Six months of Iran war, Nepal and 'Lake America'

Hi, I'm Carmel Crimmins in Dublin. It's Friday, August 28th. Today, six months of war and ordinary Iranians are paying the price. Rescuers race against time in Nepal as a barrier lake threatens to burst. Lake Ontario gets the Trump rebrand treatment. And the robot which outran Usain Bolt but had no idea how to stop. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, seven days a week. This episode is brought to you by Nordstrom. For 125 years, Nordstrom has been part of your story. The stylist who found the perfect outfit for your big interview. The first pair of walking shoes for your one-year-old. The tomato soup you shared with your sister at the cafe. These are the moments that make Nordstrom, Nordstrom. Big or small, we're here for all of it. Celebrating 100 years. 125 years, with new moments still ahead. Discover it all in Nordstrom stores and at Nordstrom.com. Today marks six months since U.S. and Israeli strikes plunged Iran and the surrounding region into war. The conflict has reached a costly stalemate. The Trump administration is betting on a shift from airstrikes to economic pressure to force Tehran to the negotiating table. But while Iran's leaders say they can wit, understand the pressure, ordinary Iranians are paying the price. In the southern port city of Bandar Abbas, shopkeepers like Qasim Shoja say a weakening currency has hurt livelihoods. At the city's fish market, traders report fewer boats heading out to sea because of security risks and fuel shortages. And many young people say uncertainty is making it harder to plan for the future. Our chief, foreign correspondent Parisa Hafisi, says that for many Iranians, the war is now being felt most acutely through the economy. Inflation is high, food prices have increased far faster than wages, job losses are increasing, and the currency has collapsed. Fuel queues, power cuts, and damaged infrastructure are at daily strain. However, it doesn't mean that life is like a war-torn country in Iran. People still go out, they have fun, supermarkets are full of food. They're not going to work. The markets are full of goods, and life goes on. Basically, people are adapting to wartime difficulties. Meanwhile, Tehran continues to disrupt shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital route for global energy supplies. U.S. foreign policy editor Don Durfee says the prolonged conflict has complicated things for the Trump administration. They were talking about this in terms of weeks, not months. But here we are, of course, at six months. They had a number of things that they hoped to achieve that they said in the very beginning. One was that the Iranian government would collapse. They wanted to end Iran's nuclear program to eliminate its ability to strike its neighbors with missiles. None of those have been fully achieved. Don says U.S. and Israeli strikes have likely slowed Iran's nuclear program. But without international inspectors on the ground, there's far less visibility on what remains. Meanwhile, Washington's shift back toward economic pressure is a familiar tactic. It's important to remember that the U.S. has had sanctions on Iran really since the late 70s when the Iranian revolution happened. And to date, those sanctions, that economic pressure has not caused the Iranian government to collapse. And the political costs for President Donald Trump are rising at home. The war is unpopular, no question about it. The latest Reuters-Ipsos poll showed that just 31% of American voters approve of it. You know, gasoline is very expensive in the U.S. That's a politically sensitive issue. And it's not run on a campaign of ending wars and not starting new ones. So that is also weighing on the party. Now to the border region of Nepal and China, where the risk of more flooding is complicating rescue efforts in the wake of this week's catastrophic glacier collapse. A lake formed after that collapse is overflowing, halting the search for survivors. Hundreds of people have been killed, and around 1,000 are still missing. Beijing bureau chiefs have said they're not sure what's going on. The collapse of the glacier caused a lot of debris to accumulate at the base of the mountain slope from which the glacier fell off from. And the debris has led to the formation of a temporary lake, a so-called barrier lake. And this barrier lake is at risk of bursting. This lake, according to Chinese engineers, is about 100 meters high. And has a capacity to hold around 2 million cubic meters of water. That will be equal to about 800 Olympic sized swimming pools. Chinese engineers have been trying to create a very narrow waterway at the base of this lake to slowly drain it and safely drain it. The challenge here is that the terrain is highly unstable, and there is still a chance that the lake could suddenly burst and then cause secondary flooding downstream. The number of Americans on unemployment benefit has slid to the lowest level in a month. It's a signal of a more stable labor market that could give the Federal Reserve leeway to focus on fighting inflation. And investors are keen for clarity on how that fight is going, with Fed Chair Kevin Warsh's speech at Jackson Hole later today, top of the market's agenda. Here's Mike Dolan from our sister podcast, Morning Bid. So we finally get to Wyoming. Having speculated about this speech all week, the markets now get to hear from Kevin Warsh later today. What he's not going to do is he's not going to give us guidance on the September policy rate meeting because, you know, he's very intent on not guiding markets specifically on policy ahead. However, his last meeting, I think, left a lot of confusion in financial markets about exactly what the Fed is targeting. What inflation rate is it targeting? And does he mind to change that? The other thing he said was that markets had tightened, bond markets in particular, had raised the cost of borrowing. We're doing some of the Fed's work for it. Now, in the meantime, the U.S. Treasury has tried to cap those borrowing rates. And so we want to hear from him as to what he thinks of that operation and whether that comes back and feeds back into Fed policy itself. So just two things that Warsh may need to address to get markets back on side. These are the moments that make Nordstrom Nordstrom. Celebrating 125 years with new moments still had. First, it was the Gulf of Mexico. Now, President Trump is taking aim at one of the Great Lakes. We're going to be changing the name of Lake Ontario, effective immediately, to Lake America. The move escalates a feud with Canada after both sides have levied tariffs on the bank. escalates a feud with Canada after both sides have levied tariffs on tens of billions of dollars in cross-border trade. The order applies to US federal agencies and has no bearing on what Canada, international bodies or other organisations call the lake. The Prime Minister of Canada and the Democratic Governor of New York State said they wouldn't be changing the name. The name Lake Ontario is more than 400 years old, predating both countries and comes from the indigenous Wendat language, meaning the lake is beautiful, great. Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb general known as the Butcher of Bosnia, has died in UN custody at the age of 84. He was serving a life sentence for orchestrating the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, in which at least 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were killed, Europe's worst atrocity since World War II. He also oversaw the brutal siege of Sarajevo and was found guilty of crimes against humanity, extermination, and terror. Survivors say his crimes are still being denied by many Bosnian Serbs who view him as a hero. Norway's King Harald has died at the age of 89, following hospitalisation to treat a bacterial infection in his blood. He was Europe's oldest monarch. A legal victory for Anthropic, a federal judge has blocked the Pentagon's attempt to blacklist the AI company. Ruling the move was illegal. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth had labelled Anthropic a national security risk after it was declared a national security risk. It refused to allow its clawed AI models to be used for autonomous weapons or surveillance. Now, you may have seen the news earlier this week that a Chinese humanoid robot, Tiangong Ultra, ran the 100m dash in 8.64 seconds, nearly a second faster than Usain Bolt's world record. And while that feat might have you wondering when humanoid robots could begin showing up in more practical applications like factory work or service industry jobs, a new Reuters investor has said that the robot could be used to do more practical jobs. An investigation shows there are still hurdles to overcome. Getting humanoid robots to do simple tasks like sorting crates or making coffee can be incredibly challenging. An industry Executives and researchers say most humanoid robots still lack the intelligence needed for general-purpose work. Our editor-at-large Kevin Krolicki explains the disconnect. The robots of these games, including Tiangong Ultra, experts say, were engineered to do one thing. They had one KPI that was run fast in a straight line, and they didn't know how to stop. And we saw that in the games as they repeatedly hit a padded restraining wall at the end. We had robots taking off on stretchers. We had apparent battery fires. It shows that in a more open set of challenges and a wider domain, the humans still have an advantage. 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 of today's pod 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 smartphone. Just ask for the latest news from Reuters seven days a week. We'll be back tomorrow with our daily headline show.