Reuters World News - Michigan shooting, Portland, Kyiv and Moldova’s election result

Episode Date: September 29, 2025

In Michigan, four people are dead after a man drove into a Mormon church and then opened fire. Reuters has learned the callup of National Guard troops to Portland came as a surprise to the Pentagon. Kyiv residents and emergency services have been cleaning up in the wake of one of the most sustained attacks on the capital since the war began. And in Moldova, the pro-EU ruling party has won a clear victory in parliamentary elections, beating its Russia-supporting rival. Listen to On Assignment ⁠⁠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

Today, the Pentagon is caught off guard by the National Guard call up to Portland. Federal drug prosecutions plunge as Trump shifts investigators' focus to immigration. And we're on the ground during one of the biggest attacks on Kiev of the war in Ukraine. It's Monday, September 29th. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, seven days a week. I'm Kim Vinal in Wanganui, New Zealand. In Michigan, four people are dead after a man drove into a Mormon church, opened fire with an assault rifle, then set the building on fire. Police identified the gunman as 40-year-old former Marine Thomas Sanford.

He was shot dead by police in the parking lot. Hundreds of people were in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when the attack happened. Grand Blank Township Police Chief will not. William Rain, says more victims may still be found in the child remains of the building. For more on this developing story, head to Reuters.com or the Reuters app. Reuters has learned the call-up of National Guard troops to Portland came as a surprise to the Pentagon. US Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegeseth, has ordered 200 troops into the Democrat-run city. President Donald Trump says that's needed because of the threat from domestic terrorists,

which Oregon's governor, Tina Kotick, is calling a misuse of federal power, with the state filing a lawsuit to challenge it. Reporter Idris Ali is covering the story. It was really a surprise because people at the Pentagon weren't really expecting it. They had really been focused on preparing for Chicago, maybe Memphis as a place for potential deployments. So when Portland came, sources that we spoke to were caught off guard. It's not something that they were necessarily planning for. So what we've seen is the numbers in Portland are sort of 200 National Guard troops currently,

which is pretty low compared to what we've seen in other cities. So in Washington, D.C., we're talking about thousands of National Guard troops being sent in from around the country to patrol the streets. In Los Angeles, we saw not only thousands of National Guard troops, so we saw 700 active-duty Marines being sent to the city. the one thing all of these cities have in common is they're run by Democrats. And I think that is not lost on many political pundits and politicians. And the argument that they're making is, look, this isn't about crime. This is about Trump imposing his will on cities that are not run by Republicans.

And that sort of comes to the next point, right? We have seen in the data a violent crime in Portland, much like many cities around the country, is actually going down. Beyond crime, another big priority for President Trump is immigration. But our reporting has shown that federal drug prosecutions have dropped to the lowest level in decades because agents are focusing on immigration. As reporter Brad Heath explains, the administration says the two go together. We reviewed millions of court records and talked to a lot of current and federal law enforcement officials. and what all of that tells us is that this process is bogged down at every step.

Agents are able to open fewer new drug investigations because they're busy doing other things. Prosecutors have been told to put their attention onto criminal immigration violations. That leaves fewer of them available to do the drug cases even when agents can open them. So this thing snowballs and leads to a pretty dramatic pullback. It's not that they've run out of targets. It's that they've run out of time because they're doing other things. The number of new defendants charged with drug offenses this year in federal courts down about 10% so far, which is the slowest pace in decades. The administration has told us that drug enforcement is still a priority.

The number of migrants crossing has gone down a lot, but the quantity of drugs seized at the border is actually higher this year than it was last year. But the number of people prosecuted for smuggling drugs into the United States is lower. Kyiv residents and emergency services have been cleaning up in the wake of one of the most sustained attacks on the capital since the war began. Russia launched almost 600 drones and nearly 50 missiles in the attack, which forced neighboring Poland to close its airspace in two southeastern cities. Our reporter Anthony Deutsch was in Kiev during the attacks. The attack in Kiev lasted roughly seven hours. so it was a pretty, pretty short night,

and you could hear the thuds of the anti-aircraft guns going and the drones buzzing overhead for basically all night. The first sounds really were in the very early hours of the morning when you heard the thud of the kind of anti-aircraft guns going off across the city, and it grew increasingly louder, and you also heard the artillery or the guns that were trying to shoot down the drone, The drones are quite a terrifying noise really. They fly low and they have a really loud buzzing sound, which gets louder and louder as they get closer.

So pretty much all night you could hear the guns trying to shoot them out of the air as they flew over the city and over our hotel. Anthony says finding shelter is difficult for such sustained attacks. They were firing ballistic missiles. as well as Scud missiles and drones carrying explosives. So when you have hundreds of drones flying across the sky and missiles coming in, and a lot of this city, people are living in high-rise buildings, so people could see them flying across the sky,

and you could see the tracers of the bullets as they flew through the sky trying to knock the drums out of the air. Some people sheltered in the underground subway stations, station. Our photographer was there and sheltering and had pictures of families there in the subway. Some people go into the bathrooms and climb into bathtubs. But really on an attack like this, it's hard to find places that are really out of harm's way. In Moldova, the pro-EU ruling party has landed a victory over its Russia-leaning rival. The pivotal parliamentary election win is a relief for the government as it seeks to stay outside of Moscow's orbit, as well as keep

the country's EU bid on track. Moldova did accuse Russia of trying to meddle in its vote, something Moscow denies. And yet, despite all we've achieved, I cannot continue my re-election campaign. New York Mayor Eric Adams announcing he's dropping out of the mayoral race, leaving Democrat Sovran Mamdani and independent, Andrew Cuomo, essentially in a two-horse race.

Adams ends his quest, having faced a federal. federal bribery indictment, which was abandoned, and sinking approval ratings. But he says that's not what drove his decision. The constant media speculation about my future and the campaign finance board's decision to withhold millions of dollars have undermined my ability to raise the funds needed. Adam says he won't endorse a successor. Zoran Mamdani, however, may not need it. he has a strong lead in the polls, five weeks out from Election Day.

A looming government shutdown in the US is top of investors' minds if Congress doesn't agree a funding bill by tomorrow. They're also eyeing a bunch of economic data releases due out this week. The most closely watched is Friday's jobs report, a key barometer of labour market health that helps shape the Fed's interest rate decisions. President Trump has told Reuters he, hopes to finalize a Gaza peace plan proposal when he meets with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House later today.

It comes, as Hamas says, it's lost contact with two hostages it was holding in Gaza City as Israel's offensive on the urban centre steps up. Israel's massive ground assault on Gaza City has flattened whole districts and forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to flee. And for today's recommended read, Italian fashion house Georgio Amani has unveiled the last collection the late designer and founder worked on. We'll drop a link to that story and those photos in the pod description. And we also have our latest episode of On Assignment podcast out now, where our journalists take you behind the scenes of the UN General Assembly, tackling high-stakes diplomacy, broken escalators, and all the challenges of multilateralism in the second Trump.

error. A link to that will also be in the show notes. 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. 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 tomorrow with our daily headline show.