US Business

Beyonce leads this year’s pack of Grammy Award nominees with nine chances at gold on music’s biggest night, ahead of rapper Kendrick Lamar coming in at eight, and balladeers Adele and Brandi Carlile scoring seven each.

That sets the stage for a fresh showdown at the February gala between Beyonce and Adele, after the British artist shut out the pop queen’s “Lemonade,” which wowed critics and fans — in the major categories in 2017. 

The nominations, announced on Tuesday, also saw Beyonce move into a tie with her husband, Jay-Z, as the most nominated artists ever with 88 each.

The 65th annual Grammys are slated to take place in Los Angeles on February 5, at what looks set to be the Recording Academy’s most star-studded gala in recent memory.

R&B legend Mary J. Blige won six chances at a prize off her album “Good Morning Gorgeous” — she was tied with rapper Future and DJ Khaled for his album “God Did.”

Pop juggernaut Harry Styles, who has been snubbed in past years by the Academy, will also vie for six awards, including alongside Beyonce, Lamar and Adele for Record and Album of the Year.

Queen Bey’s dance and disco-inflected album “Renaissance” was a boon for songwriters including Terius “The-Dream” Gesteelde-Diamant, who thanks to his work on “Renaissance” also was nominated in six categories.

Recent Grammy regulars Lizzo and Doja Cat also figure among the top nominees.

Taylor Swift, who’s been making good on a vow to re-record her first six albums so she can control the rights to them, garnered recognition in the country categories along with a nod for best music video and another in the prestigious Song of the Year contest for her 10-minute version of “All Too Well.”

And Bad Bunny, indisputably the world’s biggest streaming and touring artist, came away with three nominations for his major drop “Un Verano Sin Ti,” which is in the running for best album.

– OG stars make Grammy splash –

The Academy — made up of music-makers including artists, composers and engineers — also honored a coterie of music’s enduring stars including Bonnie Raitt, Willie Nelson and ABBA with a significant collection of nominations each.

Grammy regulars in the global categories including Angelique Kidjo and Burna Boy also made appearances, while South Korea’s boy band sensation BTS — who earlier this year declared they were taking a hiatus — while vie once again for their first elusive gramophone.

And it wouldn’t be the Grammys without a few surprises: icon Neil Young will compete against stars including Adele, Billie Eilish and Justin Bieber for the award for Best Music Film.

Missile strikes hit cities across Ukraine on Tuesday, plunging seven million homes into darkness just days after a humiliating Russian retreat, prompting a defiant response from President Volodymyr Zelensky.  

Seven million homes were without power following the latest attacks, the presidency said, dampening jubilation over the recapture of Kherson city as world leaders gather at a G20 summit expected to tackle the violence engulfing Ukraine.

Lviv in the west and Kharkiv in the east were also attacked on Tuesday, authorities said, with Lviv’s mayor reporting 80 percent of the city was without power.

Zelensky said in a video statement that Russia had fired 85 missiles at energy facilities across the country.

“We are working, we will restore everything,” he said as areas across Ukraine reported interruptions to power supplies including the western Ternopil region that said 90 percent of users were cut off.

And the Dnipropetrovsk region’s military administration said an energy facility in Kryvyi Rih had been hit, creating a “complicated” situation for the grid.

Moldova, which borders Ukraine, reported power cuts because of the missiles fired at its neighbour and called on Moscow to “stop the destruction now”.

Kyiv’s mayor Vitali Klitschko said at least half of the city’s residents were without power, two residential buildings were hit and “several missiles were shot down… by air defence systems”.

The deputy head of the president’s office Kyrylo Tymoshenko said the missiles had been fired by Russian forces and called the energy situation “critical”.

– ‘Danger has not passed’ –

Tymoshenko shared footage of a blaze at a Soviet-era, five-storey residential building struck by the missile salvoes.

“The danger has not passed. Stay in shelters,” he added in the statement online.

The attacks came after Russia-appointed officials in Nova Kakhovka said they were leaving the important southern city, blaming artillery fire from Kyiv forces, which have reclaimed swathes of the south after Russia left Kherson.

In Kherson city, 41-year-old Olga Genkulova said it had “been five days without water and a week without electricity”. 

“I knew this could happen so I’ve been stocking up on water,” she said packing bottles filled from the Dnipro River.

Ukrainian strikes killed two in a Russian region on the border with Ukraine according to the governor. 

Zelensky said in a video “it is clear what the enemy wants. It will not achieve its goal”.

On Monday he made a surprise visit to the city of Kherson, announcing the retaking of the regional capital marked “the beginning of the end of the war”.

Zelensky told the G20 summit in Bali on Tuesday “now is the time” to end the war, while Washington said the strikes would “deepen the concerns among the G20 about the destabilising impact of Putin’s war”.

White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Russia was again trying to destroy Ukrainian critical infrastructure.

Since September Ukraine forces have been pushing deeper into the south. 

Russia announced last week a full withdrawal from the regional capital of the southern Kherson region, allowing Ukraine to re-enter.

Moscow-installed authorities in Nova Kakhovka said on Telegram that state and municipal employees were relocated to safety.

The Russian-backed officials said that following Moscow’s pull-out from Kherson city, Nova Kakhovka came under “indiscriminate fire” and “life in the city is unsafe”.

They also claimed “thousands of residents” had followed their recommendation to leave to “save themselves”, saying Kyiv’s forces would seek “revenge on collaborators”.

– Key dam at risk –

Nova Kakhovka sits on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, now a natural dividing line between Ukraine’s forces that retook Kherson city on the west side and Russia’s forces on the opposing bank.

It is also home to the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam which was captured in the beginning of the invasion because of its strategic importance supplying the Moscow-annexed Crimean peninsula.

The Russian-controlled dam is a particular focus now after Zelensky accused Russian troops of planning to blow it up to trigger a devastating flood.

Any defects at the dam would cause water supply problems for Crimea, which has been under Russian control since 2014 and which Ukraine hopes to recapture.

Russian forces said last week that a Ukrainian strike had damaged the dam.

The Russian-appointed head of the occupied part of the Kherson region, Vladimir Saldo, said Tuesday the dam was no longer operating.

“The situation is more dangerous — not with electricity generation — but with the dam itself, which, in the event of an explosion, would flood a fairly large area,” he said on state-run television channel Rossiya-24, according to Russian agencies.

The loss of Kherson was the latest in a string of setbacks for the Kremlin, which invaded Ukraine on February 24 hoping for a lightning takeover that would topple the government in days.

NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg nonetheless cautioned that Ukraine was facing difficult months ahead and said that Russia’s military capability should not be underestimated.

Former US president Donald Trump is expected to launch a new White House bid Tuesday, even as a growing number of his hardcore supporters chalked up losses in last week’s midterms.

The 76-year-old billionaire, whose 2016 win shocked America and the world, has summoned the press to his Florida mansion for a “very big announcement” at 9:00 pm Tuesday (0200 GMT Wednesday).

The event comes during a turbulent moment, with Trump’s Republicans licking their wounds after bitter ballot box defeats while also inching towards a likely takeover of the House of Representatives with a razor-thin majority that will be difficult for party leadership to keep in line.

Known for his unpredictability, Trump could still change his mind at the last minute, but for months he has barely hidden his desire to vie for the presidency again in 2024.

And delaying the announcement now, as some of his advisers have reportedly suggested to him, would be awkward considering Trump’s repeated boast about the momentousness of his Tuesday address.

“Hopefully TODAY will turn out to be one of the most important days in the history of our Country!” Trump posted overnight on his Truth Social platform.

An advisor, Jason Miller, said recently that Trump would announce “that he’s running for president.”

– ‘Red wave’ crashes –

But in a new sign that Trump and his hardcore followers do not lead the electoral juggernaut they once did, one of Trump’s staunchest allies, the election denier and establishment skeptic Kari Lake, was projected to lose her race to be governor of Arizona.

The defeat of Lake and other Trumpists in multiple battleground states have emboldened Trump’s Republican detractors — many of whom blame him for the party’s poorer-then-expected midterm showing — and sapped most of his political momentum heading into the expected Tuesday campaign launch.

“This is certainly not the rollout I’m sure Donald Trump wanted for his announcement tonight,” outgoing congresswoman Liz Cheney, a fierce Republican critic of Trump, said during a Washington Post event.

In 2016, Trump and the Republicans swept into power, taking control of the White House and maintaining their majorities in both chambers of Congress.

But Democrats won back the House of Representatives in a 2018 landslide after campaigning largely against Trump’s caustic style.

They completed their trifecta of US political power by taking the Senate and the White House in 2020.

President Joe Biden, whose victory Trump has refused to acknowledge, recently revealed he is planning to run for a second term, although he said he will make a final decision next year.

Trump departed Washington in chaos two weeks after his partisans stormed the US Capitol, but he chose to remain in the political arena, continuing to fundraise and hold rallies around the country.

Leading up to last week’s midterm vote, in which Biden’s Democrats had been expected to lose handily, Trump made denial of the 2020 election results a key litmus test for candidates to win his influential political endorsement.

But the predicted Republican “red wave” failed to materialize, and Democrats will maintain their control of the Senate. 

Trump’s once-loyal wingman, former vice president Mike Pence, offered potent criticism late Monday, telling ABC News that Trump was “reckless” on the day of the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol and that he had told the president they had no authority to unilaterally block certification of the election, as Trump sought.

But Pence declined to say directly whether Trump should be president again. “That’s up to the American people, but I think we’ll have better choices in the future,” he said in the interview.

– Florida showdown –

Part of the conservative world has already turned to another possible White House contender who, like Trump, is a resident of Florida: Governor Ron DeSantis.

The 44-year-old rising star of the hard right has emerged in strong form after his resounding re-election victory in the southeastern state and appears poised to challenge the former president.

Tuesday’s announcement is widely seen as a way for Trump to take the wind out of the sails of potential rivals, including DeSantis and Pence, who is publishing his memoir on the same day.

For the moment, Trump retains an undeniable popularity with his base, despite having been impeached twice by the House.

His White House pursuit will be hampered too by multiple investigations into his conduct before, during and after his first term as president — which could ultimately result in his disqualification.

Those include allegations of fraud by his family business, his role in last year’s US Capitol attack and his handling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, his private Florida mansion, which was searched by the FBI in August.

US wholesale prices continued to rise in October but at a slower pace than in the prior month, according to official data Tuesday which will add to rising hopes that inflation has peaked.

President Joe Biden cheered the news, which came on top of last week’s report showing a slowdown in consumer prices, adding traction to growing expectations the Federal Reserve will be able to dial back its aggressive increases in borrowing costs in the battle against inflation that hit a 40-year high.

The producer price index rose just 0.2 percent compared to September, the Labor Department reported, which was half the pace economists had expected.

And annual PPI slowed to 8.0 percent in October, the data showed, down from 8.5 percent in the prior month.

“There’s more good news for our economy this morning, and more indications that we are starting to see inflation moderate,” Biden said in a statement.

He noted that “food inflation slowed — a welcome sign for families’ grocery bills as we head into the holidays,” and credited his administration’s policies.

“It will take time to get inflation back to normal levels — and we could see setbacks along the way — but we will keep at it,” Biden said.

Food and energy prices, which have soared this year in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, continue to pressure the overall index.

Wholesale energy prices, especially gasoline, were the biggest driver, jumping 2.7 percent in the month and up 21.8 percent compared to October 2021, according to the report.

Food prices have risen 12.7 percent over the past year, and there were big jumps last month in costs for eggs, fresh fruits and vegetables.

The prices of goods excluding volatile food and energy dipped slightly last month, and are up a more modest 6.6 percent over the year.

However, passenger car prices fell, the report said.

Rubeela Farooqi of High Frequency Economics noted the improving trend in inflation pressures.

“Producer prices, while high, are off their peaks,” she said in an analysis. “The improvement in the October inflation data, if it persists, supports the Fed’s expectation of a step down in the pace of increases going forward.”

The Fed has moved aggressively this year to cool the economy and tamp down inflation, hiking the benchmark interest rate six times. But central bankers increasingly have said it will soon be time to slow the pace of those increases.

US retailer Walmart saw its earnings top expectations in the third quarter as consumers looked for bargains amid surging inflation, but its numbers were bogged down after a settlement announced Tuesday relating to opioid cases.

The big-box retailer said it “continued to gain market share” in the grocery segment, raising its full-year outlook on strong results despite a challenging environment this year.

Total revenue came in better than expected at $152.8 billion, up 8.7 percent from a year ago.

Walmart also expects that its full-year adjusted profit will decline between 6.5 percent and 7.5 percent — an improvement from earlier estimates.

But its numbers were bogged down by a settlement resolving allegations that it contributed to the opioid crisis by failing to regulate prescriptions at stores.

The deal is set to provide $3.1 billion to communities nationwide and “require significant improvements in how Walmart’s pharmacies handle opioids,” according to a statement by New York Attorney General Letitia James’s office.

This came as the opioid crisis in the United States — causing more than 500,000 deaths over 20 years — triggered a flurry of lawsuits against drugmakers, distributors and pharmacies.

US pharmacy chains CVS Health and Walgreens similarly announced preliminary agreements this month to pay a total of more than $10 billion to resolve opioid claims.

“Pharmacies such as Walmart played an undeniable role” in perpetuating the harm caused by opioids, said James, adding that the settlement is being sent to other states for review and approval.

In a separate statement, Walmart said it “strongly disputes” the allegations but believes the settlement will help communities in the fight against the crisis.

– Gains in grocery –

“With the cost of everyday items still stubbornly high in too many categories, more customers and members are choosing us for the value and assortment we’re known for,” Walmart Chief Executive Doug McMillon told an earnings call.

Customers are shopping with Walmart more often as well, including wealthier consumers, he said.

“Walmart US continued to gain market share in grocery, helped by unit growth in our food business,” McMillon said in a statement, adding that the company has improved its inventory position.

“When consumer finances get tough, Walmart gets going. That is the central message from today’s strong set of numbers,” said GlobalData managing director Neil Saunders in an analysis.

He noted that most of the company’s expansion is occurring in grocery where shoppers are feeling the pinch.

Although some of this is down to inflation, “there has also been volume growth which reflects the increase in customer numbers.”

With US inflation hovering near a decades-high level, consumers have been spending more on staples and pulling back on discretionary items, forcing Walmart to cut its profit outlook in July.

The company also announced in recent months that it would hire 40,000 workers for the upcoming holiday season, significantly lower than before.

Investors have been eyeing Walmart’s results as a proxy for demand, and Wall Street stocks climbed in morning trading on signs of resilience among consumers.

Missile strikes hit cities across Ukraine on Tuesday and prompted mass power outages, a few days after a humiliating Russian retreat in the nation’s south and in the middle of the G20 summit.

The fresh bombardment, which officials said struck residential buildings in Kyiv, trespassed on days of Ukrainian jubilation over the recapture of the key city of Kherson.

Lviv in the west and Kharkiv in the east were also attacked on Tuesday, authorities said, but there were no immediate information on possible casualties.

Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko announced the attack following reports that air raid sirens were sounding across all Ukraine’s regions, saying at least half of Kyiv’s residents were without power.

“According to preliminary information, two residential buildings were hit in the Pechersk district,” he said adding “several missiles were shot down… by air defence systems.

The deputy head of the president’s office Kyrylo Tymoshenko said the missiles had been fired by Russian forces.

He distributed footage of the apparent scene of the attacks, showing a blaze at a Soviet-era, five-storey residential building.

“The danger has not passed. Stay in shelters,” he added in the statement online.

The atttacks came after Russian appointed officials in Nova Kakhovka said they were exiting the important southern city, blaming artillery fire from Kyiv forces, which have been reclaiming swathes of the south after a Russian retreat.

Their announcement comes one day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the recently liberated regional capital of the Kherson region and announced “the beginning of the end of the war”.

Zelensky told the G20 summit in Bali on Tuesday “now is the time” to end the war.

“I am convinced now is the time when the Russian destructive war must and can be stopped,” he said via video link, according to a speech obtained by AFP. “It will save thousands of lives.”

Ukraine forces since September have been pushing deeper into the south and Russia announced last week a full withdrawal from the regional capital of the southern Kherson region, allowing Ukraine to enter.

“Employees of the state administration of Nova Kakhovka, as well as state and municipal institutions have left the city and were relocated to safe locations in the region,” the Moscow-installed authorities said on Telegram.

The Russian-backed officials said after Moscow’s pull-out from Kherson city, Nova Kakhovka came under “indiscriminate fire” and “life in the city is unsafe.”

They also claimed “thousands of residents” had followed their recommendation to leave to “save themselves”, saying Kyiv’s forces will seek “revenge on collaborators.”

The authorities claimed that this did not mean that the city was “abandoned” and that “crews of municipal workers” were working to ensure the “functioning of energy and water supply systems.”

– Key dam in ‘dangerous’ state –

Nova Kakhovka sits on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, now a natural dividing line between Ukraine’s forces that retook Kherson city on the west side and Russia’s forces on the opposing bank.

It is also home to the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam which was captured in the beginning of the invasion because of its strategic importance supplying the Moscow-annexed Crimean peninsula.

The Russian-controlled dam is a particular focus now after Zelensky accused Russian troops of planning to blow it up to trigger a devastating flood.

Any problem with the dam would cause water supply problems for Crimea, which has been under Russian control since 2014 and which Ukraine hopes to recapture.

Russia forces said last week that a Ukrainian strike had damaged the dam.

The Russian-appointed head of the occupied part of the Kherson region, Vladimir Saldo, said Tuesday the dam was no longer operating.

“Today, the turbines do not produce electricity, and there is no need for this,” he said on state-run television channel Rossiya-24, according to Russian agencies.

“The situation is more dangerous — not with electricity generation — but with the dam itself, which, in the event of an explosion, would flood a fairly large area.”

The loss of Kherson was the latest in a string of setbacks for the Kremlin, which invaded Ukraine on February 24 hoping for a lightning takeover that would topple the government in days.

NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg nonetheless cautioned that Ukraine was facing difficult months ahead and said that Russia’s military capability should not be underestimated.