Reuters World News - Saudi alert system, IMF outlook and French fridge hack

Episode Date: October 13, 2026

Saudi Arabia's flagship oil conference pushes ahead amid reports the country's warning system stayed quiet before the deadly airport attacks. The IMF says AI investment is keeping global growth afloat, but warns it could bring it crashing down too. And hackers remotely cranked up fridge temperatures at hundreds of French supermarkets. 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 Tara Oaks in Liverpool. It's Tuesday, October 13th. Today, Saudi Arabia pushes ahead with its flagship oil conference. The US hopes the diesel deal can soften Moscow. The IMF releases its growth outlook and hackers remotely cranked up refrigeration temperatures at supermarkets across France. This is Reuters World News, bringing everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, seven days a week. The event of recent weeks are serious. Our response must be equally serious, while remaining focused on the decades ahead. Saudi Arabia's energy minister, Prince Abdullahiz bin Salman, urging oil bosses to stay the course in the wake of deadly attacks on the kingdom's airports. An oil conference in Riyadh went ahead on Monday, despite several executives pulling out following the attacks.

At least 18 people were killed and more than 300 wounded in four attacks over the past week. Saudi Arabia's public warning system, which had been issuing warnings via cell phones and social media since May, went silent in the days before the attack. The government has not explained why. Officials tell Reuters the silence was an effort to maintain a sense of normalcy. Those alerts have now resumed in Riyadh and elsewhere. Now to that surprise, Russia-Ukraine energy ceasefire announced by U.S. President Donald Trump. Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitri Peskov, says talks about a possible energy ceasefire are continuing. But says Moscow does not want a temporary ceasefire and is instead seeking what it calls

a long-term peace. And all this comes as Trump faces criticism over a deal for the U.S. to buy diesel from Russia. Zelensky says it reverses years of Western efforts to isolate Russia's economy and lawmakers from both U.S. parties have also pushed back saying the deal appears to violate U.S. law. Rootus Groms Lattery has more. So we continue to learn more about this meeting on Friday and Miami between the U.S. negotiators and the Ukrainian negotiators and a few other parties present. And this meeting, of course,

has set the terms for this sort of illusory energy ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine and this very controversial diesel deal. The U.S. negotiators, which were Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, and Steve Woodcoff, a close personal friend, they told the Ukrainians, you know, look, the Russians, they're not really interested

in negotiating at the moment. So let's throw them some sort of carrot and hope it kind of gets them to the table in earnest. It's interesting for a couple of reasons. One, because Trump in public, he keeps saying the Russians, they really want to make a deal. But in private, the U.S. acknowledges much like the Europeans that the Russians really aren't that interested in a deal. The Ukrainians received it poorly. They basically said, look, you've tried carrots with the Russians.

You keep throwing them carrots, carrots, carrots. You know, one of these days you've got to throw on the stick. And also, just practically speaking, Russia's war economy is really based on their ability to export fuel products. So in the immediate term, of course, it potentially will increase Ukrainian suffering. So they didn't like it for two different reasons. The International Monetary Fund has released its latest world economic outlook. The headlines, AI investment is keeping global growth afloat, but its risks are mounting. And the war in the Middle East is casting a shadow.

David Lauder is at the meeting in Bangkok. AI is kind of both the driver and a major risk to the global economy. economy in this report. It is the reason that global growth is sort of being maintained at around 3.1% this year, this continued strong investment is offsetting the drag from high energy prices because the war in the Gulf is dragging on. But the IMF is also looking at it as a major risk to the economy. on a number of fronts, most significantly if there is a repricing of assets related to AI, if AI would disappoint. There's kind of sky-high valuations right now. There are expectations that it will create massive productivity gains. If those don't materialize, the fund is flagging that it could cause a sudden

halt to the investment that we're seeing. So it's a double-edged sword. And David says the growth forecasts also depend on a fragile assumption about the war. They're based on outcomes of the war that the IMF can't predict. Currently they are based on an assumption that the Strait of Hormuz reopens in March of 2027. We return to free war shipping conditions by October of 2027 and that the average oil price would be about $96 a barrel this year. Obviously, there are already over $100 a barrel, especially given recent attacks on Saudi Arabia by the Houthis. There's also an adverse scenario highlighted in the report,

which the war worsens. It drags on longer. Oil is above $130 a barrel by the first order of 2027. So that would reduce growth, you know, by another 0.2 percentage points this year and a half a percentage point in 2027. And if you're in the market for more econ and finance news, then check out our sister podcast morning bed. Available wherever you get your podcasts. Immigration agents have raided the Washington home of Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. Authorities turned up at our house before dawn.

This local woman watched on. I was getting ready to go to Sikh's coffee and someone said, talking outside, they said, hey, they're out there outside of the congresswoman's house. I said, what? Omar was born in Somalia and came to the United States as a child. A person familiar with the investigation says part of the probe concerns immigration paperwork filled out by her late father when she was a child. Omar, a prominent critic of President Trump,

says the government is being weaponized against a political approach. opponent. But President Trump says it's nothing to do with him. She comes from a country that is a non-country, and then she comes over here, she complains about our Constitution. I think she's a terrible person, but that's really up to the DOJ. I have not been doing. Democrats are raising questions about the timing, but the search coming just weeks before the November 3rd midterm elections. Justice Department policy bars prosecutors from timing actions to affect an election's outcome. And historically, the DOJ has avoided investigations into candidates within 60 days of a vote. Staying with the elections, Elon Musk has spent a whopping

$366 million on this election cycle. And more than three quarters of that, roughly 276 million, has come since July. The money is aimed at helping Republicans keep control of Congress. Musk is backing major Republican super PACs in both the House and the Senate. He's also putting money into his own political group, America PAC. Taken together, these donations likely make Musk the single biggest political donor of this election cycle. Now to France, where a cyber attack has hit supermarkets. Hackers remotely changed refrigeration settings at major chains. Some were set as high as 122 degrees Fahrenheit. The result, spoiled food, damaged equipment, and in some cases, fires. Director of one store, Julianne Fraure, put out this video statement that the attack on

their software caused a total loss of fresh and frozen produce. Retailers expect losses in the tens of millions of euros. Pope Leo keeping a full public schedule yesterday right up to heading into hospital. The 71-year-old pontiff is expected to have surgery after doctors found a small nodule on his lung during a routine checkup. The Vatican says he'll spend about a week recovering and cancel public events through October 20th. On any of the stories from today, as well as more analysis and news shaping our world, check outrouters.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 favourite 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.