Nepal flood, Meta settlement, Nvidia and Nigeria

Hi, I'm Carmel Crimson Dublin. It's Thursday, August 27. Today, rescuers in Nepal search for survivors after a devastating flood. Meta agrees a massive payment to settle US lawsuits over children's social media addiction. And Nigeria launches a rescue operation for hundreds kidnapped at a mask attack. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in ten minutes, seven days a week. In Nepal, an elderly woman caked in mud is evacuated, carried in a digger which itself churns through mud and debris as emergency workers hold her by the hand. Nearly 1500 people are still missing after a wall of water mud and rock collapsed into a Himalayan river, sending catastrophic floods to towns and valleys. The moment that wave hit captured on surveillance camera, showing people running before being overwhelmed by the onslaught. Authorities on both sides of the border fear far higher casualties. Rescuers in Nepal are using helicopters to search for survivors and drop emergency supplies to thousands cut off, but landing is difficult. One survivor, Keshav Prasad Baral, says he tried to get to his wife, but she was swept away by the mud. Hundreds of foreigners are among the missing in the region, an area popular with trekkers and pilgrims. You can follow the latest on Reuters.com or the Reuters app. Over on Wall Street, the world's most valuable company has good news for investors. The AI boom is surging ahead. Nvidia says demand for its AI chips is getting even hotter and it would be growing even faster if it had access to more supplies. The bullish forecast is reassuring investors worried about how long the AI spending boom can last. Peter Henderson, our company's breaking news editor, is in San Francisco. AI has been going gangbusters for years and the big question is, can it continue? These results, beating expectations, doubling revenue for the next quarter, show that there's a lot that's still going on here. It's going to provide some comfort for a lot of people that the AI wave will continue. It's going to keep on lifting the AI software companies like OpenAI and Anthropic. It's going to support the data center builders and it's going to support this huge ecosystem of companies that are building the data centers and that are relying on them for jobs. That's a lot of the United States. Sticking with tech, Meta has agreed to one of the biggest settlements in social media history, paying up to $18 billion to settle claims with nearly all US states. The move ends a federal trial over allegations Meta's products, harmed children, and the company misled the public about their safety. "No amount of money is ever going to bring a beautiful daughter back." Victoria Hinks, whose daughter Alexandra died by suicide at age 16. Meta denies Annie wrongdoing. As part of the settlement, Meta also agreed over the next decade to restrict teenager's use of Facebook and Instagram to two hours a day and block all usage from midnight to 6 a.m. unless their parents consented. Porter Diana Novak-Jones says the deal could reshape how millions of teenagers use social media. The states were seeking a court order that would have completely changed the way Facebook and Instagram work by removing things like auto play or infinite scroll. So the agreement between the states and Meta is somewhat of a reduction from what the states had been seeking, but the states feel that the changes that Meta is going to make to the platform are significant and will go a long way to keeping teens from compulsively using Instagram and Facebook. A unique feature of the deal is that Meta has conditioned 30 percent of the money and additional tightening of teen features on the participation of Tiktok in YouTube. Tiktok and YouTube are very popular platforms, Meta says, and should not be exempt from a global reckoning around teen users and compulsive use. Diana says Meta snop Tiktok and Google still face thousands of other cases. The deal doesn't impact lawsuits brought by individuals who say their mental health problems were caused by an addiction to social media, and in fact, some of those cases are set for trial in October. Another group of cases is brought by school districts who say that they have had to foot the bill for their students' addiction to social media and the related impact on mental health. Those companies were not immediately available for comment. Central bankers from around the world gather in Jackson Hole this week, and the spotlight is firmly on Fed Chair Kevin Warsh. Just months into the job, investors want clarity from him on how he's going to get inflation under control, and a surprise intervention by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in the bond market is complicating things for him. Fed reporter Ansafear will be at Jackson Hole for us. Inflation is sticky and high. He's also got a market that is not behaving, perhaps, the way that he would like it to be. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent came in with an intervention in those markets trying to bring yields down because they've been quite high and rising. And Kevin Warsh has said that he wants to see what markets have to say without interference from policymakers, either from Fed policymakers making their remarks about rates or from other sources. So this is all muddying the waters at a moment when he really needs to be very clear about his communication about getting inflation down. If you want to hear more about Scott Bessent's intervention in the bond market and what it means for borrowers in the Fed, tune into this week's Reuters e-con world, hosted by me. You can catch it wherever you get your podcasts. Net and Igeria were hundreds are still missing after one of the country's largest mass kidnappings in recent years. President Bola Tanubu has ordered a rescue operation after gunmen reportedly abducted hundreds of people from a mosque in Nigeria state last week. An armed group post a video on social media showing what residents say were around 600 women, children and older people taken in the attack. Reuters has not independently verified that number. Our correspondent David Lewis says this is far from an isolated incident. Across large swathes of Nigeria, this tactic of rounding up people sometimes it's in schools, this one happened to be after prayers in a mosque and taking them away and the grants and payments that obviously never confirmed but people tell us on the ground that money does change hands and people are not freed until this until it does take place. The US has increased scrutiny over violence in Nigeria during Trump's second term. President Trump did send a letter to Nigeria praising the country's efforts to tackle violence against Christians but Nigeria's government has been treading a fine line between not accepting this narrative that Christians are specifically targeting well also trying to make sure they work with the US government. Authorities are still trying to determine who carried out the kidnapping. The government has promised that it's doing everything it can to protect communities in remote areas but several analysts we've spoken to in our reporting of this story have said well this incident clearly shows that's not working and this is a particularly sensitive issue at a time in the lead up to elections in Nigeria opposition are likely to latch on to these incidents as evidence that the government is failing in its promises to tackle insecurity across the country. The US Justice Department says it's disrupted a Chinese hacking operation that since 2018 has broken to sense of government agencies including NASA, the Federal Reserve and the Senate as well as the DOJ itself. The department says it sees domains used by two hacking platforms called Qscan and QT Router that were part of the campaign. A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington said the Chinese government firmly opposes all forms of cyber attacks. And finally Tim Curry, the British actor known for roles such as the Butler in the film called Clue and Rooster in the Musical Annie has died at the age of 80. Probably his most notorious role, Dr. Franken-Further in the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Curry originated the role in the London stage production of Rocky Horror in 1973 and then starved in the movie adaptation alongside Susan Sardin. The film has become a cult classic with fans dressing up for screening and singing or shouting movie lines along with the film. 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. We'll be back tomorrow with our daily headline show.