Reuters World News - Iran, Grok, Nancy Guthrie and Disney

Episode Date: February 4, 2026

The U.S. shoots down an Iranian drone that approached its aircraft carrier. French police raid X offices in Paris and order Elon Musk to face questions. A Reuters investigation shows that Musk’s Grok produces sexualized images, even when told subjects didn’t consent. Spain and Greece weigh teen social media bans as social media companies face backlash in Europe. And Arizona police believe Savannah Guthrie’s mother has been abducted. Plus, Disney names Josh D’Amaro as its next CEO.     Listen to the Morning Bid podcast ⁠⁠here⁠⁠. Sign up for the Reuters Econ World newsletter ⁠⁠here⁠⁠. Listen to the Reuters Econ World podcast ⁠⁠here⁠⁠. Find the Recommended Read 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 Wednesday, February 4th. Today, the US shoots down an Iranian drone, escalating tensions as the two rivals look to seal a nuclear deal. Reuters' investigation reveals X's AI chatbot Grok is still making explicit images, despite saying it would crack down. Authorities continue their search for the mother of US TV host Savannah Guthrie. And Disney gets a theme park hero as its new CEO. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, seven days a week. The US has shot down an Iranian drone, which it says aggressively approached one of its nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. The incident comes as Washington and Iran edged toward possible nuclear talks scheduled for the end of the week. Our Pentagon reporter Idris Ali has more.

The U.S. military said this drone, an unmanned, unarmed drone, was approaching the Lincoln carrier. The U.S. military says it tried to take de-escalatory steps. The drone continued its approach, and so an F-35 fighter jet shot down the Iranian drone. The Iranians are saying that the drone was carrying out surveillance in the region, and it lost connection with the drone, but the reason is unclear. A few hours after that, in the Strait of Hormuz, which is really this critical waterway, a U.S. flagged vessel was approached by Iranian speedboats and drones asking the U.S. vessel, merchant vessel, to stop.

Instead of stopping, it increase its speed and fled away, at which point it was joined by a U.S. destroyer which was in the region and he was able to safely escort this U.S. merchant festival away from those waters. Iran hasn't commented on that second incident. In France, police have raided X's offices in Paris and prosecutors have ordered Elon Musk to appear in court. The raid and summons are linked to a year-long investigation into suspected abuse of algorithms and fraudulent data extraction.

Such court summons are mandatory, though they are harder to enforce on people who do not live in France. Referring to the raids, Musk said in a post on X, this is a political attack. The French prosecutor's office also says it's widening its investigation,

alleging X's AI chatbot, GROC, let users create sexualized images, including of minors. X had pledged to crack down on the creation of sexual AI-generated images. But a new Reuters investigation finds the AI bot is still doing whatever it's asked. Reuters' cyber correspondent Raphael Satter explains the tests his team conducted.

So a couple of weeks ago, myself and eight other Reuters journalists decided to check out what Groch would do if we asked it to edit photos of ourselves and each other and edit those photos in ways that were degrading, humiliating, or sexualized. And in almost every case where we submitted a photo and asked GROC to do something with it, GROC complied, even in cases where we told Grog that the photos would be used for harmful purposes, for example, for the purposes of public humiliation.

Raphael says X's previous pledge to stop users being able to do just that came after a lot of complaints. We took our findings to X and XAI several different times. We have received no comment beyond the boilerplate response that XAI often emails journalists, say, quote unquote, legacy media lies. And X flagged to us the statement that they'd made publicly a few weeks ago, which said that they were imposing some curbs. But they haven't explained why it is that users can still generate these non-consensual images. Staying with social media, Spain and Greece are now weighing up whether to ban social media for teenagers.

The pair would be following Australia's lead, which became the first country in the world to enforce a teenage social media ban back in December. Tech reporter Jeff Horwitz has more on how social media companies are responding. So there's been kind of a big push by a lot of companies such as meta to introduce voluntary teen accounts. that it's rolled out around the world to say that sort of it's trying to bring enough that perhaps it stalls national regulation. And there's been a focus on all the positive use cases as well that might be getting restricted.

And I think there's been sort of a goal to, like, at least initially portray this as something that the crazy old Australians did and that doesn't need to go any further. Over in the US, though, if it's by some states to do something similar, have come up against roadblocks. So the state restrictions, some of them have gone through.

There is, however, substantial litigation over whether there are First Amendment rights implicated or whether this is just simply regulating a consumer product that happens to be used by a lot of children. And on the federal level, I would say that there's been a lot of talk about how we need to regulate social media platforms and very little actual regulation has come out of that. For news on how AI is impacting markets, as well as more, top econ and finance stories, tune in to our sister podcast, MorningBid, wherever you get your podcasts. We do believe that Nancy was taken from her home against her will.

Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos announcing that 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie, mother of NBC news anchor Savannah Guthrie, has not disappeared, but has been abducted. Authorities say they're asking for the public's help and say they're doing everything they can. Reporter Erica Stapleton is following developments. We know that Nancy Guthrie was dropped off at her home around 9.30 Saturday night, and then she didn't show up for church in the Sunday morning, around 11. Her family got that notice, and that's when they notified the sheriff's department that she wasn't at home. That's when the search started.

Erica says Nancy's house isn't in a place someone would likely stumble upon either. It's interesting because this neighborhood, it's a bit tucked away. It's in the Catalina Foothills area, so a bit more. desert terrain. It's more of an affluent area. And it's this house in particular where Nancy Guthrie lives is kind of in the back of the neighborhood. So it's not a place you can access, you know, right off the main road. You kind of have to weave through a few neighborhood streets. It's pretty residential. Savannah Guthrie, of course, Today Show anchor. She's a bit of a hometown hero here. I've seen Sheriff Nanos, you know, tearing up in some of his interviews as he's doing them because

this is, you know, a family that's well known in the community. A four-day partial government shutdown has officially ended. President Donald Trump signed the agreed bill into law Tuesday night, giving lawmakers two weeks to negotiate potential limits on the current immigration crackdown. And also at the White House, Colombian president Gustavo Petro and President Trump seem to have shown a warmer relationship. Trump previously called Petro and Emanuel. illegal drug dealer and threatened military action against Colombia,

while Petro accused the US of war crimes over strikes on suspected drug boats. The White House visit included discussions of eradicating coca crops, capturing major drug traffickers, and possibly exporting Venezuelan gas through Colombia. Disney has a new CEO. Josh DeMaro has been at the head of Disney's theme parks, overseeing massive expansions of the Disney experience. And as our business of entertainment reporter, Dawn Chimaleski reports,

he'll now have the challenge of bringing that to the whole Disney Empire. He is a mini-celebrity among theme park aficionados. He spearheaded the plan to invest $60 billion over a decade to upgrade these parks to continue to attract guests. He's launched new cruise ships. He was the leading proponent of Disney's investment in Epic Games, which is the game publisher, the publisher of Fortnite. So Josh is, you know, is very tech forward and is already running a complex organization.

But the job he's moving into is much bigger than theme parks. The movie business is still in recovery. Now, Disney has ended the year with two enormous blockbusters that brought in over a billion dollars each. You had Avatar, Fire and Ice, and you had Zootopia 2, which is now approaching $2 billion, in box office revenue. So Disney knows how to make hits, big, all-audience films that gets

families off the couch and into the movie theaters, but it's still a business in decline. And there are other opportunities on the horizon that have the potential of being greatly disruptive technologies like generative AI. And for today's recommended read, the latest installation in our Culture Current series, where we speak to climber Alex Honnold after he completed the first ever, ropless ascent of Taipei 101, Taiwan's tallest skyscraper. There's a link to that story in the 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 favourite 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.