-8.4 C
New York
Tuesday, January 27, 2026
Home Blog Page 9

Ukraine denounces ‘brutal’ Russian attacks as second day of peace talks approaches

0

Ukraine has condemned a fresh wave of Russian strikes overnight which killed one person and injured 23 others, as talks with the US aimed at ending the war are set to resume.

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said the “brutal” attack – “cynically” ordered by Russian leader Vladimir Putin – had “hit not only our people, but also the negotiation table”.

Delegations from Russia, Ukraine and the US have been meeting in Abu Dhabi for the first trilateral talks since the Kremlin launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbour in 2022.

A source told the BBC that some progress had been made but the key issue of territory remains unresolved.

The mayor of Ukrainian capital Kyiv said one person had died and four had been wounded while Kharkiv’s mayor reported that 19 people had been hurt during a sustained assault on the city in the early hours of Saturday morning.

On the second day of the three-way talks in Abu Dhabi, Sybiha said the “barbaric” overnight assault proved “that Putin’s place is not at the board of peace, but at the dock of the special tribunal”.

US President Donald Trump said last week that Putin had accepted an invitation to join his ‘Board of Peace’ – an organisation focused on ending global conflicts. Putin has not confirmed this.

Kyiv’s mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram that three of the four people who had been injured had been hospitalised.

He added that the capital’s critical infrastructure had been damaged, leaving 6,000 buildings without heating.

Temperatures have fallen to around -12C in parts of Ukraine, according to the Met Office. In a statement following the assaults, President Volodymyr Zelensky said: “The main target of the Russians was the energy infrastructure.”

Last week, Russia attacked Kyiv’s power infrastructure, forcing Zelensky to initially call off his trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

In Kharkiv, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said 19 people had been injured during the strikes in the early hours of Saturday morning. A maternity hospital and a hostel for displaced people were damaged.

Russia occupies roughly 20% of Ukraine, including parts of the eastern Donbas region. The Kremlin wants Ukraine to hand over large areas of the territory, but Ukraine has ruled this out.

In Davos, Zelensky said: “It’s all about the land. This is the issue which is not solved yet.”

He said that he had reached an agreement with Trump on future US security guarantees for Ukraine in the event of a deal.

He gave no detail but said it would need to go before US Congress and the Ukrainian parliament before signing.

The day before the talks in Abu Dhabi began, US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner met with Putin in Moscow, which the Russian president described as “useful”.

Following the first day of talks, Rustem Umerov, who is leading the Ukrainian delegation, said on social media: “The meeting focused on the parameters for ending Russia’s war and the further logic of the negotiation process aimed at advancing toward a dignified and lasting peace.”

Pentagon anticipates a reduced role in deterring North Korea

0

Pentagon foresees ’more limited’ role in deterring North Korea

Major winter storm causes cancellation of over 8,000 flights across US | Weather News

0

More than a dozen states sound the alarm, declaring emergencies or urging people to stay home.

More than 8,000 flights set to take off over the weekend have been cancelled as a major storm bears down across the United States, threatening widespread heavy snow and a band of catastrophic ice stretching from east Texas to North Carolina.

At least 3,400 flights were delayed or cancelled on Saturday, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware, and more than 5,000 were called off for Sunday.

Recommended Stories

list of 4 itemsend of list

Roughly 140 million people from New Mexico to New England were under a winter storm warning, as forecasters say damage, especially in areas pounded by ice, could rival that of a hurricane.

Snow fell ‍over parts of Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas on ‍Friday ahead of a winter storm expected to converge with bitter Arctic cold and engulf much of the US over the weekend.

“This is a mean storm,” Jacob Asherman, a meteorologist at the US Weather Prediction Center in Maryland, told Reuters news agency. He said it was the biggest so far this ​season in terms of intensity and scope.

Life-threatening wind-chill readings had plunged to below minus 45 degrees Celsius (minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit) in the Dakotas and Minnesota. The meteorologist warned that exposure to such cold without proper clothing “can lead to hypothermia very, very quickly”.

The ‍worst was predicted for parts ⁠of Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee, where ice up to an inch thick was likely to coat tree limbs, power lines and roadways, Asherman said.

Governors in more than a dozen states sounded the alarm, declaring emergencies or urging people to stay home. Texas Governor Greg Abbott told residents on X that the state Department of Transportation was pretreating the roads and urged residents to “stay home if possible”.

Utility companies braced for power outages because ice-coated trees and power lines can keep falling long after a storm has passed.

President Donald Trump said via social media on Friday that his administration was coordinating with state and local officials and that the Federal Emergency Management Agency was “fully prepared to respond”.

The storm represents the ‍first major test for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who took office just weeks ago.

He told local news station NY1 on Friday that the city’s sanitation workforce would transform into “the nation’s largest snow-fighting operation” in advance of the heavy snowfall expected on Sunday.

Second Team All-Region 2025 West/Mid-West

0

CLARE ARVAI
Saline High School (MI)
Senior – Forward/Midfield

24 goals, 18 assists, 6-game winning goals
Led state in goals, assists & points
First Team SEC
State Offensive Player of the Year
First Team All-State
NFHCA Midwest Region Second Team
MAXFH Preseason Player to Watch

Activist from Minnesota released after exposing White House for altering images of her arrest

0

A Minnesota activist who was charged for her role in an anti-immigration enforcement protest at a church released her own video of her arrest Friday after the White House posted a manipulated image online.

The White House on Thursday posted a picture on its X page of civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong crying with her hands behind her back as she was escorted by a blurred person wearing a badge. The photo was captioned in all caps: “Arrested far-left agitator Nekima Levy Armstrong for orchestrating church riots in Minnesota.”

A photo posted by Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem’s account showed the same image with Levy Armstrong wearing a neutral expression.

Levy Armstrong, who was arrested with at least two others Thursday for an anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement protest that disrupted a service at a church where an ICE official also serves as a pastor, released her own video. Levy Armstrong and Chauntyll Allen, a St. Paul school board member who was also arrested in connection to the protest, were both released Friday, according to a post by Levy Armstrong’s organization, the Racial Justice Network. Their attorneys declined to comment.

The video shot by Levy Armstrong’s husband, Marques Armstrong, shows several federal agents approaching to arrest her.

“I’m asking you to please treat me with dignity and respect,” she said to the agents.

“We have to put you in handcuffs,” one agent said, while another held up a phone and appeared to record a video.

“Why are you recording?” Levy Armstrong asked. “I would ask that you not record.”

“It’s not going to be on Twitter,” the agent filming said. “It’s not going to be on anything like that.”

“We don’t want to create a false narrative,” the agent said.

At no point in the more than seven-minute video — which shows Levy Armstrong being handcuffed and led into a government vehicle — did Levy Armstrong appear to cry. Instead, she talked with agents about her arrest.

“You know that this is a significant abuse of power,” she said. “Because I refuse to be silent in the face of brutality from ICE.”

“I’m not in here to get in a political debate,” the agent filming said.

In an audio message that Levy Armstrong’s spokesperson shared with The Associated Press, Levy Armstrong said the video of her arrest exposes that the Trump administration had used AI to manipulate images of her arrest.

“We are being politically persecuted for speaking out against authoritarianism, fascism and the tyranny of the Trump administration,” said Levy Armstrong, who recorded the message Friday morning during a call with her husband from jail.

The Department of Homeland Security didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

___

Associated Press reporters Giovanna Dell’Orto in Minneapolis and Tiffany Stanley in Washington, D.C., contributed.

Pentagon shifts focus away from China as top security priority

0

China is no longer the top security priority for the US, according to the Pentagon’s new National Defense Strategy.

The document, published once every four years, instead says that the security of the US homeland and Western Hemisphere is the department’s chief concern, adding that Washington has long neglected the “concrete interests” of Americans.

The Pentagon also says it will offer “more limited” support to US allies.

It follows the publication last year of the US National Security Strategy, which said that Europe faced “civilizational collapse” and did not cast Russia as a threat to the US. At the time, Moscow said the document was “largely consistent” with its vision.

By comparison, the 2022 National Defense Strategy named the “multi-domain threat” posed by China as its top defence priority. In 2018, the document described “revisionist powers”, such as China and Russia, as the “central challenge” to US security.

The 34-page document, released on Friday, largely reinforces policy positions staked out by the Trump administration over its first year back in office.

In that time, US President Donald Trump has seized Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, carried out strikes against alleged drug boats in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean, and more recently, applied pressure on US allies to acquire Greenland.

The strategy reiterated that the Pentagon “will guarantee US military and commercial access to key terrain, especially the Panama Canal, Gulf of America, and Greenland”.

The document also says the Trump administration’s approach will be “fundamentally different from the grandiose strategies of the past post–Cold War administrations”.

It adds: “Out with utopian idealism; in with hardnosed realism.”

Relations with China are to be approached through “strength, not confrontation”. The goal “is not to dominate China; nor is it to strangle or humiliate them”, the document says.

Unlike in previous versions of the strategy, Taiwan, the self-governing island claimed by China, is not mentioned. However, the document does write that the US aims to “prevent anyone, including China, from being able to dominate us or our allies”.

Late last year, the US announced a vast arms sale to Taiwan worth $11bn (£8.2bn), leading China to hold military drills around the island in response.

The strategy also calls for greater “burden-sharing” from US allies, saying that partners have been “content” to let Washington “subsidize their defense”.

Though, it denies this demonstrates a move towards “isolationism”.

“To the contrary, it means a focused and genuinely strategic approach to the threats our nation faces,” it says, adding that it does not want to conflate American interests “with those of the rest of the world – that a threat to a person halfway around the world is the same as to an American.”

Instead, it says allies, especially Europe, “will take the lead against threats that are less severe for us but more so for them”.

Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly four years ago, is described as a “persistent but manageable threat to NATO’s eastern members”.

The strategy also outlines a “more limited” role for US deterrence of North Korea. South Korea is “capable of taking primary responsibility” for the task, it adds.

In a speech made at the World Economic Forum earlier this week, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said the old world order is “not coming back” and urged fellow middle powers – like South Korea, Canada and Australia – to come together.

“Middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu,” Carney said at the Davos meeting.

That came as French President Emmanuel Macron also warned of a “shift towards a world without rules”.

MBW’s Weekly Round-Up: From Zebralution’s acquisition to $200M indie funding sprees

0

Welcome to Music Business Worldwide’s Weekly Round-up – where we make sure you caught the five biggest stories to hit our headlines over the past seven days. MBW’s Round-up is exclusively supported by BMI, a global leader in performing rights management, dedicated to supporting songwriters, composers and publishers and championing the value of music.


This week, Insight Holdings Group, the private equity firm behind DistroKid‘s $1.3 billion valuation, acquired German digital distributor Zebralution from collecting society GEMA.

Meanwhile, Universal Music Group moved closer to completing its $775 million acquisition of Downtown Music Holdings after Reuters reported the company is set to receive conditional EU approval for the deal.

Elsewhere, Sony Music Entertainment bought a 49% stake in Vietnamese media giant YeaH1 Group’s music unit, launching a new joint venture called SYE Holdings that debuted boy group UPRIZE.

Also this week, AI music platform Udio struck a licensing deal with independent music organization Merlin, following similar settlements with Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group, while the indie music financing space heated up with both Duetti securing $200 million in fresh financing led by The Raine Group and Matt Spetzler’s Jamen Capital launching Pipeline with over $200 million in backing.

Here are some of the biggest headlines from the past few days…


1. DISTROKID INVESTOR BUYS INDIE DISTRIBUTOR ZEBRALUTION FROM GEMA

German collecting society GEMA has sold digital distributor Zebralution to New York-based private equity firm Insight Holdings Group, which previously made a substantial investment in DistroKid in 2021, valuing that platform at $1.3 billion.

GEMA confirmed on Tuesday (January 20) that it is selling its 100% shareholding in Zebralution GmbH, a digital media distributor for audiobooks, podcasts, and music, as part of its corporate strategy to focus more on its core business of collective rights management.

The transaction marks GEMA’s exit from digital distribution just over five years after acquiring a majority stake in the Berlin-based company in December 2019… (MBW)


2. UMG ‘SET TO WIN EU NOD’ TO BUY DOWNTOWN MUSIC, REUTERS REPORTS

Reuters reported on Tuesday (January 20) that Universal Music Group is set to receive conditional approval from the European Commission for its proposed $775 million acquisition of Downtown Music Holdings.

The report followed UMG’s December offer to divest Downtown’s Curve royalty accounting business to address the EC’s competition concerns about the transaction.

The news agency, citing people with direct knowledge of the matter, reported that the EU antitrust watchdog has not demanded further concessions… (MBW)


3. SONY MUSIC BUYS 49% STAKE IN MUSIC UNIT OF VIETNAM MEDIA GIANT YEAH1; COMPANIES LAUNCH NEW SYE HOLDINGS JOINT VENTURE

Sony Music Entertainment has made significant moves in Vietnam by acquiring a 49% stake in 1Label JSC, the music production and artist management unit of Vietnamese media giant YeaH1 Group.

Following the deal, Sony Music and YeaH1 Group launched a joint venture called SYE Holdings, which debuted a new boy group called UPRIZE earlier this week.

In a filing to the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange on December 16, 2025, YeaH1 said Sony Music Entertainment Hong Kong will hold 49% of 1Label’s voting shares via a share subscription. YeaH1, however, will retain a 49.88% stake in the business, making it an associated company… (MBW)


4. UDIO STRIKES AI LICENSING DEAL WITH MERLIN AFTER UMG AND WARNER MUSIC SETTLEMENTS

Independent music licensing group Merlin has partnered with artificial intelligence music platform Udio to license recordings for training AI models.

The partnership follows settlements Udio reached with Universal Music Group in October and Warner Music Group in November.

The agreement with Merlin allows Udio to develop AI systems using music from Merlin members who choose to participate, with compensation flowing back to those labels and artists… (MBW)


5. DUETTI SECURES $200M IN FRESH FINANCING, WHILE MATT SPETZLER’S JAMEN CAPITAL LAUNCHES PIPELINE WITH $200M IN BACKING

The landscape of alternative funding options for indie artists, labels, and distributors heated up this week with two major financing announcements totaling $400 million.

Music investment company Duetti secured $200 million in fresh financing led by a $50 million Series C equity investment by Raine Partners, the flagship growth equity fund of The Raine Group, alongside a second $125 million private securitization and a $25 million increase of an existing credit facility. In connection with the equity financing, Joe Puthenveetil, Partner at The Raine Group, will join the Duetti Board of Directors.

Meanwhile, a new financing platform called Pipeline, backed by Matt Spetzler’s investment firm Jamen Capital, emerged from stealth with over $200 million in capital and ambitions to become the largest funder of independent music globally… (MBW / MBW)


Partner message: MBW’s Weekly Round-up is supported by BMI, the global leader in performing rights management, dedicated to supporting songwriters, composers and publishers and championing the value of music. Find out more about BMI hereMusic Business Worldwide

Trump’s unexpected change of heart regarding Greenland

0

new video loaded: Inside Trump’s Turnabout on Greenland

Our national security correspondent David Sanger describes how President Trump’s escalations with Europe over Greenland seem to have led to him backing down.

By David E. Sanger, Gabriel Blanco, Nikolay Nikolov, Stephanie Swart and Whitney Shefte

January 23, 2026

Challenging Clients

0



Client Challenge



JavaScript is disabled in your browser.

Please enable JavaScript to proceed.

A required part of this site couldn’t load. This may be due to a browser
extension, network issues, or browser settings. Please check your
connection, disable any ad blockers, or try using a different browser.

Naval forces divert Russian ‘shadow fleet’ tanker to French port | Shipping News

0

French prosecutors say Russia-linked tanker ‘Grinch’ under investigation after interception in western Mediterranean.

The French navy has diverted an ‍oil tanker, suspected of being part of Russia’s sanctions-busting “shadow fleet”, ‍towards the port of Marseille-Fos for further investigation, according to reports.

The office of the ​prosecutor in the southern French city of Marseille, which handles matters related to ‌maritime law and is investigating the case, said on Friday that the ship had been diverted, but did not specify where to.

Recommended Stories

list of 4 itemsend of list

A source close to the case told the AFP news agency that the tanker is expected to arrive on Saturday morning at the port of Marseille-Fos in southern France.

The ‘Grinch ‘ tanker was intercepted by French naval forces on Thursday while on the high seas in the western Mediterranean, between the southern coast of Spain and the northern coast of Morocco, France’s maritime police said in a statement.

It added that navies of other countries, including Britain, supported the operation.

Video footage released by the French military of the operation showed a unit of soldiers descending from a helicopter onto the deck of the Russia-linked ship. The boarding of the vessel involved a navy boat and two navy helicopters, according to reports.

The Grinch, which was sailing under a Comoros flag, left the Russian Arctic port of Murmansk in ​early January and is suspected of operating under a ‍false flag and of belonging to the secretive fleet of ships that enables Russia to export oil around the world despite international sanctions due to Moscow’s war on Ukraine.

The AFP news agency reported that a ship called “Grinch” is under United Kingdom sanctions, while another named “Carl” – with the same registration number – is sanctioned by the United States and European Union.

Prosecutors in Marseille said they were investigating the ship’s alleged failure to confirm its nationality.

The EU has ‌imposed 19 packages of sanctions against Russia, but Moscow has adapted to most measures ‌and continues to sell millions of barrels ⁠of oil to countries such as India and China, typically at discounted prices.

Much of the oil, which is key to financing its war in Ukraine, is carried by what is known as ‌a shadow fleet of vessels operating outside of Western maritime industry regulations.

In October, France detained another Russian-linked sanctioned tanker, the Boracay, off its ‍west coast and released it after a few days.

The Boracay’s Chinese captain is to stand trial in France in February over the crew’s alleged refusal to cooperate with investigators, according to French judicial authorities.

This aerial picture taken on October 1, 2025 off the coast of the western France port of Saint-Nazaire shows French soldiers onboard the tanker from Russia's so-called "shadow fleet" suspected of being involved in drone flights over Denmark which sailed off the Danish coast between September 22 and 25. Named the Pushpa or Boracay, the Benin-flagged vessel, which is blacklisted by the European Union for being part of Russia's sanction-busting "shadow fleet", has been immobilised for several days off the French coast. (Photo by Damien MEYER / AFP)
This aerial picture taken on October 1, 2025, off the coast of western France shows French soldiers on board a tanker from Russia’s so-called ‘shadow fleet’. Named the Pushpa or Boracay, the Benin-flagged vessel is blacklisted by the European Union [Damien Meyer/AFP]