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By Jake Lucas and Axel Boada
December 18, 2025

Eli Lilly stock rating reiterated at Outperform by BMO on weight loss data
Thousands protest as EU leaders clash over trade pact farmers fear will flood Europe with cheaper South American goods.
Published On 18 Dec 2025
Hundreds of tractors have clogged the streets of Brussels as farmers converged on the Belgian capital to protest against the contentious trade agreement between the European Union and South American nations they say will destroy their livelihoods.
The demonstrations erupted on Thursday as EU leaders gathered for a summit where the fate of the Mercosur deal hung in the balance. More than 150 tractors blocked central Brussels, with an estimated 10,000 protesters expected in the European quarter, according to farm lobby Copa-Cogeca.
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It made for a twin-tracked day of febrile tension outside and inside at the EU summit as leaders were perhaps more focused on a vote to determine whether they are able to use nearly $200bn in frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine over the next two years.
Outside the gilded halls on the streets, farmers hurled potatoes and eggs at police, set off fireworks and firecrackers, and brought traffic to a standstill.
Authorities responded with tear gas and water cannon, setting up roadblocks and closing tunnels around the city. One tractor displayed a sign reading: “Why import sugar from the other side of the world when we produce the best right here?”
“We’re here to say no to Mercosur,” Belgian dairy farmer Maxime Mabille said, accusing European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen of trying to “force the deal through” like “Europe has become a dictatorship”.
Protesters fear an influx of cheaper agricultural products from Brazil and neighbouring countries would undercut European producers. Their concerns centre on beef, sugar, rice, honey and soya beans from South American competitors facing less stringent regulations, particularly on pesticides banned in the EU.
“We’ve been protesting since 2024 in France, in Belgium and elsewhere,” said Florian Poncelet of Belgian farm union FJA. “We’d like to be finally listened to.”
France and Italy now lead opposition to the deal, with President Emmanuel Macron declaring that “we are not ready” and the agreement “cannot be signed” in its current form.
France has coordinated with Poland, Belgium, Austria and Ireland to force a postponement, giving critics sufficient votes within the European Council to potentially block the pact.
However, Germany and Spain are pushing hard for approval. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz warned that decisions “must be made now” if the EU wants to “remain credible in global trade policy”, while Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez argued the deal would give Europe “geo-economic and geopolitical weight” against adversaries.
The agreement, 25 years in the making, would create the world’s largest free-trade area covering 780 million people and a quarter of global gross domestic product (GDP).
Supporters say it offers a counterweight to China and would boost European exports of vehicles, machinery and wines amid rising US tariffs.
Despite provisional safeguards negotiated on Wednesday to cap sensitive imports, opposition has intensified. Von der Leyen remains determined to travel to Brazil this weekend to sign the deal, but needs backing from at least two-thirds of EU nations.
Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva issued an ultimatum on Wednesday, warning that Saturday represents a “now or never” moment, adding that “Brazil won’t make any more agreements while I’m president” if the deal fails.
IT service was built to bring structure to chaos. But for many organizations today, it’s become a source of it. The ticket queues keep growing. Processes feel rigid. And employees often feel frustrated by systems that seem stuck a decade behind.
The numbers reflect this pain, with 40% of organizations either replacing or re-implementing their IT service tools in 2025. This is a clear sign that the model is cracking and needs to be reimagined. Meanwhile, 58% of organizations say their IT team spends more than five hours each week fulfilling repetitive requests. Something has to give.
Today’s businesses are agile. Customers expect instant fixes, and artificial intelligence (AI) is redefining how work gets done. The problem? Many IT processes haven’t kept up. They’re still burdened by manual, outdated workflows that slow everyone down, with a recent report citing that 45% of organizations consider repetitive tasks as their top IT service challenge in 2025. To stay relevant, IT must evolve from a back-office function into a strategic driver of business growth.
Here are the three biggest challenges holding IT service back and how forward-thinking teams can help solve them:
For most IT teams, the day begins and ends with manual tasks: logging incidents, assigning tickets, documenting fixes, and updating records. These repetitive processes drain time and productivity. In fact, 90% of IT leaders say manual, repetitive work contributes to low employee morale.
The impact runs deep. Skilled analysts are pulled away from strategic work. Projects stall. Employee burnout rises. And IT ends up perceived as a cost center, not an enabler.
The fix starts with automation, but not just rule-based automation. The next generation of IT service is built on intelligence, context-aware systems that can actually understand what someone needs. For example, when an employee messages IT about a problem, the system can pick up the key details, create a ticket, and send it to the right person automatically. Instead of humans chasing data, the system does it for them.
This shift doesn’t replace people; it refocuses them. Analysts can now spend time on important work like diagnosing complex issues or improving processes, not copy-pasting tickets.
The modern workplace runs on collaboration platforms like Slack and Teams. Yet most IT service tools still live outside of where people actually work. Employees have to leave their workflow, open a portal, fill out forms, and wait. Often, they do this without any visibility into what happens next.
The result? Low engagement. In many companies, a large number of IT issues go unreported because the process feels too painful. In fact, 62% of employees say they avoid their service desk altogether, and 58% admit they’re living with ongoing problems that IT hasn’t been able to fix, according to a recent survey.
IT analysts feel this friction, too. The conversations that matter (troubleshooting, context gathering, updates) happen in chat threads, while the official records live in a different system. That constant switching between tabs slows everything down.
Modern IT leaders are closing this gap by bringing IT service into the collaboration layer. When employees can request help and track issues directly in the places where they collaborate and work, like Slack or Teams, context stays intact and work keeps moving. With AI agents now built into these platforms, they can simply ask for what they need in natural language, just like chatting with a colleague or a ChatGPT-style interface. The result: IT becomes an active part of daily work, not a separate system to avoid.
It’s a cultural shift as much as a technical one, aligning IT with how employees actually communicate. And it pays off: 71% IT leaders believe that AI or intelligent automation will improve employee and customer satisfaction in IT service.
If there’s one phrase that frustrates every IT leader, it’s this: “This is just how the system works.”
Traditional IT service frameworks often lock teams into fixed workflows. Need to adjust an approval process for a new compliance rule? Add a custom step for a high-priority change type? Often, it takes weeks of development or costly consultants to make even minor updates.
The irony is that IT service, meant to bring flexibility to operations, has become one of the least agile systems in the enterprise stack.
What’s changing now is the rise of low-code and adaptive workflows. Platforms like Salesforce, ServiceNow, and other modern ITSM tools let teams design and modify processes without deep coding expertise. Instead of rigid, hard-coded systems, IT can define dynamic lifecycles where each stage has its own rules, tasks, and access controls. Approvals can adapt automatically based on risk or impact. And integrated analytics help teams see what’s working and where bottlenecks form.
The IT service of the future won’t just manage incidents and changes. It will orchestrate intelligent workflows across the enterprise. Employees will interact with IT the same way they use any modern app — conversationally, contextually, and instantly. IT teams will focus less on maintaining systems and more on improving outcomes.
We’re already seeing the blueprint: automation reducing manual load, Slack-first collaboration improving experiences, and flexible frameworks enabling adaptation. Together, these shifts are redefining what IT service can be, turning it from a support function into a strategic partner for every department.
The challenge isn’t technology anymore. It’s the mindset. Modern IT service isn’t about keeping the lights on. It’s about lighting the way forward.
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
Nigeria’s Foreign Minister Yusuf Tuggar has formally apologised to Burkina Faso for the unauthorised entry of a Nigerian military jet into Burkinabè airspace, an incident that led to the detention of 11 Nigerian servicemen.
Tuggar’s spokesperson told the BBC that the detained personnel had been released and were due to return to Nigeria, without saying when.
The plane was flying to Portugal when it developed a technical problem and had to land in Burkina Faso, according to the Nigerian Air Force.
The unauthorised landing sparked a diplomatic row with the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) made up of Burkina Faso and its neighbours, Mali, and Niger.
In a statement, AES characterised it as an “unfriendly act” and said member states‘ respective air forces had been put on maximum alert and authorised to “neutralise any aircraft” found to violate the confederation’s airspace.
The three AES states, all run by the military, have withdrawn from the West African regional bloc, Ecowas, and moved closer to Russia, while most Ecowas members remain allied to the West.
Tuggar led a delegation to the Burkinabè capital, Ouagadougou, on Wednesday, to discuss the incident with military leader Captain Ibrahim Traoré.
“There were irregularities concerning the overflight authorisations, which was regrettable, and we apologise for this unfortunate incident,” Tuggar said on national TV.
It remains unclear when the military personnel, said to be in “high spirits”, and the aircraft will return to Nigeria.
According to Nigeria’s foreign ministry, both sides agreed to “sustain regular consultations and pursue practical measures to deepen bilateral cooperation and regional integration”.
By Dan Dingman on SwimSwam

SwimSwam’s daily swimming workout series is a collection of workouts written by coaches from a variety of backgrounds. All daily swimming workouts have been written using Commit Swimming. The workouts themselves are not indicative of SwimSwam’s or Commit’s views on training. They strictly reflect the opinions of the author swim coach.
Read the full story on SwimSwam: Daily Swim Coach Workout #1066
The Trump administration warned it may impose fees and restrictions on European companies operating in the US, including Spotify, if the European Union continues enforcing “discriminatory and harassing lawsuits, taxes, fines, and directives” against American service providers.
The Office of the US Trade Representative issued the threat earlier this week, naming nine European companies that could face retaliation: Swedish music streaming giant Spotify, consulting firm Accenture, Madrid-based IT firm Amadeus, French IT firm Capgemini, German multinational logistics firm DHL, French AI company Mistral, French ad agency Publicis, German software company SAP and German automation company Siemens.
The USTR’s office wrote on social media: “If the EU and EU Member States insist on continuing to restrict, limit, and deter the competitiveness of US service providers through discriminatory means, the United States will have no choice but to begin using every tool at its disposal to counter these unreasonable measures.”
“Should responsive measures be necessary, US law permits the assessment of fees or restrictions on foreign services, among other actions. The United States will take a similar approach to other countries that pursue an EU-style strategy in this area.”
The office said European service providers have operated freely in the US for decades, and that American companies provide “free” services to EU citizens and companies, and support “millions of jobs and more than $100 billion in direct investment.”
“If the EU and EU Member States insist on continuing to restrict, limit, and deter the competitiveness of US service providers through discriminatory means, the United States will have no choice but to begin using every tool at its disposal to counter these unreasonable measures.”
Office of the US Trade Representative
The USTR said Spotify and the eight other firms it singled out have “enjoyed this expansive market access” in the US for decades.
The warning comes over a week after the EU imposed a fine of EUR €120 million ($141 million) on Elon Musk’s X, citing its breaches of the bloc’s Digital Services Act. The European Commission said X’s violations include the “deceptive design” of its “blue checkmark” for verified accounts, as well as its alleged failure to provide access to public data for researchers.
Earlier this year, the European Commission also fined tech giants Apple and Meta for violations of the Digital Market Act. Apple was fined EUR €500 million ($587m) for allegedly preventing developers from informing customers of alternative offers outside the App Store, while Meta was slapped with a EUR €200 million ($235m) fine, citing the non-compliance of its “consent or pay” advertising model.
Last year, before it was notified of the fine, Apple announced a policy change in the EU, allowing app developers to communicate with their customers outside of its App Store. Previously, Apple allowed developers to use “link-outs” only, meaning apps could include a link that redirected customers to a web page where contracts could be finalized.
However, Apple’s revised compliance plan was slammed by Spotify and Fortnite developer Epic Games, arguing that it’s “confusing,” “illegal,” and ultimately fails to address the core issues raised by the landmark legislation.
“Should responsive measures be necessary, US law permits the assessment of fees or restrictions on foreign services, among other actions. The United States will take a similar approach to other countries that pursue an EU-style strategy in this area.”
Office of the US Trade Representative
Back in August, Trump signaled his intention to protect US tech firms, threatening “substantial additional tariffs” and “export restrictions” against countries that “harm or discriminate” US tech firms.
Trump’s statement came just days after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg raised concerns about the EU’s planned taxes on digital companies. Bloomberg reported in August, citing people familiar with the matter, that the Meta founder visited Trump to discuss the threat of the EU’s digital service taxes.
However, a spokesman for the European Commission rejected claims of bias in the EU’s digital regulations. Thomas Regnier told Barron’s: “As we have made clear many times, our rules apply equally and fairly to all companies operating in the EU.”
“We will continue to enforce our rules fairly, and without discrimination,” he added.
Aside from the US tech firms, the EU has also investigated TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, over violations of the Digital Services Act (DSA). Following a probe that started in February of last year, the EU earlier this month said it secured TikTok’s commitment to comply with the DSA.
Music Business Worldwide
For anyone who ever wanted to own an insane track bike producing a whopping 220 horses courtesy of a dual-rotary 690cc engine, you’re in luck. An exclusive Crighton CR700W – one of only 25 that were ever made – is on sale … and it could be yours!
Unveiled back in November 2021, the Crighton CR700W is what many call an ultimate track weapon. It comes from the hands of Brian Crighton, one of the world’s most successful rotary-powered race bike makers.
The motorcycle available for purchase is number 15 of the 25 examples that were built. It’s hardly been ridden around, sporting a mileage of under 125 miles (200 km). The only two trackdays it has seen were at Donington Park GP, with a cumulative three hours of use, after which it was sent back to Crighton for service. This is as close to “Mint condition” as you can get.
MSG Racing Suzuki
It’s an insane machine, producing almost 319 hp per liter. In comparison, high-performance superbikes like the Ducati Panigale V4 produce around 210–220 hp per liter. MotoGP bikes produce about 300 hp per liter, while the likes of Ferrari F2004, one of the most potent naturally aspirated F1 cars of recent times, produces 309 hp per liter.
The entire engine and transmission unit weighs just 101 lb (46 kg), and that’s including the six-speed gearbox and slipper clutch. Combine its 220 horsepower and 105 lb.ft (152 Nm) of torque with a dry weight of just 285.5 lb (129.5 kg), and you have a track bike that is almost too dangerous to own.
The hardware on board is all top-spec, as expected. Starting with the traditional Spondon-derived chassis, which features triple-section custom extrusions and a single shock rear swing-arm made of aluminum alloy.
Up front, you get Ohlins FGR 300 front race forks, with Brembo GP4-MS 108-mm brake calipers. Even the tires are Bridgestone race-spec rubbers.
MSG Racing Suzuki
At the rear, there’s a titanium and inconel exhaust that, according to Crighton, “utilizes the rotaries’ exhaust system to generate a high energy vacuum through the core of the engine.”. And the whole bike is dressed from head to toe in carbon fiber.
So, how much would a limited-edition superbike like this cost? Well, this one’s listed for £154,495 on the MSG Racing Suzuki Facebook page. That’s just a few thousand north of US$200,000 via direct conversion.
You’d better act fast if you have the cash (and the guts) to own one. Here’s a video of one of these bikes in action. Hear those revs?
Crighton CR700W rotary motorcycle start up. #rotarymotorcycle
Source: MSG Racing Suzuki via Facebook
A president returned to power in America and rattled the global order. A wildfire, almost unfathomably, ravaged populated neighborhoods of Los Angeles. A fragile cease-fire took hold in the Gaza war, and a conflict in Sudan wore on.
Over the course of a turbulent year, photographers captured those and other events with intrepidness and determination — even as they so often put themselves at risk. Doggedly, they trailed a young mayoral candidate as he electrified his base in New York. In cities across the United States, they were on the front lines of an increasingly aggressive immigration crackdown.
In their bold photographs, they show their own neighbors eking out life amid the rubble of their destroyed homelands. Their diligence allows us to peek inside a quiet vigil for a coyote returning to its pups, and to observe a tender hug between a boy and a man with 100 years between them.
Looking back on the year through those fleeting moments gives us a chance to reflect on the world, and endeavor to understand it better.
— Dionne Searcey
Curation
Tanner Curtis, Jeffrey Henson Scales
Interviews
Dionne Searcey
Editing
Natasha King
Digital Design
Matt Ruby, Tina Zhou
Print Design
Mary Jane Callister, Felicia Vasquez
Production
Sarah Bahr, Peter Blair, Eric Dyer, Ilaria Parogni
Additional Production
Justin Baek
New York Times Director of Photography
Meaghan Looram