The US government shutdown looks set to be the longest in history, leaving hundreds of thousands without pay.
It's World Business Express from the BBC World Service.
I'm Leanna Byrne.
In Denmark, its star company, Novo Nordisk, is falling down the rankings and Saudi Arabia is making a big push into AI.
The US government's been shut down for 34 days and by midnight Tuesday it'll be the longest in history.
Federal workers are still going without pay.
Small businesses waiting on government contracts are on the brink and food aid is running dry.
Here's Abigail Smith, a school bus driver at a food bank in Detroit.
It's hard when you don't know if your next meal is... going to be, you know, not there.
Some of us don't have savings.
Some of us don't even have bank accounts.
Some of us don't have money put up in a cookie jar anywhere.
We live check by check.
Food banks say they're bracing for a surge in demand as millions risk losing SNAP benefits.
That's the main U.S. food aid scheme.
Michael Otley runs the Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen in New York.
He told me numbers are rising.
Well, the phone is ringing off the hook right now because of all the people that have the uncertainty of what's going to happen with SNAP or what has happened with SNAP.
We do have emergency bags for those people.
We don't know what to expect.
There's no way we could plan for it.
We don't know how it affects us.
But we do know that every week Tuesday, Wednesdays and Thursdays in our pantry we do see roughly 750 clients, which is a lot.
What happens the longer this goes on for? food disaster for me.
I mean, I've been here for 17 years and I've seen some rough times, but this is the roughest I've seen it in my history here at Holy Apostles.
If SNAP ends for you, is there any other alternative sources of funding that you might have to think about?
We've been beating the quarters for funding.
It's scary times, and no one can prepare for this because we don't know what to expect.
But a lot of people rely on, just think about it, a SNAP meal is $6.31 or $0.42 a day per person.
How can you survive in a city of New York with $6 per meal for a SNAP participant?
Presumably a lot of the people coming through your door are also government employees now.
Yeah.
We're down next to the post office, one of the bigger post offices in New York, on 28th and 9th Avenue.
And we see a lot of the postal workers coming here for food.
We also have a soup kitchen that we run Monday through Friday.
We're seeing a huge increase in those people coming for a daytime meal and running back to work to deliver the mail for us.
That was Michael Otley from the Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen.
Michelle Fleury, our correspondent, is also in New York.
Michelle, is there any sign of movement in Congress before that Tuesday night deadline?
Look, I mean, I think, aside from the kind of horrible hardship that individuals are enduring, there is unfortunately little political pressure to end it.
And as a result of that, there is a sense this could drag on.
It's already the longest on record.
Part of this is that polling seems to suggest the public blames Republicans rather than Senate Democrats.
And so there's little incentive for them to kind of come to the table and try and negotiate it.
Meanwhile, you've got these political milestones happening.
Obviously, there's the opening of enrollment of the Affordable Care Act.
That's the health care plans for 26.
And November 4th brings elections in several states.
We'll have to see if that makes a difference.
And we heard from food banks there.
But how much damage is this doing to the wider economy?
Yeah.
I mean, in the past, shutdowns have caused lost economic activity in billions of dollars.
But, you know, we're talking about a $30 trillion economy.
This time around the Congressional Budget Office.
The bipartisan group thinks that the shutdown, if it lasts four weeks, which were already passed, will lead to sort of 1 shrinkage in GDP growth in the final three months of this year.
An eight-week shutdown, that would translate to about 2% in lost GDP.
Most of this would be recovered next year when the government reopens, but roughly 7 to 14 billion would be permanently lost.
And so Goldman Sachs is already saying look, you know, there is no doubt the current shutdown will probably have the greatest economic impact of any shutdown on record.
Michelle Flurry in New York, thank you.
The company behind Huggies and Kleenex is buying the maker of Tylenol Kenview, in a 49 billion deal, one of the biggest consumer deals of the year.
Kenview's had a rough time since splitting from Johnson & Johnson in 2023.
It was also recently caught up in controversy after President Trump said pregnant women should stop taking Tylenol, citing unfounded links to autism.
Now, at the start of the year, Novo Nordisk, which makes Ozempic, was Europe's most valuable firm.
But now the stock isn't looking so good.
Rachel Winter, partner and investment manager at Killik & Co. can tell me what happened.
What happened, Rachel?
Well, the stock is down 70% since 2024.
And that's because Novo Nordisk used to be the leader in weight loss drugs, but there's now more competition.
There is another company called Eli Lilly that has launched a drug that many people think is better.
And therefore, we've seen this big drop in the share price of Novo Nordisk.
And there's this big race to make the pill version too.
But I mean, the company has a new CEO, so I'm guessing the pressure is on for him.
Yeah, he's really trying to shake things up a bit.
He is trying some fairly drastic action.
He has just launched a $9 billion bid for another company.
So that is a way of trying to promote a bit of growth at Novo Nordisk.
Definitely one way to do it.
Rachel Winter, Partner and Investment Manager at Killikin Toke.
Thank you so much.
Now, almost 10 years after launching its ambitious Vision 2030 plan to diversify away from oil, Saudi Arabia appears to be changing course.
The country is now scaling back some of its vast gigaprojects like NEOM.
Instead, it's pouring billions into artificial intelligence and high-tech infrastructure.
I've been speaking to our correspondent, Samir Hashmi.
One of the main pillars of ai as a sector is building the infrastructure, essentially building data centers that are required to power these ai operating systems, and compute power, as it's called.
To build this infrastructure, you need energy sources.
Saudi arabia already has that infrastructure because, as one of the largest exporters of oil in the world, it has already built that massive energy infrastructure.
And the second big advantage it has is that The energy it produces is cheap.
Third, I would say, is the geographical location.
Because, if you look where the Gulf states like Saudi Arabia sit, they sit at the intersection of Europe, Africa and South Asia.
And it gives them access to 3 billion people in terms of population.
So these are the big advantages that the Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, has.
It's interesting though you say Samir, that they're going to be using their energy to power these data centres.
So is that really a diversification from oil, or is it almost just a branding exercise, because they're just going to be using that energy in a different way?
Saudi Arabia has been investing a lot in renewable energy over the last decade or so.
While it still remains the second largest exporter of oil in the world...
What Saudi Arabia has done is it's trying to shift, whether it's through nuclear or other sources of renewable energy, to feed its domestic consumption, while it continues exporting oil to other countries.
When these data centers come up in the next five or 10 years, it will be able to feed the energy through the renewable sources and not rely on its oil exports.
We're also seeing investment in new ventures like Ria Air.
So how does that fit into the country's strategy overall?
So if you look at Saudi Arabia's strategy of diversifying its economy, it has four or five key pillars, and one of them is tourism.
It wants to attract 150 million visitors every year by 2030.
It's already hit the 100 million target.
For that, they need a globally well-connected airline.
Now Saudi Arabia already has a national carrier called Saudi Airlines, which has been operating for five decades.
But that essentially relies a lot on transporting people who come for religious tourism.
But now Saudi Arabia wants to attract a lot of business travelers and leisure tourists.
And for that, they need an airline that is well-connected.
That was our Middle East correspondent, Samir Hashmi.
And that's it from World Business Express. please subscribe to get the latest.
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I'm Leanna Byrne.
As ever, thanks so much for listening.
