Reuters World News - US-China, TikTok, Kirk suspect, AI phishing bots and Emmys

Episode Date: September 15, 2025

The U.S. and China close in on a TikTok deal during Madrid trade talks. The Charlie Kirk shooting suspect is not cooperating with authorities, according to Utah’s Governor.   A new Reuters investigation reveals that AI chatbots can be easily manipulated to help create phishing scams targeting elderly Americans. And The Pitt, The Studio and Adolescence win big at the Emmys. 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

Today, the Charlie Kirk shooting suspect is not cooperating with authorities. The US and China close in on a TikTok deal, how AI chatbots can be manipulated to create fishing scams targeting the elderly. And all the big winners from the Emmys. It's Monday, September 15th. 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 Tara Oaks in Liverpool. The man arrested in the killing of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk is not cooperating with authorities.

That's according to Utah Governor Spencer Cox, who says investigators are working to establish a motive for the shooting by talking to his friends and family. 22-year-old Tyler Robinson will be formally charged on Tuesday. Now to Madrid, where delegations from the U.S. and China are on day two of two of two. talks. It's a fourth attempt in as many months to use a European backdrop to hash out their differences over trade. No indication of a breakthrough on tariffs. But another T-word is also on the agenda. Negotiating TikTok right now. We may let it die or we may, I don't know, it depends up to China. It doesn't matter too much. I'd like to do it for the kids they like. David Lauder is in Madrid and breaks down TikTok and tariffs for us.

This is the fourth meeting that we've had between essentially Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and the Chinese vice premier Helle Feng. And most of that has been about trying to unstick this kind of death spiral of trade between the two economies and get it on some kind of an even keel. So now where are we? We're in a place where maybe they can start to look at some of the more difficult questions, which is Chinese excess manufacturing capacity. which is really starting to threaten the Chinese economy. The U.S. tech export controls. There's a lot of emphasis here also on maybe trying to nail down arrangements for a meeting

between President Xi and President Trump, that this is sort of seen as sort of key to kind of moving the relationship forward that the two leaders kind of get together and hash out some things. Right now, the main sort of deadline that they're facing is a Wednesday, deadline for TikTok to sell its U.S. assets or be shut down. I think a lot of observers are expecting that to be extended another time. So that's sort of one of the main deliverables out of this meeting. And while those talks go on, China says it will continue an investigation into U.S. chip giant, NVIDIA, after preliminary findings showed it had violated the country's

anti-monopoly law. Another meeting that markets will be watching close. closely this week is the Fed's rate-setting decision. A quarter-point cut is seen as a sure thing. We're just not sure yet who exactly will be voting. Carmel Crimmons explains. The Fed is at the centre of an unprecedented challenge to its leadership. President Trump wants a US appeals court to let him fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook over allegations of mortgage fraud before this week's interest rate meeting. And the Senate is expected to vote today to appoint Trump advisor's Stephen Myron to a separate vacancy on the board. Whatever the outcome of those events, they're not expected to change the result of the rate-setting meeting. But it could be the start

of Trump putting his stamp on the central bank. One interesting development did emerge over the weekend in the Lisa Cook case. A bank document reviewed by Reuters appears to contradict the Trump administration's mortgage fraud allegations. A loan estimate for an Atlanta home purchased by Cook shows she declared the property as a vacation home and not her primary residence. The Trump administration has accused Cook of passing off the property as her main residence for financial gain. The strength of the Israeli-American alliance, it's as strong and as durable as the stones of the Western Wall that we just touched.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hosting U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. And while Rubio visits, Israel has stepped up its bombing of Gaza City, forcing thousands to flee their homes. And in Qatar, regional leaders will warn that Israel's hit on Doha last week undermines efforts to normalize ties in the region. That's according to a draft resolution at an Arab Islamic summit meeting in Qatar today. A new Reuters investigation reveals that AI chatbots can be easily manipulated to help create phishing scams targeting elderly Americans. First, we used six popular chatbots, including ChatGPT and Elon Musk's grok, to create simulated phishing emails for the purpose of tricking senior citizens into handing over money.

Then, we joined with Harvard researcher Fred Hiding to test a selection of those emails on elderly volunteers who agreed to participate in a study of email behaviors. No money, of course, was taken from any of the participants. Investigative reporter Steve Stecklo explains. These AI chatbots don't have really great safeguards to protect against wrongdoing. You tried to do prompts to the AI chatbots. Now, often they would say, oh, I couldn't possibly do that. That would be illegal or unethical.

So then I'd say, I'm a researcher studying fishing. And then I would repeat the exact same prompt. And then it would produce these scam emails. Now, they would often say on them, this is for research purposes only, don't use this in a real life situation. When testing the phishing emails on 108 senior citizens, the researchers found that about 11% clicked on those links.

The FBI says that fishing is the number one reported cybercrime in the US. Data shows that Americans 60 and over lost nearly, $5 billion to online fraud last year. And Steve says scammers are tuned into AI and already using it. We interviewed three people who've worked in these notorious scam compounds in Southeast Asia. All three of the people told us that they used Chat CheapT all the time. And one of them had said it basically had revolutionized their work scamming people. The team reached out to ChatGPT, Meta-I-I-I-I, Claude, Gemini, Deepseek and GROC for comment.

Deepseek and XAI's GROC did not respond to questions. When we do a story and name a company, we give them a chance to respond. Four of them responded, only they said, look, we have safeguards in place. This is a difficult industry-wide problem, and we investigate cases where we believe bad things are happening and we take action, like including blocking users and things like that. Google told me that as a result of what I sent them, they were going to retrain Gemini. Make it less likely for them to do that, but they wouldn't go into any detail as to what changes they made. Now to TV's Big Night in Hollywood, the Emmys. And emergency room saga

the Pitt was toasted as this year's best television drama, beating Severance, a surreal comedy on corporate power that went into the ceremony with the most nominations. The late show with Stephen Colbert was celebrated as Best Talk series for the first time in its decade-long run. CBS, the network that broadcast the Emmys, announced earlier this year it was canceling the show for financial reasons, a decision that sparked outcry. A big night for the Brits too as adolescence, a dark Netflix story about a teen accused of murder, received the Best Limited Series honour.

Its 15-year-old star, Owen Cooper, was named Best Supporting Actor in a Limited Series, becoming the youngest winner in that category. It means so much to me. It means so much to me, my family, the people back home. And with so much award-winning TV around, the key question, are you a binger or an old-fashioned once-a-weaker? Stars, including Gary Oldman and Rob Delaney,

were divided on the red carpet. I like bingingian. Yeah, it's great when they drop a show and then you get all six, seven, eight episodes. Yeah. No, once a week, do it the old-fashioned way. Yeah, don't make... Because then you have to make each episode so good

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you to Nepal and a Reuters exclusive about how the young activists who toppled the government are now picking new leaders.

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