Reuters World News - Iran, Australia rare earths, Amazon’s outage and Trump’s ballroom

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi, I'm Kim Vinal in Wanganui, New Zealand. It's Tuesday, October 21st. Today, Iran's supreme leader rejects U.S. calls for peace talks. Trump inks a deal with Australia for critical minerals in an attempt to counter China's dominance. And how problems at one Amazon data center in northern Virginia took millions of people offline around the world. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, seven days a week. Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khameni is rejecting U.S. President Donald Trump's latest offer of talks. Washington and Tehran remain in a stalemate, months after a 12-day air war which saw Israel and the U.S. bomb Iranian nuclear sites.

Starting point is 00:01:03 Khomeini responded to Trump's claim that those strikes destroyed Iran's nuclear capabilities with the phrase, keep dreaming. Trump recently told Israel's parliament he'd like to negotiate a peace deal with Tehran. Western powers accuse Iran of trying to build a nuclear bomb. But Tehran says its nuclear program is strictly for civilian energy. Iran's economy, meanwhile, is facing a double threat. soaring inflation and a deepening recession risk as so-called snapback UN sanctions bite. Officials warn the country's oil lifeline is vulnerable and everyday Iranians are struggling with rising prices and shrinking incomes.

Starting point is 00:01:50 Here's Reuters reporter Parisa Hafizzi. While the full impact is still unfolding this return of global sanctions, there are concerns that the sanctions could worsen inflation and, further weaken Iran's Rio, which has already lost significant values. Ordinary Iranians have been suffering from economic hardship for years because of years of sanctions, previous sanctions and mismanagement. Across all layers of society, from urban professionals to rural workers that we have talked to, there is increasing fear of even more pressure on their livelihoods.

Starting point is 00:02:29 Parisa also spoke to three Iranian officials who say, as far as Tehran is concerned, the sanctions are part of a bigger power play from the West. They said that the top officials in Iran, they believe that the US, Britain, France, and Germany, and of course Israel, Iran's longtime fall, they are intensifying these sanctions on the Islamic Republic to fuel on red, and eventually hoping that it will lead to collapse of the Islamic Republic. They truly believe that the aim of these sanctions are just to change the political order in Iran and change the regime. Israeli bulldozers carry huge yellow barrier blocks being used to demarcate the new so-called yellow line inside Gaza,

Starting point is 00:03:29 the point at which Israeli troops are withdrawing to. The footage was released by Israel's defense forces. Reuters could not independently verify its location or date. Palestinian medics say three people were killed by Israeli fire near one of those ceasefire lines on Monday. It's one of several outbreaks of violence in Gaza threatening the fragile U.S. brokered ceasefire. Palestinian Anwar.

Starting point is 00:03:59 Myqtad, whose wife was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Sunday, says they were told they were safe. The Trump administration is working to keep Israel and Hamas committed to the truce, sending Vice President J.D. Vance to Israel for talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Both Hamas and Israel have recommitted to the ceasefire, but with key unresolved issues like Hamas disarming and the future governance of Gaza, the agreement remains on shaky, ground. The US in Australia have signed a major critical minerals deal aimed at countering China's dominance in rare earths. The minerals are key to everything from electric vehicles to missile systems.

Starting point is 00:04:45 President Trump and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese agreed to invest $1 billion each over six months into mining and processing projects and set a price floor for critical minerals. While President Trump emphasised the scale of the project, the signing wasn't entirely smooth sailing, with Trump taking a swipe at Australia's U.S. ambassador, Kevin Rudd, who once described Trump as the most destructive president in history. I don't like you either. I don't, and I probably never will. And speaking of destruction, demolition crews are tearing down part of the White House's East Wing to make way for President Trump's 90,000 square foot ballroom.

Starting point is 00:05:30 And the ballroom's going to be beautiful. So you'll have drinks, cocktails, everything on this floor. And then they'll say, welcome to dinner. You walk into the ballroom, Mr. Senators, and you're going to see a ballroom, the likes of which I don't think will. I don't think it'll be topped. It'll be the finest. So it's going to be a lot of fun.

Starting point is 00:05:50 It's the most dramatic renovation yet to the White House under the Trump presidency. He's already redone the Rose Garden in the style of his golf clubs and added gold leaf to the Oval Office. The project will cost upwards of $250 million, and Trump says it will be paid for by himself and donors. If your apps have been glitching over the past day, it's not just you. Amazon's cloud service, AWS, has had some big issues,

Starting point is 00:06:20 taking a large chunk of the internet around the world down with it. Snapchat, Reddit, and Venmo were all knocked offline. Even Amazon's own shopping site was hit. Amazon says services are now back to normal. Technology reporter Stephen Nellis explains why one outage can have such a massive impact. One of the reasons that you're seeing the effects of this spread so far actually has nothing to do with Amazon itself. Amazon actually has data centers all around the world, and so do their competitors at companies like Google or Oracle or Microsoft. And if you're a customer and you really want to, you can set up redundancies and failover plans and all kinds of things so that in outage, any single one of these data centers will not disrupt your service.

Starting point is 00:07:12 And I think you'll see for a lot of government customers or a lot of really mission critical things like financial institutions, they will have, in many cases, stuff in multiple data centers from one cloud provider. They may have two or more cloud providers that they have just in case. And then they also may have some of their own data centers in the mix. So some of the problems you're seeing today are actually just the companies who haven't taken the time to do all of that. Steven says the reliance on these cloud companies has been building over time. Over the past few decades, we've really evolved to a place where only a handful of the very, very biggest companies. At Amazon is among them, have the wherewithal. to build everything on their own from the ground up.

Starting point is 00:08:01 What that means is that when one of these really foundational technologies has a glitch or fails, it often ripples throughout the entire technology landscape and you don't realize how much is really built on just a handful of companies. A divided U.S. Appeals Court has ruled that President Trump can send National Guard troops into Portland despite objections from local leaders. The decision marks illegal. win for Trump as he expands military deployments to democratic-led cities. Markets are reacting positively to promises of economic stimulus by Japan's new Prime Minister,

Starting point is 00:08:38 Sanai Takeichi. Japan's parliament began the formal process of appointing Takeichi after her liberal Democratic Party agreed a coalition deal. Takeichi will be the country's first female leader, making an historic break in Japan's male dominated politics. She also plans to appoint Satuku Katiama as Japan's first female finance minister. Takeichi is a hardline conservative, set to steer Japan sharply to the right. Critics are warning her socially conservative views could limit social change. Former French president, Nikola Sarkozy, heads to prison today, starting a five-year sentence for conspiring to raise campaign funds from Libya. He's the first former French leader, Jay,

Starting point is 00:09:23 since World War II and must serve time while his appeal plays out. Sarkozy denies wrongdoing, calling the case politically motivated. He'll be held in an isolation unit, Paris's La Santéééé prison, with access to a TV, phone and private shower. And for today's recommended read, we're staying in Paris and returning to that jewelry heist at the Louvre, with a graphics-led story looking at how the thieves did it and what they stole.

Starting point is 00:09:59 We've put a link to that piece in the description of today's podcast. 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.

Reuters World News - Iran, Australia rare earths, Amazon’s outage and Trump’s ballroom

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