Category World News

UK warns Abramovich to give Chelsea sale cash to Ukraine or face court

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Published On 17 Dec 2025

The United Kingdom on Wednesday said it was giving Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich a final chance to give Ukraine 2.5 billion pounds ($3.33bn) from the sale of Chelsea Football Club or face potential legal action.

The UK sanctioned Abramovich in a crackdown on Russian oligarchs after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, triggering a rushed sale of the Premier League football club and freezing of the proceeds.

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The UK wants the funds spent only on humanitarian causes in Ukraine, in line with a wider European push for Moscow to foot the bill for deaths and destruction triggered by its invasion.

Reuters was not immediately able to reach representatives for Abramovich for a response to the government statement. He has previously sought more flexibility and said he wants the money to go to all victims. Abramovich has 90 days to act under the terms of the government’s new licence.

Should the Russian businessman fail to free the funds quickly, the government said in a statement that it was fully prepared to take him to court if necessary to enforce a 2022 agreement with him.

“It’s unacceptable that more than 2.5 billion pounds]$3.33 bn] of money owed to the Ukrainian people can be allowed to remain frozen in a UK bank account”, Finance Minister Rachel Reeves said in the statement.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the UK would issue a licence to release the funds. This would allow the transfer of the money to a new charitable foundation.

“We will consider any proposal from Mr Abramovich to make use of this clear legal route to establish the foundation and transfer the funds under the terms of the licence”, Reeves said in a separate statement issued to parliament.

European Union leaders are set to review on Thursday proposals aimed at using proceeds from immobilised Russian sovereign assets to support Ukraine’s huge budget and defence needs – something Moscow fiercely opposes.

Under Abramovich, Chelsea enjoyed the most successful run in their history before the club were sold to a consortium led by US investor Todd Boehly and private equity firm Clearlake Capital in May 2022.

England’s resident doctors begin five-day strike

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Published On 17 Dec 2025

Resident doctors in England have begun a five-day strike in a long-running dispute over pay and working conditions.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer addressed the strike during Prime Minister’s Questions in parliament on Wednesday, describing the walkout as “dangerous and utterly irresponsible”.

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“My message to resident doctors is: don’t abandon patients”, Starmer said. He urged them to “work with us to improve conditions and rebuild the NHS”.

The prime minister also blamed the previous Conservative government for leaving the National Health Service “absolutely on its knees”.

The doctors, formerly known as junior doctors and accounting for nearly half of England’s medical workforce, walked out at 07: 00 GMT on Wednesday. The strike is due to continue until 07: 00 GMT on Monday.

The strike follows an online ballot organised by the British Medical Association (BMA), the union representing resident doctors. About 30, 000 members voted to reject the government’s proposal, triggering the industrial action.

Jack Fletcher, a BMA representative, said the dispute centred on two main issues: pay and a lack of jobs for qualified doctors.

“There is a jobs crisis, where doctors are trained but unable to secure roles, and there is a pay crisis”, Fletcher said while standing on a picket line outside St Thomas ‘ Hospital in London.

“We must value our doctors in this country”, he added. “Last year, more doctors left the profession than at any point in the past decade”.

The strike comes as the NHS faces increased pressure, with flu-related hospitalisations in England rising by more than 50 percent in early December. Health authorities across Europe have also warned of an unusually early and severe flu season.

NHS England said fewer doctors than usual would be on duty during the strike period, with staff required to prioritise life-saving care.

After years of inflation increases, the BMA is calling for what it calls a “genuinely long-term plan” to address pay. Additionally, it demands the creation of new training positions to enable doctors to specialize and advance, as opposed to what it claims are recycled positions.

No new pay conditions were included in the government’s most recent offer, which was made last week. Wes Streeting, the health secretary, accepted a pay increase offer that was lower than the union’s 29 percent target shortly after taking office.

Warner Bros Discovery rejects Paramount’s hostile takeover bid

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Warner Bros Discovery’s board has rejected Paramount Skydance’s $108.4bn hostile takeover bid and accused the studio giant of misleading shareholders about its financing.

In a letter to shareholders on Wednesday, the Warner Bros board wrote that Paramount “consistently misled” Warner Bros shareholders that its $30-per-share cash offer was fully guaranteed, or “backstopped”, by the Ellison family, led by billionaire Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison, whose son David runs Paramount Skydance.

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Paramount has been in a race with Netflix to win control of Warner Bros and its prized film and television studios, HBO Max streaming service and franchises like Harry Potter. After Warner Bros accepted the streaming giant’s offer, Paramount launched a hostile offer to outdo that bid.

“It does not, and never has”, the board wrote of the guarantee of Paramount’s offer, noting that the offer posed “numerous, significant risks”.

The board said it found Paramount’s offer “inferior” to Netflix’s $27.75 per share offer, which is a binding agreement that requires no equity financing and has robust debt commitments, the board wrote.

The board also said the offer could be terminated or amended at any time before the deal’s completion, which is not the same as a binding merger agreement.

Warner Bros has not yet set a date for a shareholder vote on the deal, but it is expected to happen sometime in spring or early summer, its chairman, Samuel Di Piazza, said in an interview with CNBC.

The Ellisons have cited their relationship with United States President Donald Trump as a reason why the deal would face an easier regulatory path.

“The Warner Bros Discovery Board reinforced that Netflix’s merger agreement is superior and that our acquisition is in the best interest of stockholders”, its co-CEO Ted Sarandos said in a statement.

Netflix is already talking with the US Department of Justice and the European Commission, its other co-CEO, Greg Peters, told CNBC while expressing confidence in how regulators would view the deal.

Netflix has told Warner Bros it would keep releasing the studio’s films in cinemas in a bid to ease fears that the deal would eliminate another studio and major source of theatrical films, according to people familiar with the matter.

Paramount’s case

Paramount last week took its case directly to Warner Bros shareholders, arguing it had arranged “air-tight financing” to support its bid with $41bn in new equity assured by the Ellison family and RedBird Capital and $54bn of debt commitments from the Bank of America, Citi and Apollo.

The board decision came a day after Affinity Partners, a fund backed by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and one of the funding sources of the Paramount offer, pulled out of the deal. The amount Affinity Partners was contributing to the offer was not disclosed in Paramount’s latest filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

“With two strong competitors vying to secure the future of this unique American asset, Affinity has decided no longer to pursue the opportunity”, the firm said in a statement.

“The dynamics of the investment have changed significantly since we initially became involved in October. We continue to believe there is a strong strategic rationale for Paramount’s offer”.

The Warner Bros board countered that Paramount’s latest offer included an equity commitment “for which there is no Ellison family commitment of any kind” but rather the backing of “an unknown and opaque” Lawrence J Ellison Revocable Trust, whose assets and liabilities are not publicly disclosed and are subject to change.

“Despite having been told repeatedly by WBD how important a full and unconditional financing commitment from the Ellison family was, … the Ellison family has chosen not to backstop the PSKY offer”, the Warner Bros board wrote.

“A revocable trust is no replacement for a secured commitment by a controlling shareholder”.

Paramount had submitted a total of six bids to acquire the entire Warner Bros studio, including its television networks, such as CNN and TNT Sports.

It has previously said the Ellison family trust – which Paramount says contains more than $250bn in assets, including about 1.16 billion shares of Oracle – is more than adequate to cover the equity commitment.

Warner Bros had raised questions about Paramount’s financial condition and creditworthiness. The offer relied on a seven-party, cross-conditional structure with the Ellison Revocable Trust providing 32 percent of the required equity commitment while capping its liability at $2.8bn, Warner Bros said. It noted that the trust’s assets could have been withdrawn at any time.

DRC says M23 vow to pull out of Uvira is a ‘distraction’

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The DRC government has said the M23 armed group’s unfulfilled pledge to withdraw from the key town of Uvira is a “distraction”, as the group said its conditions for a pullout were yet to be met.

Patrick Muyaya, a spokesperson for the Democratic Republic of Congo’s government, said Wednesday that the group’s statement it would withdraw from the town in South Kivu province, in line with a request from US mediators, was a “non-event, a diversion, a distraction”.

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“The son, M23, offers itself in sacrifice before the US mediator to protect the father, Rwanda”, Muyaya said, referring to Kigali’s support for the group.

“The intention is to distract the American mediation team, which is preparing to take measures against Rwanda”, Muyaya told Reuters.

Later on Wednesday, footage aired exclusively on Al Jazeera appeared to show dozens of fighters from the group and several vehicles on the move near the M23’s main base in Uvira.

Reporting from the town, Al Jazeera’s Alain Uaykani described the movement of the forces as a “withdrawal” and said the group was “voluntarily leaving”.

“These are the soldiers leaving the main headquarters, the main operational base of the town of Uvira. They are going now, leaving. We cannot say exactly where they are going, how many kilometres out from this town of Uvira”, he said.

It was not immediately clear if the group was withdrawing from the town.

The Rwanda-backed militia seized the strategic town last week, imperilling a tenuous US-brokered peace agreement between Kinshasa and Kigali signed amid fanfare just days earlier and raising fears of a widening conflict.

The seizure of the town led ​​US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to accuse Rwanda, which denies backing M23 rebels, of a “clear violation” of the deal, promising that Washington would “take action to ensure promises made to the president are kept”.

Earlier this week, the leader of the Alliance Fleuve Congo&nbsp, rebel coalition, which includes the M23 group, said their fighters would withdraw from the strategic town near the border with Burundi, in accordance with the request from US mediators.

Corneille Nangaa, leader of the coalition, described the withdrawal as a “unilateral trust-building measure in order to give the … peace process the maximum chance to succeed”.

But despite that pledge, M23 fighters remained visible in the town earlier on Wednesday, stationed near government offices and along major roads, saying there were conditions for any withdrawal.

M23 spokesperson Willy Ngoma had told Reuters that the group was “ready to leave, but our conditions have to be reviewed”.

The group said a neutral force must be deployed to maintain security in the town if the group were to pull out, to avoid a repeat of previous withdrawals that it says have led to renewed violence.

Jean Jacques Purusi, governor of South Kivu province where Uvira is located, told Reuters that the M23 fighters “do not want to leave”.

Markets reopen

Al Jazeera’s Uaykani reported earlier on Wednesday that a fragile sense of normality was returning to the town after days of fighting.

Markets were reopening, and traffic was returning to the streets, he said – although daily life remained overshadowed by the ongoing political instability.

Resident Feza Mariam said the priority for locals was an end to the fighting.

“We don’t know anything about the political process that they’re talking about”, she said.

“The only thing we need is peace. Anyone who is able to provide us with peace is welcome here”.

Fellow resident Eliza Mapendo said locals had suffered “a lot”, but that calm had been restored sufficiently for daily life to begin to resume.

“For now, we feel secure and we’re working freely in this market”, she said, adding that the sense of normality was fragile.

“They could attack without any reason and take your business away”.

Meanwhile, DRC’s army spokesperson, Sylvain Ekenge, told Reuters that fighting was continuing daily across the conflict-hit east, where M23 made a rapid advance this year.

Is Trump about to wage war in Latin America?

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NewsFeed

As Washington launches airstrikes and declares alleged drug networks terrorist organizations, there are growing concerns in Latin America about the US military’s expansion in the Caribbean. Hassan Massoud of Al Jazeera reports from Bogota, Colombia, where tensions are rising due to the region’s largest US military display in decades.

Published On 17 Dec 2025