Nathan’s Famous, which opened as a 5-cent hot dog stand in Coney Island more than a century ago, has been sold to packaged meat giant Smithfield Foods in an all-cash $450 million deal, the companies announced Wednesday.

Smithfield, which has held rights to produce and sell Nathan’s products in the U.S. and Canada and at Sam’s Clubs in Mexico since 2014, will acquire all of Nathan’s outstanding shares for $102 each.

Like almost every food company, Nathan’s has been under significant inflationary pressure. Nathan’s sales costs of branded products rose 27% compared with last year in its most recent quarter, the company said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. There was a 20% increase in the average cost per pound of hot dogs, it said.

Nathan Handwerker opened the first Nathan’s hot dog stand on Coney Island in 1916 with a $300 loan, according to the company. After opening a handful of other locations around New York over the years, the Handwerker family sold the Nathan’s Famous business to investors in 1987. The franchise has continued to expand.

Nathan’s has an outsized cultural presence in the U.S. both because of its history and the famous, or infamous, hot dog-eating contest held at its flagship Coney Island shop, where contestants from around the world gather every July 4 to see who can down the most hot dogs in 10 minutes.

The restaurant sits on same lot where Handwerker opened his first hot dog stand.

American Joey Chestnut is the reigning Nathan’s hot dog-eating champion after eating 70.5 hot dogs and buns last year. Chestnut has won 17 of the last 19 events, setting a record in 2021 after wolfing down 76 hot dogs and buns.

While the first recorded hot dog-eating contest was held in 1972, Nathan’s says informal contests began the year the stand opened early in the 20th century. It says the 2025 contest was its 103rd.

Smithfield said Wednesday that the event, which has been televised on ESPN with a crowd estimated at 30,000 at Coney Island each year, will continue.

Smithfield said it expects to achieve annual savings of about $9 million within two years of closing the deal.

“As a long-time partner, Smithfield has demonstrated an outstanding commitment to investing in and growing our brand while maintaining the utmost quality and customer service standards,” said Nathan’s CEO Eric Gatoff.

Nathan’s board of directors, which own or control nearly 30% of the outstanding shares of Nathan’s Famous common stock, approved the buyout and agreed to recommend to its shareholders to vote in favor of the deal.

Smithfield, which also owns the Gwaltney bacon and Armour frozen meat brands, rang up more than a billion dollars in operating profit in 2024 on sales of $14.1 billion.

Smithfield shares were unchanged in midday trading Wednesday at $23.39.

In fiscal 2025, Nathan’s reported profit of $24 million on revenue approaching $150 million. It’s acquisition is expected to close in the first half of this year.

U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said on Wednesday it has begun moving ISIS detainees from northeastern Syria to Iraqi-controlled facilities as part of a broader effort to prevent the terror group’s resurgence and maintain long-term security in the region.

CENTCOM said U.S. forces transported 150 ISIS fighters who were being held at a detention facility in Hasakah, Syria, to a secure location in Iraq, with up to 7,000 detainees potentially slated for transfer.

“We are closely coordinating with regional partners, including the Iraqi government, and we sincerely appreciate their role in ensuring the enduring defeat of ISIS,” said Adm. Brad Cooper, CENTCOM commander. “Facilitating the orderly and secure transfer of ISIS detainees is critical to preventing a breakout that would pose a direct threat to the United States and regional security.”

US LAUNCHES WAVE OF STRIKES IN SOMALIA TARGETING ISIS, AL-SHABAB TERROR THREATS

The announcement comes one day after Tom Barrack, U.S. ambassador to Turkey and special envoy for Syria, said Damascus is prepared to assume security responsibilities, including control of ISIS detention facilities and camps.

The State Department said in a 2025 report to Congress that roughly 8,400 ISIS-affiliated detainees from more than 70 countries are being held in detention facilities run by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the largest of which is the al-Hol camp.

Barrack helped broker a fragile four-day ceasefire agreement Tuesday between the new interim Syrian government, led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, and the Kurdish-led SDF, after escalating clashes threatened to spiral further.

The U.S. official said the Trump administration does not seek a long-term military presence in Syria, emphasizing the need instead for a continued focus on defeating remaining ISIS elements.

“The deal integrates SDF fighters into the national military (as individuals, which remains among the most contentious issues), hand over key infrastructure (oil fields, dams, border crossings), and cede control of ISIS prisons and camps to Damascus,” Barrack wrote on X.

“This creates a unique window for the Kurds: integration into the new Syrian state offers full citizenship rights (including for those previously stateless), recognition as an integral part of Syria, constitutional protections for Kurdish language and culture (e.g., teaching in Kurdish, celebrating Nawruz as a national holiday), and participation in governance—far beyond the semi-autonomy the SDF held amid civil war chaos,” he added.

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Syria’s Ministry of Interior said Monday that security forces had recaptured 81 of the 120 ISIS prisoners who escaped from the al-Shaddadi prison in the Hasakah countryside and were continuing efforts to track down the remaining escapees.

The interim government and the SDF have since traded blame over responsibility for the escape, which occurred amid heightened tensions over security arrangements in the region.

From repeating his long-running claim regarding ending eight wars, to evoking World War II history to stake his claim on Greenland, US President Donald Trump made a series of bold statements during his Wednesday speech in Davos.

The Cube, Euronews’ fact-checking team, has looked at some of his assertions to determine their accuracy.

NATO has ‘never done anything’ for the US

Trump repeatedly criticised NATO and its members for not pulling their weight in his speech, complaining that the US gets very little compared to what it gets back, casting doubt on whether the alliance would support his country in an attack.

“We’ve never got anything out of NATO,” the president said, adding later: “We’ve never asked for anything, it’s always a one-way street.”

“We’ll be there 100% for NATO, but I’m not sure they’ll be there for us,” Trump added.

However, the US is the only country to have ever invoked NATO’s Article 5 common defence measure, triggering an obligation for each country to come to its assistance. It did so in the aftermath of the 11 September attacks in 2001.

According to NATO, the alliance assisted the USin various ways, including enhancing intelligence sharing, providing increased security to US facilities, and launching its first-ever anti-terror operation — Operation Eagle Assist — between October 2001 and May 2002.

Trump also asserted that the US was paying “virtually 100%” of NATO’s budget before he entered office, but that’s not true either.

If he was referring to NATO’s common budget, then according to thealliance’s figures, the US was contributing some 15.9% to its funds between 2024 and 2025, alongside Germany. This included its civil budget, military budget and security investment programme.

The number has dropped to just under 15% for 2026-2027, again alongside Germany. The next biggest contributors are the UK (10.3%), France (10.1%) and Italy (8%).

It’s possible that Trump was referring to NATO members’ defence spending, which he criticised at several points during his speech, too, but it’s still wrong to say the US was ever contributing 100% to the alliance’s defence.

Back in 2016, the last year before Trump took office the first time around, US defence spending was in the clear majority (71%) of the total by all NATO members, but that’s not close to 100%.

Since then, it’s fallen to a figure estimated to be around 66%.

These numbers are not to be confused with members’ defence spending as a percentage of their GDP, which was originally set at a 2% target. It has since been increased to 5% by 2035 (excluding Spain), after Trump criticised that not enough countries were meeting the original number.

Recent figures put Polandat the topwith 4.48%, followed by Lithuania (4%) and Latvia (3.73%). The US is in sixth place at 3.22%.

Are Germany’s electricity prices 64% higher than 2017?

During his speech, Trump attacked European countries’ energy policies and claimed that Germany’s electricity prices are 64% higher now than they were in 2017.

“Germany generates 22% less electricity than it did in 2017. And it’s not the current Chancellor’s fault, he is solving the problem, he is going to do a great job. But what they did before him, I guess that’s why he got there. The electricity prices are 64% higher,” he said.

It’s not clear where Trump is getting his data from, and whether he is counting electricity prices for households or for non-households. It is true that Germany has generated less electricity in recent years since 2017, and that renewables account for a much larger share of the country’s total energy generation, a shift that has grown steadily over decades.

An initial look at data from the German Association of Energy and Water Industries, which represents around 2,000 energy and water companies in Germany, shows that household electricity cost 30,36 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2017 on average. In 2025, the average price was around 39.28 cents per kWh.

That represents an increase of around 29%, not 64%.

Data from Germany’s Federal Statistics Office and Eurostat depict a similar picture. According to it, households in Germany paid an average of 30.4 cents per kWh in 2017 and 39.92 cents in the first half of 2025 — an increase of around 31%.

Elsewhere, Trump blamed the renewable energy policies of left-leaning governments for “extremely high prices” and what he called the “New Green Scam”.

“There are windmills over the place, and they are losers,” he told the crowd.

Overall, Germany’s electricity prices have increased. They spiked particularly in 2022 and 2023 in what experts say was an increase directly linked to the collapse of gas supplies over Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022.

Renewable energy has added long-term system and grid costs to electricity bills, but it was not the main driver of Germany’s electricity price spike during this period.

Trump also said of the UK that it “produces just 1/3 of the total energy from all sources that it did in 1999. Think of that 1/3. And they’re sitting on top of the North Sea — one of the greatest reserves anywhere in the world, but they don’t use it.”

UK government data shows that energy production in 2023 is down 66% from 1999, when “UK production peaked”, so roughly by one-third.

According to it, oil and gas production from the North Sea, a major source of energy for the UK for decades, has declined naturally as “most accessible oil and gas has already been extracted”, making Trump’s claim that the UK “doesn’t use” its North Sea reserves misleading.

Recently, there has been an uptick in rhetoric, particularly from the Conservative Party, that the UK should push for more oil and oil production in the North Sea.

Fixing eight wars

During his address, Trump reiterated his claim that he has ended eight wars since commencing his second Presidential term in January 2025.

He has previously listed these conflicts as: Israel and Hamas, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia, India and Pakistan, Serbia and Kosovo, Rwanda and Congo, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and Cambodia and Thailand.

Although Trump has played a part in mediation efforts in a number of these conflicts, his impact is not as clear-cut as he alleges. Although he is credited with ending the 12-day war between Israel and Iran, this can be seen as a temporary respite from an ongoing cold war.

Fresh fighting broke out between Cambodia and Thailand in December. Although a peace agreement between Congolese forces and Rwanda-backed rebels was brokered by the Trump administration, fighting has continued, and M23 — the Rwandan-backed rebel group in the eastern DRC — was not party to the agreement.

Although the US announced the launch of the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire plan in mid-January, the next steps in this process remain shrouded in uncertainty. Many of the points in the first phase of Trump’s 20-point plan have not materialised.

Friction between Egypt and Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is best described as heightened tension, not war. There has been no threat of war between Serbia and Kosovo during Trump’s second term, nor has he made any significant contribution to improving relations in his first year back in the White House.

And while the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan signed a deal aimed at ending a decades-long conflict at the White House in August, they have yet to sign a peace treaty, and their parliaments would still need to ratify it.

The US ‘returned’ Denmark to Greenland

Donald Trump repeatedly claimed during his speech that the United States had returned Greenland to Denmark after World War Two.

“We already had it as a trustee, but respectfully returned it back to Denmark not long ago,” the former president said.

In reality, while the US assumed responsibility for Greenland’s defence during the war, this did not affect Denmark’s sovereignty over the island.

After the conflict, Denmark was required to list Greenland with the United Nations as a “non-self-governing territory”, effectively acknowledging its colonial status.

The US has sought to purchase Greenland on several occasions over the past century. Most notably, in 1946, President Harry Truman offered Denmark $100 million in gold, an offer Copenhagen rejected.

Under a 1951 defence agreement, Washington formally recognised the “sovereignty of the Kingdom of Denmark over Greenland”.

In 2004, the US also acknowledged Greenland’s status as an equal part of the Danish kingdom, following changes to the territory’s constitutional position.