Reuters World News - Trump-Xi, Rio bodies, Melissa and Fed

Episode Date: October 30, 2025

U.S. President Donald Trump shaves China tariffs after an “amazing” meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Hurricane Melissa tears through the Caribbean, as the extent of its devastation begins to emerge. Brazil’s deadliest police raid leaves over 100 dead, with corpses lying on the street just days ahead of COP30. And the Dutch centrist party makes huge election gains, delivering a blow to the far-right. Plus, the Fed says not to assume another interest rate cut is on the cards for 2025.    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 Thursday, October 30th, today. Trump touts an amazing meeting with Xi Jinping and says a tariff cut and rare earth's deal have been agreed. Hurricane Melissa kills dozens in Haiti. Brazil's deadliest police raid leaves more than 100 dead in Rio. And the Dutch centrist party wins big, as the right loses support.

This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, seven days a week. US President Donald Trump agrees to cut tariffs on Chinese goods down to under 50% after what he calls an amazing meeting with Xi Jinping in South Korea. Speaking on board Air Force One, Trump described Xi as a great leader.

It's a great leader. a leader of a very powerful, very strong country, China. In exchange, Beijing is cracking down on fentanyl, resuming soybean purchases and keeping the rare earths flowing. It was an outstanding group of decisions, I think, that was made. A lot of decisions were made, too. It wasn't too much left out there. It's the first face-to-face talks between the leaders since 2019, marking a potential thaw in the trade war that's been rattling global markets for months.

But markets are showing skepticism, Asian stocks veered between gains and losses, as some traders are not convinced that this calm will last. While en route to the meeting, President Trump made the extraordinary announcement that the U.S. is going to start testing nuclear weapons immediately. Reuters White House correspondent Trevor Honeycutt, who is traveling with the president, has more. Trump was flying on Marine One. When he issued a statement on truth social, saying that he intended to resume nuclear testing.

This was a huge surprise that sent shockwaves through the global community, and it was extremely unexpected, and it set interesting, intense backdrop to a meeting that was supposed to be about economic issues primarily, but now has this kind of security question looming over it as well. The move comes as Trump gives Seoul the green light to build a nuclear-powered submarine of its own. In recent days, North Korea tested ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads,

while Russia tested nuclear-powered weapons. The U.S. hasn't conducted a nuclear weapons test for more than 30 years. And President Trump, after repeatedly teasing the idea of running for a third term, which he is not allowed to do, is now saying it's not on the cards. Based on what I read, I guess I'm not allowed to run. So we'll see what happens. The president's comments coming after his top ally in Congress, Speaker Mike Johnson, said there was no legal pathway to make it happen.

I've talked about the constrictions of the Constitution, as much as so many American people lament that. Trump's flirtation with the idea has alarmed opponents and constitutional experts. Hurricane Melissa is storming through the Northern Caribbean, leaving devastation in its wake. In Cuba, hundreds of ruins. communities are cut off. And in Haiti, more than 20 people are dead. Ten of them children, after a river burst its backs in Petit Guave. The scale of the destruction in Jamaica,

meanwhile, is becoming clear, after Melissa made landfall bare as the strongest hurricane ever to hit the island. Entire communities are devastated, and nearly 80% of the country is without power. Zara Burton is in Kingston. So you had areas like St. Elizabeth, which was really badly hit. That parish was badly hit in 2004 last year because of Hurricane Beryl. They spent a lot of money putting back things together, and now they've been hit again. Black River Hospital, we're hearing that it's just devastated. The hospital is the only hospital, public hospital, available in that parish, St. Elizabeth.

and no crops are going to be affected, vegetables, fruits, that kind of thing. And then you have, you know, Westmoreland, that was another parish, that was also impacted. Set James, the Montagueby Airport is impacted. They're waiting to get a full assessment of it. Melissa has weakened as it continues tracking northeast through the Bahamas, but Zara says its slow crawl is making it one of the Caribbean's most destructive hurricanes on record. So the whole focus right now is getting relief to families that have been displaced, families affected, families who are hungry, families who are hurt, people who are hurt, homeless population who may have been again displaced. So it's a recovery going on right now.

Just a warning now, this next story contains some disturbing imagery. bodies line the street of Rio de Janeiro after the deadliest police raid in Brazil's history. The state government says the raids were targeting a major drug gang. Well over 100 people were killed. Tawa Brito, whose son was killed in the raid, called it a massacre. It comes as the country prepares to welcome heads of state from around the world, ahead of the COP 30 climate summit. Brad Haynes is our bureau chief in Sao Paulo.

Rio state police say they'd been planning for at least two months a strike on the Commando Vermealio leadership that was gathered in Rio this week. They say that they had plotted a very deliberate strategy to flush gang leaders out of the Peña neighborhood into the forested hills behind them

where another special operating, unit was lying in wait. Ambushed them. There was gunfire throughout the morning, but no one could have expected a death toll this high. So officials in Rio had already cataloged over 60 people dead in public morgues by the end of Tuesday. But on Tuesday night, the residents in the Penae neighborhood went out looking for missing relatives. They found dozens of dead bodies in the forest behind In their neighborhood, by midday there were 70 of those bodies lined up almost the length of a city block in the center of the Pena neighborhood. Some of them covered in blankets, tarps and bags, others stripped down to their underwear, even

in Rio, which can be quite violent at times. We've never seen anything like it. Palestinian man Abed Aweida carries the tiny body of his nephew, killed in the latest Israeli air strike on Gaza. He says they were attacked at 4 in the morning while all of the children were sleeping. More than 100 people were killed in the strikes, according to local health officials.

Reports that over 100 Palestinians were killed overnight, most of them children and women, in a wave of Israeli air strikes across the Gaza Strip, are appalling. The UN's Ravina Shamsamsamsani warning Israel that it's accountable for its violations of the agreed ceasefire. Israel says it carried out the airstrikes because one of its soldiers was killed by Palestinian militants.

Hamas says it's not responsible. Israel now says it has resumed enforcing the agreed ceasefire. Dutch voters woke up to a new political landscape. The centrist party making huge gains in Wednesday's election and a narrow lead likely giving it the edge to form the Netherlands next government. The D66 party and far right leader Gertville is virtually tired. for first place at the time of recording this podcast. The leader of D66, Rob Jettin, telling supporters, they've shone the world it's possible to beat populist and extreme right movements.

At 38 years old, he may become the country's youngest ever prime minister. Gert Wilders, who brought down his own coalition government over immigration, says he's likely headed back to the opposition. A divided U.S. Federal Reserve has cut in. interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point. But officials are struggling to reach a consensus about what lies ahead. A further reduction in the policy rate of December meeting is not a foregone conclusion. Fed Chair Jerome Powell says a growing number of central bank officials are ready to hold off on an imminent interest rate cut. We have strong views across the committee.

And as I mentioned, they were strongly differing views today. And the takeaway from that is that We haven't made a decision about December. And for today's recommended read, a Naples museum has created photographic fingerprints of over 10,000 gemstones in its priceless collection. It's a security method, experts say, could have prevented thieves from reselling stones stolen in the recent Louvre heist.

We'll drop a link to that story in today's podcast 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 favourite 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.