Macron's twilight, Trump's approval and AI hacking

Hi, I'm Carmel Kremens in Dublin. And I'm Christopher Walgesper in Chicago. It's Tuesday, October 20th, today. A drone strike on a market on Sudan's border kills more than 150 people. France's riots could be clearing a path to the presidency for Marine Le Pen. Albertans vote to remain in Canada. And how one hacker used AI agents and a few thousand dollars to break into scores of sites. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in ten minutes, seven days a week. French President Emmanuel Macron is facing growing pressure over what critics say were major security failures during a weekend of riots and looting tied to anti-government protests. Authorities imposed curfews and parts of several cities on Monday, including Paris, Lille and Nice. The unrest is plunging Macron's final months in office into turmoil and benefiting far right leader, Marine Le Pen. Reporter Michelle Rose has more from Paris. Marine Le Pen was already the front runner for the presidential election in 2027, but these events over the weekend are creating a clear pathway for her. That's what most analysts say. And I talk to one of Macron's former lawmakers who spoke to the president on Sunday and told him you should resign now because you should try and prepare some orderly transition because the country cannot function like this for another six months. So this former lawmaker told me Le Pen doesn't only have a clear pathway to the presidency. She has a six-lane highway ahead of her and the scenes of looting across French cities are only benefiting her. Meanwhile, an online app for secondhand clothing says it's cracking down on looted French goods being sold on its platform. Vinted has removed listings suspected of being linked to looting in France. The app says it's working with French authorities and could permanently ban accounts that violate its rules. France's small businesses minister called a meeting on Monday with Vinted, Amazon, eBay and TikTok to address stolen goods appearing online after the weekend's violence. Albertans have voted overwhelmingly to remain in Canada. If three-quarters of the votes counted, 76% have rejected separation in a non-binding referendum that handed Prime Minister Mark Carney a much-needed win. A small but vocal separatist movement has argued that Alberta's energy wealth is subsidizing other provinces. Premier Danielle Smith, who called for the vote, says she's pleased with the result. It's the second separatist challenge Carney has faced in two weeks after Quebec's independence party won power earlier this month. A Sudanese military drone strike has killed more than 150 people at a market in the disputed Abier region. That's according to South Sudanese officials. The strike hit a fuel depot that diplomatic sources say is used by the rapid support forces. The paramilitary group that's been at war with Sudan's government since 2023. Sudan's army hasn't commented on the incident. It's one of the deadliest attacks yet in Sudan's brutal civil war. Now in its third year, the conflict has spilled across borders, with drone strikes reported in Chad and Egypt in recent weeks. Abier is jointly governed by both Sudan and South Sudan, but has become a flashpoint as a key transit route for fuel supplies in the conflict. Over the past couple of weeks, cybersecurity researchers Snore Fagirland watched as a Chinese-speaking hacker broke into websites belonging to more than 100 companies. Yet the hacker did almost none of the work. The cyber criminal instead outsourced their hacking spree almost entirely to artificial intelligence, tasking AI agents with spending hours autonomously probing and breaking into targeted sites. Raphael Satur explains. So what took place is that about two and a half weeks ago, a Chinese-speaking hacker spun up an instance of something called Karen, which is an open source platform, which is very popular with what the industry calls red teamers and what are probably more popularly known as hackers. These Karen's are effectively kind of systems that allow teams of AI agents to work together to solve a common goal. And so what we've seen recently over the past couple of weeks is these Karen's being used a lot by hackers to point agents at targets and to give them fairly-terse instructions and say, go crazy, I need you to hack these guys, and that's what this researcher that I spoke to found, except on a wider scale than we've seen before, with more than 100 different victims. That hacks that this researcher saw being carried out by these AI teams were actually pretty sophisticated. They would have relied, but from a human hacker, a fair bit of lateral thinking and a fair bit of creativity. Now, no, that's necessary. It's like setting a kitchen timer, right? You come back to it once it dings and it's hacked something. When this level of skill is put into the hands of people who didn't have it before, what you're looking at is a far more dangerous internet. Reuters couldn't determine the degree to which the breach is discovered by Fagirland resulted in the unauthorized extraction of data. Karen's author has said the platform is not intended for hacking attacks. The UK is sending Royal Air Force Typhoon fighter jets to help defend Saudi Arabia from Houthi attacks. The UK Ministry of Defense says the aircraft will fly defensive missions only, protecting Saudi cities and critical infrastructure from drones and missiles. They will not be conducting offensive strikes. The deployment follows a Saudi request and comes as Houthi strikes have intensified in recent weeks. More than 70 people were killed and 200 injured in a Houthi attack on a government security forces training camp earlier this week. Local sources say three ballistic missiles were fired at troops during a training exercise. It's the latest in a string of deadly Houthi attacks, including strikes on Saudi Arabia's energy infrastructure and Riyadh airport, attacks that are disrupting travel in and out of the kingdom and forcing organizers to postpone its flagship investment conference known as Davos in the desert until 2027. Our chief correspondent Timor Azari explains on the drive to Bahrain. So, we are driving through the desert right now. I need to get to Dubai. The other airport is closed and we figured out the shortest route is to drive to Bahrain and then fly to Dubai with my colleague Khaled over here who is driving. More and more people are taking the land route out of Saudi Arabia after Houthi attacks on the airports, on the other airport, on the man and on others in the south of the country. And that's a big shift from what we saw earlier on in the war where Saudi Arabia became sort of the haven for people fleeing Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, when they were facing the brunt of Iranian attacks. That map has now flipped and embassies and companies are recommending that their citizens and their employees actually go to neighboring Gulf states and fly from there. So, there's a sign of just how much the war has come home to the kingdom. I mean, the Yemen wars and the whole one, the Saudi Arabia got involved 12 years ago and at the time they had similar goals that the Yemeni government have now, which was to push the Houthis back into the mountains out of the capital. It hasn't worked for 12 years and many people are skeptical of the current campaign and its ability to affect the change on the ground. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is facing daily attacks now by the Houthis and that really has brought the war home in a way which it hasn't been for the past decade. New Reuters' Ipsos polling meanwhile shows President Trump's approval rating has hit an all-time low, with just 31% of Americans approving of the job he's doing. And with just two weeks to go before the midterms, Democrats now hold a 12-point lead over Republicans on the generic congressional ballot. That's their widest advantage of this election cycle. A Kenyan court has found self-proclaimed preacher Paul McKenzie and 28 others guilty of murder in one of the deadliest cult cases in recent memory. Prosecutors say McKenzie's good news international church convinced followers to starve themselves and their children to reach heaven before the end of the world. The victims include 190 children and one adult. More than 400 bodies have been recovered from Kenya's Shakola forest so far. Sentencing is on November 6th and their lawyer says they plan to appeal. 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 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.