Ukraine’s top peace negotiator quits

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2025-11-29 13:02

Weekend Briefing

From Reuters Daily Briefing

By Robert MacMillan, Reuters.com Weekend Editor

Welcome to the Weekend Briefing, where we are serving much more than Thanksgiving leftovers. Our Week in Review podcast from the Morning Bid team talks Fed and Black Friday. And as a delightful garnish, I recommend this week’s City Memo, which drops us off in Stockholm.

Ukraine’s top peace negotiator quits

REUTERS/Anatolii Stepanov

Raid: President Zelenskiy’s powerful chief of staff Andriy Yermak resigned hours after anti-corruption police searched his home. A major corruption probe is ensnaring public officials and causing widespread public anger. Yermak has been a close friend of Zelenskiy since the president’s days as a TV comedian. He has not been named as a suspect..
Pass: Marco Rubio plans to skip a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels next week, a highly unusual move for a U.S. diplomat, especially as the U.S. and Ukraine try to agree on a peace plan to end Russia’s invasion. On the battlefield, Ukraine’s drone pilots are using artificial intelligence to aid their strikes on Russian targets. A vast overnight Russian attack on Kyiv killed three and left more than 600,000 households without power.

Killing of Palestinians looks like summary execution, U.N. says

West Bank: Israeli security forces opened fire on two men in Jenin after they appeared to have surrendered. Itamar Ben-Gvir said the forces did what was expected of them and that “terrorists should die.” A U.N. human-rights office spokesman called the right-wing national defense minister’s comments “nothing short of abhorrent.”
Middle East: Hezbollah’s chief said the group retained the right to respond to Israel’s killing of its top military commander as the Lebanese worried that Israel could escalate its bombardment. The U.S.- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is closing after months of criticism over the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians who tried to seek aid at its hubs.

National Guard shooting suspect to face murder charges

Alarm: Twenty-year-old Sarah Beckstrom, one of the Guard members allegedly shot by 29-year-old Afghan man Rahmanullah Lakanwal, died of her wounds. President Trump said he would freeze migration from “Third World Countries” to the U.S. after the shooting. The U.N. urged Washington to keep the doors open for asylum seekers.
Who let him in? The Trump administration blamed Biden-era failures for Lakanwal’s admittance to the U.S., but he received asylum this year. Afghans seeking resettlement in the U.S. after fleeing the Taliban say they’re in deep trouble.

Airbus issues A320 recall

Thanksgiving surprise: Airlines raced to fix a software glitch on their Airbus A320 jets after the plane maker issued a major recall. Why? Intense solar radiation may corrupt data required for flight controls to function. Industry sources said a sharp loss of altitude during a JetBlue flight from Cancún to New Jersey that injured several passengers triggered the recall. The notice comes ahead of the busiest travel weekend of the year in the U.S.
Add to cart: Americans favored shopping online instead of stepping outside on Black Friday. Alibaba’s AliExpress said it banned a China-based seller’s childlike sex dolls. France is pushing for European Commission action against Shein over the same thing. The FAA is investigating Amazon after one of its delivery drones snapped an Internet cable in Texas.

You must be at least this tall to ride this chatbot

AI: The European Parliament wants to raise the minimum age to 16 to allow people access to artificial-intelligence chatbots and social-media sites.
Suits and settlement: A startup that creates AI-powered courtroom simulations sued one of its cofounders for allegedly stealing its trade secrets. AI music companies Suno and Udio settled copyright disputes with two big music companies.

What’s at stake in Trump's battle with the BBC

Panorama of pitfalls: Trump’s $5 billion lawsuit against the BBC may cost it dearly as governments hostile to independent reporting say they now have an opening to go after the broadcaster.
Static and squelch: Bosnia’s public broadcaster went on air from an improvised tent studio on a bitterly cold day outside parliament to urge the government to prevent its collapse. Viktor Orbán's government has spent 15 years eroding independent media in Hungary, but YouTube and other online platforms have given critical voices the popularity and financial independence to survive.

Before I forget…

Hong Kong’s anti-graft body said it arrested eight people in connection with the high-rise apartment-complex fire that killed at least 128 people. Two hundred others remain missing. Read more on Hong Kong’s foreign domestic helpers, some of whom were caught in the fire.
The death toll from floods and cyclonic rains in Indonesia rose to 303. Another 162 people died in floods in Thailand.
St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ conservative opposition party won a landslide victory in this week’s general election, ending the ruling party’s 24 years in power. The big question: will the Caribbean nation end its relations with Taiwan and get closer to China?
Hackers are raiding U.S. transmission equipment to broadcast fake emergency messages and obscene language.
Some countries charge foreigners more for visiting monuments and attractions. Now the U.S. will do the same at its national parks.
A new counting method using the DNA from extracted dung reveals that there are more endangered African forest elephants than previously thought.
Did you leave a bag of cooked frogs on a London bus?

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