Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Monday, November 29th.

And this is your FT News Briefing.

The new coronavirus variant is rattling financial markets.

UK regulators might reverse a tech acquisition made last year,

plus Iranian diplomats will sit down with Western counterparts to talk about its nuclear program

and sanctions. Iran wants a guarantee from the US that it would never again leave

the agreement. Our correspondent will give us the view from Iran.

I'm Mark Filipino and here's the news you need to start your day.

This week, financial markets are likely to be focused on, once again, the pandemic.

Several governments reimposed travel restrictions late last week after scientists in South Africa

discovered the new coronavirus Omicron variant. Major global stock indices dropped on Friday

and nervous investors poured money into safe havens like gold.

Now, it's unclear how contagious the new variant is.

FT Pharmaceuticals reporter Danado Palo Mancini has been speaking to the World Health Organization

and other public health experts who say Omicron appears to be more transmissible than the Delta variant.

And it has some mutation, some characteristics that suggest it could evade natural immunity

and vaccine afforded immunity. So that means the vaccines that we have right now

are probably less efficacious against it. That doesn't mean that that's the case for short.

There are studies underway, but global health authorities are quite concerned about it because

anything that is more easily transmissible than Delta, anything that is able to pierce through

vaccinations would put a severe dent in our plans to sort of reemerge globally from the pandemic.

Danado, what do experts say about precautions like lockdowns and travel restrictions?

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