Buffett’s Farewell Letter, Trump Welcomes Syria’s al-Sharaa, and Apple Hits Pause on the iPhone Air

11th November 2025

Warren Buffett bids farewell to shareholders in his final Thanksgiving letter as Berkshire Hathaway CEO, reflecting on six decades of partnership, philanthropy, and perspective. The BBC faces its biggest credibility crisis in decades following the resignation of two top executives. Apple delays the next version of the iPhone Air amid weak sales and design trade-offs. At the White House, President Trump hosts Syria’s new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, a onetime al-Qaeda commander turned reformer, as Washington extends sanctions relief. All this and more in today’s Read It And Eat!

Major Headlines

• Read Warren Buffett's Thanksgiving shareholder letter — his last one as Berkshire Hathaway CEO

With his third annual Thanksgiving letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, the Oracle of Omaha expressed the sentiment in another installment of what could become his primary means of dispensing observations and advice after he steps down as CEO at the end of this year.

In the letter, the legendary investor mused on his 64-year friendship with Charlie Munger and the extensive connections that emerged from his humble hometown in Nebraska. He outlined the acceleration of his giving plan to wind down his vast fortune through charitable organizations led by his children. He said Monday that he converted 1,800 Class A shares into 2.7 million Class B shares to fund the effort.

Those shares are worth about $1.35 billion. He also offered life advice for leaders and workers alike facing tough decisions, and echoed his long-standing view of always betting on America. "You will never be perfect, but you can always be better," he said. Yahoo.Finance

• The BBC Under Fire 

It is tempting to view the sudden resignation of two top BBC executives on Sunday evening, in the wake of scathing criticism by the Trump administration, as an extension of the pressure that President Trump has put on news media organizations in the U.S.

The executives resigned after a leaked memo said the BBC had misleadingly edited a speech by Trump that preceded the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, splicing together comments that were actually about 50 minutes apart. But the British Broadcasting Corporation is not CBS or ABC, both of which settled lawsuits brought by Trump over their coverage of him. Its current crisis, the gravest the BBC has faced in decades is less about Trump, experts say, than about the insoluble tensions of a renowned public service broadcaster operating in a bitterly divided world.

The Jan. 6 documentary was the immediate catalyst, but the departures of the BBC’s director general, Tim Davie, and the chief executive of BBC News, Deborah Turness, follow a string of disputes over the broadcaster’s coverage of other sensitive issues, including the Israel-Hamas war and transgender rights. Davie, a longtime BBC executive whose roots are in marketing, not journalism, has had to weather one crisis after another since he was named director general in 2020. He has been criticized for failing to act more swiftly in the case of a BBC anchor accused of sexual misconduct. He also faced a mutiny after suspending a popular soccer broadcaster who had likened the Conservative government’s policy for asylum seekers to Germany in the 1930s.

In 2024, Davie was back under a microscope for what critics said was a failure to deal with charges of unwelcome physical conduct and inappropriate language toward colleagues by the presenter of MasterChef, Gregg Wallace. The Israel-Hamas war brought a fresh raft of headaches. A 2025 documentary, “Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone,” came under fierce criticism after it emerged that the father of the 13-year-old narrator was a Hamas official. Davie pulled the film from BBC’s iPlayer service, saying he had lost faith in it. Last summer, Davie was again on the defensive when the BBC did not cut away from Bob Vylan, an English punk rap duo, after they led a crowd at the Glastonbury Festival in chanting, “death to the I.D.F.,” referring to the Israeli military.

Even before Trump entered the fray, the BBC was regularly targeted by Conservatives like Boris Johnson, the former British prime minister. He recently called for heads to roll as a result of the Jan. 6 documentary. Nigel Farage, the right-wing populist who leads the anti-immigrant party Reform U.K., accused the BBC of “election interference.” He said he discussed the matter with Trump last Friday, and that the U.S. president had made his feelings known in “not a quotable form.” “What’s best for the BBC is to have a reset and address these issues,” said Claire Enders, a media analyst in London. “For the BBC to manifest political bias is the most dangerous thing it could do in this world.” New York Times 

• Apple delays next version of iPhone Air, the Information reports

  
  

Apple (AAPL.O), will not release the next version of the iPhone Air in the fall of 2026 as previously planned, amid weak sales, the Information reported on Monday, citing sources familiar with the matter.

The company launched the iPhone Air in 2025 as a thinner and lighter alternative within its flagship iPhone portfolio. The model, with a slim design, came with some trade-offs in terms of battery size and camera features. Analysts said demand for the iPhone Air has been weaker than originally anticipated.

In October, the company said the iPhone Air would be available for pre-order in China, following regulatory approval for eSIM services by those telecom operators. The iPhone Air is being sold in China without a physical SIM tray, supporting only eSIM connectivity. Reuters

• Trump hosts Syria’s al-Sharaa at White House as US extends sanctions relief

  
  

United States President Donald Trump has held talks with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa at the White House, as the Department of the Treasury announced suspending sanctions against Damascus for a further six months. The meeting on Monday capped a stunning year for al-Sharaa, a 43-year-old former al-Qaeda commander who toppled the longtime hardline leader of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, last December.

Al-Sharaa, who wants to unify his war-ravaged nation and end its decades of international isolation, was the first ever Syrian leader to visit the White House since the country’s independence in 1946. The Syrian presidency said al-Sharaa and Trump held talks “focusing on bilateral relations between Syria and the United States, ways to strengthen and develop them, and a number of regional and international issues of common interest”. For his part, Trump heaped praise on al-Sharaa after the meeting.

“He comes from a very tough place, and he’s a tough guy. I like him,” Trump said of the Syrian president. “We’ll do everything we can to make Syria successful, because that’s part of the Middle East. We have peace now in the Middle East – the first time that anyone can remember that ever happening.” But Trump also gave a nod to al-Sharaa’s controversial past. “We’ve all had rough pasts,” he said.

Al-Sharaa later told Fox News that his association with al-Qaeda was a matter of the past and was not discussed during his meeting with Trump. Syria is now seen as a geopolitical ally of Washington and not a threat, he added. The meeting between the two leaders came six months after their first meeting in Saudi Arabia, where Trump announced plans to lift sanctions, and just days after the US said that al-Sharaa was no longer a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist”.

Shortly afterwards, a senior US official told The Associated Press and AFP news agencies that Syria has formally confirmed that it would join the global coalition against the armed group ISIL (ISIS), becoming its 90th member. The official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the US would also allow Syria to resume operations at its embassy in Washington so the two countries can better coordinate on counterterrorism, security and economic issues. Aljazeera

Minor Headlines 

• Supreme Court rejects appeal challenging legality of same-sex marriage BBC

  
  

• CoreWeave beats third quarter revenue estimates Reuters

  
  

• Burger King Strikes Joint Venture to Double Presence in China Wall Street Journal 

  
  

• Paramount Q3 Revenue Misses Wall Street Target, But Company Boosts Skydance Merger Savings Outlook To $3B Yahoo.Finance

  
  

• British-Hungarian author David Szalay wins 2025 Booker Prize with novel Flesh BBC

  
  

• Rad Power Bikes faces shutdown in January without new funding TechCrunch 

  
  

• At least eight killed after car explodes near Delhi's Red Fort BBC 

  
  

• Gold hits near 3-week peak on rate-cut bets, US shutdown optimism Reuters