Reuters World News - Airbus recall, Pope Leo and icy swims

Episode Date: November 29, 2025

Airbus recall halts flights around the world. Pope Leo visits Istanbul's Blue Mosque. President Trump’s immigration crackdown pledge. Plus, icy swims in Russia. Recommended Read: How the deadly Hong Kong inferno spread Listen to On Assignment - Tracking Trump’s retribution targets Listen to Morning Bid podcast here.  Sign up for the Reuters Econ World newsletter here.  Listen to the Reuters Econ World podcast here. Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices.  You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, I'm Evan Jacobi in Dalton, Massachusetts. It's Saturday, November 29th. Today. Airbus grounds thousands of A320 jets over a software glitch, disrupting flights worldwide. Pope Leo visits Istanbul's Blue Mosque on his first trip overseas as Pontiff. And in Russia, icy water feels like a hot tub

when the air is double digits below freezing. This is Reuters' World News, bringing you news, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, seven days a week. Airbus is grounding more than 6,000 planes worldwide after a software glitch in its A320 fleet. Asian airlines are scrambling to fix the problem this weekend, with hundreds of flights canceled in Japan, India, and Australia. The recall was issued in response to a jet blue incident in October that sent passengers plunging and left several injured, according to industry sources. It covers over half of all A320s in service. Regulators are ordering that flight control software

be replaced before planes can fly again. Pope Leo makes history in Istanbul, stepping into the Blue Mosque on his first trip overseas as Pontiff. The Pope removes his shoes in a gesture of respect, but chooses not to pray, touring the iconic site with its Imam and Mufti. The visit comes as Leo calls for unity among the world's 2.6 billion Christians and condemns violence in the name of religion. In Washington, President Donald Trump is vowing to clamp down on migration from what he calls, quote, third world countries, after an Afghan asylum seeker allegedly killed a National Guard member.

and wounded another. I spoke to immigration reporter Ted Heson to get a better sense of what this might mean in practice. The Trump administration is looking specifically at this list of countries that are already on Trump's existing travel ban. So that's 19 nations, which actually includes Afghanistan as well. And among those 19 nations, 12 of them already have complete bans on immigrant and non-immigrant visas being issued. So it's just not clear whether what Trump's saying would apply just to those nations, whether it could potentially be broader. I think we'll have to wait and see in the coming days and weeks how the Trump administration proceeds. So since the incident, Trump's administration has also said that they'd take other steps to restrict immigration,

including a sweeping review of people granted asylum under President Biden. Do we have a sense of who all is going to be affected? The asylum review could be quite comprehensive in nature. We're talking about tens of thousands of people. Now, what exactly could come of it is unclear. How they could actually do this vetting on a large scale is also unclear. Even before this incident had happened, we had reported this week that the Trump administration was looking at a review of everyone who entered under the U.S. refugee program under Biden. So when you take these things together, you're talking about a real intensification of people who entered the country legally in recent years. I think the real question is, where do we go from there?

Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to seek revenge on those who wronged him, and that vow became a guiding principle of his second term. In our latest on assignment out today, our investigative reporters lay out the most comprehensive accounting of this effort and how it's changing government and institutions. So there are really two aspects to this sort of retribution campaign. You've got, on the one hand, the president pursuing his personal vendettists, so prosecutors who worked on cases against him, officials who were critical of him. But then there's another component, which is this sort of drive for cultural and political dominance.

We'll put a link in today's description. Black Friday has come and gone. But don't panic if you missed that major deal. With retailers and consumers rattled by terrorists. and as more and more of our shopping habits turn digital, those in-person Black Friday deals look different these days. I spoke to U.S. business editor David Gaffin yesterday, who shared the latest from the field.

We are definitely seeing a lot of people who are a little concerned about how much they're going to spend. And one thing that's noticeable from the data as well is that we are seeing certainly that the prices in the United States, the average selling point, is higher than... the rest of the world, which some of the early data companies that have looked at this stuff, say is attributable in part to tariffs, as well as just overall inflation. And as well, what we're seeing is that the people that are most likely to spend are, as you might expect, the wealthiest.

Really, the reality is that they've been pushing their discounts earlier on, I believe Walmart and Target both started a few weeks ago. And that in some ways kind of saps the Jews from the Black Friday thing anyway. And if the holiday shopping season still has you curious about the economy, check out MorningBid, our new markets and finance show, which airs seven days a week. Nell McKenzie is joining us from the London studio to tell us about what's on offer today. Hey, Nell. Hey, Evan.

So today we're going to talk about the CME outage. We're going to talk about Black Friday sales and move over Elf on a shelf because we think by Christmas we'll have the name of the next Fed chair. For this and more stories, join us on the Morning Bit. That's Tipcom Llewe, a 59-year-old farmer in Thailand. For most of her life, she's relied on the Coke River to irrigate her fields. But since April, she's had to use groundwater instead, after authorities warned her about serious contamination in the river.

She says, it's like half of me. has died. According to research this month from U.S. think tank at the Stimson Center, more than 2400 mines across mainland Southeast Asia could be releasing deadly chemicals into river water. Many of those mines are illegal and unregulated. Sawat Gao Dam is a fisherman born and raised in a village where the Koch River meets the Mekong. If the river could say, it would say, I want to say, I want to cry.

If the river could speak, he says, it would say it wants to cry. Sawat says the Mekong faces several threats, from pollution to hydro-power dams that disrupt its natural flow. Now, he says, when he casts his net across the river, he doesn't catch any fish at all. In Norway, a century-old wealth tax is catching the attention of Britain, France, Italy, even New York City. The tax dates back to 1892, and And some critics say it forces millionaires to leave the country. More than 250 ultra-wealthy Norwegians are now leaving every year. But as Francesco Kinepa explains, Norway isn't bothered by that.

What used to be a steady prickle of Norwegians out of Norway became more of a stream when the tax was increased and the exit tax was tightened, so to speak, so the loopholes were closed. But Norway's answer to that is so big it. the rate doubled compared to before the tax hike. But what's interesting is the political reaction to it, is that Norway is prepared to take that loss. So they say we value equality and this wealth tax helps underpin what is actually one of the most equal societies in the world.

The tax was a defining issue in Norway's election last September, which saw the Labour Party return to power. Leaving the country does have its own tax implications on any unrealized capital gains. But Francesco says, while reporting this story, he spoke to many people who left anyway. Moulton Astrup, the ultimate daredevil. He's the fan manager based in Verbié on the Swiss Alps.

And Ken has been taking risks all his life. He left Norway as a young man to try his hand of other tech entrepreneur in London during the dot-com bubble. He lost nearly all of it, and with little more than an apartment in the car to his name. mainly hold up in Zverbier, which is this lovely Swiss mountain resort, where he then started trading bonds, and now he has this investment fund trading Nordic junk bonds. And his point is Norway is going to lose more people like me, he's going to lose the

entrepreneurial minders and it's going to lose the risk-pakers. Swimmers in Russia are taking the plunge into freezing cold water. But believe it or not, even at water's freezing temperature, the water still feels warm. That's because the air is negative 20 degrees Fahrenheit, about 50 degrees colder. For locals in Yakutsk, the world's coldest city, even that might be considered a warm day.

Winter temps here can drop below negative 70. Swim club member Oleg Popov says the key is to get dressed quickly. and all the whole, with the gollasks, all. There, well, in the water, when you go to go, it's a jar. And for today's recommended read, we look at how Hong Kong's deadliest fire in decades spread as fast as it did

in an interactive breakdown of the blaze that tore through a public housing complex. We'll drop a link in the description. For more on any of the stories today, check out Reuters.com or the Reuters app. Don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast player. And if you're listening on a smart speaker, just ask for the latest news from Reuters seven days a week. We'll be back tomorrow with our daily headline show.