Music-for-gaming company Reactional Music is joining forces with rights management firm MusicInfra (Music Infrastructure Company) to make music licensing for video games easier and more efficient.
InfraMusic’s rights management infrastructure will be connected with Reactional’s music delivery platform, creating a one-stop shop for developers who want to license music for their games, the two companies announced on Tuesday (December 9).
Reactional is the company behind the Reactional Music Engine, a patented technology that allows gamers to personalize music in their gameplay. It also enables game developers to include “adaptive music experiences,” where in-game music reacts in real time to game play.
MusicInfra has been building what it describes as a “global clearinghouse” for music rights. The platform aims to help digital streaming services, rightsholders and collecting societies navigate licensing agreements.
“Music’s use has exploded across platforms and devices, which means that traditional frameworks and the supporting infrastructure must evolve,” the companies said in a statement, adding the partnership “reflects a broader shift in how music, technology platforms, and gaming industries can work together.”
“Reactional chose MusicInfra because innovation recognizes innovation,” said Matt Connors, CEO of Reactional Music.
“Its forward-thinking rights management platform supports our breakthrough licensing model in bringing popular music to gaming’s billions of players – removing the friction, expense, and technical barriers that have kept two of the world’s largest entertainment industries apart for too long.”
“Reactional is opening up entirely new creative and commercial possibilities for music, but these can only be realized if the infrastructure works for everyone – platforms, rightsholders, and creators.”
Björn Lindvall, MusicInfra
MusicInfra CEO and co-founder Björn Lindvall said the partnership “exemplifies why MusicInfra exists. Reactional is opening up entirely new creative and commercial possibilities for music, but these can only be realized if the infrastructure works for everyone – platforms, rightsholders, and creators.”
He added that Music Infra is “building the essential plumbing that allows both new, and already existing, sectors of the music industry to flourish.”
Founded by classical composer Jesper Nordin, UK-born Reactional Music has built a library of 6 million licensed tracks from over 50 music labels, including indies like Ninja Tune, Beggars Group, Hopeless Records, Cherry Red Records, and classical music company Naxos.
It has partnered with music publisher Primary Wave and D2C platform Game My Fan to release artists’ albums as mobile games, and is currently working on 11 gaming titles from Tier 1 publishers.
Co-founded in 2023 by former Hipgnosis Songs COO Björn Lindvall, MusicInfra has backing from investors including MiddleGame Ventures, The Raine Group, UTA Ventures, and Peter Thiel’s Snö Ventures. The company recently appointedJules Parker, former Global Head of Songwriter and Publisher Partnerships at Spotify, as its Chief Business Officer. The company also boasts talent from YouTube, Meta, and Gracenote.Music Business Worldwide
Australia is banning social media for everyone under the age of 16 from December 10. The government says their intention is to help protect children and teenagers from risks online, such as cyberbullying and harmful content.
The BBC took to the streets of Sydney to find out what young people aged between 18 to 20 think of the ban.
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Ron Curtis, an English professor in Montreal, lived for 40 years with a degenerative spinal disease, in what he called the “black hole” of chronic pain.
On a July day in 2022, Mr. Curtis, 64, ate a last bowl of vegetable soup made by his wife, Lori, and, with the help of a palliative care doctor, died in his bedroom overlooking a lake.
Aron Wade, a successful 54-year-old stage and television actor in Belgium, decided he could no longer tolerate life with the depression that haunted him for three decades.
Last year, after a panel of medical experts found he had “unbearable mental suffering,” a doctor came to his home and gave him medicine to stop his heart, with his partner and two best friends at his side.
Argemiro Ariza was in his early 80s when he began to lose function in his limbs, no longer able to care for his wife, who had dementia, in their home in Bogotá.
Doctors diagnosed A.L.S., and he told his daughter Olga that he wanted to die while he still had dignity. His children threw him a party with a mariachi band and lifted him from his wheelchair to dance. A few days later, he admitted himself to a hospital, and a doctor administered a drug that ended his life.
Until recently, each of these deaths would have been considered a murder. But a monumental change is underway around the world. From liberal European countries to conservative Latin American ones, a new way of thinking about death is starting to take hold.
Stephanie Nolen is exploring access, attitudes and approaches to medically assisted death around the world.
Over the past five years, the practice of allowing a physician to help severely ill patients end their lives with medication has been legalized in nine countries on three continents. Courts or legislatures, or both, are considering legalization in a half-dozen more, including South Korea and South Africa, as well as eight of the 31 American states where it remains prohibited.
It is a last frontier in the expansion of individual autonomy. More people are seeking to define the terms of their deaths in the same way they have other aspects of their lives, such as marriage and childbearing. This is true even in Latin America, where conservative institutions such as the Roman Catholic church are still powerful.
“We believe in the priority of our control over our bodies, and as a heterogeneous culture, we believe in choices: If your choice does not affect me, go ahead,” said Dr. Julieta Moreno Molina, a bioethicist who has advised Colombia’s Ministry of Health on its assisted dying regulations.
Yet, as assisted death gains more acceptance, there are major unresolved questions about who should be eligible. While most countries begin with assisted death for terminal illness, which has the most public support, this is often followed quickly by a push for wider access. With that push comes often bitter public debate.
Should someone with intractable depression be allowed an assisted death?
European countries and Colombia all permit people with irremediable suffering from conditions such as depression or schizophrenia to seek an assisted death. But in Canada, the issue has become contentious. Assisted death for people who do not have a reasonably foreseeable natural death was legalized in 2021, but the government has repeatedly excluded people with mental illness. Two of them are challenging the exclusion in court on the grounds that it violates their constitutional rights.
In public debate, supporters of the right to assisted death for these patients say that people who have lived with severe depression for years, and have tried a variety of therapies and medications, should be allowed to decide when they are no longer willing to keep pursuing treatments. Opponents, concerned that mental illness can involve a pathological wish to die, say it can be difficult to predict the potential effectiveness of treatments. And, they argue, people who struggle to get help from an overburdened public health service may simply give up and choose to die, though their conditions might have been improved.
Should a child with an incurable condition be able to choose assisted death?
The ability to consent is a core consideration in requesting assisted death. Only a handful of countries are willing to extend that right to minors. Even in the places that do, there are just a few assisted deaths for children each year, almost always children with cancer.
In Colombia and the Netherlands, children over 12 can request assisted death on their own. Parents can provide consent for children 11 and younger.
Denise de Ruijter took comfort in her Barbie dolls when she struggled to connect with people. She was diagnosed with autism and had episodes of depression and psychosis. As a teenager in a Dutch town, she craved the life her schoolmates had — nights out, boyfriends — but couldn’t manage it.
She attempted suicide several times before applying for an assisted death at 18. Evaluators required her to try three years of additional therapies before agreeing her suffering was unbearable. She died in 2021, with her family and Barbies nearby.
The issue is under renewed scrutiny in the Netherlands, where, over the past decade, a growing number of adolescents have applied for assisted death for relief from irremediable psychiatric suffering from conditions such as eating disorders and anxiety.
Most such applications by teens are either withdrawn by the patient, or rejected by assessors, but public concern over a few high-profile cases of teens who received assisted deaths prompted the country’s regulator to consider a moratorium on approvals for children applying on the basis of psychiatric suffering.
Should someone with dementia be allowed assisted death?
Many people dread the idea of losing their cognitive abilities and their autonomy, and hope to have an assisted death when they reach that point. But this is a more complex situation to regulate than for a person who can still make a clear request.
How can a person who is losing their mental capacity consent to dying? Most governments, and doctors, are too uncomfortable to permit it, even though the idea tends to be popular in countries with aging populations.
In Colombia, Spain, Ecuador and the Canadian province of Quebec, people who have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease or other kinds of cognitive decline can request assessment for an assisted death before they lose mental capacity, sign an advance request — and then have a physician end their life after they have lost the ability to consent themselves.
But that raises a separate, challenging, question: After people lose the capacity to request an assisted death, who should decide it’s time?
Their spouses? Their children? Their doctors? The government? Colombia entrusts families with this role. The Netherlands leaves it up to doctors — but many refuse to do it, unwilling to administer lethal drugs to a patient who can’t clearly articulate a rational wish to die.
Jan Grijpma was always clear with his daughter, Maria: When his mind went, he didn’t want to live any more. Maria worked with his longtime family doctor, in Amsterdam, to identify the point when Mr. Grijpma, 90 and living in a nursing home, was losing his ability to consent himself.
When it seemed close, in 2023, they booked the day, and he updated his day planner: Thursday, visit the vicar; Friday, bicycle with physiotherapy and get a haircut; Sunday, pancakes with Maria; Monday, euthanasia.
All of these questions are becoming part of the discussion as the right to control and plan one’s own death is pushed in front of reluctant legislatures and uneasy medical professionals.
Dr. Madeline Li, a Toronto psychiatrist, was given the task of developing the assisted-dying practice in one of Canada’s largest hospitals when the procedure was first decriminalized in 2015. She began with assessing patients for eligibility and then moved to providing medical assistance in dying, or MAID, as it is called in Canada. For some patients with terminal cancer, it felt like the best form of care she could offer, she said.
But then Canada’s eligibility criteria expanded, and Dr. Li found herself confronting a different kind of patient.
“To provide assisted dying to somebody dying of a condition who is not happy with how they’re going to die, I’m willing to assist them, and hasten that death,” she said. “I struggle more with people who aren’t dying and want MAID — I think then you’re assisting suicide. If you’re not dying — if I didn’t give you MAID, you wouldn’t otherwise die — then you’re a person who’s not unhappy with how you’re going to die. You’re unhappy with how you’re living.”
Who has broken the taboo?
For decades, Switzerland was the only country to permit assisted death; assisted suicide was legalized there in 1942. It took a further half century for a few more countries to loosen their laws. Now decriminalization of some form of assisted death has occurred across Europe.
But there has recently been a wave of legalization in Latin America, where Colombia was long an outlier, having allowed legal assisted dying since 2015.
Paola Roldán Espinosa had a thriving career in business in Ecuador, and a toddler, when she was diagnosed with A.L.S. in 2023. Her health soon deteriorated to the point that she needed a ventilator.
She wanted to die on her terms — and took the case to the country’s highest court. In February 2024, the court responded to her petition by decriminalizing assisted dying. Ms. Roldán, then 42, had the death she sought, with her family around her, a month later.
Ecuador has decriminalized assisted dying through constitutional court cases, and Peru’s Supreme Court has permitted individual exceptions to the law which prohibits the procedure, opening the door to expansion. Cuba’s national assembly legalized assisted dying in 2023, although no regulations on how the procedure will work are yet in place. In October, Uruguay’s parliament passed a long-debated law allowing assisted death for the terminally ill.
The first country in Asia to take steps toward legalization is South Korea, where a bill to decriminalize assisted death has been proposed at the National Assembly several times but has not come to a vote. At the same time, the Constitutional Court, which for years refused to hear cases on the subject, has agreed to adjudicate a petition from a disabled man with severe and chronic pain who seeks an assisted death.
Access in the United States remains limited: 11 jurisdictions (10 states plus the District of Columbia) allow assisted suicide or physician-assisted death, for patients who have a terminal diagnosis, and in some cases, only for patients who are already in hospice care. It will become legal in Delaware on Jan. 1, 2026.
In Slovenia, in 2024, 55 percent of the population who voted in a national referendum were in favor of legalizing assisted death, and parliament duly passed a law in July. But pushback from right-wing politicians then forced a new referendum, and in late November, 54 percent of those who voted rejected the legalization.
And in the United Kingdom, a bill to legalize assisted death for people with terminal illness has made its way slowly through parliament. It has faced fierce opposition from a coalition of more than 60 groups for people with disabilities, who argue they may face subtle coercion to end their lives rather than drain their families or the state of resources for their care.
Why now?
In many countries, decriminalization of assisted dying has followed the expansion of rights for personal choice in other areas, such as the removal of restrictions on same-sex marriage, abortion and sometimes drug use.
“I would expect it to be on the agenda in every liberal democracy,” said Wayne Sumner, a medical ethicist at the University of Toronto who studies the evolution of norms and regulations around assisted dying. “They’ll come to it at their own speed, but it follows with these other policies.”
The change is also being driven by a convergence of political, demographic and cultural trends.
As populations age, and access to health care improves, more people are living longer. Older populations mean more chronic disease, and more people living with compromised health. And they are thinking about death, and what they will — and won’t — be willing to tolerate in the last years of their lives.
At the same time, there is diminishing tolerance for suffering that is perceived as unnecessary.
“Until very recently, we were a society where few people lived past 60 — and now suddenly we live much longer,” said Lina Paola Lara Negrette, a psychologist who until October was the director of the Dying With Dignity Foundation in Colombia. “Now people here need to think about the system, and the services that are available, and what they will want.”
Changes in family structures and communities, particularly in rapidly urbanizing middle-income countries, mean that traditional networks of care are less strong, which shifts how people can imagine living in older age or with chronic illness, she added.
“When you had many siblings and a lot of generations under one roof, the question of care was a family thing,” she said. “That has changed. And it shapes how we think about living, and dying.”
How does assisted dying work?
Beyond the ethical dilemmas, actually carrying out legalized assisted deaths involves countless choices for countries. Spain requires a waiting period of at least 15 days between a patient’s assessments (but the average wait in practice is 75 days). In most other places, the prescribed wait is less than two weeks for patients with terminal conditions, but often longer in practice, said Katrine Del Villar, a professor of constitutional law at the Queensland University of Technology who tracks trends in assisted dying
Most countries allow patients to choose between administering the drugs themselves or having a health care provider do it. When both options are available, the overwhelming majority of people choose to have a health care provider end their life with an injection that stops their heart.
In many countries only a doctor can administer the drugs, but Canada and New Zealand permit nurse practitioners to provide medically assisted deaths too.
One Australian state prohibits medical professionals from raising the topic of assisted death. A patient must ask about it first.
Who determines eligibility is another issue. In the Netherlands, two physicians assess a patient; in Colombia, it’s a panel consisting of a medical specialist, a psychologist and a lawyer. The draft legislation in Britain would require both a panel and two independent physicians.
Switzerland and the states of Oregon and Vermont are the only jurisdictions in the world that explicitly allow people who are not residents access to assisted deaths.
Most countries permit medical professionals to conscientiously object to providing assisted deaths and allow faith-based medical institutions to refuse to participate. In Canada, individual professionals have the right to refuse, but a court challenge is underway seeking to end the ability of hospitals that are controlled by faith-based organizations and that operate with public funds to refuse to allow assisted deaths on their premises.
“Even when assisted dying has been legal and available somewhere for a long time, there can be a gap between what is legal and what is acceptable — what most physicians and patients and families feel comfortable with,” said Dr. Sisco van Veen, an ethicist and psychiatrist at Amsterdam Medical University. “And this isn’t static. It evolves over time.”
Jin Yu Young in Seoul, José Bautista in Madrid, José María León Cabrera in Quito, Veerle Schyns in Amsterdam and Koba Ryckewaert in Brussels contributed reporting.
India plans to continue buying cheap crude oil from Russia, despite sanctions imposed on major Russian oil companies by the United States and Europe.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with Russian President Vladimir Putin for the Russia-India annual bilateral summit in New Delhi last week, during which Putin said: “Russia is ready for uninterrupted shipments of fuel to India.”
India is the second-largest consumer of Russian oil after China and is facing intense pressure from the US to stop buying it. Earlier this year, the administration of US President Donald Trump doubled trade tariffs on Indian goods to 50 percent, in part because of this issue, Trump said at the time.
Here is what we know about India’s imports of Russian oil, and how New Delhi has managed to keep its petroleum purchases from Moscow afloat in spite of sanctions and pressure.
How did India become such a big consumer of Russian oil?
In 2021, prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian oil constituted around 2.5 percent of India’s total oil imports, according to figures from the US Energy Information Administration published in February this year.
After the war began, Europe and the US began placing sanctions on Russian companies to economically isolate Moscow.
Overall, since the beginning of the war, the US and its allies have imposed more than 21,000 sanctions on Russia, targeting individuals, media organisations, the military, and sectors that include energy, aviation, shipbuilding and telecommunications.
Crucially, however, in December 2022, the Group of Seven (G7), the European Union and Australia placed a cap on the price of Russian oil at $60 per barrel, ostensibly to reduce Russia’s ability to fund its war in Ukraine. The cap was later reduced to around $48 by the EU and the United Kingdom. This made Russian oil more attractive to purchasers, particularly India and China. Russia has sold crude oil to India at steeply discounted rates, dropping as low as $35 per barrel in March 2022.
By contrast, Brent crude oil is currently trading at around $62.50 per barrel.
How much oil is India buying from Russia?
In October 2024, India’s purchases of Russian crude petroleum reached a historic high of $5.8bn.
At the end of that month, the US imposed new sanctions on hundreds of Russian individuals and entities. These include Russian shipowners, vessels and traders involved in shipping Russian crude.
In November 2024, India’s crude petroleum imports from Russia dropped to $3.9bn and by December 2024, India was importing even less oil from Russia, worth $3.2bn.
However, in January 2025, Indian imports of Russian oil from Russia bounced back up to $3.6bn. Since then, volumes of imports have fluctuated.
What pressure is India facing to stop buying Russian oil?
In August this year, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said India’s purchases of Russian crude oil were funding Moscow’s war in Ukraine and must stop.
“India acts as a global clearinghouse for Russian oil, converting embargoed crude into high-value exports while giving Moscow the dollars it needs,” Navarro wrote in an opinion piece published in the Financial Times.
In August, Washington also doubled trade tariffs on Indian goods to 50 percent as a punishment for India buying Russian oil.
In October, Trump claimed that Modi had pledged to stop buying oil from Russia.
“So I was not happy that India was buying oil, and he assured me today that they will not be buying oil from Russia,” Trump told reporters during a White House event.
“That’s a big step. Now we’re going to get China to do the same thing.”
But during an interview with Indian broadcasters during the Russia-India annual bilateral summit on December 4, Putin scoffed at Trump’s claim. “The United States itself still buys nuclear fuel from us for its own nuclear power plants,” he said. In 2023, US imports of enriched uranium from Russia hit a record high in over a decade, worth about $1.2bn.
If the US has the right to buy Russian fuel, he added, India should enjoy “the same privilege”.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov repeated this sentiment during a call with reporters on Monday this week, when he said: “India, as a sovereign state, conducts foreign trade operations and purchases energy resources where it is beneficial for India, and as far as we understand, our Indian partners will continue this policy to ensure their economic interests.”
Why have sanctions on Russian oil caused a spike in Indian imports?
On October 22 this year, Trump imposed US sanctions on two of Russia’s largest oil producers, Rosneft and Lukoil. It was the first time during his second term as US president that Washington had imposed sanctions related to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The US sanctions came the same day that the EU approved its own 19th package of sanctions on Russia, and one week after the UK also sanctioned Rosneft and Lukoil.
The US sanctions were set to come into effect on November 21, after which purchases from US-sanctioned entities Rosneft and Lukoil would be restricted, giving Indian importers a window to ramp up purchases ahead of the deadline.
One day after the US sanctions were announced, state refiners in India, including Indian Oil Corp, Bharat Petroleum Corp and Hindustan Petroleum Corp, began reviewing their Russian oil purchases, Reuters reported, citing an unnamed source with direct knowledge of the matter.
In October, India imported $3.55bn worth of crude petroleum from Russia, according to figures from the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, reported in Indian media. While this was not as high as the $5.8bn value of crude petroleum India purchased from Russia in October 2024, it showed that India was still buying more oil than it was before the war in Ukraine broke out.
In early November, however, India ramped up its imports of Russian oil. India’s crude oil imports increased by 220,000 barrels per day, reaching 5 million barrels per day, according to energy market intelligence firm Vortexa. This was a seasonal peak, nearly matching the record high of 5.05 million barrels per day set in March 2025.
India’s refining sector consists of three main categories of operators: National Oil Companies (NOCs), which are state‑owned, public sector refiners; Reliance Industries, which is privately owned, with a diverse crude sourcing strategy; and Nayara Energy, a Russian‑majority‑owned private refiner.
The EU sanctioned Nayara in July 2025 over its links to Russia. Since then, however, it has doubled down on buying exclusively Russian crude, significantly increasing its intake.
With sanctions already in place, the company appears to see little downside in deepening its reliance on Russian oil. By late October, Nayara had ramped up crude processing at its Vadinar Refinery in Gujarat to 90-93 percent of capacity, Reuters reported, citing unnamed sources. That fell to 70 to 80 percent of capacity in July following the EU sanctions.
Overall, however, it is clear that India is continuing to import Russian oil. While sanctions have led to India scaling back on Russian oil purchases to some degree, New Delhi is still projected to buy 600,000 barrels of oil per day in January. This may be well below the 1.6 million to 1.8 million barrels it has been importing in recent months, but not zero, Bloomberg reported.
How will India continue to import Russian oil?
Rosneft and Lukoil account for around 60 percent of the Russian oil purchased by India, Reuters reported in October, citing Prashant Vashisht, vice president at ICRA Ltd, an Indian credit rating agency. Citing Russian government agencies, S&P Global said Rosneft accounts for almost half of all Russian oil production and 6 percent of global output.
India, therefore, will have to turn to other sources for its Russian oil imports. This is likely to include companies such as Surgutneftegaz, which was never fully affected by sanctions.
India has also purchased oil from Gazprom Neft, which faces sectoral sanctions rather than being fully sanctioned. This means that the US has put limits on some activities, but has not completely banned doing business with the company.
India could also purchase Russian oil via a shadow fleet of older tankers using non-Western insurance and flags, which can often bypass sanctions.
Between January and September this year, India imported 5.4 million tonnes of Russian oil carried by 30 vessels sailing under false flags, according to a report published in November by the European think tank the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).
My dad spent 40 years operating heavy machinery on construction sites around Chicago. He was proud of his work and of his union card, but I wouldn’t call what he had a quality job. No one listened to him. He didn’t feel respected. He could never get ahead financially. Around the dinner table, he’d tell stories about fighting over wages or whether the lunch hour was paid or unpaid. What stayed with me wasn’t just the frustration; it was how obviously bad that dynamic was for everyone involved. I remember wondering why work had to feel like a fight.
Decades later, I see those same tensions playing out across the U.S. economy. The new American Job Quality Study, conducted by Gallup and developed by Jobs for the Future, The Families & Workers Fund, and the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, aims to measure what makes a job “good.” It looks at five things: financial security, safety and respect, opportunities to grow, a voice in decisions, and a manageable schedule. By that definition, only around 40 percent of American workers have quality jobs.
As an investor, I evaluate hundreds of companies every year, and this data squares with what we see on the ground. Many companies don’t even measure employee engagement or quit rates. And what isn’t measured certainly isn’t managed. We routinely see companies that have such high turnover that they rehire their entire frontline every few years. Inevitably, the impact of all this churn spills into other areas like safety, given that less experienced workers are far more likely to get hurt. In one particularly ironic case, a safety equipment manufacturer had injury rates that were triple the OSHA benchmark.
For workers, the consequences are obvious. People in quality jobs are healthier, happier, and more satisfied with their lives. But it matters just as much for companies. Every “human” statistic has a business consequence. When you’re replacing your entire frontline every few years, you’re wasting resources on recruiting, training, and onboarding. If you have a safety problem, that’s clearly horrible for workers, but you’re also wasting money on workers’ comp and missed days of work. And if safety is poor, product quality usually is too because both are the direct result of weak processes and disengaged colleagues.
This new study puts all these elements together in one clear, data-driven picture. And it shines a light on reality: we’re stuck in a perilous cycle. High turnover discourages investment in people – things like upskilling, cross-training, and career development. Workers sense that and give the bare minimum in return. Leaders start to see employees as “heads” – interchangeable units of labor. Empathy erodes. Companies focus their attention on the next quarter, and workers keep their eyes open for a better offer. Everyone gets trapped in short-termism.
How to break the cycle? Change the way companies operate; empower workers to think and act like owners.
That’s why my work as an investor has increasingly focused on broad-based employee ownership as a tool to both lift up workers and shift corporate cultures. Over the past fifteen years at KKR, we’ve partnered with more than eighty companies to give equity ownership to about 180,000 frontline employees. When done well, it changes everything.
I’ve seen factory workers start tracking quality yields with the intensity of CFOs. Engagement scores rise, quit rates fall, and productivity climbs because people finally feel respected, trusted, and included. They have a stake and a voice. They can see how the business works, and how their effort moves the numbers.
Just last month, we completed our investment in an insurance services company called Integrated Specialty Coverages. Employees who had been there at least three years earned stock worth 100 percent of their annual income – a reward that didn’t replace any of their regular pay. More tenured workers did even better, some earning three years of wages. In addition to significantly enhancing its growth rate and profitability, the company was rewarded with engagement scores reaching the top decile of its peer group and quit rates dropping by more than half.
Sharing equity isn’t a magic wand. Employee ownership only works when paired with education, transparent communication, financial literacy training, and worker voice. It’s also not a replacement for wages or other benefits – and it’s not charity. It’s a tool for cultural alignment and improved performance. And it’s one of the few structural levers we have to shift incentives away from short-termism and toward shared success.
The American Job Quality Study matters because it gives us a data-backed picture of what too many Americans already know from experience: most jobs don’t offer dignity, stability, or a path forward – and we all reap the consequences. Let’s take the lessons from this study and apply them. It’s time to start rethinking how value is shared, so that the people creating it can share in it. I’ve seen what happens when they do. My dad would’ve called that a quality job.
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.
US lawmakers are trying to pressure the Trump administration to release video of a controversial “double-tap” military strike by limiting Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth’s travel budget.
The incident on 2 September, in which the US carried out a second deadly strike on a boat in the Caribbean, has raised fresh questions about the legality of Trump’s campaign targeting alleged drug-carrying vessels.
A provision buried in a lengthy defence spending policy would restrict travel funds for Hegseth’s office until the Pentagon hands over unedited footage. The bill is expected to pass with support from both parties.
US President Donald Trump says release of the video is something for Hegseth to decide.
Trump denied that he had previously said he would have “no problem” with the footage being made public – despite that comment being made on camera as recently as Wednesday.
The threat from Congress to withhold money from Hegseth’s travel budget has emerged amid a clamour for information from lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle.
It is buried within a 3,000-page draft bill that is focused on approving next year’s defence spending. The annual bill authorises nearly $901bn in funding (£687m).
The bill’s final wording, which was first reported by Politico, states that Hegseth’s office may spend no more than three-quarters of the funds made available for travel for the year 2026 until it meets certain requirements.
These include an obligation to give the House and Senate armed service committees all “unedited video of strikes conducted against designated terrorist organizations in the area of responsibility of the United States Southern Command”.
The wording nods to the way Trump has characterised his strikes on boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. He says they are a matter of targeting designated terrorist organisations.
Trump calls US reporter’s company “fake news” over question about alleged drug boat strike video
In his comments to reporters on Monday, Trump said each of the alleged drugs boats that had been sunk had saved 25,000 American lives, and claimed that drugs trafficking to the US by sea had all but stopped.
His administration has sought to justify its actions by saying it is in a non-international armed conflict with the alleged traffickers. Dozens of people have been killed in the months-long campaign, but the administration has not publicly provided evidence for its assertions of criminality in each case.
Experts have raised questions about the legality of the strikes, prompting concern from Republicans and Democrats alike.
Regarding the “double-tap” attack on 2 September specifically, the experts point out that the so-called laws of war decree that the parties in an armed conflict are obliged to pick up wounded survivors of a strike rather than attack them again.
Nine people died in the first strike on the vessel and two survivors were left clinging to the burning wreckage when it was struck again, killing them, according to the Washington Post.
The White House has repeatedly said it is working within the laws of armed conflict.
It says the second strike was ordered by a navy admiral, and not by Hegseth, who has become a focal point for scrutiny of both the strike and the White House narrative surrounding it.
Senior members of Congress who were shown the video in a briefing last week by that admiral, Frank Bradley, emerged with differing views.
Jim Himes of Connecticut, the senior Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said he found the video of the second attack “deeply, deeply troubling”.
But Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas disagreed, calling the strikes “entirely lawful and needful”.
Watch: Lawmakers react to boat strike video showed in classified briefing
Trump has previously posted video of the first strike from 2 September, and continues to be asked whether he will release video of the second.
Last Wednesday, the president responded to an on-camera question about the video from an ABC News reporter by saying: “I don’t know what they have, but whatever they have, we’d certainly release, no problem.”
Five days later, he responded to a question from the same network by saying: “I didn’t say that. That’s – you said that, I didn’t say that.”
He went on to clarify: “Whatever Pete Hegseth wants to do is OK with me.”
In his most recent remarks on the subject, Hegseth was noncommittal on the subject, saying: “We’re reviewing the process, and we’ll see.”
Hegseth, along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Dan Caine, the chairman of the Join Chiefs of Staff, is due to brief top congressional lawmakers on Tuesday afternoon, two sources told CBS.
Lawyers for Taylor Swift and Universal Music Group have asked a US federal court in Florida to dismiss a copyright lawsuit brought against them by a poet who claims that multiple songs by Swift ripped off her works.
Calling it a “frivolous and harassing lawsuit,” Swift’s lawyers urged Judge Aileen Cannon to dismiss a case filed by Florida poet Kimberly Marasco, who earlier this year filed her second attempt at a copyright suit against Swift.
“Despite having no conceivable case against [Swift], and after being expressly informed by this court that her allegedly infringed ‘expressions’ are not protectable under copyright law, plaintiff filed yet another meritless lawsuit and expanded her groundless campaign to include defendants [Universal Music Group] and Republic [Records],” stated the motion, which was filed on December 4, and can be read in full here.
“Plaintiff’s claims are, as in her last lawsuit, absurd and legally baseless.”
Marasco first filed a lawsuit against Taylor Swift in May 2024. She alleges that numerous songs on four Taylor Swift albums, including The Tortured Poets Department, Lover, Folklore and Midnights, copied poems that Marasco published in two volumes, Dealing With A Chronic Illness, published in 2017, and Fallen From Grace, published in 2019 and later renamed Songs of the Unsung.
Marasco’s complaint identifies numerous songs that she claims copied from her works, including The Man, Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?, My Tears Ricochet, Hoax, I Can Do It With a Broken Heart, and others.
Marasco is representing herself in court, and her first lawsuit failed when she was unable to serve process papers to Swift. According to a report in USA Herald, Marasco said her process servers were unable to get past Swift’s security at numerous addresses. Lawyers for Swift argued she had gone about the task incorrectly, for instance by attempting to serve papers to an address under renovation, or while Swift was known to have been traveling.
In her second lawsuit, filed with the court in February, Marasco asked for damages of no less than $25 million. However, in an amended complaint (available here) filed in October, Marasco didn’t specify a number.
The second lawsuit also expanded the defendants in the case to include Republic Records and parent company Universal Music Group, as well as Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner, both known for having co-written songs with Swift. However, Judge Cannon dismissed Dessner from the case last month, due to what the judge concluded was Marasco’s improper service of notice to the musician.
“Plaintiff’s claims are, as in her last lawsuit, absurd and legally baseless.”
Lawyers for Taylor Swift
While Marasco has argued that the similarities between her poems and the Swift songs “are so specific, unique and improbable that independent creation is unlikely,” lawyers for Swift argue there are no recognizable similarities, except for individual words or themes, which can’t be copyrighted.
“The concept of betrayal or the words ‘fire’ or ‘love’ cannot be owned by one person, as basic themes or words are not protectable by copyright law,” Swift’s lawyers wrote in the motion to dismiss.
Marasco has also filed a request for a preliminary injunction to stop streaming service Disney+ from airing The End of an Era, a documentary series about Swift’s The Eras Tour set to premiere on December 12.
The docuseries “will broadcast performances of the infringing works to millions of viewers worldwide, causing irreparable harm to plaintiff’s exclusive rights to her works,” Marasco’s motion stated. As of Monday (December 8), the court had not yet ruled on the injunction.
This isn’t the first time Taylor Swift has faced legal action over her works – and it’s not even the first time she was sued by a poet. In 2022, Teresa La Dart of Mississippi alleged that the companion book for Swift’s album Lover copied creative elements from La Dart’s 2010 self-published poetry collection, also called Lover.
La Dart dropped the case in 2023. Legal experts toldBillboard that La Dart’s case was weak and she was facing potentially costly legal bills if she lost.Music Business Worldwide
Trials is a novel for swimmers, written by swimmer and author Ben Brostoff.
The book focuses on three swimmers trying to make the Olympic games over two decades. Hunter Banks, Connor Mahoney and Miles Green are three of five swimmers to break the world record in 2004 for the 400 meter IM. But American swimming is a cruel lover; only the top two move on, and the boys must pick up the pieces and decide whether to pursue their dreams in the years to come. Through doping scandals, suit tech advances, faster and faster world records, death, marriage, geopolitical turmoil and recession, Trials explores what it means to pursue a dream when the odds are stacked against you.
Swimmers and parents of swimmers will love reading or listening to this book while driving to practices or waiting at meets. Need a holiday gift for a swimming family? Trials is available on Amazon Kindle, in paperback and hardcover and as an audiobook on Audible.
TRAILS BOOK EXCERPT:
CONNOR AND THE GET OUT SWIM
The alarm never went off without him being awake. Today was no different. In fact, he had been awake for an hour before he heard the beep of the clock and saw the bright green digital display. 4:57AM.
What was different about today was the anticipation. He had looked forward to this day for a long time. Today was the final practice of his junior year season.
More than a decade of waking up early for practice and meets had honed an innate sense of time in him. As he strode across the Boston American campus, he knew he would arrive in the locker rooms at 5:10, be changed by 5:15 and doing stretches on the deck by 5:20. He still took pride in being early. Three years after arriving at Boston American, no one had beaten him to practice, even if they had beaten him in the pool. He knew not only the time of day, but his splits from races years ago, sometimes even the pace he was swimming while in the water.
He went through his stretching motions and chatted with McDaniels about the Celtics game from the previous night. He joked with Tim McCarthy, a senior butterflyer. He was the first to jump in the pool and begin the 500 free warmup. It was good to be done. Almost.
***
McDaniels had not seen Connor so chipper in months.
Just like the previous two seasons, Connor’s junior year campaign had been underwhelming. McDaniels had tried nearly everything he could think of to turn the year around. He scratched him from the 400 IM in a big early December meet against Boston University. Then scratched him again against Syracuse after the holidays when he looked sluggish in warm-ups. Finally, he removed Connor from the 400 altogether. The event was too taxing, he reasoned. Too much of a commitment for him to improve all his strokes.
If Connor were to make progress, he had to take it one stroke at a time. McDaniels honed in on the backstroke. He programmed hundreds of thousands of yards purely on Connor’s back. They worked starts, turns, underwater kicks, poured over the fundamentals. It made zero difference.
Instead of four bad events, Connor simply struggled in the 100 and 200 back when the 200 and 400 IM were pulled from his workload. He removed the 200. Connor’s times barely budged in the 100.
He was angry at Connor for being happy. He should be disappointed, not debating craft beers between sets.
“Head back!” he yelled when Connor lazily rolled his head at the flags during a sprint set of 50 yard backstrokes. “You forget your kick at home?”
The critiques continued. Connor made the subtle corrections half-heartedly, doing just enough to show he was listening. He seemed to thoroughly be enjoying himself.
“This is not a comedy show Mahoney! Why are you so smiley today?”
“He’s got a girl now!” chided McCarthy.
McDaniels checked himself. This newfound romance was news to him, but the boys were in college. His singling out of Connor was becoming obvious. He shut his mouth for a few minutes, instead giving McCarthy shit for mailing in his last practice as a competitive swimmer.
But his eyes continued to find their way back to Connor. Something needed to be done.
“Everyone out of the pool except Mahoney. It’s 6:15AM. By my watch, we have 45 minutes before you guys are done. If Connor here can go sub 47 in the 100, you can all go home.”
He saw the first excited and then doubtful-but-interested faces. The time would have been top 5 in NCAAs in the backstroke. It was a half second faster than Connor had swum all season and only a half second slower than his best time.
If Connor was scared, he didn’t show it. He projected confidence as he swam over to the blocks. McDaniels clapped three times.
“Out of the pool, boys. This is a one time offer.”
They climbed out and distributed themselves behind either end of Connor’s lane and the pool’s edge. McDaniels could feel the energy building. It wasn’t the first time he had made one of these offers.
Over the last three years, nearly every swimmer had been the target of his bargains to end practice for a fast swim. He was as good as his word in both directions. Sam Workman five months ago got a bad draw when he had to break 4:35 in the 500 yard free. He finished with a 4:35.3. McDaniels was merciless in announcing the time and telling the team to get back in the pool.
He second guessed himself as Connor crunched up into his backstroke starting position, hands gripping the bare metal of the thin bar halfway between the block and the water. Would Mahoney or Pierson have gambled this way? Connor had barely touched 46.5 in the NCAA finals last week. Even if the gamble was unwise, he justified, something had to be done. He had to make him care about something. The fate of a whole practice just might do it.
“Take your marks,” said McDaniels. A second later, he pressed the air horn. Connor’s start was promising. The first 25 was nearly under 11 seconds. McCarthy was going nuts and his teammates followed his lead. Someone had found the cow bell used to signal the last lap of the distance events and was ringing it with force.
Connor, Connor, Connor.
The chants started with just two or three of them and then the entire team was screaming his name. McDaniels felt his pulse quickening. First fifty complete in 23.1.
It would be close.
***
Connor had always prided himself on being a second half swimmer. His dad hated that about him when he lost and loved it about him when he won. He wondered how Wes could not be aware of his own hypocrisy.
This was the thought that flashed across his brain in the midst of his hundred yard backstroke to save the team from the last 45 minutes of practice. The first fifty had felt damn good, and he could see by McDaniels’ approving look at the halfway point this was one of his better swims in a long time.
How could the same strategy yield different feedback? In the classroom, he had been pushed to the edge of his academic capacity and the one thing he had learned from his three quarters complete math minor was the same techniques yielded the same results. The most challenging problem could be broken into smaller and easier component parts and solved with simple principles. Rinse and repeat. Lincoln had been adamant about this point.
“Reduce, reduce, reduce,” he told Connor in his nasal, high pitched voice. At first, Connor had wanted to tell him to fuck off. But this point was repeated so often Connor had no choice but to observe and experience its truth. Reducing problems to their simplest possible units worked. And it always worked.
Saving your energy for the second half of a swim worked when you won and did not work when you lost. And winning was based on how fast your opponents swam. The problem, he thought, as he broke into an all-out sprint for his third 25, was your opponents were always getting faster.
2004 Trials had seen fifteen world records fall across men and women’s swimming. And none of those world records currently existed. The sport was a bastion of progress, celebrated for how the arms race of training techniques, breakthroughs in swimsuit physics, better diet and nutrition and the works increased efficiency and reduced drag. Reduce, reduce, reduce.
Here, he had no opponents. It was just him and that 47 second barrier. He thought of McDaniels’ obsession with Roger Bannister and how he had fought through the psychological wall of the four minute mile.
The individual sports were psychological, according to Matt. At the highest level of swimming, everyone was training the same way, so you could only win through better thinking. Connor thought that was bullshit – what about the Russians and their performance-enhancing drugs? – but now he didn’t have the luxury of skepticism. Anything to break 47 seconds was his friend.
The backstroke flags appeared faster than he expected and he counted three strokes to the turn. His feet hit the wall and he exploded off of it. Fifteen meters underwater. His lungs felt surprisingly fresh.
If he was on pace after the first 50, he knew he had a chance.
***
His trigger finger knew what he wanted to do before his mind.
McDaniels owned the best stopwatch on the market. It was a high end model he had dropped $150 on, waterproof and bright yellow with a massive three row display. The start/stop button had to be forcefully pressed for the timer to register. McDaniels knew just how to pressure his right index finger to exert the minimum force to stop the clock. He knew how to shield the clock with his hip so no one could see what his hand was doing. It would not look like he was hiding anything. Coaches owed it to their swimmers to watch them and not their watch.
Connor’s third turn McDaniels timed at 35.01. It was less than twelve seconds of breathing room. A strong finish could make the time, but it wasn’t a given. McDaniels considered the probabilities. Connor even in his slump was an excellent second half swimmer. His stroke looked strong. He had split roughly 11.0, 11.9, 12.1. The first 25 of course had been aided by his backstroke start, so his pace had been fairly even. His odds he put at about 50-50. Those weren’t good enough. He felt his finger ready to hit stop before Connor touched the wall.
Connor emerged from the water with ten yards to go. He would have a few seconds at most to make a decision. Around the backstroke flags he consciously became aware he was going to stop the clock a half second early. 500 milliseconds – in few walks of life did so little time matter so much. For a swimmer’s confidence in a sprint event, it was everything.
As McDaniels committed what he knew to be a cardinal sin, he vowed not to have regrets. The ends justified the means. Connor and the team would never know the 46.51 he proudly announced was a 47.01. They would never know the whoops and cheers and suck-on-that-Matties were not justified. But it didn’t matter.
None of that mattered to McDaniels. For the first time in three years, he saw Connor unleash a truly primal scream after he announced the time, waiting just the perfect three beats of silence to build the suspense. Someone had turned on the speakers and the first bars of Dirty Water were drowning out the sound of everyone chanting Connor. You could not engineer moments like this, but that is exactly what he had done.
Trialsspent four weeks as the number one Kindle and Book in the Swimming Category on Amazon and has been a top 20 novel in both categories since its release. As of October 2025, it had sold over 1,250 copies and garnered critical praise from a range of readers.
Trialsis the perfect holiday gift for the upcoming holiday season. Give your swimmer or parent of a swimmer the gift of a great book.
Trials 
