White House press reinstated, Trump-Xi meeting, OpenAI agent hack (Updated)

Hi, I'm Kim Vannell in Wanganui, New Zealand. And I'm Joan Agreeon in New York. It's Thursday, September 24. Today. Trump and Xi sit down for talks in Washington, D.C. The White House reinstates Politico, MSNow, and CNN after initially barring them. And war erupts in Ethiopia's Tigray region. This is Reuters' World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, 7 days a week. President Donald Trump receiving Chinese President Xi Jinping at the White House for a lavish state summit. It's their second meeting this year, though it's Xi's first visit to Washington in more than a decade. The meeting is expected to be heavy on symbolism but light on substance. Several prominent business leaders are on the guest list for the state dinner, including Apple's Tim Cook, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, OpenAI's Sam Altman, Nvidia's Jensen Wang, as well as banking and pharmaceutical heads. Both leaders are keen to play up stable ties, despite a deep underlying rivalry between the two. Trump faces midterm elections in November that will determine his support in Congress, while Xi navigates economic challenges at home. Xi will spend three days in the U.S. White House reporter Trevor Hunnicat says there are four T's on the agenda, trade, technology, Iran, and Taiwan. There's been one early win, Treasury Secretary Scott Besson announcing the pair have agreed to extend their trade truce through to January. It had been due to expire in November. Trevor says Xi is expected to press Trump to halt sales of arms to Taiwan, but both sides have played down any hopes of a major breakthrough. One thing we'll be watching for is just what the tone is like from these leaders. Which Trump do we get for this meeting? Xi tends to be a little bit more predictable at these meetings, especially in his public, but behind closed doors, he has made very aggressive arguments with Trump, the example being Taiwan at that last meeting, and we'll usually find out about that in the statements that the Chinese government releases after their meeting because they usually quote Xi directly, and so we get to hear exactly what Xi Jinping told Donald Trump. The White House has reinstated journalists from Politico, CNN, and MSNOW. The move comes after a chaotic few hours earlier on Thursday when the White House barred them from entering the building. Despite a federal judge ruling that Trump's ban was likely unconstitutional, that prompted the media organizations to request an emergency hearing. In a show of solidarity, the rest of the White House pool refused to cover Trump's events this week, including his meeting with Xi until access was restored. Australia says an open AI agent breached a government health website and gained unauthorized access to files in what could be the first known instance of an AI agent hacking government sites. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says no personal information is believed to have been accessed, although investigations are ongoing. He also says he spoke directly to CEO Sam Altman to express his deep concern. Revealing, it wasn't the government who figured out something had gone wrong. "And I also expressed my disappointment that it took the company way too long to inform the government what had occurred and the nature of the way that that notification occurred as well was unacceptable." The breach which happened back in June is one of the highest profile incidents of rogue AI agents breaking into systems outside the US and it follows several other breaches that have already raised alarm bells globally. So we don't know exactly why these agents took the kind of decision paths that they did. But in many of these cases, and we've seen this in other incidents involving organic AI agents, they are being asked to complete relatively complicated or difficult research tasks. And often times they can't find the answer that easily, and so as a result, they start trying to take short cuts. And that may be what happened here. We've heard from the Australian government that these AI agents were involved in looking for statistics that they targeted kind of statistical websites that may have been in the service of trying to answer these difficult questions that open AI was putting them through. Tech and Cybersecurity correspondent Rafael Sata says there are key differences in this hack compared to others. So in the hugging phase incident, which is probably the best known, we saw a swarm of AI agents work together to break into a company's network. This at least from the initial indications that we have, suggests a more desultry attempt to kind of poke at a government website, right? So I mean, picture the difference between a burglar who breaks into a bank and somebody who jiggles the car door, right, to see if it's unlocked, right? But on the other hand, these are government websites, right? So that's fairly serious stuff and this is what a lot of governments consider critical infrastructure. Open AI says it found no evidence patient records were accessed, but acknowledged its models had visited several Australian government websites while looking up answers and took actions they did not intend. Albanese revealed the breach just hours after the CEOs of anthropic and open AI appeared before the UN Security Council issuing warnings about the technology they are developing. We should begin with narrow agreements that every member can support, such as a ban on using AI to make biological weapons or permitting your AI technologies to be used to make biological weapons. Anthropics Dario Amode speaking virtually at the summit there. Both leaders said increasingly powerful AI systems could pose serious risks if governments fail to work together. Some more UN news now. Venezuela's interim leader, Delci Rodriguez, has told the General Assembly that the country will hold elections as part of a transition to "full democracy". She did not, however, give a timeline. Harvey Weinstein has been sentenced to 15 years in prison in New York for sexually assaulting former production assistant Miriam Haley in 2006. The sentence follows his 2025 retrial conviction after his original New York conviction was overturned. More than 100 women have accused Weinstein of misconduct over the years, allegations he has denied. War has broken out in Ethiopia. To gray enforcers have launched a major offensive against the government, seizing airports and clashing with federal troops across multiple regions. It shatters a peace deal that ended a conflict just four years ago, which killed hundreds of thousands of people. In this time, there are concerns that this won't stay contained within the country's borders. Aaron Ross has more. And Ethiopia watchers have been warning and dreading this scenario for well over a year as the peace deal that ended the previous conflict in 2022 broke down. Just during this week on Sunday, the TPLF announced that they had formed an alliance with six other armed groups across the Ethiopia aimed at overthrowing the federal government. So each side says that they're acting in self-defense, but what we have and what's been confirmed by sources on all sides is that there was combat both with integri and in the two-day-bring regions yesterday. And then regionally, you also have lots of unanswered questions. There's a fear among diplomats, among analysts that this new conflict could in some ways connect and join with the conflict in neighboring Sudan, where you've obviously had civil wars since 2023, which has turned into what the UN has called the world's worst and largest humanitarian crisis. And in that conflict in Sudan, there have been a lot of external actors who have been trying to influence it in various ways. And there's a fear that this conflict in Ethiopia could also see lots of actors from both neighboring countries and from further afield trying to influence events. For more on any of the stories from today, as well as more analysis on the 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 favourite podcast player. If you're listening on a smart speaker, just ask for the latest news from Reuters 7 days a week. 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