Reuters World News - Melissa, Trump in South Korea, OpenAI-Microsoft and Geert Wilders

Episode Date: October 29, 2025

Hurricane Melissa makes landfall in Cuba after leaving a trail of destruction in Jamaica. U.S. President Donald Trump is on his final stop in a high-stakes Asia trip. Microsoft and OpenAI strike a deal that clears the way for the ChatGPT maker to go public. And Dutch voters head to the polls as far-right, anti-immigration leader Geert Wilders tries to hold onto power. 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, October 29th. Today, President Trump lands in South Korea, his final stop on a high-stakes Asia tour. Open AI makes a deal with Microsoft as it looks for cash to bring the next phase of its AI ambitions to life. And the far right makes its pitch to maintain power in the Netherlands. This is Reuters World News,

bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, seven days a week. Hurricane Melissa has made landfall in Cuba, along with warnings of life-threatening flooding on the island, prompting the evacuation of three-quarters of a million people. Its path leaving a trail of destruction in Jamaica, the extent of which is only now becoming clear. Melissa made landfall there with winds topping 185 miles per hour, the strongest cyclone ever to hit the island. In St Elizabeth, homes were left in pieces, with pylons strewn across roads,

leaving more than half a million people without power. The hurricane has weakened slightly to a still very powerful category four and is slow moving, meaning more potential for damage. The US National Hurricane Centre is still warning that, quote, total structural failure is still likely in Melissa's path. follow along on Reuters.com or the Reuters app for developments.

U.S. President Donald Trump has arrived in South Korea for the final stop of his Asia tour. He's set to meet with President Li Jiam Yong with trade talks topping the agenda. Our deal with the Republic of Korea will be finalized very soon. The two countries struck a deal in August to avoid steep tariffs, but negotiations over $350 billion in South Korean investments, meant to keep those tariffs at bay have stalled. Just hours before Trump's arrival, North Korean state media says Pyongyang tested a nuclear-capable cruise missile.

Trump has made repeated calls for a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, but no word yet on whether that's something Kim is up for. Trump will, however, sit down with China's Xi Jinping on Thursday. I think we're going to have a deal. I think it'll be a good deal for both. To Gaza now, where a war. woman screams over the body of a loved one killed in new Israeli airstrikes. The hospital in Khan Yunus once more treating the injured, including children. It's yet another test of the fragile Gaza ceasefire brokered earlier this month by US President Trump.

Israel hasn't commented on these specific strikes, but has accused Hamas of violating the ceasefire agreement. Hamas's armed wing, meanwhile, says it's delaying the handover of a recovered hostages' body as a result of Israeli attacks. The group is also warning any further escalation will hinder search efforts and slow the return of Israeli soldiers remains. Microsoft and OpenAI have struck a new deal that clears the way for the chat GPT maker to go public. It replaces their original 2019 agreement, which saw Microsoft invest in Open AI in exchange for exclusive rights to provide its computing power and a writer-first refusal on new AI services. As Reuters Tech correspondent Deepa Sitteramen explains,

the restructuring gives open-AI freedom to pursue some ambitious plans. At a fundamental level, Open AI and Sam himself, they're talking about AI as a potential mechanism for overhauling the way society just functions. They talk about this could change the way human beings work, the way they learn, the way they live, maybe your job gets replaced by AI. Maybe we need a universal basic income so that people can still live fruitful lives.

So he's talking about a whole stale restructuring of the way we live. And all of that takes a lot of money and all of that takes a lot of talent and resources. And so he's spending a lot to, secure that. Deepa says OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, will keep the same salary, $76,000 a year, with no stake in the company. Initially, given the way Open AI was structured, this was actually an asset. The idea then was, Open AI was developing technology that was so powerful. You needed a

CEO that was not financially motivated by profit. But You have to remember that over the course of this overall AI revolution, Sam Altman has been investing a lot in companies. It's brought his net worth to a couple billion dollars. Another major tech company, Nvidia, is also making moves, announcing a deal to build supercomputers for the U.S. Department of Energy, in part to help Washington develop and maintain its nuclear weapons. The United States is ahead in the AI race,

and we have to stay ahead in the AI race. CEO Jensen Huang speaking after a keynote to investors, praising Trump, happy that the president appears open to easing limits on sales to China. Huang argues that access to roughly $50 billion in potential sales there is crucial to keeping Nvidia ahead. All that is the company nears a stock market value of $5 trillion, which would make it the first company in history to cross that threshold. The Federal Reserve is expected to cut interest rates a quarter-peratured,

percentage point later today for the second time this year. But there's another tool in the Fed's toolbox that's getting some attention, the buying and in this case selling of bonds, known as quantitative tightening. And as our Fed reporter Michael Derby explains, that strategy may be coming to an end. When interest rates were near zero and the Fed still needed to provide stimulus to the economy, it did so by buying massive, like trillions of dollars in government and mortgage bonds. Most people think the Fed overdid it and bought too much and grew its holdings far too much. And so in 2022, as the Fed was getting into the business of raising rates to deal with rising inflation, the Fed also shifted into trying to get these bonds off of its books.

And so what that process did was it took overall Fed holdings from a peak of $9 trillion, which was double where the Fed's balance sheet was before the COVID pandemic struck, and has taken it down to about $6.6 trillion. While this is a technical move by the Fed, it's not without controversy. So the Fed's footprint in markets is very large. Many people, including the Treasury Secretary, believe that the Fed owning bonds in the way that they do distorts financial markets, and they would like the Fed to reduce its footprint as far as it can possibly go.

More than 60 people have died during police raids in Rio de Janeiro. The operation targeted a major gang just days before the United Nations Climate Summit, known as COP 30, is set to begin in the country. Police say suspects used drones and grenades against the police. Rio's hosting climate-focused events alongside the Amazonian city of Bel-Im, where COP 30 will take place. Among the dead are four police officers. the deadliest police operation in Rio's history.

Dutch voters head to the polls today in an election that could push the country further right again. Gert Wilders, the far-right leader who forced the election after his coalition refused to halt all asylum migration, is leading, but he faces tough odds of forming a coalition. While Wilders is focusing on immigration, with ideas like sending male Ukrainian refugees back and using the army to seal borders, his centrist rivals are focusing on more domestic issues. Reuters reporter Bart Meyer is in Amsterdam. Dutch far-right leader, Geert Wilders, led the previous government after winning the election in 2023, but he quickly also toppled that government, which was dominated by his party.

As he said, it was not willing to follow his radical ideas to stop migration. All other parties have said they actually will rule out working with him again, but parties on all sides have tried to portray that they will not work with the other side, trying to win voters for their preferred coalition. So we would probably see parties first try to form a more center-left government or center-right, but both might come up short to actually have a majority. Our recommended read for today is one not really suited for a podcast due to it being ultra-quiet, which in this case is the whole point.

NASA has tested its experimental supersonic jet, designed to break the sound barrier with little noise, paving the way for supersonic and therefore much faster commercial air travel. We'll put a link to that story in today's pod 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.