Reuters World News - Six months of Iran war, Nepal and 'Lake America'

Episode Date: August 28, 2026

Six months into the war in Iran, all sides face a costly stalemate. Iranians tell Reuters about the price they are paying for the conflict and our correspondents unpack the fallout for U.S. President Donald Trump and the government in Tehran. Plus, rescue efforts in Nepal and China are at risk from more flooding, and Lake Ontario gets the Trump rebrand treatment. 📲 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 Friday, August 28th. Today, six months of war and ordinary Iranians are paying the price. Rescuers race against time in Nepal as a barrier lake threatens to burst. Lake Ontario gets the Trump rebrand treatment. And, the robot which outran Usain Bolt but had no idea how to stop. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front line. in 10 minutes, seven days a week. Two and five Canadians will hear the words you have cancer. That's why

every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at PMC,

Today marks six months since U.S. and Israeli strikes plunged Iran and the surrounding region into war. The conflict has reached a costly stalemate. The Trump administration is betting on a shift from airstrikes to economic pressure to force Iran to the negotiating table. But while Iran's leaders say they can withstand the pressure, ordinary Iranians are paying the price. In the southern port city of Bandar Abbas, shopkeepers like Qasim Shouja say a weakening currency has hurt livelihoods. At the city's fish market,

traders report fewer boats heading out to sea because of security risks and fuel shortages. And many young people say uncertainty is making it harder to plan for the future. Our chief Iran correspondent, Paris Safizi, says that for many Iranians, the war is now being felt most acutely through the economy. The inflation is high.

Food prices have increased. is far faster than wages. Job losses are increasing and the currency has collapsed. Fuel, cues, power cuts and damaged infrastructure at daily strain. However, it doesn't mean that life is like a war-torn country in Iran.

People still go out, they have fun, supermarkets are full of goods and life goes on. Basically, people are adopting to wartime difficulties. Meanwhile, Tehran continues to disrupt shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital route for global energy supplies.

U.S. foreign policy editor Don Durfey says the prolonged conflict has complicated things for the Trump administration. They were talking about this in terms of weeks, not months, but here we are, of course, at six months. They had a number of things that they hoped to achieve that they said in the very beginning. One was that the Iranian government would collapse. They wanted to end Iran's nuclear program, sort of eliminate its ability to strike its neighbors with missiles. None of those have been fully achieved. Don says U.S. and Israeli strikes have likely

slowed Iran's nuclear program, but without international inspectors on the ground, there's far less visibility on what remains. Meanwhile, Washington's shift back toward economic pressure is a familiar tactic. It's important to remember that the U.S. has had sanctions on Iran really since the late 70s when the Iranian revolution happened. And to date, those sanctions, that economic pressure has not caused the Iranian government to collapse. And the political costs for President Donald Trump are rising at home. The war is unpopular, no question about it. The latest Reuters-Ipsos poll show that just 31% of American voters approve of it.

You know, gasoline is very expensive in the U.S. That's a politically sensitive issue. Trump had run on a campaign of ending wars and not starting new ones. So that is also weighing on the party. Now to the border region of Nepal and China, where the risk of more flooding is complicating rescue efforts in the wake of this week's catastrophic glacier collapse. A lake formed after that collapse is overflowing, halting the search for survivors.

Hundreds of people have been killed and around a thousand are still missing. Beijing Bureau Chief Ryan Wu has more. The collapse of the glacier caused a lot of debris to accumulate at the base of the mountain slope from which the glacier fell off from, and the debris has led to the formation of a temporary lake, a so-called barrier lake, and this barrier lake is at risk of bursting. This lake, according to Chinese engineers,

is about 150 meters long, about 50 meters high, and has a capacity to hold around 2 million cubic meters of wood. water, that will be equal to about 800 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Chinese engineers have been trying to create a very narrow waterway at the base of this lake to slowly drain it and safely drain it. The challenge here is that the terrain is highly unstable and there is still a chance that the lake could suddenly burst and then cause secondary flooding downstream.

The number of Americans on unemployment benefit has slid to the lowest level in a month. It's a signal of a more stable labour market that could give the Federal Reserve leeway to focus on fighting inflation. And investors are keen for clarity on how that fight is going, with Fed Chair Kevin Warsh's speech at Jackson Hole later today, top of the market's agenda. Here's Mike Dolan from our sister podcast, Morning Bid. So we finally get to Wyoming, having speculated about this speech all week, the markets now get to hear from Kevin Warsh later today. What he's not going to do is he's not going to give us guidance on the September policy rate meeting because he's very intent on not guiding markets specifically on policy ahead.

However, his last meeting left a lot of confusion in financial markets about exactly what the Fed is targeting. What the inflation rate is it targeting? And does he mind it to change that? The other thing he said was that markets had tightened bond markets in particular had raised the cost of borrowing. We're doing some of the feds work for it. Now, in the meantime, the US Treasury has tried to cap those borrowing rates. And so we want to hear from him as to what he thinks of that operation

and whether that comes back and feeds back into Fed policy itself. So there's just two things that Warsh may need to address to get markets back onside. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca.

First, it was the Gulf of Mexico. Now President Trump is taking aim at one of the Great Lakes. We're going to be changing the name of Lake Ontario, effective immediately to Lake America. The move escalates a feud with Canada after both sides have levied tariffs on tens of billions of dollars in cross-border trade. The order applies to US federal agencies and has no bearing on what Canada, international bodies or other organizations call the lake. The Prime Minister of Canada and the Democratic Governor of New York State said they wouldn't be changing the name. The name Lake Ontario is more than 400 years old, predating both countries, and comes from the indigenous Wendot language, meaning the lake is beautiful, great.

Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb General known as the Butcher of Bosnia, has died in UN custody at the age of 84. He was serving a life sentence for orchestrating the 1995 Serbenica massacre in which at least 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were killed, Europe's worst atrocity since World War II. He also oversaw the brutal siege of Sarajevo and was found guilty of crimes against humanity, extermination and terror.

Survivors say his crimes are still being denied by many Bosnian Serbs, who view him as a hero. Norway's King Harold has died at the age of 89, following hospitalisation to treat a bacterial infection in his blood. He was Europe's oldest monarch. A legal victory for Anthropic, a federal judge has blocked the Pentagon's attempt to blacklist the AI company. Ruling the move was illegal. Defense Secretary Pete Hegeseth had labelled Anthropic a national security risk

after it refused to allow its clawed AI models to be used for autonomous weapons or surveillance. Now, you may have seen the news earlier this week that a Chinese humanoid robot, Tian Gong Ultra, ran the 100-meter dash in 8.64 seconds, nearly a second faster than you. Usain Bolt's world record. And while that feat might have you wondering when humanoid robots could begin showing up in more practical applications like factory work or service industry jobs, a new Reuters investigation shows there are still hurdles to overcome. Getting humanoid robots to do simple tasks like sorting crates or making coffee can be incredibly challenging. And industry executives and researchers say most humanoid robots still lack the intelligence needed for

general purpose work. Our editor-at-large, Kevin Crowlicky, explains the disconnect. The robots of these games, including Tangong Ultra, experts say, were engineered to do one thing. They had one KPI that was run fast in a straight line. They didn't know how to stop. And we saw that in the games as they repeatedly hit a padded restraining wall at the end. We had robots taken off on stretchers.

We had apparent battery fires. It shows that in a more open set of challenges. in a wider domain, the humans still have an advantage. For more on any of the stories from today, as well as more analysis and news shaping our world, check out Reuters.com or the Reuters app. There's a link in the description of today's pod 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 tomorrow with our daily headline show.