Reuters World News - US-Iran strikes, Meta's AI layoff plan, and bear break-ins

Episode Date: August 31, 2026

The U.S. and Iran exchange fire for the first time in weeks. Finance ministers from the G20 group of major economies meet today in North Carolina. A Reuters investigation looks at how a plan for Meta to replace staff with AI imploded. And bears are breaking into houses looking for food in the drought-stricken American West. ⁠⁠📲 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 Monday, August 31st. Today, the US in Iran resume military attacks for the first time in weeks. Finance ministers from major economies meet today in North Carolina. And, a record number of bears are entering US homes. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, seven days a week. First to the Middle East, where the US in Iran have resumed military attacks for the first time in weeks. In a social media post, the US military says it carried out a limited, precise action against Iranian mine-laying forces posing a threat in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran says it retaliated by firing missiles at two US bases in Jordan, all of which were intercepted.

In a separate post, US President Donald Trump suggested that the US was also targeted. targeting Karg Island, Iran's major oil hub. Reuters has not been able to verify Trump's post. This is a live story, so head to roiders.com or the Reuters app for the latest updates. The return to military action follows weeks where the Trump administration had been pursuing a different strategy against Iran, economic pressure. And when finance ministers from the G20 group of major economies meet in Asheville, North Carolina this week, the U.S. will be asking other countries to get on board.

reporter David Lauder sat down with Treasury Secretary Scott Besant before the summit kicked off. So we had this interview with Secretary Besant before President Trump disclosed the latest attacks on Iran, which were the first since July. The Treasury had been shifting to a plan to increase economic pressure on Iran by threatening more secondary sanction on other countries that help. Iran process transactions, say for oil and other goods, and maintain business ties to Iran. I don't think there's a lot of countries in the G20 that are willing to sort of go out of their way and say, yes, we're going to help Iran. It might be a situation where countries will voice support and say, yes, we'll go along with this. you know, they all want to continue to do business with the United States. So it doesn't cost much to sort of say you're agreeing with this policy.

But then the question becomes, is, you know, how much are you enforcing it? And what steps are you really taking to ensure that you're cutting those business ties with Iran? David says Besant also wants G20 members to put up barriers to Chinese exports. China has unleashed an amazing amount of exports to the world. What Bessent is suggesting to us in this interview is that other countries need to step up and kind of match what the U.S. is doing by imposing their own trade barriers on Chinese goods. And somehow that this will force Beijing to make some policy changes to rebelling. its economy, to rely more on domestic demand as opposed to exports for its growth.

Google Maps has changed the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America for U.S. users. That's to reflect President Trump's executive order last week, renaming the lake as part of an escalating trade feud with Canada. In a blog post, Google says Canadian users would continue to see the Great Lake labeled as Lake Ontario, while those outside of the U.S. and Canada will see both names. Google Maps made a similar change to the Gulf of Mexico last year, labeling at the Gulf of America after Trump ordered the body of water renamed on his first day in office. Earlier this year, at a leadership retreat in Hawaii, Mark Zuckerberg and Meta's top executives started mapping out a major overhaul of the company. That plan became known as Project OT,

short for organization transformation. And the idea? That AI would take over much of the daily work performed by thousands of employees. The plan called for two rounds of restructuring, one in May and another in November. But just hours before the first layoff wave, Zuckerberg and his team blinked. Our tech reporter Katie Paul explains. Project O.T was an initiative at Meta that entailed scenario planning exercises, looking at how the company could go what it called AI native and cut down the size of many of its existing teams.

So on May 20th, they laid off. off about 10% of the staff. But Mark Zuckerberg called off planning for the second wave of restructuring the night before the May 20th layoffs. We don't know why he did this exactly. We know what was happening at the company around this time. Employees by then had learned of what the company was planning. They took all this information in and they saw signs that the company's AI transformation was at least partly aimed at replacing them, and they revolted effectively. They were posting angry comments on the company's internal workplace systems, and so the company had a big morale problem on its hands, and executives were well aware of that.

At the same time, internal data was showing indications that the AI agent technology wasn't developing as they had hoped. Infrastructure teams were warning about reliability issues, and also the AI coding surge itself was overwhelming systems. As a result of those dynamics, major technical and security incidents were up very significantly. Meta declined to make Zuckerberg available for comment for this story. Australia is keeping AI off its music charts. The Australian Recording Industry Association says it will no longer allow wholly AI-generated music on its list of most popular songs. Breaking News editor Alistair Pal explains what triggered the move.

They say that you're allowed to use artificial intelligence to refine human-made songs. So, for example, using autotune to refine a human vocal, but you're not allowed to use AI to completely generate a vocal. This comes off the back of a song, which was actually a cover of Like a Prayer by Madonna, which was released by an Australian DJ and then climbed several charts in Australia and was briefly among the most played songs in Australia. It's led to much debate here

about the role of AI-generated music. Lots of recording artists here, not very happy about it. And the DJ in question says, AI is just part of how he works and it shouldn't really be a consideration. in terms of how music is rated. This has global ramifications,

artificially generated songs. They've charted across the world, including in the UK and the US. And it's something that streaming platforms, including Spotify, are becoming increasingly aware of, and they've even started verifying that artists on Spotify are in Dekuman. You guys can't be in my fucking house.

Poked my head outside the bathroom door, and there's two. Bear cups hanging on my bear rug staring at me. Matter Rico says he's no stranger to animals. He's even had bears get into his garbage, but he'd never seen them inside his home in Granby, Colorado before. Black bears are showing up in more homes, schools, and businesses

across the American West this year. In Colorado alone, officials have recorded more than 7,000 bear sightings, already a record as bears prepare to put on weight for hibernation. And in New Mexico and Utah, wildlife agencies are euthanizing bears at record rates as encounters with people increase. Reporter Andrew Hay is in New Mexico. This year, there is an extreme drought in the US West and it has wiped out the food sources in the wild of bears. And that is sending bears into towns and cities in search of food. And so you have situations where people are literally sitting in their home and a bear will,

will enter heading for the refrigerator because they have an incredible sense of smell and can actually smell the food inside the refrigerator from outside the home. And bears are breaking into people's cars. When they come into contact with humans, they are being run over and some are having to be euthanized. The long-term fear is that with the steady aridification of the US West, this drought has been going on for about three decades now. bears will begin to become habituated with human food and they just can't return to the world

because the winters are so warm that their food sources don't exist. For more on any of the stories from today as well as more analysis and news shaping our world, check out roiders.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 platform. 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.