Rebuild or annihilate

Reuters Daily Briefing <dailybriefing@thomsonreuters.com>
To: news@emailtest.eu

2026-09-23 13:01

Go beyond the headlines with Reuters on the stories shaping the day. Subscribe for $1/week.

Daily Briefing

By Robert MacMillan

Thanks for reading the Daily Briefing. Emmanuel Macron dismisses Donald Trump’s claims of securing peace in Gaza, diplomats at the United Nations General Assembly try to find a way to end the US-Iran conflict as Trump ponders annihilating a nation, legal experts say the White House media ban likely won’t stand up in court, and a Looksmaxxing influencer is charged with rape.

Plus, there is a man with one name and one mission: to visit every Starbucks on the planet.

Today's Top News

REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

Threats and recrimination

The president’s words need no summary from me: “Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before?” he mused during his General Assembly speech. “Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly?"
France’s president told the UN in his final address to the assembly that Trump’s boast of peace in Gaza “has not reopened humanitarian access for a single second. Are we simply to stand by and watch this spectacle that should shame us all?”
Trump and the leaders of Denmark and Greenland signed an agreement to allow a larger US military presence in the far north that might stave off Trump’s threat to annex Greenland as a US territory. Locals welcome the agreement, but trust remains shaky. I’d call it an icebreaker if the polar region weren’t losing so much ice to begin with.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he and Trump discussed efforts to end the war with Russia. He said Ukraine was ready for any format of an energy ceasefire, but they did not discuss Ukraine unilaterally ending its attacks on Russian oil refineries. Moscow meanwhile is slamming jet-powered drones into Kyiv’s gas stations.
Artificial-intelligence leaders will brief the Security Council on the potential that their technologies have to threaten human existence.
There is plenty more Reuters coverage from the General Assembly available here. Sign up to receive our Sustainable Switch newsletter, in which my colleague Sharon Kimathi examines whether the UN can remain relevant in these interesting times. And if you don’t have time to read, listen to today’s edition of the World News podcast.

In other news

China’s ambassador laid out the “red lines” for Beijing ahead of Xi Jinping’s meeting with Trump on Thursday: Taiwan and China’s record on human rights figure prominently. Breakingviews columnist Hudson Lockett explains why it sounds like the setup for a bad political thriller.
The Trump administration plans to set a refugee admissions ceiling of 17,500 people over the next 12 months from South Africa, mostly white people from the Afrikaner ethnic minority. At least 11 people were shot to death at a house party in KwaZulu-Natal province. Police said the incident may be gang related. South Africa registers about 60 murders a day, one of the world’s highest murder rates.
What do you do when you’re president of the United States and your agenda meets stubborn resistance? You invoke national security, particularly when you want to build a large triumphal arch in Washington.
How many times can the Supreme Court consider a redrawn map of congressional districts that favors Republicans? So far, the answer is three.
Azerbaijan’s president pardoned a French national who was serving a 10-year prison sentence for spying after the EU lifted sanctions on Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov. Estonia smelled something fishy and demanded to know why France pushed for the sanctions dismissal.
It’s been nearly a decade since Catalonia sought independence from Spain. Now, immigration and crime rank among the issues pushing more voters toward supporting a far-right separatist party.

Business & Markets

REUTERS/Amanda Perobelli

The billionaire family behind H&M is building its stake, fueling speculation that it might try to take the retailer private following the CEO’s failure to lift sales and boost the shares.
Chinese businesses are making bank with sales of beauty accessories surging across the United States.
The dollar rose to its strongest level in two months on the prospect of the Fed raising interest rates in the near future.
The Adani Group wants to sell nicotine pouches at duty-free shops at India’s airports. Delhi doesn’t like that because it classifies them as illegal drugs. A court sided against Adani.

30,000 Mistakes

REUTERS/Cheney Orr

US states may have added tens of thousands self-declared non-citizens to the nation’s voter rolls since 2000 because of software glitches and clerical errors made while processing their driver's license and state ID applications, according to official records reviewed by Reuters.

The cases expose weaknesses in voter registration systems across a dozen US states governed by both Democrats and Republicans, but at numbers that experts said were too small relative to the country’s more than 170 million registered voters to impact elections.

And Finally...

REUTERS/Kylie Cooper

America’s air-traffic control system runs on outdated telecom systems, decades-old Compaq computers and replacement parts bought on eBay. No wonder it keeps failing.

Read more

Sponsors are not involved in the creation of newsletters or other Reuters news content. Advertise in this newsletter or on Reuters' website

Reuters Daily Briefing is sent 5 days a week. Think your friend or colleague should know about us? Forward this newsletter to them. They can also sign up here.

Want to stop receiving this email? Unsubscribe here. To manage which newsletters you're signed up for, click here.

This email includes limited tracking for Reuters to understand whether you’ve engaged with its contents. For more information on how we process your personal information and your rights, please see our Privacy Statement.

Terms & Conditions