Reuters World News - Macron's twilight, Trump's approval and AI hacking

Episode Date: October 20, 2026

France's riots plunge Emmanuel Macron's final months as president deeper into turmoil, with Marine Le Pen standing to gain from the fallout. A new Reuters/Ipsos poll puts President Donald Trump's approval at a record low. Saudi Arabia postpones its 'Davos in the Desert' conference as Houthi attacks keep Riyadh airport closed. And how one hacker used AI agents to breach over 100 companies. Podcasts, breaking news, and video analysis from the source. ⁠⁠⁠⁠Download the Reuters app here.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 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 Carmel Crimmons in Dublin. It's Tuesday, October 20th. Today, France's riots could be clearing a path to the presidency for Marine Le Pen. Trump warns the US could burn like France if Democrats win the midterms, as his approval ratings hit a new low. And how one hacker used AI agents and a few thousand dollars to break into scores of sites. This is Reuters World News, bringing you every day. everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, seven days a week. The new Subaru Cross Trek Hybrid is the most fuel efficient cross-track yet. That means less time filling your tank and more time filling your day.

More court time, more ride time, more lake time, more camp time, more go time. The new 27 Subaru Cross Trek Hybrid, Consumer Reports, top-rated subcompact SUV. Stop by your local Subaru dealership. or visit Subaru.ca to learn more. Consumer reports as non-endores products or services. At least 73 people are dead after drones hit a market in the disputed ABA region

on the border of Sudan and South Sudan. That's according to ABA's caretaker information minister who's accusing Sudan's army of carrying out the attack on Monday. Stay across Reuters for more on this developing story. French President Emmanuel Macron is facing growing pressure over what critics say were major security failures

during a weekend of riots and looting tied to anti-government protests. Authorities imposed curfews in parts of several cities on Monday, including Paris, Lille and Nice. The unrest is plunging Macron's final months in office into turmoil and benefiting far-eyed leader Marine Le Penh. Reporter Michel Rose has more from Paris. Marrile-Le Pen was already the frontrunner

for the presidential election in 2026. but these events over the weekend are creating a clear pathway for her. That's what most analysts say. And I talked to one of Macron's former lawmakers who spoke to the president on Sunday and told him, you should resign now because you should try and prepare some orderly transition because the country cannot function like this. for another six months. So this formal lawmaker told me

Le Pen doesn't only have a clear pathway to the presidency. She has a six-lane highway ahead of her. And the scenes of looting across French cities are only benefiting her. Meanwhile, an online app for second-hand clothing

says it's cracking down on looted French goods being sold on its platform. Vinted has removed listings suspected of being linked to looting in France. The app says it's working with French authorities and could permanently ban accounts that violate its rules. France's small business minister called a meeting on Monday with Vinted, Amazon, eBay and TikTok

to address stolen goods appearing online after the weekend's violence. Over the past couple of weeks, cybersecurity researchers Snorfagerland watched as a Chinese-speaking hacker broke into websites belonging to more than a hundred companies. Yet the hacker did almost none of the work. The cybercriminal instead outsourced their hacking spree almost entirely to artificial intelligence,

tasking AI agents with spending hours autonomously probing and breaking into targeted sites. Rafael Satter explains, So what took place is that about two and a half weeks ago, a Chinese-speaking hacker spun up an instance of something called Cairn, which is an open-source platform, which is very popular with what the industry calls red teamers and what are probably more popularly known as hackers. These cairns are effectively kind of systems that allow teams of AI agents to work together to solve a common goal. And so what we've seen recently over the past couple of weeks is these cairns being used a lot by hackers

to point agents at targets and to give them fairly terse instructions and say, go crazy, I needed to hack these guys, and that's what this researcher that I spoke to found, except on a wider scale than we've seen before with more than a hundred different victims. Some of the hacks that this researcher saw being carried out by these AI teams were actually pretty sophisticated. They would have relied from a human hacker, a fair bit of lateral thinking and a fair bit of creativity. Now none of that's necessary. It's like setting a kitchen timer, right? You come back to it once it dings and it's hacked something. When this level of skill is put into the hands of people who didn't have it before, what you're looking at is a far

more dangerous internet. Reuters couldn't determine the degree to which the breach is discovered by Fagerland resulted in the unauthorized extraction of data. Cairns' author has said the platform is not intended for hacking attacks. Federal prosecutors say a former Open AI engineer accused of secretly placing a recording device inside an executive conference room may have had support from Saudi Arabia. In court filings, prosecutors say the 35-year-old Saudi National Abdulraman al-Fozan was in frequent contact with an unnamed member of the Saudi royal family. They also allege a Saudi military official paid for a one-way ticket home for Al-Fozan's wife and son

after his arrest. A lawyer for Alfozan didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Prosecutors are now asking a judge to keep him in custody as the investigation continues, arguing that he's a flight risk. The new Subaru Cross-Trek hybrid is the most fuel-efficient cross-trek yet.

That means less time filling your tank and more time filling your day. More court time, more ride time, more lake time, more camp time, more go-time. The new 2027 Subaru Cross Trek Hybrid. Consumer Reports top-rated subcompact SUV. Stop by your local Subaru dealership or visit Subaru.ca to learn more.

Consumer Reports does not endorse products or services. Turning now to the Gulf, at least 58 people are dead and more than 200 injured after Iran-aligned Houthis hit a government security forces camp in Yemen. Local sources say three ballistic missiles were fired at troops during a training exercise. It's the latest in a string of deadly Houthi attacks, including strikes on Saudi Arabia's energy infrastructure and Riyadh airport, attacks that are disrupting travel in and out of the kingdom and forcing organizers to postpone its flagship investment conference

known as Davos in the desert until 2027. Our chief correspondent Timor Azari explains on the drive to Bahrain. So we are driving through the desert right now. I need to get to Dubai. Theat airport is closed and we figure, the shortest route is to drive to Bahrain and then fly to Dubai with my colleague Hamad over here who is driving. More and more people are taking the land route out of Saudi Arabia after Houthi attacks

on the airports, on the Riyadh airport, on Damam and on others in the south of the country. And that's a big shift from what we saw earlier on in the war, where Saudi Arabia became sort of the haven for people fleeing Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and Qaeda. when they were facing the brunt of Iranian attacks, that map has now flipped, and embassies and companies are recommending that their citizens and their employees actually go to neighboring Gulf states and fly from there.

So there is a sign of just how much the war has come home to the kingdom. I mean, the Yemen war is an old one. Saudi Arabia got involved 12 years ago, and at the time, they had similar goals that they had similar goals that the Yemeni government have now, which was to push the Houthis back into the mountains out of the capital. It hasn't worked for 12 years, and many people are skeptical of the current campaign and its ability to effect the change on the ground.

But meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is facing daily attacks now by the Houthis, and that really has brought the war home in a way, which it hasn't been for the past decade. To Washington now, where the war of words between U.S. President Donald Trump and you Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky continues. Speaking to reporters on Monday, Trump again called into question whether Zelensky should be leading talks to end the war with Russia. Ukraine could have had this thing settled a long time ago. If he would have listened to me, and you remember the Oval Office,

he would have had this settled a long time ago. Maybe it's time for Zelensky to get somebody else to negotiate. Trump was headed to a midterm rally in Wichita, Kansas, where Republicans are fighting for a Senate seat, and where he told the crowd that the US could burn like France if Democrats win. Kansas hasn't sent a Democrat to the Senate in 94 years. New Reuters Ipsos polling, meanwhile, shows President Trump's approval rating has hit an all-time low, with just 31% of Americans approving of the job he's doing.

And with just two weeks to go before the midterms, Democrats now hold a 12-point lead over Republicans on the generic congressional ballot. That's their widest advantage of this election cycle. Final verdict. A Kenyan court has found self-proclaimed preacher Paul McKenzie and 28 others guilty of murder in one of the deadliest cult cases in recent memory. Prosecutors say McKenzie's Good News International Church convinced followers to starve themselves and their children to reach heaven before the end of the world.

The victims include 190 children and one adult. More than 400 bodies have been recovered from Kenya's Shakykaqqq. Pola Forest so far. Sentencing is on November 6th, and their lawyer says they plan to appeal. The new Subaru Cross Trek Hybrid is the most fuel-efficient Cross-Trek yet. That means less time filling your tank and more time filling your day. More court time. More ride time. More lake time. More camp time. More go time. The new 2027 Subaru Cross-Trek Hybrid. Consumer reports top-rated subcompact SUV. Stop by your local Subaru dealership or visit Subaru.ca to learn more.

Consumer Reports that's not indoors products or services. For more on any of the stories from today, as well as more analysis and news shaping our world, check out roiders.com or the Reuters app. There's a link in the description to download it and start getting pure news straight from the source. Don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast player. And if you're listening on a smart speaker, just ask for the latest news from Reuters seven days a week. We'll be back later with an update.