Although he himself is referred to as ‘The Greatest’, Muhammad Ali believed another man trumped him as the best boxer in the history of the sport when it came to the all-time pound-for-pound rankings.
A six-time Ring Magazine Fighter of the Year that was involved in six ‘Fight of the Year’ winners, Ali is deservedly discussed in conversations as to whom the best to ever lace up the gloves.
“That man was beautiful. Timing, speed, reflexes, rhythm, his body, everything was beautiful.
“I’d say I’m the greatest heavyweight of all time, but pound-for-pound, I still say Sugar Ray Robinson was the greatest of all time.”
The ‘pound-for-pound’ term itself was first brought in to give credit to Robinson in the late 1940’s, allowing the legendary Georgia-based phenomenon to be praised as the best fighter on the planet without requiring comparison to how he would fare against the larger heavyweights of his time.
Data center servers, powerful smartphones, and your computer’s motherboard have one thing in common. When these devices get too hot, their performance takes a hit, and we can’t have that. That’s why copper is used to manufacture them: this metal has high thermal conductivity, which means it can efficiently carry heat and dissipate it across its surface.
Now, copper is already pretty good at what it does. With a thermal conductivity of approximately 401 W/mK at room temperature, it’s second only to silver by a wee bit, while being a lot less expensive to procure. But aerospace engineers at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) have discovered a material that blows those two out of the water with nearly thrice the thermal conductivity.
Metallic theta-phase tantalum nitride exhibits an ultrahigh thermal conductivity of 1,100 W/mK, which means it’s way more efficient at transporting heat than copper and silver. Their conductivity is limited by the strong interactions between free-moving electrons and atomic vibrations called phonons.
That name just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? It refers to a specific crystal structure of this metallic compound which has certain properties – similar to how carbon can be found in the form of soft graphite, and also as hard diamond.
A sequence showing how thermal energy, carried by electrons, spreads through theta-phase tantalum nitride after the metallic material is struck by a pulse of light, from 0.1 to 10 picoseconds (seen using ultrafast optical spectroscopy)
H-Lab/UCLA
Using molecular structure analysis techniques like synchrotron-based X-ray scattering and ultrafast optical spectroscopy, the researchers found unusually weak electron-phonon interactions in this specific configuration of tantalum nitride. This allows for super-efficient heat flow through the material with a lot less resistance, vastly exceeding what we see with copper and silver. The findings were published in the journal Science this month.
“As AI technologies advance rapidly, heat-dissipation demands are pushing conventional metals like copper to their performance limits, and the heavy global reliance on copper in chips and AI accelerators is becoming a critical concern,” explained Yongjie Hu, a professor at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering who led the study.
Heat sinks typically made of copper help move heat away from processors as they work, allowing them to operate efficiently
This metallic material could prove to be a desirable alternative to copper in heat sinks – not just for computers and AI hardware, but also for aerospace systems and quantum computers that need to constantly run cool.
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Fire officials warn that the situation is changing rapidly
Firefighters in the Australian state of Victoria are battling at least six major fires as a record-breaking heatwave hits the country’s south-east.
Two fires are currently burning at “emergency level” according to local broadcaster ABC News. Several communities have been issued emergency warnings to either evacuate, watch and wait, or shelter in place.
Fire officials warn that the situation is changing rapidly and have asked locals to stay up to date with the latest warnings.
The Bureau of Meteorology says that parts of the state have seen all-time temperature highs – with one area hitting a high of 48.9C. Melbourne has recorded a temperature of 41C.
Chris Hardman, the chief fire officer at Forest Fire Management Victoria, had told reporters that the state’s heat conditions were making conditions “incredibly difficult” for firefighters.
Two fires – in Camperdown and Otways – are burning at emergency level. A new fire in the Larralea area is also causing “significant concern”.
Country Fire Authority (CFA) chief officer Jason Hefferman told ABC Radio that there was a danger that the Otways fire could produce ember showers “which can create more fires in front of the main fire”.
It is unclear what damage has been caused by the fires, but Australia’s Deputy Incident Controller Alistair Drayton, said he had “anecdotal evidence” that some homes had been lost.
He also praised the “spectacular” work done by firefighters so far.
Apart from Victoria, where there is a total fire ban, South Australia has also been placed under alert for “extreme” fire risk.
Meanhwile health officials have warned that the prolonged heat carries significant health risks.
The elderly, children and people with underlying health conditions are most at risk, Victoria chief health officer Caroline McElnay told reporters.
“It can cause potentially fatal health problems such as heat exhaustion and heat stroke but it can also trigger events like heart attacks or stroke.”
And Australasia has seen an increasing frequency and severity of heat extremes in recent decades, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
South-east Australia also experienced extreme heat in early January, with temperatures surpassing 40C.
A rapid study by scientists at the World Weather Attribution group estimated that the high temperatures across a three-day period were now at least five times more likely as a result of climate change.
While fires occur naturally in Australia, these hot, dry conditions can make it much easier for fires to spread, potentially fuelling larger blazes.
And as the world continues to warm, Australia is expected to see further increases in these “fire weather” conditions, according to the IPCC.
MBW Reacts is a series of analytical commentaries from Music Business Worldwide written in response to major recent entertainment events or news stories. Only MBW+ subscribers have unlimited access to these articles.
Drake thinks a federal judge just created a “dangerous” precedent for the music industry.
The Canadian superstar filed a 117-page appellate brief last week challenging Judge Jeannette Vargas’s October dismissal of his defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group over Kendrick Lamar’s Not Like Us.
Drake originally filed the lawsuit in January 2025, about eight months after Not Like Us was released. He alleged that UMG “intentionally published and promoted” the song, knowing that its lyrical content was false and defamatory.
Judge Vargas ruled that Kendrick Lamar’s diss track “constitutes protected opinion rather than actionable defamation,” finding that the accusations could not reasonably be interpreted as factual given the context of what she called “perhaps the most infamous rap battle in the genre’s history.”
To Drake’s legal team, the judge made fundamental errors that could shield artists from accountability for serious allegations – so long as those allegations appear in a rap diss track.
To UMG? Following the October dismissal, a spokesperson said: “From the outset, this suit was an affront to all artists and their creative expression and never should have seen the light of day.”
We don’t expect you to read through the entire 117 pages of Drake’s appeal (if you wish to, you can read it in full here).
Even so, here are three particularly interesting things that stood out to MBW…
1) Drake argues the judge created a blanket immunity for rap diss tracks – no matter how defamatory
The appeal’s most provocative claim? That Judge Vargas “effectively created an unprecedented and overbroad categorical rule that statements in rap diss tracks can never constitute statements of fact.”
Drake’s lawyers argue this is dangerous precisely because of what the song alleges. The brief states that Not Like Us is “a song that was intended to create the impression and states as an unambiguous matter of fact that Drake is a ‘certified pedophile[]’ and a ‘predator.’”
In other words, Drake’s argument is that if courts decide that anything goes in a rap battle, they’re essentially creating a legal loophole that protects defamation as long as it’s delivered with a beat.
Drake includes over 60 examples of listeners who said they believed the allegations were factual.
The brief also highlights real-world consequences: three days after Not Like Us dropped, armed assailants appeared at Drake’s Toronto home, shooting his security guard who “required emergency life-saving surgery.”
2) The Super Bowl changed everything – but the judge treated it like just another rap battle song
Here’s where Drake’s appeal gets interesting on the facts.
Judge Vargas ruled that Not Like Us must be understood within the context of the entire Drake-Kendrick rap battle. Fair enough – except Drake argues the song transcended that context in unprecedented ways.
For Drake and his legal team, the numbers tell the story: Not Like Us “has been played billions of times” and was performed at “the 2025 Super Bowl halftime show, which at 3.6 billion global views was the most widely watched halftime show in history,” according to the brief.
“Millions who tuned in to the ‘Big Game’ – including young children and people whose religious or cultural beliefs, or simply their taste in music, leave them with no interest in or exposure to rap battles – were unaware of the feud.”
Drake’s appellate brief
By contrast, the next-most-popular song in the feud, Euphoria, had “just 4.1% of the Recording’s streams and views.”
Drake’s lawyers argue the song was repeatedly “republished” to massive new audiences – at the Democratic National Convention, the Grammy Awards, where it won Record of the Year, and that record-breaking Super Bowl performance.
“Millions who tuned in to the ‘Big Game’ – including young children and people whose religious or cultural beliefs, or simply their taste in music, leave them with no interest in or exposure to rap battles – were unaware of the feud and ‘had never before heard the [Recording] or any of the songs that preceded it,’” the filing states.
The judge’s error, according to Drake? Treating every republication as if the entire audience were rap superfans who’d followed every word of the original feud.
3) Drake revives claims that UMG manipulated the song’s success with bots, payola, and “whitelisting”
Of all the allegations in the briefing, this one will get the music industry’s attention – though Judge Vargas dismissed it at the pleading stage.
Drake’s appeal revives his claim that UMG used “deceptive business practices to artificially boost the song’s success,” including:
Radio payola
Bot-generated streams
“Whitelisting” the track on YouTube and Twitch to enable unlimited re-uploads without copyright strikes
Concealed payments to influencers and streaming platforms
The brief alleges that “notwithstanding its knowledge of the falsity of the allegations and the threats to Drake and his family’s safety, UMG waged an unrelenting campaign to spread the Recording as widely as possible.”
Here’s the kicker: both Drake and Kendrick Lamar are signed to UMG (Drake via Republic Records, Lamar via Interscope).
Drake is essentially arguing his own label chose to artificially amplify a song falsely accusing him of criminal behavior, despite knowing it would put him and his family in danger.
Following the dismissal in October, a UMG spokesperson said: “From the outset, this suit was an affront to all artists and their creative expression and never should have seen the light of day. We’re pleased with the court’s dismissal and look forward to continuing our work successfully promoting Drake’s music and investing in his career.”
In May, when the company filed its motion to dismiss, UMG characterized Drake’s allegations as “wild conspiracies” and described the lawsuit as “Drake’s attempt to save face for his unsuccessful rap battle with Lamar.”
A 2.5 mile (4km) section of cliff has collapsed on the Italian island of Sicily, after it was pummelled by wind and rain brought by Storm Harry last week.
More than 1,000 residents have been evacuated from their homes in Niscemi and geological surveys are currently under way to asses the area.
There have been no reports of deaths or injuries, but aerial footage shows numerous buildings and vehicles have been destroyed.
The landslide occurred on Sunday with parts of the cliff continuing to crumble on Monday, according to local media.
Several people have died in a winter storm that hit a wide swathe of the US, causing thousands of flights to be cancelled or delayed due to severe conditions.
The storm, which caused chaos from Texas to the tip of Maine over the weekend, snarled roadways, knocked out power, and buried major cities under a thick blanket of snow.
Some areas in the north-east saw more than 20in (50.8cm) of snow during a 24-hour period, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).
Canadian officials also said the storm had seriously disrupted southern Ontario.
In eastern Canada, snow is expected to continue in the Maritimes region on Tuesday, according to BBC Weather.
Despite the storm easing away from the US, lake-effect snow showers are due to persist around the Great Lakes for the rest of the week.
The coming days will remain very cold in central and eastern region of North America, and the situation is expected to intensify ahead of the weekend, when another significant winter storm could hit the eastern US.
On Monday, more than 6,000 flights into, within or out of the US were cancelled, more than 7,000 were delayed, according to tracking website FlightAware.
The severe weather also had a range of on-the-ground impacts, including in a number of southern US states.
More than half a million users were without power in the early hours of Tuesday, according to PowerOutage.com. The worst-affected state is Tennessee, where the city of Nashville has experienced a deep freeze that plunged residents into cold and darkness.
“There are many trees down and power lines blocking the roads,” Joy Flores, vice president of the Nashville Rescue Mission homeless shelter, told the BBC. Her centre was taking calls from residents who had lost power.
The roads were icy and impossible to navigate, Flores said, and own her home had “no heating, no internet, and no coffee”.
In Texas, a teenage girl died and another was in critical condition due to a sledding accident, the Frisco Police Department announced.
In North Carolina, a man was found dead on the side of a highway in Buncombe County and authorities are investigating whether his death was weather-related.
Louisiana’s department of health said that two people had died due to hypothermia.
Further north, a total of eight people died in New York City between Friday and Monday morning as temperatures plummeted, according to city officials, .
The city’s Central Park had registered 11.4in of snow as of Monday morning.
Other deaths have been reported in Massachusetts, Kansas, Pennsylvania.
As of Monday evening, at least 20 deaths had been linked to the cold temperatures and heavy snowfall, although in some cases officials said it was too early to determine the exact cause.
In Canada, Ottawa and Quebec saw the heaviest impacts from the storm, leading to transport issues and multiple school closures.
Toronto Pearson Airport received 18in of snowfall on Sunday, a new record for the site, according to the CBC.
Relief may not come soon. According to the NWS, the “potential is increasing” for another winter storm beginning on Friday. Such an event could bring very cold temperatures across the eastern US, and “widespread heavy precipitation”.
The US weather agency cautioned that forecasters did not yet know the potential path of the storm or where it would have the most impact.
new video loaded: Remains of Final Israeli Hostage in Gaza Returned to Israel
The Israeli government announced on Monday that Israel’s last captive in Gaza had been returned home and that it will allow the Rafah crossing to reopen within the next few days.
The U.S. sneaker market continues to boom and one British retailer wants a much bigger piece of that pie.
JD Sports Fashion currently has nearly 400 stores in North America bearing its name, with plans to reach 800 by opening new stores and continuing to convert stores from the Finish Line chain it bought a few years ago. The company also owns several other sports apparel chains in the U.S. under different banners. All told, JD’s various chains bring in nearly $6 billion a year stateside, making it one of the largest sports gear retailers in the country.
But that is just a small sliver of the opportunity that JD CEO Régis Schultz sees for the Manchester, England-based retailer. The $24 billion sneaker market now represents about 60% of the U.S. footwear market, double the share from a decade ago, as running shoes replace Oxfords in many offices. And Schultz sees no end to the running shoe boom.
“As soon as you start wearing sneakers, you don’t go back to formal shoes,” he told me in an on-stage interview at the National Retail Federation conference earlier this month in New York.
Since the beginning of the decade, JD has also built its presence in different corners of the U.S. through acquisitions. In 2024, it bought Hibbitt, a large sports retailer focused on the South with stores in smaller retail markets. It has also bought a West Coast chain focused on the Hispanic market called Shoe Palace, and a more urban one called DLTR.
“We see a lot more potential in the U.S.” said Schultz. “We have invested in our stores and they have a lot of energy and theater.”
The group’s most recent results, published a week after the NRF interview, back this emphasis on the U.S. Over the holiday period of November and December, comparable sales in North America rose 1.5%, while falling in the U.K. and continental Europe.
“JD’s brand awareness continues to grow in the US,” Schultz said in a statement published with the financial results, “and, building on this momentum, we have decided to increase our marketing initiatives in North America.”
JD seems to be thriving even as competitors struggle—which could be reason for optimism, but also caution. The travails in recent years of Foot Locker, during which it bled market share and closed hundreds of stores, have created opportunities for JD to step in. But Foot Locker, bought by Dick’s Sporting Goods last year, is now part of a much larger, extremely well-run retailer—and it’s a better-known brand in the US, so there are no guarantees that this market share will remain JD’s for the taking.
To set itself up for success in this competitive market, Schultz has invested in stores, and given employees more training on buying and merchandising the products it sells. “You need to have a point of view,” he said, emphasizing that store buyers should think outside the box to become tastemakers. “Our big wake-up call was that buyers used to be very lazy.”
Schultz recalled Nike CEO Elliott Hill calling him shortly after Hill returned to the company in 2024. “You know the consumer better than we know them,” he recalls Hill saying. “Please give us your insights.” Nike represents more than 40% of JD’s revenue.
For now, Schultz sees JD’s lane in the U.S. as running shoes from top brands such as Nike, Hoka, New Balance, Adidas and On Running, along with some apparel.
“I’ve learned in my career that less is more,” Schultz said. “If you try to do too many things, you end up doing nothing.”
