WSJ What’s News - Behind the Escalating Violence in Sudan

Episode Date: October 31, 2025

P.M. Edition for Oct. 31. Sudan’s civil war is taking a jarring turn in Darfur, where an Arab-led militia is now using state-of-the-art drones and execution squads to dominate the region’s Black population. WSJ reporter Nicholas Bariyo, who is based in Uganda, shares the latest on the conflict. Plus, a federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to use emergency funds to pay for federal food assistance benefits as the government shutdown continues. And across the U.S., a growing number of home purchases are falling through. We hear from Journal personal finance reporter Veronica Dagher about what’s driving the rise, and what it says about the U.S. housing market. Alex Ossola hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And when that happens, they may want to back out of that contract last minute if they feel like their job prospects are a little shaky. And inside the escalating violence in Sudan, where a rebel group is dominating the population in the region of Darfur. It's Friday, October 31st. I'm Alex O'Sullough for the Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. We begin this evening in Sudan, where the Civil War is taking a jarring turn in Darfur.

There, an Arab-led militia is now using state-of-the-art drones and execution squads to dominate the region's black population. The conflict, which began more than two years ago, is between the Sudanese government and the rapid support forces, a well-armed rebel force. Humanitarian groups say the violence has been escalating since the militia seized control of El Fasher, the largest city in the region, where 70% of the population, largely black Sudanese, have fled their homes. These human rights groups are warning that the killings have the potential to surpass the genocide that played out in Rwanda just over 30 years ago. For more, WSJ reporter Nicholas Barrio joins us now from Kampala, Uganda. Nicholas, what exactly is going on in Darfur? At the moment, what's happening is that the rebel group known as the rapid support forces

has taken over the last holdout city in this region of Darfur and Fasha from the regional army. So the entire area, which is roughly the size of Spain, is under rebel control. This is a Lithuanic conflict between the Arab-dominated tribes versus the indigenous black African tribes in the same region. These are competing for a lot of things, including land, resources, and governors. And most of these black African communities are allied with Sudan's army. So after the takeover of this city, most of them are fleeing westward towards the border with Chad, The Chardian border, it's like the sanctuary, already hosting around half a million people,

and the city is rapidly emptying. I mentioned drones in my intro. How are drones being used here? They give the rebels an edge over the military. They have these drones armed with bombs. They are able to target where the military positions are, where the populated areas, are where the disposed are sheltering. So you have a very experienced army

being facilitated by grounds for surveillance and for picking out targets with bombs. That was WSJ reporter, Nicholas Barrio. We're exclusively reporting that J.P. Morgan Chase's investment bank is leading a group investing roughly $90 million in the Texas Stock Exchange. It's the latest wall

Street heavyweight to back the upstart trading venue, which has built itself as more CEO-friendly. Previous investors include Citadel Securities, Black Rock, and Charles Schwab. The exchange said that the new investment brings its total fundraising to date above $250 million. Major U.S. stock indexes rose today after yesterday's strong earnings from Amazon and Apple reassured investors about the trajectory of big tech. The NASDAQ added points. percent, the S&P 500 advanced about 0.3 percent, and the Dow rose roughly 0.1%. Indexes also ended the week and month solidly higher. The Dow and the NASDAQ set their longest streaks of monthly gains since January 2018.

Inside Microsoft's quarterly earnings that came out earlier this week was a charge that caught analysts by surprise, a $4.1 billion hit on its investment in OpenAI. The figure was up 490% from a year earlier. A Bernstein analyst said that this implies a more than $12 billion quarterly loss at OpenAI, which, if true, would mark one of the largest single quarter losses for a tech company in history. The specifics behind the red ink are unclear, as OpenAI doesn't report results publicly. But CEO Sam Altman has told investors to expect years of heavy losses, as Open AI invests to be a leader in a technology that he believes will transform the economy.

And the biggest names in AI, including OpenAI, and Competitors DeepMind and XAI, are working on big, large language models like the one that powers ChatGPT. Eventually, these AI megabrains will get sophisticated enough to, supposedly, take all our jobs. But for most tasks in the corporate world, it's actually the most simplistic AI models that are winning the day. Small models are made up of billions or a few hundred million parameters, which is tiny, compared to the more than one trillion parameters needed to power those big models. As Christopher Mims, who writes a technology column for the journal and also hosts our bold names podcast told us, that small size can come with some advantages.

It turns out that the world runs on small models. We just don't hear about it because it's not as flashy or exciting and it's not a place where companies can make zillions of dollars. Small models have taken over for translating text and documents into, machine-readable text. Small models are what allow voice transcription on your phone or in any app that does that for you. Small models are fast. Speed is often of the utmost importance. We still tap on buttons and type on things and ask the cloud to do things for us and expect immediate responses, right? So a smaller model is what's powering the generative summaries that you're getting on Google these days, obviously they cost less to access and to run. And then finally,

because they can be specialized to individual tasks, they can actually be more capable than large models at things for which they've been fine-tuned. Coming up, the legal move that may keep federal food assistance funded as the government shutdown continues. That's after the break. This advertisement is brought to you by Talis. Talis's industry-leading platforms protect critical applications, data and identities. Anywhere at scale with the highest ROI. That's why the most trusted companies in the world rely on Talis to protect what matters most. Learn more at talisgroup.com slash cyber.

Today, President Trump said that he isn't considering ordering military attacks in Venezuela, two weeks after suggesting ground strikes were possible. Asked by reporters on Air Force One about reports that he's weighing airstrikes against Venezuela, Trump responded, quote, no, it's not true. As we mentioned on this morning show, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the U.S. military has identified targets in Venezuela that include military facilities used to smuggle drugs. Two federal judges have ordered the Trump administration to tap emergency funds to pay for food assistance benefits, a day before they were set to be suspended because of the government shutdown.

Judge John McConnell of Rhode Island issued a temporary restraining order during a hearing today, saying he was directing the U.S. Department of Agriculture to use contingency funds to pay benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP. In a related case, a Massachusetts judge said today that the move to suspend SNAP benefits was likely unlocked. and that the government was required to use emergency funds as needed to make payments. The two orders may help temporarily alleviate one looming crisis for millions of Americans, resulting from the impasse between Republicans and Democrats on a bill to fund the government and end the shutdown. And the Trump administration is facing a separate lawsuit, this one over the conditions at the immigration facility in Broadview, Illinois. In legal filings yesterday, advocates for immigrants detained there said that the suburban facility,

which is designed to be a temporary holding spot on route to a formal detention center, is now holding immigrants for days or even weeks in squalid and unsanitary conditions without access to legal counsel. The Department of Homeland Security has defended conditions at its facilities. More home purchase agreements are being scrapped around the country, reflecting an intensifying standoff between buyers and sellers in a largely stalled housing market. According to the real estate brokerage firm Redfin, about 15% of agreements were canceled in September, up from roughly 13.6% a year earlier. And the rate has generally been climbing all year.

I'm joined now by WSJ Personal Finance Reporter, Veronica Dagger. Veronica, what are some of the reasons that these housing deals are falling apart? One of the factors is uncertainty regarding the economy. Buyers are feeling anxious about their job security. and when that happens, they may want to back out of that contract last minute if they feel like their job prospects are a little shaky. Also, financing for buyers may be falling through because they lost their jobs and they no longer qualify for a mortgage, or the house ends up being a lot more expensive than they realized. For example, if they are factoring in home insurance that maybe

they didn't factor in initially or property taxes, they may realize that this, This monthly payment is going to be way more than they can handle. Another thing is a lot of these deals are falling out of bed during the home inspection stage, and folks are finding there's a repair I need to make. That's not super unusual, but the difference now is that doing those repairs are a lot more expensive. So you may realize I don't have another $20,000 to put towards a pipe repair when I'm already so stretched on this mortgage going in. What are the consequences of a failed deal for both the buyer and the seller?

Depending on the contract, when the buyer backs out of that contract, they could lose a good-faith deposit, typically 1 to 3% of the home's purchase price. If you back out in time or under certain conditions, you can get that money back. You're also going to lose the money spent towards home inspections and appraisals, and that could be in the thousands of dollars. sellers, on the other hand, having that deal fall through doesn't look good in general because your house is going to ultimately be on the market longer. Other buyers will see that and say, there's something maybe wrong with this house. What is this showing us more broadly about the housing market right now? This just shows the uncertainty about what's happening in the market, and that is combining with people's general uncertainty about this overall economy, and that's

giving people a lot of pause. That was WSJ personal finance reporter, Veronica Dagger. Thanks so much, Veronica. My pleasure. And that's What's News for this week. Tomorrow you can look out for our weekly markets wrap-up, What's News and Markets. Then on Sunday, we'll be discussing

the upcoming New York City mayoral election and what it means for business and politics on a national scale. That's in What's News Sunday. And we'll be back with our regular show on Monday morning. Today's show is produced by Pierre Biennameh and Zoe Colkin with supervising producer Janah Heron. Michael LaValle wrote our theme music.

Jessica Fenton is our technical manager. Isha El-Muslim is our development producer. Chris Zinsley is our deputy editor. And Falana Patterson is the Wall Street Journal's head of news audio. I'm Alex Osala. Thanks for listening. cybersecurity, a technological and cultural imperative, says Deloitte U.S. CEO Jason Garzottis. The level of sophistication from bad actors is only intensifying. That's put a huge premium on enterprises

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