[Asher:] Hello, everyone, I'm Zain Asher. Coming up in the next half-hour of QUEST MEANS BUSINESS, Apple switches its gun emoji for something a little less harmful. And I'll talk to the CEO of IMAX on the day they announce a massive deal in China. Before that these are the top news headlines we are following at this hour. U.S. President Barack Obama says Donald Trump is unfit to be the country's next commander-in-chief, speaking at the White House after a meeting with Singapore's prime minister, Mr. Obama said Donald Trump lacked any of the right qualifications.
[Barack Obama, President United States Of America:] I think the Republican nominee is unfit to serve as president. I said so last week. And he keeps on proving it. The notion that he would attack a Gold Star family that had made such extraordinary sacrifices on behalf of our country, the fact that he doesn't appear to have basic knowledge around critical issues in Europe, in the Middle East, in Asia, means that he's woefully unprepared to do this job.
[Asher:] After that, Mr. Obama went on to question why Republicans continue to support Trump's campaign. Trump responded by saying it was Mr. Obama and the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, who were unfit to serve. In a statement, he criticized their foreign policy record and called Clinton reckless. Two chemical attacks have been reported in northern Syria. In Aleppo, the Syrian government says rebels carried out gas attacks that killed five people. In Idlib province, opposition groups are accusing Syrian forces of using chlorine gas on civilians. They say 00:35:00 this video shows alleged victims being treated. Thousands of mourners have gathered in France for a funeral of a priest murdered last week in his church. 86-year-old Father Jacques Hamel was killed as he said morning mass in Normandy by two men who claimed the attack in the name of ISIS. Turkey has made a second request to the United States to extradite a powerful cleric. That is according to Turkey's Justice Minister. The Turkish government believes Fethullah Gulen is behind last month's attempted coup there. Gulen lives in self-imposed exile in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. India is rushing aid to thousands of its citizens in Saudi Arabia who are running out of food after losing their jobs. The layoffs come as Saudi Arabia grapples with low oil prices that have slashed economic growth. Here is our John Defterios with more.
[John Defterios, Cnn Money, Emerging Markets Editor:] Thousands of laborers from India left in limbo.
[Unidentified Male:] No salary. No food. No money.
[Defterios:] They're stranded in Saudi Arabia after the plunge in oil prices sparked massive layoffs there. According to the Indian government, some 7700 Indian workers are stuck in 20 different camps across the kingdom. A CNN camera crew visited this camp in Jeddah. It was shut down months ago with no warning t workers. Now there's no water, no power, and nowhere to go.
[Unidentified Male:] There's no water. No water. No electricity. No. no. How many months? Seven months. Seven months.
[Defterios:] These construction workers tell CNN they haven't been paid for up to seven months. Over the past week, food rations are drying up. India's Consul General based in Jeddah calls it a desperate situation.
[Muhammad Noor Rahman Sheikh, Indian Consul General:] The condition is not good, I mean this what we convey to the authorities here. I mean it is no just about food, it's about the livability of the camps as well.
[Defterios:] The Indian community has rallied to deliver food to the workers, hoping it will last until the Indian government can obtain exit visas. But it's complicated. Nearly all of these workers have handed over their passport to the companies they work for. So trying to get them back is very difficult. Another issue, the Indian government is trying to obtain back pay for thousands of their workers, they are sending a top diplomat to Jeddah to lobby that cause. With an estimated 3 million Indian expats on the ground in Saudi Arabia, it could get much worse if oil continues to hover around $40 a barrel, which would likely lead to further cuts from the Saudi government and in turn cuts for contractors as well.
[Asher:] And Oger's representatives were not immediately available for comment. Saudi officials contacted by CNN Money said they would look into questions about the situation. Earlier I asked John Defterios you saw in the package there what the challenges are for repatriating these workers.
[Defterios:] The biggest challenge is that when they take a contract, and there's a usually a middleman involved in the process, they turn their passport over to the middleman and that goes to the contractor itself. So you have had a case here where projects have been squeezed because, don't forget, the government as part of this 2030 plan is trying to wean the society off of oil because of $40 oil at this stage. So the big projects have been stopped in many cases. The workers can't leave the country without an exit visa. And of course they don't want to leave the country unless they get their back pay. I think it's hard for us to understand, particularly in the West, but I'm sitting here in the Gulf, to have people in a country not being fed and having the local community kind of fill that void right now. There's going to be a negotiation between the Indian government and the External Affairs Ministry, the Labor Ministry in Saudi Arabia, and serious talks with the contractors themselves. How did you halt the project and get to such a dire situation over the last two weeks with no water in some of the camps and very little food if the Indian community did not step in?
[Asher:] So if oil prices remain low. If they still continue to hover around $40 a barrel or even lower, what does the future hold for these workers, especially the ones who decided to stay?
[Defterios:] Well, this is the new normal, Zain, if you will. What I mean by that is we were enjoying $100 a barrel for the better part of four years. That's what sparked this construction boom throughout the six Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia, over the last four years. The Saudi oil minister told me after the OPEC meeting in Vienna in June he thought we could get to $60 a barrel by the end of 2016. That looks very different from where we are now. Let's go back say even four months to April. We had a low of around $40 a barrel by mid-April, then a rally to $52 a barrel in early June. And then it's been a drip, drip, drip, lower to where we are today, hovering around $40 a barrel. Many thought this market would rebalance. There's a catch here, Zain. There is the goldilocks scenario. If I'm a Gulf producer and I can produce it for say $2 to $6 a barrel and shale producers in the United States are hovering around $35 to $45 a barrel, I don't want the price to go too high because it invites other producers back into the market. So they want to kind of keep this halfway point right now. But $40 is certainly not working for all the spending projects that we've had on the books going back five years when oil prices were much higher than they are today, that's for sure.
[Asher:] John Defterios speaking to me earlier. Next on QUEST MEANS BUSINESS, IMAX rolls out even more big screens in China. We speak to the company's CEO about its biggest deal ever. That's next.