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Major Airlines Cut Hundreds of Flights This Weekend; Trump Exempts Hungary from Russian Energy Sanctions; Island Nations Urge Stronger Global Action on Climate Change; Havana Keeps Dancing. Aired 3-3:30a ET

Aired November 08, 2025 - 03:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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POLO SANDOVAL, CNN ANCHOR AND NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Hey, everybody. I'm Polo Sandoval, live in New York. This is CNN NEWSROOM. And here's what's coming your way.

Canceled flights, frustrated travelers, a casualty of the U.S. government shutdown. People left scrambling to figure out how to get to their destinations.

A White House meeting and a rare exemption. Why Hungary won't be subject to U.S. sanctions for buying Russian oil, at least not for now.

And people in the Philippines are bracing as Typhoon Fung-wong sets its sights on the region. Officials warning that it could become as strong as a category four hurricane.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Live from New York, this is CNN NEWSROOM with Polo Sandoval.

SANDOVAL: Let's begin with the U.S. Congress and a live picture at Washington -- from Washington, D.C., as Congress remains at an impasse with really no end to the government shutdown in sight.

Air traffic control shortages, they are currently forcing airlines to cancel hundreds more flights this weekend. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says that the percentage of canceled flights could rise from 4 percent to 20 percent.

That's if the shutdown doesn't end soon. The levels of frustration and uncertainty are currently rising among people trying to fly throughout the U.S.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We've been here since 4:00 this morning. But the thing is, there's no flight to Syracuse. So we're going to Raleigh, North Carolina. Then we're going to Buffalo. Then someone has to pick us up.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, can't get you hotel comp, you know. No transportation compromises. They wouldn't get us on another airline. Not even a little money for lunch. Pretty much just send you back to where you came from and call it a day.

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SANDOVAL: And we're not even at the holiday travel season yet. We are currently following this story from several cities affected by reduced flights. We'll be hearing from CNN's Jason Carroll in Newark, New Jersey, in just a few moments.

But first, here's Pete Muntean at Reagan Washington National Airport.

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PETE MUNTEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Airlines are already posting their flight cancellations for Saturday. Southwest Airlines says it will shed about 100 flights from its schedule, United Airlines 170, American Airlines 220 flights from its schedule.

All to comply with this Trump administration emergency order to shed about 4 percent of flights from airline schedules through Monday, then 6 percent starting on Tuesday, 8 percent on Thursday and then 10 percent on Friday, all in the name of safety, according to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.

Because air traffic controllers continue to go unpaid during this government shutdown, he says the stress that they were feeling was showing up in the national airspace system and it was simply too unsafe to continue to operate airline schedules at full capacity.

Airlines say they are complying with this Trump administration order but it has upset them, because airlines are a huge economic driver and airlines will lose millions of dollars in the process.

They say that they're dealing with this like they would a major snowstorm, although these cancellations are occurring not in just one region but across the country -- Pete Muntean, CNN, Reagan National Airport.

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JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Newark International Airport, one of 40 airports across the country impacted by all of this. We've been speaking to passengers. Obviously, a number of them very upset over what's been going on, frustrated over their travel.

Some of those, who made it here to the airport, their flights were so severely delayed they just gave up. Others, their flights were outright canceled.

We've been speaking to people who decided to just give up on airline travel altogether this go-around and to drive to their destinations. One thing is abundantly clear: the longer that this all drags on, the more impatient people are going to become.

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KAREN SOIKA, AIR TRAVELER: I'm renting a car. I have to be back in Utah by Tuesday. And from what I hear with the counters, the airline counters, and TSA, they literally said to me, if I were you, I wouldn't travel over the next three days.

JAY CURLEY, AIR TRAVELER: They said, yes, you're still going to be flying out at 10 o'clock. Well, of course, 10 o'clock came -- and --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is 10 o'clock --

J. CURLEY: -- 10 o'clock at night.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK.

And then they said, cancel flight.

CINDY CURLEY, AIR TRAVELER: But it wasn't even on the board. And we just went to an agent and they looked it up and they said, nope, that's canceled too. And, of course, the whole board, there were so many cancellations.

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So we're going to just rent a car and drive.

J. CURLEY: So, well, I mean --

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Drive from where?

J. CURLEY: From here to Wilmington, North Carolina.

People are really hurting out here. And it's not just the traveling public but it's affecting the whole economy. And you people are to blame.

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CARROLL: Obviously, the "you people" directed at lawmakers. The feeling is that they are simply not doing enough to end this shutdown. And everyday people are being affected by it -- Jason Carroll, CNN, Newark International Airport.

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SANDOVAL: Federal authorities have moved to subpoena former officials who investigated Russian interference during Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. Sources say the U.S. attorney's office in the Southern District of Florida was scheduled to send out subpoenas to several intelligence officers. Those include former CIA director John Brennan, former Director of

National Intelligence James Clapper, as well as former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. Prosecutors are now asking for records related to their work from July 2016 through February 27th, 2017.

Based on the subpoenas themselves, it's unclear what the scope of the investigation is or who the possible targets are.

Donald Trump is giving Hungary a one-year exemption from U.S. sanctions for buying Russian energy. The news coming during his meeting Friday with Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban at the White House. That's where CNN's Kristen Holmes reports.

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KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: President Trump told Hungary's leader, Viktor Orban, that the country would be exempt from paying those sanctions on Russia oil and energy. Now this is not all that surprising, particularly given what we heard from Trump earlier in the day.

He not only seemed like he was leaning toward it, he seemed like he was making a case for Hungary to be exempt, instead saying that Hungary was not the problem but the European allies were.

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TRUMP: We're looking at it because it's very difficult for him to get the oil and gas from other areas. As you know, they don't have -- they don't have the advantage of having sea. It's a great country, it's a big country.

But they don't have sea, they don't have the ports. And so they have a difficult problem. There's another country that has that same problem, by the way.

So that question could be really asked, maybe more accurately, if you talked about many European countries, not Hungary, necessarily, because Hungary is in a different position.

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HOLMES: President Trump and Viktor Orban have maintained a close relationship for the last several years. On the campaign trail, president Trump praised Orban as a strong man and Orban came and visited him at his Mar-a-Lago home several times when he was not in office, including after he became president-elect.

Now during the question-and-answer portion of their meeting, talking to reporters, they also mentioned two other critical factors. One was the ongoing Ukrainian war, the idea being that Orban said that he believed that this war could come to an end quickly.

Now one of the things to point out is how he said this was going to happen because he almost essentially parroted some of these Russian talking points, saying that Ukraine and European leaders wanted this war to continue because they thought Ukraine could win.

That is not the sentiment that we have heard time and time again from Ukraine or from European leaders who are providing ammunition and weapons to the country, not to try and necessarily win the war but to try and fight back and protect their people.

So whether or not they actually got to a real discussion about how this war could come to an end remains to be seen.

Another point that we've asked about is whether or not president Trump had any discussion with Orban about rescheduling his summit with Russian president Vladimir Putin.

That was supposed to be held in Hungary; was later scrapped by president Trump, who canceled it and imposed these sanctions after, saying that he learned that Russia was just not on the same page when it came to ending that Ukraine war.

Waiting to see if these two leaders discuss potentially putting that back on the books as Orban is friends with both of them -- Kristen Holmes, CNN, the White House.

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SANDOVAL: And after that meeting, a former U.S. ambassador to Hungary expressed some concern about what came out of that gathering. Here's what David Pressman had to say.

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DAVID PRESSMAN, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO HUNGARY: I think it's really worrying when you see the president of the United States looking up to a leader who has played such a fundamental role in eroding democracy in a country that was, remember, one of the shining lights coming out of the post-Communist period.

Hungary had so much promise. And obviously, it's really suffering now. it worries me that if the president of the United States has bought into this story that Viktor Orban has told that there's, you know, this landlocked country that has no other choice, you know, Hungary is not the only landlocked country in the European Union, Erin.

And some of, you know, the Czech Republic has -- on Russian gas has gone from virtually 100 percent to nothing.

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Even landlocked Slovakia has gone from 100 percent to 60 percent. The Hungarians have other options for Russian crude.

But really what's going on here is that the Hungarians want to continue importing Russian oil. They want to make money off of the fact that they get an exemption from these sanctions and then they're going to plow that money back into a system that is enriching Orban's family and friends.

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SANDOVAL: At least one person is dead and 10 others injured after a deadly Russian strike on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. Ukraine state emergency services say that a Russian drone hit a nine-story residential building, causing all this destruction (INAUDIBLE) in a fire.

On Friday, Russia struck a gas station in another suburb. Five people were hurt. The Russian military now claiming to control nearly 20 percent of Ukraine. That's 116,000 square kilometers or nearly 45,000 square miles.

Well, the war is causing widespread death and injury. One Russian military veteran is taking an unusual path to rehabilitation. Frederik Pleitgen shares his story.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Speaking foreign language).

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FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Evgeny Ivanov is a veteran of what Russia still calls its special military operation. He lost both his legs in a drone strike in Ukraine but he said that he never gave up. He kept training, getting stronger and is now trying to set this world record.

EVGENY IVANOV, RUSSIAN VETERAN: (Speaking foreign language).

PLEITGEN (voice-over): The organizers say that the yacht weighs more than 58 tons and he's doing it, crawling on the floor while pulling himself forward on a rope. It's extremely difficult and you can see that, obviously for him, he's really putting all of his strength into it.

IVANOV: (Speaking foreign language).

PLEITGEN (voice-over): However, you view the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, what it is doing is it's killing a lot of people and also a lot of people are getting injuries that are life-altering, like for instance, Evgeny Ivanov. Now a lot of those people are now trying to claw their way back into their lives.

IVANOV: (Speaking foreign language).

PLEITGEN: (Speaking foreign language).

IVANOV: (Speaking foreign language).

PLEITGEN (voice-over): The organizers say that, in the end, Evgeny did manage to break the world record after a lot of effort. He managed to pull this yacht a distance of six meters and 43 centimeters, obviously leading to big cheers from the organizers and also from Evgeny himself, here in Moscow.

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SANDOVAL: Israel has received the remains of one of the last deceased hostages held in Gaza. The Israeli military has confirmed that the remains are those of Cmd. Sgt. Major Lior Rudaeff. This is one of the first images shared of the IDF member.

The military says that his body was taken after he died defending a kibbutz during the October 7th attack. With this confirmation, the bodies of five deceased hostages still remain in Gaza. This is the fourth transfer of remains this week.

Returning all the deceased hostages, that is one of the key conditions of the first phase of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal.

Now to northern Philippines, where people are bracing for a new typhoon. Coming up on CNN NEWSROOM, this is just days after Typhoon Kalmaegi carved a path of death and destruction. We're tracking the latest on this massive storm just ahead.

And global leaders are gathering in Brazil ahead of this week's COP30 summit. Ahead, we'll tell you all about a new initiative to help preserve one of the world's most valuable resources, our forests.

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SANDOVAL: What was once tropical storm Fung-wong is now a typhoon. It is expected to rapidly intensify this weekend as it moves over some of the warmest water in the Pacific Ocean.

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center now says that Fung-wong, it's expected to become a strong -- as strong as a category four hurricane and it could even become a supertyphoon before making landfall in the northern Philippines. Officials are warning people in the storm's path to flee if possible.

This storm comes less than a week after Typhoon Kalmaegi unleashed torrential floods and damaging winds over central Philippines. At least 188 people were killed with that storm.

And the devastation in Vietnam and the Philippines, it's just one example of what island nations say they're facing too often, worsening storm severity in a warming world.

At a summit in Brazil ahead of the next week of -- next week's COP30 climate talks, representatives from small island states called for stronger global action on climate change. And that includes carbon price on international shipping.

The climate minister in Tuvalu, one of the most at-risk places in the world for rising seas, says that the growing toll of extreme weather, it should be a warning to everyone.

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MAINA VAKAFUA TALIA, CLIMATE MINISTER, TUVALU: We only need to reflect on the recent impacts of Hurricane Melissa.

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That wreaked havoc on Jamaica and Cuba and Typhoon Tino that hit the Philippines to understand that climate change is here.

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SANDOVAL: A key climate meeting in Brazil's rainforest, it is laying the groundwork for this week's upcoming COP30 summit. World leaders, they wrapped up two days of talks focused on focused on protecting forests and also on cutting emissions.

Brazil's president Lula da Silva, announcing a new multibillion-dollar fund to pay nations that actively preserve their tropical forests. Here's CNN's Julia Vargas Jones.

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JULIA VARGAS JONES, CNN PRODUCER: You can really feel the urgency here in Berlin. We are in the Amazon rainforest, the largest one in the world.

And today, as leaders, heads of state from all over the world, came together and ended their two-day summit ahead of the COP30, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, the president of Brazil, who is hosting this very conference, said, we're just not doing enough.

He asked those leaders, urged them really, to reconsider their commitment to the Paris agreement and launched his own fund. This is the Tropical Forest Forever Fund. The goal is to raise $10 billion in the first year, for a total of $125 billion.

That would then be invested. And with the investment, that would be used to pay nations who have those rainforests and reward them if they continue to leave those forests standing.

The idea behind this is very much part of Lula's way of seeing the fight against climate change. He says it has to come from a place of also social justice to those people. For a long time, nations that are still developing have said that basically they were left out of the fossil fuel boom.

And this is a chance for countries to get paid to protect those very forests that are important, not just for them but across the world. The fund would benefit not only Brazil, Peru and Colombia, as well as Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Of course, not present here and not also putting any kind of commitment toward this fund is the United States of America. The absence of president Donald Trump and any kind of delegation from the White House really has been a big talking point here.

But the Brazilian government has actually assessed that it is potentially better for the United States to not be present in these conversations and to basically allow those who are truly committed to fighting climate change to work out their solutions for themselves.

Now coming out of this two-day summit, the gains and losses are still not completely clear. I mean, these are heads of state that have, for years, committed to goals that haven't been achieved.

Now critics of this fund say it is too dependent on private investment and that it could be hard to carry it out and to get to those $125 billion.

Now it's important to say not only the United States but the United Kingdom has also said it will not be putting any money toward this fund. They are now at $6 billion out of the $10 billion that they expect to raise until the end of this year -- Julia Vargas Jones, CNN, Belen, Brazil.

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SANDOVAL: Well, Britain's Prince William making his first visit to Latin America ahead of the United Nations' climate summit. He spent five days in Brazil, meeting on Friday with indigenous leaders at an Amazon museum.

He also attended the award ceremony for the Earthshot prize, which is his initiative, which aims to find innovations to fight climate change. Five winners received $1.3 million each for their respective projects. Prince William is set to give a speech at COP30, which starts on Monday.

Well, salsa has long been at the heartbeat of Cuba but some worry that the rhythm seems to be fading in Old Havana. Some people are determined to keep that tradition alive, one dance step at a time. Here's my colleague, Isabel Rosales, with more.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Speaking Spanish). ISABEL ROSALES, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): On this terrace in Old Havana, a group of Cubans are breathing new life into an old tradition, teaching beginners how to dance Salsa Cubana.

This style of dancing has long been a calling card for the Caribbean island. In the past, people often learned the dance at home but that tradition is changing due to a variety of factors, like a grinding economic crisis that has helped fuel multiple widespread blackouts on the island, most recently in September.

The coordinator of Salsa for My People, the group organizing these lessons, says salsa's dominance in Cuba is also threatened by the popularity of other beats and rhythms, like reggaeton.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Speaking Spanish). (MUSIC PLAYING)

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): (INAUDIBLE) is internationally recognized.

As a salsa destination.

And. Multicultural country. Still.

The strength of other rhythms such as reggaeton is undeniable. What happens with this space is that we try to get people to learn so that they can take that knowledge to other places and other night clubs, especially young people who haven't learned from their parents.

ROSALES (voice-over): That includes young people like Alejandro Beltran. Until recently, he was among a rare breed, Cubans with two left feet.

ALEJANDRO BELTRAN, DANCING STUDENT (through translator): I must admit that the first classes were challenging. Progress was slow. I would go one way and my feet would go the other. I would ask her to go forward and she would go backward. I got tangled up.

ROSALES (voice-over): Other students say the program is less about learning to dance and more about feeling a deeper connection to the dance and to their community.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): Salsa and all dances are a motivation in my life. They serve as a therapy, as a source of joy and physical activity. And here in this place, I found a space that, even though it is a school, I like to come to dance and enjoy salsa with other people who have the same interest as me.

ROSALES (voice-over): Isabel Rosales, CNN.

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SANDOVAL: New York's major auction houses are currently previewing the high-value artworks that they plan to sell this season. The blue-chip pieces, they span the 19th through the 21st century, with Basquiat, Klimt and Van Gogh to Rothko. A little bit of everything represented.

And this comes as a recent report indicated that sales of global art and antiques, they dropped last year, with the steepest slowdown at the very top end of the market. Sotheby's and Christie's auctioneers, they hope to -- they hope that some of these top works and carefully curated collections will energize the bidding.

And with that beautiful art, we want to thank you so much for joining us, the last 30 minutes of headlines. I'm Polo Sandoval in New York. "CONNECTING AFRICA" is next. Then the news continues at the top of the next hour.