Archive September 9, 2025

Rupert Murdoch’s family has reached a deal to end the years-long succession battle over the mogul’s media empire.

The deal, announced by News Corp on Monday, will see eldest son Lachlan Murdoch take control of a sprawling media portfolio that includes Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, and The Times.

The agreement helps ensure that Murdoch’s media properties will retain their conservative bent long after the 94-year-old patriarch’s death.

Under the settlement, Lachlan, who is widely viewed as more aligned with his father’s conservative views than his siblings, and his two younger sisters, Grace and Chloe, will be beneficiaries of a new family trust that has a controlling stake in Fox Corporation and News Corp.

The deal stipulates that the trust will be in place until 2050.

Voting rights will rest “solely” with Lachlan, 54, who has served as chairman of News Corp and CEO of Fox since his father stepped down from the day-to-day running of the businesses in 2023.

Lachlan’s three oldest siblings, James, Elizabeth and Prudence, will relinquish their stakes in an existing family trust, receiving an equal split of the equity sales.

Under the deal, the three elder siblings will be subject to a “long-term standstill agreement” barring them from acquiring shares of News Corp and Fox Corporation and “taking certain other actions with respect to the companies”.

US media estimated the payout for the three siblings at about $3.3bn.

“News Corp’s board of directors welcomes these developments and believes that the leadership, vision and management by the Company’s Chair, Lachlan Murdoch, will continue to be important to guiding the Company’s strategy and success,” News Corp said in a statement.

The settlement caps a saga that has captivated political and media circles, and drawn comparisons with the plot of HBO’s award-winning drama Succession.

“Rupert Murdoch has built his reputation on being aggressive in securing what he wants, and he wanted Lachlan Murdoch to control both Fox Corp and News Corp,” Lynne Vincent, an associate professor of management at Syracuse University’s Whitman School of Management, told Al Jazeera.

“Not surprisingly, that is what is going to happen. Rupert Murdoch is very effective at getting what he wants.”

Vincent said Lachlan Murdoch’s control of the media portfolio would ensure “business as usual” at the outlets.

“From what we know, Lachlan Murdoch’s views and values are very similar to Rupert Murdoch’s,” she said.

“From an organisational perspective, this provides Fox Corp and News Corp with a sense of stability, which might be appealing to some stakeholders.”

The legal fight over Rupert Murdoch’s succession plans erupted in 2023, when the Australian-born mogul sought to change the structure of the family trust to give full control of his companies to Lachlan after his death.

James, Elizabeth and Prudence, who stood to inherit equal control of the companies along with Lachlan, took their father to court to block the bid.

Here is how things stand on Tuesday, September 9:

Fighting

• Russian attacks killed four people and injured 10 in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, Governor Vadym Filashkin said in a post on Telegram on Monday.
• Two people were killed and one person was injured as Russian forces launched 449 strikes on 17 settlements in Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region, Governor Ivan Fedorov said.
• Ukrainian forces launched a “massive” drone attack on Russian-occupied Donetsk, killing two civilians, Russia’s state TASS news agency reported, citing local officials.
• Ukrainian forces recaptured the village of Zarichne in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces reported in a post on Facebook.
• Russian forces attacked a thermal power generation facility in the Kyiv region overnight, causing localised blackouts and gas outages, Ukraine’s Ministry of Energy said.
• Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said it detained a citizen of Azerbaijan, alleging he was working with Ukraine to conduct reconnaissance missions for possible attacks on government buildings in Russia’s cities of Yessentuki and Stavropol.
• The Russian Ministry of Defence said that its forces shot down 195 Ukrainian drones and two aerial bombs in a 24-hour period, TASS reported.

Sanctions

• The European Union’s plan for new sanctions against Russia is being closely coordinated with the United States, EU Council President Antonio Costa said.
• Costa’s remarks came as the EU’s top sanctions official, David O’Sullivan, visited Washington, DC, with a team of experts, to discuss possible coordinated sanctions.
• The Kremlin responded to the EU announcement, saying sanctions would not force Russia to change course in the war.
• “No sanctions will be able to force the Russian Federation to change the consistent position that our president has repeatedly spoken about,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told Kremlin reporter Alexander Yunashev.

Politics and diplomacy

• The Czech Republic will expel a Belarusian diplomat it has accused of espionage, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. “We will not tolerate the abuse of diplomatic cover for secret service activities,” the ministry said in a post on X.
• The Czech counterintelligence service said that, together with Romanian and Hungarian services, it had “broken up a Belarusian intelligence network being built in Europe”.
• A German government spokesperson said that Russia’s “ongoing escalation of the war” on Ukraine shows that Russian President Vladimir Putin “does not want to negotiate”, and the war “can only be stopped by enabling Ukraine to maintain its defence and not allowing Putin to succeed”.

BREAKINGBREAKING,

Nepal has lifted a ban on social media platforms following mass protests and the killing of 19 people in clashes with security forces, a government minister said.

Cabinet spokesman and Minister of Communication and Information Technology Prithvi Subba Gurung said early on Tuesday that the government had rolled back the social media ban imposed last week.

“We have withdrawn the shutdown of the social media. They are working now,” Gurung told the Reuters news agency.

At least 19 people were killed and more than 100 were injured in clashes with Nepalese security forces after thousands of young people took to the streets on Monday to protest against corruption and the government’s ban on social media platforms.

The government had blocked 26 social media sites, including WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube.

Israel and India have signed a bilateral investment agreement to expand mutual trade during far-right Israeli Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich’s trip to the South Asian country, which deepened its ties with Israel under Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The agreement, signed in New Delhi by Smotrich and Indian Minister of Corporate Affairs Nirmala Sitharaman, aims to boost trade and investment flows between the two countries. Sitharaman stressed the need for greater collaboration in “cybersecurity, defence, innovation and high-technology”.

The deal marked “an important strategic step for our joint vision”, said Smotrich, who has been sanctioned by several Western countries for his links to illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.

“The agreement reached today between Israel and India reflects our economic growth, innovation and mutual prosperity,” he wrote on X.

“This agreement will open new opportunities for investors in both countries, strengthen Israeli exports, and provide businesses with the certainty and tools to grow in one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing markets.”

India’s Ministry of Finance described the deal as a “historic milestone”, adding that it will foster cooperation in “fintech innovation, infrastructure development, financial regulation, and digital payment connectivity”.

Bilateral trade stood at $3.9bn in 2024, while current mutual investments are worth about $800m, according to official figures. But the bulk of the trade between the two countries is in the domain of defence and security, with New Delhi being Israel’s largest weapons buyer.

Last year, Indian firms also sold Israel rockets and explosives during Israel’s war on Gaza, an Al Jazeera investigation revealed.

The agreement comes as New Delhi moves closer to Israel, even as Israel faces growing political isolation over its genocidal war on Gaza. India was one of the first countries to reach out to Israel after the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel led by Hamas, condemning it as “an act of terror”.

Indian authorities have cracked down on pro-Palestine protests, even criminalising them in some cases, while allowing pro-Israel rallies.

India still supports the so-called two-state solution for the resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict, but it has abstained from several United Nations resolutions that have been critical of Israeli rights violations against Palestinians.

In 2024, India also abstained from a UN General Assembly vote calling for an “immediate, unconditional and permanent” ceasefire in Gaza.

Indians make up the largest group of foreign students in Israel, while Israeli construction companies have sought permission to hire up to 100,000 Indian workers to replace Palestinians whose permits were revoked after Israel launched its brutal war on Gaza in October 2023.

India has also refused to condemn Israel’s war on Iran, and declined to support the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s (SCO) condemnation of Israeli attacks. But after United States President Donald Trump’s 50 percent tariffs on India, which took effect late last month, New Delhi this month signed an SCO declaration that condemned the US-Israeli bombing of Iran.

India has also moved to mend its ties with rival China, in a setback for years of US policy using New Delhi as a counterweight to Beijing.