Ukraine's Starlink problem, US inflation and Ohio voters

Hi, I'm Kim Vanell in Whanganui, New Zealand. And I'm Christopher Waljasper in Chicago. It's Thursday, October 15th. Today. Ukraine strikes a Russian oil refinery in defiance of Trump's energy ceasefire. Inflation stays high, raising the chance rates could be hiked again. And dozens of schoolchildren are killed in northwestern Pakistan after a school roof collapse. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, seven days a week. Football is back, and PrizePix is bringing out their best offer yet. On PrizePix, you can make all the picks you want, all in the same app. And now, PrizePix is available nationwide. Lock in for kickoff, because everyone and everything is on PrizePix. What you want. Download the PrizePix app today and use code SPOTIFY to get $150 instantly in lineups if you win your first $5 lineup. PrizePix, run your game. Must be present in certain states. Visit PrizePix.com for restrictions and details. Ukraine has struck a Russian oil refinery, openly defying U.S. President Donald Trump's demand for a ceasefire on energy targets. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, tells the Financial Times, quote, the block is out. We're done. After Russia continued deadly strikes on Ukrainian power stations, it marks a significant rift between Kiev and Washington and comes as Ukrainian drones are hampered by new speed limits on military Starlink systems, just as Ukraine's faced a huge wave of missile attacks on power stations, plunging 600,000 people into darkness. Kiev says Elon Musk's SpaceX purposefully restricted the satellite communications Ukraine's military relies on. Musk says restrictions on its military version of Starlink are controlled by the U.S. government and ultimately by President Donald Trump. And while Trump hasn't commented on Starlink, he is pressuring Ukraine to stop attacking Russian oil refineries as he pursues a diesel deal with Moscow, aimed at the Russian military. The deal is aimed at bringing down fuel prices. Reuters Ukraine Bureau Chief Dan Flynn explains. Limiting the speed of the Starlink terminal makes it extremely hard for Ukraine to use this in combat missions. It has been using this terminal on top of its mid-range strike drones to hit military targets deep in the rear of Russian positions, which have been providing weapons and logistics support to the front line. And officials have been saying that it's not going to work. The officials have also said that Starlink is being used on the interceptor drones that Ukraine uses to take down Russian strike drones, these jet-powered Shahed drones that Russia has been raining down on cities like the capital Kiev almost 24 hours a day in recent months. The U.S. military execution of the Fort Hood gunmen will not be live-streamed. President Trump has cancelled the planned broadcast of the live firing squad, execution of Nadal Hassan, who killed 13 people at the Texas Army base in 2009. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had announced the idea earlier this month, intending it to be a public spectacle. The president said families of the victims can watch in person if they choose, but that many Americans would rather not see it streamed. The plan has drawn bipartisan criticism, including from Vice President J.D. Vance and religious leaders. Two commercial ships have sunk near the Strait of Hormuz in the space of 24 hours. They're only the second and third vessels to sink near Hormuz since the U.S.-Iran war began. The Singapore-flagged GFS Pride went down after being hit by a projectile and catching fire. All its crew escaped safely. The Antigua and Barbuda-flagged Cape Dow also sunk, but it was struck three weeks earlier on September 23. One crew member was killed. Iran says it is stepping up attacks in response to the U.S. blockade of its ports and tougher sanctions, and has indicated it wants to keep oil prices high with the U.S. midterm elections looming. At least 34 schoolchildren and one teacher have been killed in northwestern Pakistan after a school roof collapsed during morning classes. Rescue workers in Peshawar spent hours in the city, pulling children from the rubble of a privately run education center. Most of the victims are under 13 and from low-income households. Police say the building had a weak structure with an overloaded roof. The school's owner has been arrested. What you want? PrizePix. Run your game. Gas prices are showing up in the data in the U.S. Inflation came in hotter than economists expected for the past year. And prices at the pump are a big reason why. But there's more. U.S. economics editor Dan Burns explains. Well, the big driver was fuel and energy costs. Gasoline prices were up 9.1 percent, and that accounted for essentially half of the increase. The issue, though, is that those sustained high energy prices are starting to seep into other parts of inflation. So it's not just competition. If you look at what people refer to as like the super core rate, which is services excluding energy, that was up about 3.2 percent and has held above 3 percent now for many months. The report is also changing the conversation at the Federal Reserve. Many investors thought the Fed might be done raising interest rates this year. But Dan says this latest inflation data could be shifting that outlook. A week ago, we were probably at 9 out of 10 chance that there would be no rate increase in two weeks. But now we're approaching more kind of a coin toss type of scenario. Those higher borrowing costs are weighing on tech giants as they plow billions of dollars into AI infrastructure build out. The latest catalyst for market worries around AI debt is cloud company Corweave, which has sparked a larger sell off. Here's a clip from our sister podcast, Morning Bid, where host Mike Dolan discusses what's dragging down the market. The attention was on Corweave, as you mentioned, not just its equity price, which fell 15 percent. Oracle, the other big highly indebted hyperscaler, down 10 percent as well. The SOX index, the chip makers down 4 percent. But it wasn't just the equity of Corweave. It was its debt side. It's 50 billion in debt. It's the big data center builder. It is kind of at the apex of the massive AI build out that's going on. And it's heavily indebted. And you can imagine if borrowing prices are going up, borrowing costs are going up, as we kind of certainly have talked about around the CPI, then that's not a great picture for the indebted story. In Youngstown, Ohio, the signs of economic decline are hard to miss. Empty factories. Closed businesses. And like everywhere else, affordability is the biggest issue voters are thinking about. For Labor leader Larry Fovre, the struggles are personal. Standing across from a recently shuttered bakery that had been part of the community for more than a century, he talked about what the region has lost. I've watched the good times. I've watched the bad times. And my family grew up here. And some of my family have moved away. Because there was no jobs here that they could do. President Trump rallied supporters in Ohio this week as early voting gets underway ahead of the November midterms. I'm asking everybody to pretend, just pretend that I won the ballot. But Democrats are hoping economic frustration could help win back some of the working class voters who helped turn Ohio from a swing state into a Republican stronghold. Reporter Richard Cowan recently traveled to two counties in Ohio. I was really taken aback. You ask them what they're thinking about in the run-up to the election, and they're angry. And then when you drill down, they're really upset about prices, grocery prices, gasoline prices. Gasoline prices leads them to talk about the Iran war. They're tired of all the harsh language and the chaos. Ohio, a decade and more ago, was known as one of the most curious. bellwether states in the country, always swinging back and forth with the times. According to the initial figures, on the first couple of days, there were a lot more Democrats showing up at the polls than Republicans. And these are in places where Republicans outnumber Democrats. And so the question is, does that show more energy on the part of the Democratic Party and Democratic voters to turn out? And might it show that Republicans might just stay home? Because one guy, he said, I'm fed up. So if you're fed up, maybe you just don't vote. Maybe you stay at home. You try to decide whether if you're fed up with the current people in power, can you vote for Democrats? Football is back and PrizePix is bringing out their best offer yet. And now PrizePix is available nationwide. 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