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Challenging Client Situation
Mamdani supports striking nurses in NYC, criticizes hospital executives’ salaries
Nearly 15,000 nurses walked off their jobs at major New York City hospitals on Monday in one of the largest health care strikes in decades. They are demanding higher pay, safer staffing levels and better security measures at hospitals. Mayor Zohran Mamdani visited the nurses on a picket line.
Published On 12 Jan 2026
Qwest Corp Files Form S-1 for 7.00% Notes Maturing on April 1, 2052, Due on January 12
Form S-1 Qwest Corp 7.00% Notes Exp 1 Apr 2052 For: 12 January
Witnesses recount brutal nationwide crackdown
Roja Assadiand
Sarah Namjoo,BBC Persian
Public domain“I saw it with my own eyes – they fired directly into lines of protesters, and people fell where they stood.”
Omid’s voice was shaking as he spoke, fearful of being traced. Breaking the wall of silence between Iran and the rest of the world takes immense courage, given the risk of reprisals by the authorities.
Omid, in his early 40s and whose name we have changed for his safety, has been protesting on the streets of a small city in southern Iran over the past few days against worsening economic hardship.
He said security forces had opened fire at unarmed protesters in his city with Kalashnikov-style assault rifles.
“We are fighting a brutal regime with empty hands,” he said.
The BBC has received similar accounts of the crackdown by security forces following the widespread protests across the country last week.
Since then, internet access has been cut by the authorities, making reporting from Iran more difficult than ever. BBC Persian is banned from reporting inside Iran by the government.
One of the largest nationwide anti-government protests took place on Thursday, the twelfth night of demonstrations. Many people appear to have joined the protests on Thursday and Friday after calls from Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the last shah of Iran who was overthrown in the 1979 Islamic revolution.
The following day, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said: “The Islamic Republic will not back down.” It appears that the worst bloodshed occurred after that warning as security forces and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps take their orders from him.
Iranian authorities accused the US and Israel of fomenting trouble and condemned “terrorist actions”, state media reported.
A young woman from Tehran said last Thursday felt like “the day of judgement”.
“Even remote neighbourhoods of Tehran were packed with protesters – places you wouldn’t believe,” she said.
“But on Friday, security forces only killed and killed and killed. Seeing it with my own eyes made me so unwell that I completely lost morale. Friday was a bloody day.”
She said that, after Friday’s killings, people were afraid to go out and that many were now chanting from alleys and inside their homes.
Tehran was a battlefield, she said, with protesters and security forces taking positions and cover on the streets.
But she added: “In war, both sides have weapons. Here, people only chant and get killed. It is a one-sided war.”
Eyewitnesses in Fardis, a city just to the west of Tehran, said that on Friday, members of the paramilitary Basij force under the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) suddenly attacked protesters after hours without a police presence on the streets.
The forces, who were in uniform and riding motorcycles, fired live ammunition directly at protesters, according to the witnesses. Unmarked cars were also driven into alleys, with occupants shooting at residents who were not involved in the protests, they said.
“Two or three people were killed in every alley,” one witness alleged.
Those who have given accounts to BBC Persian say the reality inside Iran is hard for the outside world to imagine, and the death toll reported by international media so far only represents a fraction of their own estimates.
International news outlets are not allowed to work freely inside Iran and they are mostly relying on Iranian human rights groups who are active outside the country. On Monday the Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO) said at least 648 protesters in Iran had been killed, including nine people under the age of 18.
Some local sources and eyewitnesses report very high numbers of people killed across different cities, ranging from several hundreds to thousands.
The BBC is currently unable to independently verify these figures and, so far, Iranian authorities have not provided official or transparent statistics on the number of deaths of protesters.
However, Iranian media has reported that 100 security personnel had been killed during the protests, saying that protesters – whom they refer to as “rioters” – set fire to dozens of mosques and banks in various cities.
Eyewitness image
Eyewitness imageVideos verified by BBC Persian’s fact-checking team also show police vehicles and some government buildings being set alight in different locations during the protests.
Testimonies and video sent to BBC Persian are mainly from larger cities such as Tehran, nearby Karaj, Rasht in the north, Mashhad in the north-east, and Shiraz in the south. These areas have greater access to the internet via the Starlink satellite network.
Information from small towns – where many early casualties occurred – is scarce as their access to Starlink is very limited.
But the volume, consistency, and similarity of the accounts received from various cities point to the severity of the crackdown and the widespread use of lethal violence.
Nurses and medics who spoke to the BBC said they had seen numerous dead bodies and injured protesters.
They reported that hospitals in many cities had been overwhelmed and were unable to treat those with severe injuries, especially to the head and eyes. Some witnesses reported bodies “stacked on top of each other” and not handed over to families.
Eyewitness image / ReutersGraphic videos published on the activist-run Telegram channel Vahid Online on Sunday showed a large number of bodies at the Kahrizak Forensic Medical Centre in Tehran, with many families either mourning or attempting to identify the corpses.
In one of the videos apparently from Kahrizak, a photo of a body relatives are seen looking at the photos of unidentified bodies displayed on a screen.
Many bodies in black bags were visible in the facility and on the street outside, only some of which seem to have been identified.
One video showed the inside of a warehouse containing several bodies, while another showed a truck being unloaded with people removing corpses from it.
A mortuary worker in a cemetery in Mashhad said that before sunrise on Friday morning between 180 and 200 bodies with severe head injuries were brought in and buried immediately.
A source in Rasht told BBC Persian that 70 bodies of protesters were transferred to a hospital mortuary in the city on Thursday. According to the source, security forces demanded “payment for bullets” before releasing bodies to families.
At the same time, a medical staff member at a hospital in eastern Tehran told BBC Persian that on Thursday, around 40 bodies were brought there the same day. The hospital’s name has been withheld to protect the identity of the medic.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Sunday that he was “shocked by reports of violence and excessive use of force by the Iranian authorities against protesters resulting in deaths and injuries in recent days”.
“I want to emphasise that regardless of the death toll, the use of lethal force by security forces is concerning,” Mai Sato, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, told BBC Persian.
Paramount retaliates against Warner Bros. bid with proxy fight for board seats
In a dramatic escalation of Hollywood’s latest takeover brawl, Paramount Skydance said Monday it will launch a proxy fight at Warner Bros. Discovery and sue in Delaware to pry loose more details about the company’s pending deal with Netflix—moves aimed at derailing that transaction and advancing its own hostile, all‑cash offer.
Paramount Skydance plans to nominate its own slate of directors for election at Warner Bros. Discovery’s 2026 annual meeting and to urge shareholders to vote against the Netflix agreement if WBD calls a special or early meeting to approve it. The strategy is designed to reshape the board that twice rejected Paramount’s bid and to rally investors behind a rival deal Ellison insists is superior on both value and risk.
“WBD has provided increasingly novel reasons for avoiding a transaction with Paramount, but what it has never said, because it cannot, is that the Netflix transaction is financially superior to our actual offer,” Paramount CEO David Ellison wrote in a letter to Warner shareholders.
At the same time, Paramount has filed a lawsuit in Delaware Chancery Court seeking to force Warner Bros. Discovery to disclose more information about how it valued the Netflix transaction and the planned spin-off of WBD’s global cable networks into a separate public company. Paramount argues that without those details—particularly around the treatment of debt and the board’s “risk adjustment” of its $30‑per‑share all‑cash proposal—investors cannot make an informed choice between the two competing paths.
Competing visions for WBD
Under Paramount Skydance’s hostile bid, the Ellison‑led company is offering $30 in cash for every Warner Bros. Discovery share, seeking to acquire the entire company, including networks such as CNN and TNT, at a valuation of roughly $108 billion that contemplates assuming or addressing about $87 billion of WBD debt. Warner Bros. Discovery’s board has rejected that offer as inadequate and overly leveraged, arguing it is not “even comparable” to the Netflix proposal.
Netflix, by contrast, has agreed to buy WBD’s film and television studios, HBO and HBO Max in a cash‑and‑stock deal valued at $27.75 per WBD share, implying about $72 billion in equity value and $82.7 billion in enterprise value, while leaving the legacy cable networks behind as a stand‑alone public company. Warner Bros. Discovery’s board has endorsed that transaction and urged shareholders to back it, positioning the Netflix tie‑up as a cleaner, lower‑risk way to reshape the company for the streaming era.
What the proxy fight means for investors
A proxy contest would give Paramount an opportunity to ask Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders to oust some or all incumbent directors at the 2026 annual meeting and replace them with nominees more open to engaging on its offer. Paramount has said those directors, if elected, would “in accordance with their fiduciary duties” use WBD’s rights under the Netflix agreement to revisit its bid and potentially steer the company into a transaction with Paramount instead.
If Warner Bros. Discovery convenes a shareholder vote on the Netflix deal before that meeting, Paramount has pledged to solicit proxies against approving the agreement, effectively turning the vote into an early referendum on which transaction shareholders prefer. Governance and investor‑relations experts say that dynamic shifts more of the leverage from the boardroom to the shareholder base, particularly if investors view the choice as a trade‑off between headline price and execution risk.
A Netflix spokesperson declined to comment when contacted by Fortune.
Legal pressure on disclosure
In its Delaware complaint and in Ellison’s letter to WBD investors, Paramount contends that Warner Bros. Discovery has failed to provide the “customary” financial disclosure expected when a board recommends a transaction or issues a Schedule 14D‑9 response in the face of a competing tender offer. The suit says WBD has not spelled out how it valued the Netflix package versus the residual “stub” equity in the spun‑off networks, or how the purchase‑price adjustments for debt and other liabilities affect the real economics for shareholders.
Ellison argues that Delaware law requires boards to give shareholders enough information to make fully informed investment decisions when they are asked to tender shares or vote on a deal, and that WBD has fallen short of that standard. Paramount is asking the court to compel Warner Bros. Discovery to fill in those gaps before Netflix’s offer period expires, which would give investors a clearer basis on which to compare the rival transactions.
What’s next
Warner Bros. Discovery has so far stood by its endorsement of the Netflix transaction and has continued to reject Paramount’s advances, setting up what could be a prolonged fight stretching from the courtroom to the annual meeting. Paramount, for its part, is signaling that it and the Ellison family are prepared to stay in the fight, betting that more disclosure and mounting shareholder scrutiny will eventually tilt the balance in favor of its all‑cash bid.
Greenland stands firm against US takeover, refuses under ‘any circumstance’ | Latest on Donald Trump
Self-governed Danish territory says that NATO is in charge of defence of the island and that it will not accept US takeover.
Published On 12 Jan 2026
The government of Greenland has firmly rejected threats from United States President Donald Trump, stating that it will not accept a US takeover under “any circumstance”.
The self-governed Danish territory also underscored its NATO membership in a statement on Monday, saying that the territory’s defence falls to the transatlantic alliance.
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“The United States has once again reiterated its desire to take over Greenland. This is something that the governing coalition in Greenland cannot accept under any circumstance,” said the island’s coalition government.
“As part of the Danish commonwealth, Greenland is a member of NATO, and the defence of Greenland must therefore be through NATO,” it added.
Trump has continued to insist that he will seize Greenland, threatening that the territory will be brought under US control “one way or another”. Those threats have sparked outrage from European allies who have warned that any takeover of Greenland would have serious repercussions for ties between the US and Europe.
Last week, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom issued a statement expressing support for Copenhagen and Greenland amid US threats.
Trump has said that if the US does not control Greenland, where it already has a military base, it will be subject to greater influence from countries such as Russia and China.
European leaders have expressed hope that greater security cooperation in the Arctic may help placate Trump. The US president has continued to insist that the US must “own” Greenland despite offers of further steps to address US concerns.
Trump has wielded US military power around the world with few concerns for international law, striking Venezuela and abducting its President Nicolas Maduro earlier this month and making further threats against countries such as Iran, Colombia, and Mexico.
“All allies agree on the importance of the Arctic and Arctic security,” NATO chief Mark Rutte said during a press conference in Croatia on Monday. “With sea lanes opening up, there is a risk that the Russians and the Chinese will be more active.”
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Monday that the US should not use China as a “pretext” for pursuing its own interests.
“The rights and freedoms of all countries to conduct activities in the Arctic in accordance with the law should be fully respected,” spokesperson Mao Ning said during a briefing, without explicitly mentioning Greenland. “The US should not pursue its own interests by using other countries as a pretext.”
Los Lobos files lawsuit against Sony Music for unpaid royalties from ‘La Bamba’ and ‘Desperado’
East L.A. rock group Los Lobos have filed two lawsuits against Sony, claiming the band was underpaid royalties on the songs they recorded for the La Bamba and Desperado soundtracks.
Between them, the lawsuits ask for between $1.5 million and $2.75 million in compensation. They were filed in California state court late last year, and only came to light when one of the suits was transferred to a federal court on Friday (January 9).
That lawsuit names Sony Music Entertainment and its label Milan Entertainment as defendants, and centers on Canción del Mariachi, a song Los Lobos recorded for the 1995 Antonio Banderas film Desperado.
The song was used as the opening track for the movie, and appeared on both the Desperado soundtrack and in a 2004 compilation soundtrack of all the Mariachi movies, titled Mexico and the Mariachis, released by Milan Entertainment. Milan was acquired by Sony Masterworks in 2019. The song has been available via that soundtrack on streaming since 2018.
“Plaintiffs’ representatives have recently discovered that neither Sony, nor Milan, or any other Sony-related entity has ever accounted to Los Lobos for any digital streaming of the recording in any country, territory, or place, for any streaming, at any time, for any royalty period,” states the complaint, which can be read in full here.
“Neither Sony, nor Milan, or any other Sony-related entity has ever accounted to Los Lobos for any digital streaming of the recording in any country, territory, or place, for any streaming, at any time, for any royalty period.”
Los Lobos, in a complaint against Sony
This failure to account for the song’s streams became “even more egregious” in recent years when Canción del Mariachi gained new fans after UFC fighter Ilia “El Matador” Topuria began using it as his “walkout” song or “anthem,” the complaint states. It alleges Sony was aware of the song’s resurgent popularity, as it had the title changed to Canción del Mariachi (Ilia Topuria ‘El Matador’ Anthem).
Given that Los Lobos’ recording contract gave the band 24% of net revenue on the song, the band estimates they are owed between $500,000 and $750,000 for the more than 600 million streams the song has garnered. The complaint asks the court for a complete accounting of the royalties owed on the track.
It also states that Los Lobos have reason to believe the recording was licensed for use on television, for which the band never received royalties.
Sony Music declined to comment.
The other lawsuit names Sony Pictures Entertainment and Sony-owned Columbia Pictures as defendants, and alleges that members of Los Lobos – David Hidalgo, Louie Perez, Cesar Rosas, Conrad Lozano, and Steve Berlin – were never paid royalties for streams outside the US and Canada for their 1987 cover of La Bamba.
Los Lobos recorded the song for a biopic of rocker Ritchie Valens, also titled La Bamba. Valens died in 1959 in a plane crash in Iowa that also killed Buddy Holly and ‘Big Bopper’ J.P. Richardson. Valens had originally recorded La Bamba, which he had adapted from a Mexican folk song.
Los Lobos’ version of the song became an international hit, reaching No. 1 on the charts in 15 countries, according to the complaint as cited by Rolling Stone, and spent three weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Despite the song’s international success, “plaintiff’s representatives have recently discovered that no royalties for streaming exploitation of the recordings have ever been paid to Los Lobos for any country outside of the United States and Canada,” stated the complaint, as quoted by Billboard. The complaint describes that as a “massive deficiency.”
The complaint says Sony is responsible for the underpayment because it handles non-US and Canada royalty accounting for the La Bamba soundtrack. It estimates the back royalties owed run between $1 million and $2 million.
Los Lobos was formed in East Los Angeles in 1973 and came to prominence with La Bamba in 1987. They have recorded 17 studio albums, including most recently 2021’s Native Sons, and have been nominated for 12 Grammy awards, winning four.
Music Business Worldwide
Shakur Stevenson predicts the victor of Dmitry Bivol vs David Benavidez match
Shakur Stevenson has offered his prediction for a potential showdown between Dmitry Bivol and David Benavidez, branding it ‘one of the best fights in the sport of boxing.’
The two light-heavyweight world champions seem to be on different trajectories, with Benavidez teasing a move to cruiserweight and Bivol expected to make a mandatory title defence later this year.
Benavidez was the mandatory challenger to Bivol earlier last year, until the Russian’s decision to vacate his title saw the American get upgraded from interim to full WBC world champion.
This was because Bivol, following his monumental points victory over Artur Beterbiev – to claim the undisputed crown – in February 2025, had been forced to undergo back surgery.
But now, having reportedly made a full recovery, the 35-year-old is widely expected to face IBF mandatory challenger Michael Eifert in the coming months.
Benavidez, meanwhile, has done his very best to remain active, starting 2025 with a points victory against David Morrell before defending his WBC belt with a seventh-round finish over Anthony Yarde in November.
Since then, the 29-year-old has named unified cruiserweight champion Gilberto Ramirez as a likely opponent for him to face in May. He has confirmed that he will look to drop back down to 175lbs after and target both Bivol and Beterbiev.
WBC lightweight champion Stevenson has offered his take on the undisputed matchup, sharing his prediction in an interview with Cigar Talk.
“I think that Benavidez and Bivol is another fight that’s one of the biggest and best fights in the sport of boxing.
“I don’t know if it’s the biggest, but [it’s] one of the best. I’m leaning towards Bivol, but I know it will be tough with Benavidez, with his pressure [and] just his fighting style overall.
“I see it as Bivol being the winner, but it would be close.”
Bivol may look to make a trilogy fight with Beterbiev before facing Benavidez. In truth, any matchup between the three men will be welcomed by fans.
Julia’s Tiny House Provides Adaptable Layout for Family Residence and Remote Work
Designed for full-time living in a small footprint, the Julia tiny house packs an impressive number of features into its compact frame. It includes a light-filled and airy interior with a netted hangout area, as well as a home office, and can even optionally run off-the-grid.
The Julia is designed by Sweden’s Vagabond Haven and is built on a steel frame with wheels. However, the wheels are just intended for minor on-site movements, not for towing on a public road, so this isn’t a good choice for would-be nomads. It has a length of 7.9 m (25.9 ft) and a width of 3 m (nearly 10 ft). This makes it on the larger side for a European model but it’s still relatively compact by North American standards, which can exceed double its length. The exterior is finished in spruce or engineered wood, and it’s topped with an aluminum roof.
Vagabond Haven
Inside, the Julia offers 27 sq m (290 sq ft) of living space and is finished in a choice of spruce or plywood, along with laminate flooring. Entry is through the kitchen, which occupies the center of the home. It’s equipped with a sink, a small fridge, an oven, and an electric cooktop, plus plywood countertops and plenty of cabinetry for storage.
Adjacent to the kitchen is the dining area. This is generous for a tiny house and includes some stools and bench seating, both with integrated storage, plus a large table. The bathroom is nearby. Reached by a sliding door, it contains a glass-enclosed shower, a flushing toilet, and a vanity sink. Elsewhere on the ground floor lies a small extra room that’s used here as a home office.
There are two bedrooms in the Julia. Since there’s no proper lounge in the home, the ground floor bedroom can be used as a daybed and there’s lots of glazing in there, helping fill it with natural light. Above this, and accessed by a rope ladder, is the netted loft mentioned, providing another hangout spot.
Over on the other side of the tiny house, above the bathroom, lies the upstairs bedroom. It’s a typical loft model with a low ceiling and a double bed installed.
Vagabond Haven
The Julia starts at just €36,595 (roughly US$42,700). This model is available with lots of options, including furniture, appliances, skylights, and a fully off-grid setup with solar panels and rainwater harvesting system.
Source: Vagabond Haven
Poland’s Former Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro Granted Asylum in Hungary
Adam EastonBBC News Warsaw correspondent
ReutersHungary has granted political asylum to Poland’s former Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro who is facing charges of embezzlement.
Ziobro is facing 26 charges related to embezzling money from a fund meant to be spent on crime victims and rehabilitating criminals.
Instead, he is accused of authorising the purchase of spyware that was allegedly used to hack political opponents’ phones. He says he is a victim of political persecution.
Granting asylum to a citizen of a fellow EU member state goes against the spirit of EU standards.
But in the case of Hungary it is neither new nor surprising.
Ziobro is the second politician of the former Law and Justice-led government to be granted this status – last year it was his former deputy Marcin Romanowski who fled to Budapest to seek protection.
Both are accused of corruption and misusing their power – most notably by using the money of the state-controlled Justice Fund which was under their oversight in order to fund their party and its cronies.
Ziobro was justice minister between 2015 and 2023 under the previous right-wing PiS-led government, which is politically aligned to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
If found guilty he could face up to 25 years in prison.
Writing on X, Ziobro said: “I have decided to accept the asylum granted to me by the government of Hungary due to the political persecution in Poland.”
“I have chosen to fight against political banditry and lawlessness. I stand in opposition to a creeping dictatorship,” Ziobro added, accusing Prime Minister Donald Tusk of waging a “vendetta” against him.
Ziobro is accused of authorising a 25m zloty ($7m; £5.15m) purchase of Israeli-made Pegasus spyware, which Poland’s current coalition government and a European Parliament investigative team found was used to secretly hack the phones of political opponents.
Current Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said his phone was hacked and Tusk said his wife’s and daughter’s phones were also hacked.
Ziobro is also accused of awarding Justice Fund grants to fire stations and women’s associations without proper competition to bolster support for the government.
As minister of justice from 2015 to 2023, Ziobro was the author of judiciary reforms which provoked a major conflict with Brussels.
The issue led to a freeze of EU money for Poland as well as to verdicts of the European Court of Justice, which deemed them as violating fundamental EU rules and standards including the principle of judicial independence.
Orban, who faced similar criticism, and the PiS rejected and ignored those rulings, saying they violated Poland’s sovereignty and constituted an overreach of Brussels’s powers.