Reuters World News - Venezuela, Russia's ‘shadow fleet’ and AI shopping

Episode Date: November 30, 2025

U.S. President Donald Trump says Venezuelan airspace should be considered closed as tensions mount with Nicolas Maduros’ government. Ukraine says naval drones hit two tankers from Russia’s ‘shadow fleet’. Hondurans vote in a divisive election. Plus, we look at how retailers are trying to get on your AI holiday shopping list. 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 Jacoby in Dalton, Massachusetts. It's Sunday, November 30th, today. Trump says Venezuelan airspace should be considered closed. Ukraine targets Russia's shadow fleet. Honduras prepares for divisive elections. And companies are trying to get on your Christmas list by wooing AI chatbots. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front line. in 10 minutes, seven days a week.

U.S. President Donald Trump says the airspace above and surrounding Venezuela should be considered, quote, closed in its entirety. He gave no further details. U.S. officials contacted by Reuters were surprised by Trump's announcement and unaware of any ongoing U.S. military operations that would merit the closure. Venezuela's government has condemned Trump's comments, describing them as a, quote, colonialist threat. Ritter's footage shows U.S. military aircraft were active at the former Roosevelt

Rhodes Naval Base in Puerto Rico on Saturday, with personnel unloading equipment from cargo planes, while U.S. pressure mounts on Maduro's government. Ukraine says it's hit two Russian oil tankers, part of Russia's so-called shadow fleet that export Russian oil. Video footage shared by a Ukrainian official shows that, naval drones speeding towards the hulking vessels, followed by powerful explosions. Reuters could not independently verify the identity of the tankers in the clips, nor the location and date of the footage.

Kiev has repeatedly called on the West to take real action against Russia's shadow fleet, which the Ukrainian government says allows large quantities of oil to flow out of Moscow and fund its war effort in Ukraine, despite Western sanctions. And before we move on, a quick reminder that we're no longer the only seven-day week podcast from Reuters. In today's episode of Reuters' Morning Bid, our expert journalists take a look at global markets for the week and year ahead. Find that episode at the link in the description or wherever you get your podcasts. The holiday shopping season is upon us, and big retailers are trying something new. For years, they've been chasing your attention online, trying to get consumers back in stores.

Now they're chasing the attention of AI chat bots. Americans have started asking chat GPT and other LLMs for gift ideas, and companies are scrambling to figure out how to show up in those answers. That shift is changing how companies market themselves, from turning out AI-friendly blog posts to building entire websites just for bots. E-commerce reporter Ariana MacLamore says retailers see the potential and understand that holiday shopping may not start with a Google search anymore. These bots are going in and they're scraping all of this information about products. And that can be the materials that products are made of, the size, the availability, price, and where people can buy them.

And they're doing it really, really quickly. So in an effort to separate this data, retailers are building out AI versions of their e-commerce websites. In our reporting, we've seen that e-commerce platforms, brands, they're also looking at other ways to show up in the results of chat GPT. I spoke to one company called Brooklyn, and they sell betting materials, so, you know, your comforters, pillows, things like that. and they said that they're applying for more awards. Like finding ways to end up on a top 10 list or a top five list because what's essentially happening is these AI tools are looking for the ways that humans are asking the bots questions.

Right now, AI-driven shopping is less than 1% of traffic. But retailers are pouring money into it, and they're hoping those high-intent clicks pay off. Honduran's head to the polls today in a presidential election that looks to be an extremely tight race and is already surrounded by accusations of fraud. That's before votes are even cast. Polls show a virtual tie between the three top candidates. Rixi Moncada from the ruling leftist Libre Party,

Nasri Osfura from the Conservative National Party. And Salvador Nasraea from the Centrist Liberal Party. With a neck and neck race, political analysts warn rival victory claims could spark chaos. Our Mexico and Central America bureau chief, Stephen Eisenheimer, says the organization of American states and the U.S. have already raised concerns. There's a few things going on. Effectively, you've got the Partido Libre, which is the ruling party, which is accusing the other two men. candidates are planning a coup and there's a lot of like very strong rhetoric against them and trying to get in the way of the democratic process.

You've got the opposition parties that are accusing the ruling party of effectively interfering in the way that the electoral authority is planning these elections, bringing in the military to have a kind of much greater role than they usually would in the kind of planning and execution of the vote. So you've got all sides already crying foul. And I think that's what's really got people worried about it. it. Honduras also has a history of disputed elections resulting in violence. 2017 was a strong example of that when Juan Orlando Hernandez won a very, very disputed votes,

and at least 20 people died in clashes in the streets afterwards, according to rights groups. That's why the US has issued this statement to say, we're watching. Same with OAS, the Organization of American States. They'll be on the ground observing this election on the day and could play a pretty important role in terms of what comes afterwards. If you're considering taking the family on a big hike to work off that post- Thanksgiving food coma, here's a little adventure inspiration. British ex-paratrooper Carl Buschby has spent much of the last three decades

walking around the world, literally. His 36,000-mile trek started in Chile and has taken him across jungles, frozen seas, even the Caspian, which he swam. Now, as a 56-year-old on the final stretch of his journey in Hungary, Bushby is reflecting on how the world around him has changed. He spoke to Reuters about how his journey began and the obstacles that kept him on the road for 27 years.

People said, well, you can't do that. And then the idea grew, the lion's got longer, and the venture got the whole world. And then you're like, I could do this. And the world said, no, no one can do that. So it almost kind of evolved like a bad bet with the guys in the army and then just taking the Mickey and saying, now you can't do that kind of thing.

And I was utterly convinced that yes, you can. And so it kind of just evolved from there. That bad bet turned into the Goliath expedition, a walk without modernized transport. Bushby says it wasn't just the miles that slowed him down. The obvious one being the pandemics and wars, and geopolitics, like trying to get permission to get into Iran and things like that, was all stopped because the geopolitics fell apart right at the wrong time,

and that, you know, forces to end up swimming across the Caspian. Bushby expects to be finished by late next year and says the best way to handle the end of a challenge like this is to start another one. Travelers across parts of the U.S. are bracing for storms as they head home after Thanksgiving weekend. But storms, of course, are not unique to the U.S. nor even to Earth. News from NASA this week shows that the atmosphere on Mars experiences electrical storms.

Scientists are calling them mini-lightening. Our resident science expert Will Dunham explains. NASA's Perseverance Rover has detected electrical discharges often associated with whirlwinds, called dust devils, that regularly dance over the Martian surface. Perseverance picked up these electrical discharges in audio and electromagnetic recordings. The researchers say these discharges, which one of the scientists called mini-lightening,

sound like the crack of a whip. Mars joins Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn as the planet's known to have electrically active atmospheres. These discharges could pose a risk to the electronic equipment of current robotic missions, and potentially could pose a hazard for astronauts who in the future will walk on the surface of the red planet. And for today's recommended read, check out Reuters' stunning 2025 photo collection. Over one and a half million images from 150 countries,

documenting everything from ongoing wars to Trump's presidential return to spontaneous moments of joy and human resilience around the world. We'll have a link in the show notes. For more on any of the stories from today, check out Reuters.com or the Reuters app. Don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast player. 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.