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With its sale to Skydance Media still beyond its reach, Paramount Global has nominated three new directors to bolster its small board, which has been racked with drama and churn since early last year.

The debt-laden New York-based company currently has only five board members, including controlling shareholder Shari Redstone, who serves as chairwoman. The Redstone family holds nearly 77% of Paramount’s voting shares, giving the heiress tremendous sway.

In a proxy filing Monday, Paramount asked shareholders to elect seven directors at its July 2 annual meeting. The slate includes Redstone and three recruits: attorney Mary Boies (a member of the firm led by her husband David Boies); Silicon Valley venture capital executive Charles E. Ryan ; and former Massachusetts trial court judge Roanne Sragow Licht.

In addition to Redstone, three longtime board members — Linda M. Griego, Susan Schuman and Barbara M. Byrne — will stand for reelection.

Board member Judith A. McHale has decided to step down.

The company has grappled with a series of setbacks since it announced its sale to tech scion David Ellison’s Skydance Media last July.

The company took a $6-billion write-down on its cable television networks business, in yet another sign that Hollywood is reckoning with the ongoing deterioration of the traditional television business.

Leading independent director Charles Phillips left the board in October. His exit came six months after three other directors — Rob Klieger, Nicole Seligman and Dawn Ostroff — abruptly departed as the panel was struggling over terms of Redstone’s planned Paramount sale.

In late October, President Trump filed a lawsuit in Texas over his dismay with edits of a “60 Minutes” interview of then-Vice President Kamala Harris in the closing weeks of the election. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, a Trump appointee, opened an inquiry to determine whether the edits rose to the level of news distortion.

Trump doubled the amount of damages he was seeking to $20 billion.

Paramount has been defending against the lawsuit. In a court filing last week, Trump’s lawyers asserted the president suffered “mental anguish” due to the “60 Minutes” broadcast.

Redstone’s desire to settle Trump’s suit over the “60 Minutes” edits has carved deep divides within the company.

1st Amendment experts have called Trump’s lawsuit frivolous; CBS News executives and other journalists believe it is a shakedown to exploit the vulnerable company that is desperate to have the FCC approve the sale to Skydance.

The ruckus over the edits contributed to the departure of two top CBS News executives. Wendy McMahon, the president of CBS News and Stations, stepped down under pressure last month. In April, “60 Minutes” executive producer Bill Owens departed.

Redstone has expressed her dissatisfaction with CBS News’ coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.

Last month, three Democrat U.S. senators warned Redstone that the company could face allegations of bribery if they write a big check to mollify Trump in an effort to facilitate the FCC’s review of the Skydance takeover. The Wall Street Journal has reported that Paramount offered Trump $15 million to make the lawsuit go away, but he declined.

It’s been nearly 11 months since Paramount agreed to be sold to Skydance in an $8-billion deal that would inject $1.5 billion in capital into Paramount’s battered balance sheet.

Paramount has not revised its guidance on when it expects the deal to close — but the contractual deadline is early October.

As part of its proxy statement, the company again detailed the compensation packages — totaling $148 million to the top three executives and ousted Chief Executive Bob Bakish, who received compensation valued at $87 million. Co-CEO George Cheeks was paid $22.2 million. His counterparts Brian Robbins and Chris McCarthy were paid $19.6 million and $19.5 million, respectively, according to the filing.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte addresses a press conference following an informal meeting foreign ministers of member nations on May 15, 2025. On Monday, he said he expects member nations to agree to spend 5% GDP on defense spending next month in The Hague. Photo by NATO/UPI | License Photo

May 27 (UPI) — NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said that he expects alliance members to agree during next month’s summit to a defense spending target of 5% of gross domestic product.

Rutte made the revelation during the sixth and final day of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in Dayton, Ohio.

“I assume that in The Hague we will agree on a hard defense spend target of 5%,” he said.

“Let’s say that this 5%, but I will not say what is the individual breakup, but it will be considerably north of 3% when it comes to the hard spend and it will be also a target on defense-related spending.”

“We need this, because otherwise we can never, ever, ever reach the capability targets,” he added.

All NATO members have agreed to spend at least 2% of their GDP on defense by 2025, with no country yet reaching the 5% threshold.

NATO spending by member nations has long been an issue of contention for U.S. President Donald Trump, who has called for European nations to pay more, accusing them of relying on Washington for their defense.

Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has been calling for NATO members to increase defense spending to 5%.

Of the 32 NATO nations, Poland spent an alliance-high 4.12% of GDP on defense last year, according to statistics from the security alliance, with Estonia second at 3.43% and the United States third at 3.38%.

Eight countries spent below the 2% GDP on defense last year, with Spain coming in last at 1.28% GDP.

The NATO Summit is to be held in The Hague from June 24-25, where world leaders and defense chiefs of alliance members will congregate to discuss pressing security issues and decide on the alliance’s strategic direction.

Accord aims to prevent repeat of disjointed response and international disarray that surrounded COVID-19 pandemic.

Members of the World Health Organization (WHO) have adopted an agreement intended to improve preparedness for future pandemics, but the absence of the United States casts doubt on the treaty’s effectiveness.

After three years of negotiations, the legally binding pact was adopted by the World Health Assembly in Geneva on Tuesday. WHO member countries welcomed its passing with applause.

The accord aims to prevent a repeat of the disjointed response and international disarray that surrounded the COVID-19 pandemic by improving coordination, surveillance and access to medicines during any future pandemics.

“It’s an historic day,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said after the vote.

The agreement’s text was finalised last month after multiple rounds of tense negotiations.

“The world is safer today thanks to the leadership, collaboration and commitment of our member states to adopt the historic WHO Pandemic Agreement,” Tedros said in a statement.

“The agreement is a victory for public health, science and multilateral action. It will ensure we, collectively, can better protect the world from future pandemic threats. It is also a recognition by the international community that our citizens, societies and economies must not be left vulnerable to again suffer losses like those endured during COVID-19,” he added.

The agreement aims to better detect and combat pandemics by focusing on greater international coordination and surveillance and more equitable access to vaccines and treatments.

The negotiations grew tense amid disagreements between wealthy and developing countries with the latter feeling cut off from access to vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr Esperance Luvindao, Namibia’s health minister and chairwoman of a committee that paved the way for the agreement’s adoption, said COVID-19 inflicted huge costs “on lives, livelihoods and economies”.

“We, as sovereign states, have resolved to join hands as one world together, so we can protect our children, elders, front-line health workers and all others from the next pandemic,” Luvindao added. “It is our duty and responsibility to humanity.”

Effective without US support?

The US, traditionally the WHO’s top donor, was not part of the final stages of the agreement process after the Trump administration announced the US pullout from the WHO and funding for the agency in January.

US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr slammed the WHO as “moribund” during the annual assembly.

“I urge the world’s health ministers and the WHO to take our withdrawal from the organisation as a wake-up call,” he said in a video shown at the meeting in Geneva. “We’ve already been in contact with like-minded countries, and we encourage others to consider joining us.”

Kennedy accused the WHO of failing to learn from the lessons of the pandemic.

“It has doubled down with the pandemic agreement, which will lock in all of the dysfunction of the WHO pandemic response. … We’re not going to participate in that,” he said.

The treaty’s effectiveness will face doubts without the US, which poured billions into ensuring pharmaceutical companies develop COVID-19 vaccines quickly. Countries face no penalties if they ignore it, a common issue in international law.

Countries have until May 2026 to thrash out the details of the agreement’s pathogen access and benefit-sharing (PABS) mechanism.

The PABS mechanism deals with sharing access to pathogens with pandemic potential and then sharing the benefits derived from them, such as vaccines, tests and treatments.

Once the PABS system is finalised, countries can then ratify the agreement. Once 60 do so, the treaty will then enter into force.

When Los Angeles City Council members took up a plan to hike the wages of tourism workers this week, they received some carefully worded advice from city lawyers: Don’t vote on this yet.

Senior Assistant City Atty. Michael J. Dundas advised them on Wednesday — deep into their meeting — that his office had not yet conducted a final legal review of the flurry of last-minute changes they requested earlier in the day.

Dundas recommended that the council delay its vote for two days to comply with the Ralph M. Brown Act, the state’s open meeting law.

“We advise that the posted agenda for today’s meeting provides insufficient notice under the Brown Act for first consideration and adoption of an ordinance to increase the wages and health benefits for hotel and airport workers,” Dundas wrote.

The council pressed ahead anyway, voting 12-3 to increase the minimum wage of those workers to $30 per hour by 2028, despite objections from business groups, hotel owners and airport businesses.

Then, on Friday, the council conducted a do-over vote, taking up the rewritten wage measure at a special noon meeting — one called only the day before. The result was the same, with the measure passing again, 12-3.

Some in the hotel industry questioned why Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who runs the meetings, insisted on moving forward Wednesday, even after the lawyers’ warning.

Jackie Filla, president and chief executive of the Hotel Assn. of Los Angeles, said the decision to proceed Wednesday gave a political boost to Unite Here Local 11, which represents hotel workers. The union had already scheduled an election for Thursday for its members to vote on whether to increase their dues.

By approving the $30 per hour minimum wage on Wednesday, the council gave the union a potent selling point for the proposed dues increase, Filla said.

“It looks like it was in Unite Here’s financial interest to have that timing,” she said.

Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, who opposed the wage increases, was more blunt.

“It was clear that Marqueece intended to be as helpful as possible” to Unite Here Local 11, “even if it meant violating the Brown Act,” she said.

Harris-Dawson spokesperson Rhonda Mitchell declined to say why her boss pushed for a wage vote on Wednesday after receiving the legal advice about the Brown Act. That law requires local governments to take additional public comment if a legislative proposal has changed substantially during a meeting.

Mitchell, in a text message, said Harris-Dawson scheduled the new wage vote for Friday because of a mistake by city lawyers.

“The item was re-agendized because of a clerical error on the City Attorney’s part — and this is the correction,” she said.

Mitchell did not provide details on the error. However, the wording on the two meeting agendas is indeed different.

Wednesday’s agenda called for the council to ask city lawyers to “prepare and present” amendments to the wage laws. Friday’s agenda called for the council to “present and adopt” the proposed changes.

Maria Hernandez, a spokesperson for Unite Here Local 11, said in an email that her union does not control the City Council’s schedule. The union’s vote on higher dues involved not just its L.A. members but also thousands of workers in Orange County and Arizona, Hernandez said.

“The timing of LA City Council votes is not up to us (sadly!) — in fact we were expecting a vote more than a year ago — nor would the precise timing be salient to our members,” she said.

Hernandez said Unite Here Local 11 members voted “overwhelmingly” on Thursday to increase their dues, allowing the union to double the size of its strike fund and pay for “an army of organizers” for the next round of labor talks. She did not disclose the size of the dues increase.

Dundas’ memo, written on behalf of City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto, was submitted late in Wednesday’s deliberations, after council members requested a number of changes to the minimum wage ordinance. At one point, they took a recess so their lawyers could work on the changes.

By the time the lawyers emerged with the new language, Dundas’ memo was pinned to the public bulletin board in the council chamber, where spectators quickly snapped screenshots.