Reuters World News - Gaza partition risk, China’s Singles’ Day and shutdown latest

Episode Date: November 11, 2025

An end to the longest government shutdown in U.S. history inches closer to the finish line. The next phase of the Gaza ceasefire is stalled and reconstruction work is likely to be limited to the Israel-controlled area. And a billion people take part in the world's biggest shopping event as China marks ‘Singles' Day’.  Find today's recommended read 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 Vinell in Wanganui, New Zealand. It's Tuesday, November 11th. Today, the government shutdown is one step closer to being over, passing the Senate and now heading to the House. With no progress on a lasting peace plan for Gaza, concerns are growing the partitioned status quo could become permanent. And it's the biggest shopping event anywhere in the world. China celebrates Singles Day.

This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, seven days a week. On this vote, the eyes are 60, the nays are 40. The bill as amended is passed. A bill to restore federal funding in the US and reopen the government has passed the final Senate hurdle. It will now go to the House of Representatives

for a vote expected on Wednesday before it can be signed off by President Donald Trump. To pass in the Senate, eight Democrats sided with Republicans, agreeing to legislation which doesn't address Democrats' main demand, the extension of health insurance subsidies, about to expire. Reporter Nolan McCaskill, who's at the Capitol, says the defectors are taking some heat. There's just a lot of anger right now at a time when the party

was finally seeming to come out of the wilderness. They had a very good election night last week. They seemed like they had a lot of momentum. There are questions internally about whether they sort of used up all their leverage. And so at the end of the day, a few Democrats decided to vote with Republicans. And so there's just a lot of anger at the point that maybe Democrats held out in the end for really nothing. And by nothing, Nolan means the mere commitment to take up a vote on health care subsidies. There's no commitment that this will pass.

There's no commitment that if it does pass, it'll be taken up in the House. There's no commitment that if it passes both chambers, it'll go to the president's desk and he'll sign it. But I think Democrats will try to engage with Republicans to try to get a popular product that could reach that outcome. And if it doesn't, I think they'll feel like they've done enough to blame Republicans for skyrocketing health care costs and make that a big issue over the course of the next year. Ironically, travel chaos caused by the shutdown could cause the shutdown to go on even longer. That's because lawmakers in the House may be delayed in getting back to the Capitol. And air travelers are being warned things won't be business as usual for a while yet. Speaker Johnson has said he'll give members a 36-hour heads up to try to make it to the Capitol,

but members are already being encouraged to start making arrangements now to get here as quickly as possible so that if their flights are canceled or delayed, it doesn't ultimately delay their role in helping pass this bill and ending the government shutdown. Food aid for 42 million low-income Americans is still in limbo as the shutdown drags on and a legal battle plays out. The Trump administration has told the Supreme Court it will keep fire. in order to fully fund SNAP benefits. Meanwhile, the people caught in the middle, like many of those at St. Mary's Food Bank in Phoenix, Arizona, feel that they are paying the price.

11-year-old Sincer Miller at the food bank with his grandmother places his blame squarely with the president. Trump, why are you starving the kids? I'm hungry, and we have to get boxes from the food. Bank. St. Mary's Food Bank says they're now seeing more people needing help than at the height of the pandemic. To Gaza now, where a stalemate over the next phase of peace negotiations has left the enclave essentially cut in half. As part of the ceasefire agreement, Israel's military withdrew to what's called the Yellow Line, but it still controls more than 50% of Gaza. There

are concerns that the longer no progress is made, the split could become permanent. permanent. Here's senior correspondent Alexander Cornwell in Tel Aviv on what's meant to come next. The next phase of the plan is supposed to see the beginning of reconstruction, a new transitional governing authority to take over in Gaza, the deployment of a multinational security force, and also the gradual further withdrawal of the Israeli military. Now, according to European officials that I've been speaking to, that is essentially stuck. There is no progress being made and the worry is that that yellow line will become a de facto partition with reconstruction taking place but only in the areas controlled by Israel. European officials privately are comparing

this to Berlin in 1945 after World War II when the German capital was divided into different zones of control. Alexander says according to the Europeans, part of the issue is that Trump's plan to end the war doesn't include any timelines. And that without American intervention, major issues like who should control Gaza won't be settled. Hamas is so far refusing to disarm, has said it would hand over its weapons to a Palestinian entity, and wants there to be a Palestinian state. The European and the Arab states want the Palestinian Authority, which is based in the West Bank and based in Ramallah, to enter Gaza, to govern Gaza,

and for its police forces to take over, and also want a pathway to Palestinian statehood. Now Israel objects to the involvement of the PA, the Palestinian Authority, and this current Israeli government, and many members of the Israeli opposition, also object to statehood. So we're at this stalemate, and European officials are privately saying that unless the US endorses PA involvement and gets the Israelis on board on Palestinian statehood, we're set to be stuck in this period where we're at now. President Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel on Monday. The focus of the meeting? That second phase of the Gaza ceasefire deal. And how to deal with some 200 Hamas fighters still hold up in tunnels. The UK's public broadcaster, the BBC, is deciding how to respond to a legal threat from President Trump,

where he's threatening to sue them for a billion dollars. It's over what he calls a false and defamatory documentary edit of his January 6th speech. The BBC admits the way it spliced clips from different parts of the same speech made it look like Trump was inciting the Capitol riot and that it was an error of judgment. On Monday, two top BBC executives quit. The corporation is rejecting claims of systemic bias. Trump has pardoned more than 70 allies, including Rudy Giuliani, who were accused of trying to overturn his 2020 election loss. The move is largely

symbolic, as it only applies to federal charges, which none of them face. The Justice Department had been investigating a plan by Trump and his supporters to submit to alternative slates of state electors to reverse Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election. It was dismissed when Trump began his second term, with prosecutors citing Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president. The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear a case that could have challenged the nationwide right to same-sex marriage. The justices rejecting an appeal from Kim Davis, a former Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples.

It's 1111, which means happy Singles Day to all who celebrate. Singles Day is a Chinese shopping festival, which is actually a week long, and it surpasses Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Prime Day being by far the biggest retail event of the year. This year, almost a billion people are expected to shop. Casey Hall has more from Shanghai. Singles Day actually started out as a day where people could kind of celebrate their singledom, a kind of counterpoint to Valentine's Day. In terms of shopping, people could buy themselves something nice on the 11th of the 11th, as opposed to getting something from, you know, a boyfriend or girlfriend on Valentine's Day, and it really grew from there. According to Alibaba this year, there was 35 brands in the first hour of the sale this year

that sold more than 100 million R&B in merchandise, and they included Nike and L'Oreal as well as local brands. 100 million R&B, by the way, is about 14 million US dollars sold by each brand, in less than an hour. Former French President Nicola Sarkozy is back home after less than three weeks behind bars. A Paris court has granted him conditional release pending his appeal trial. He had been serving a five-year sentence over a scheme to finance his 2007 election campaign with funds from Libya.

And for today's recommended read, the cultural icon that is painter and TV personnel, Bob Ross. Today, fans can get one of his original paintings, with three of them being auctioned in L.A. There's a link to the story in today's podcast description. For more on any of the stories from today, check out Reuters.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.