep flowing. High-stakes elections in New Jersey and Virginia signal what's to come in 2026. At Canada's Carney apologizes to Trump over an anti-tariff ad. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, seven days a week. Two federal judges ruled on Friday that the Trump administration cannot suspend food aid to millions of Americans.

The judges ordered the government to use the $5.5 billion emergency fund to keep SNAP benefits flowing. Trump fired back on Truth Social, saying his lawyers don't think they have the legal authority to tap the fund. Both judges ordered the administration to report back on Monday on how it will comply. It's unclear whether benefits will be paid from November 1st. We're days out from Election Day, and this year, it's bigger than local politics. It's about momentum. Voters nationwide will head to the polls, but all eyes are on two states, New Jersey and Virginia. Both parties see these races as early tests for 2026. In New Jersey, the governor's race between Democrat Mickey Cheryl.

Bring it home. And Republican Jack Chittarelli is drawing in big money and big names. Barack Obama is stumping with Cheryl this weekend, and Donald Trump has already dialed in with a teller rally for Chittarelli. As political reporter Joseph Axe told me earlier, the stakes may be local, but the impact won't be. For Democrats in particular, those races carry a fair amount of import, because those are two states that are generally Democratic leading.

They've both voted Democratic in the last couple of residential elections, and a loss in either of them would suggest that they have an uphill battle in trying to get their voters excited, enthusiastic ahead of the mid-year-old. terms next year. There's also a ballot measure in California to watch. It's a proposition that would let the state's Democratic-controlled legislature redraw California's congressional map. It's a direct response to Texas Republicans redrawing their own congressional map at the request of President Trump. Essentially, it's a yes or no proposition. A yes vote means Democrats are likely to flip five Republican seats next year without anything else changing, a no vote means that probably won't happen.

And so it literally could change the number of House seats by five in one direction or the other. And it's important to remember that in the 2024 election, Republicans won a House majority by only three seats. So the margins that we're talking about here are incredibly thin. President Xi Jinping is wrapping up a three-day visit to South Korea today. He's attending a state dinner and closing out the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum. It's she's first visit to South Korea in 11 years.

President Lee's office says the two leaders will discuss denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula. But North Korea's already calling that a pipe dream. Meanwhile, she's pushing for a proposal for a global body to govern AI. China will host next year's APEC science. in Shenzhen. I did. I did apologize to the president. The president was offended by the act, or by the ad rather.

That's Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on his apology to President Trump over an anti-tariff ad. Carney says he spoke privately with Trump at a dinner on Wednesday at the Apex Summit in South Korea. He also says he told Ontario Premier Doug Ford not to run the ad in the first place. Trump has called the conversation very nice, but he says the U.S. and Canada will not restart trade talks. The two countries also continue their battle over the World Series with the final game tonight. For most of the past year, the U.S. job market's been stuck in neutral,

no hiring, no firing. But that stretch seems to be over. Major layoffs at Amazon, UPS, and Nestle have shaken corporate America, and AI might be the reason why. Amazon's cut 14,000 jobs, UPS, 48,000. Nestle's planning to drop 16,000 over two years. Companies say they're protecting margins, undoing pandemic era overhiring, and white-collar jobs are shifting towards automation. I spoke to business editor, David Gaffin, about the jobs being automated. The odd thing in Bank of America economists pointed this out, is that some of the areas like finance and professional services and real estate are areas where there is more use of AI. But at the same time, those areas have seen reasonably okay job growth. So far, it has not proved to be the

destroyer of jobs that some have worried about. Now, that doesn't mean that's not coming. And there are a lot of concerns about it. But at the moment, it seems like it's more of a productivity boost than it is anything else. In Syria, President Ahmed al-Shara is quietly trying to stamp out corruption as the country struggles to pivot from an insurgency to a civilian government. The president says he wants to avoid the corruption of the previous Assad regime. Our reporter Timor Ishari says that despite the effort, bribery and backroom deals still plague the country,

according to business owners and officials. So our reporting has revealed that the Syrian president held a meeting a couple months ago where he brought together the most loyal people in the new Syrian state and told them to cut it out with some of the practices that have started to emerge. He remarked about luxury cars that he's seen and he sort of joked to them, you know, I didn't know that government salaries were this high. But underpinning that meeting and the directives that he gave there are some real things happening on the ground.

For the first time in Syria, our reporting shows that there have been arrests of people on charges of corruption, which was one of the major legacies of the former regime of Bashad al-Assad. People working for a new sovereign wealth fund have been detained on suspicion of corruption and also members of a committee set up to investigate illicit enrichment. And Timor says Shara is also cracking down on his own family, including ousting his brother. He opened a business office in Damascus in the months after the former regime fell. He started meeting with officials and all kinds of business people. You would see him being driven back and forth in this black sedan with no license plates,

need kind of hold court in these hotel lobbies. Our reporting shows that he's actually been pushed out. The Syrian president gave directives that nobody should deal with him. I visited his office in Damascus and found the door sealed with red wax, which in this part of the world is usually done when there's some kind of an investigation, oftentimes for corruption. And when we went to the Syrian state with our findings, they indeed confirmed that he was operating without a license,

and they said that he also holds no official position. So as we were reporting this, one of the central questions was, is this a real anti-corruption drive or is it a consolidation of power? And what we see here is Shara going to some of these people who are as loyalists and saying we're in a new phase now, we need to act differently. But at the same time, he's also elevating some of these people to positions of power, and that includes key loyalists and it also includes members of his family. President Trump now says he's not considering strikes inside Venezuela.

His statement on Friday appearing to contradict his own previous statements. Are you considering his strikes on land? Well, I don't want to tell you exactly, but we are certainly looking at land now because we've got the sea very well under control. And for today's recommended listen, our latest episode of On Assignment out today, examines the built-up U.S. military presence in the Caribbean, with fighter jets, warships, and thousands of troops. The campaign includes the killing of 61 people who were on boats that Washington says were involved in the illegal drug trade. There's this sense of desperation and this sense that allegiance with Trump at all costs is the best way to achieve democracy in Venezuela. Investigative reporter Sarah Kinocian explains how Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado is looking to President Trump to help bring democracy to Venicewomen. Venezuela. There will be a link to the episode in the show notes. For more on any of the stories

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