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Finnish authorities are investigating an oil tanker that is part of Russia’s shadow fleet over whether it cut an electricity cable between Finland and Estonia.

The Eagle S was stopped by Finnish authorities after the Estlink 2 subsea electricity cable in the Gulf of Finland was disconnected on Wednesday. The tanker, which is registered in the Cook Islands and is carrying oil from Russia to Egypt according to ship tracking data, was seen passing over the cable at the time of the incident.

The aged tanker is part of Russia’s shadow fleet and is the focus of Finland’s investigation, according to people familiar with the probe. The Eagle S is also under investigation over whether it cut three communications cables in the Gulf of Finland, the people added.

The shadow fleet is a group of old and often poorly maintained ships used by Russia to circumvent international sanctions on its oil exports.

The Christmas Day incident appears to be the latest in a series of pipelines and cables being targeted in the Baltic Sea by foreign vessels, sparking fears of deliberate attacks on critical infrastructure between Nato countries.

“We must be able to prevent the risks posed by ships belonging to the Russian shadow fleet,” said Finland’s President Alexander Stubb in a post on X after a meeting with security chiefs on Thursday.

Last year a Chinese container ship, the Newnew Polar Bear, cut a gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia but was not stopped by authorities as it was in international waters.

A Chinese bulk carrier, the Yi Peng 3, last month passed over two data cables between Finland and Germany and Sweden and Lithuania about the times they were severed. It stopped for a month in international waters between Denmark and Sweden.

Chinese investigators finally boarded the ship last week, with Swedish, Danish, German and Finnish representatives present as observers. But Sweden’s foreign minister criticised Beijing for not allowing the lead Swedish investigator to board or to inspect the vessel, which has now left the region.

The Eagle S case is different as the ship voluntarily stopped inside Finnish waters, according to people familiar with the investigation, leaving no question as to jurisdiction. Ownership of the Eagle S is murky but it appears to be the only vessel owned by a Dubai company. Attempts to reach the owner on Thursday were unsuccessful. 

Authorities have not determined the cause of the disconnection of the Estlink 2 cable. Estonia has also said it will not affect its electricity supply. The cable is used to export electricity from Finland, which recently brought its latest nuclear power plant online, to Estonia.

Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said the country’s electricity supply would not be affected.

Finnish authorities are keeping an open mind on the latest incident, not least because dozens of poorly maintained vessels in the shadow fleet sail in the Baltic Sea.

Environmental campaigners have issued repeated warnings about the dangers in the region and elsewhere of the dilapidated vessels.

In the Mediterranean, a Russian cargo ship under US sanctions for working with the Russian military sank between Spain and Algeria on Tuesday.

Jan. 1 marks the dawn of a new era for Popeye and Tintin. It’s the day the nonagenarian cartoon characters officially enter the U.S. public domain along with a treasure trove of other iconic works.

The copyrights of thousands of films, songs and books expire in 2025, making them instantly available for people to use, share and adapt. The list includes classics like Virginia Woolf’s book A Room of One’s Own, the Fats Waller song “Ain’t Misbehavin’” and the Marx Brothers’ first feature film, The Cocoanuts.

The main thing they have in common is their age — under U.S. copyright law, their terms all expire after 95 years. All of the works entering the public domain next year are from 1929, except for sound recordings, which (because they are covered by a different law) come from 1924.

“Copyright’s awesome … but the fact that rights eventually expire, that’s a good thing, too, because that’s the wellspring for creativity,” says Jennifer Jenkins, the director of Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, which spends months poring over records to compile the most famous examples.

Once in the public domain, these works become fodder for remakes, spinoffs and other adaptations.

That explains the recent wave of horror films starring Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh, characters that entered the public domain in 2024 and 2023 respectively. The trend seems poised to continue: Jenkins says there are already three Popeye slasher flicks in the works.

“They’re capitalizing on the incongruity of this comic book character in a different genre and they get a lot of buzz,” she adds. “[But] when I sit back and look at the universe of remakes of public domain characters or works … the things that we still talk about that stand the test of time don’t tend to be these buzzworthy, kind of ew, grossed-out features.”

More enduring examples include West Side Story drawn from Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, screen adaptations of Jane Austen’s Emma, Percival Everett’s 2024 book James (a retelling of Huckleberry Finn) and Wicked, the musical-turned-movie prequel to L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz. 

But these artifacts don’t only become fodder for big-name directors and authors — they’re available for anyone who wants to use them, from artists to high school orchestra directors.

Jenkins says she gets “adorable emails” from people who are drawing their own little Winnie the Pooh cartoons, and parents whose kids are talented musicians, eager to finally be able to perform certain compositions publicly and post them online.

In other words, the impact of public domain works extends far beyond the box office and Billboard charts.

“I’m excited about those things that not everybody’s going to notice — people really re-discovering some of these older works and engaging with them and appreciating them and making them their own,” she adds.

Here’s a look at some of the works that are just days away from the public domain:

Characters

A helium-filled Popeye balloon participates in the 33rd Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York in 1959, three decades after his comic strip debut.

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Tintin the brave cub reporter — and his dog, Snowy — will enter the public domain in the U.S. well before they will in the European Union, where they are copyrighted until 2054. That’s because EU copyright terms extend 70 years past creators’ deaths, and Belgian cartoonist Hergé died in 1983.

Closer to home there’s E.C. Segar’s Popeye, who made his debut in a January 1929 Thimble Theatre cartoon strip. He sports his signature pipe, sailor outfit, anchor tattoo and sense of humor, responding when asked if he’s a sailor: “Ja think I’m a cowboy?”

He could have a whole new set of adventures starting in 2025. But there’s a catch: Popeye didn’t start deriving his strength from spinach until 1932.

As Jenkins explains, many cartoon characters develop over time and have been in copyrighted works year after year, meaning certain aspects of them may come into the public domain in different years. So only the original 1929 versions of Popeye and Tintin are fair game, at least for now.

“Definitely the Popeye from 1929 and everything that he says, all of his characteristics, his personality, his sarcasm … that’s public domain,” she says. “The spinach, if you want to be on the safe side, you might want to wait.”

Films

The Wild Party, Clara Bow’s first talkie, was released in 1929, making it public domain in 2025.

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Similarly, the original Steamboat Willie version of Mickey Mouse arrived in the public domain with much fanfare in 2024. In 2025, a dozen more Mickey animations will follow suit — including The Karnival Kid, in which he speaks for the first time.

“His very first words are ‘Hot dogs! Hot dogs!’ — so I guess that’s kind of cute,” Jenkins says. “And then he didn’t wear the white gloves in 1928, but next year, in 2025, we get the version of Mickey Mouse with the signature white gloves in the public domain.”

Sound is a big theme across the films making their public domain debut next year, since 1929 marked the end of the silent film era and the dawn of the sound film age.

The list includes the first sound films from major directors like Alfred Hitchcock (Blackmail), John Ford (The Black Watch) and Cecil B. DeMille (Dynamite), as well as Clara Bow’s first talkie, The Wild Party, and The Broadway Melody, the first sound film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture.

Other notables include Walt Disney’s The Skeleton Dance (the first of the Silly Symphony shorts); King Vidor’s Hallelujah, the first major studio film with an all-Black cast; and Alan Crosland’s On With the Show, the first all-talking, all-color, feature-length film.

Books

From left: Ernest Hemingway in 1950, William Faulkner in 1950, and John Steinbeck in 1962.

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Among the many literary works entering the public domain next year are two of the most acclaimed books about World War I: Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, and the first English translation of Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front — both authors served in the war themselves.

The list includes several detective mysteries: Red Harvest and The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett, Ellery Queen’s The Roman Hat Mystery, and Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie.

There are also some literary debuts, including John Steinbeck’s first novel, Cup of Gold, and Richard Hughes’ first novel A High Wind in Jamaica.

Musical compositions

George Gershwin’s “An American in Paris” is among the musical compositions entering the public domain in 2025.

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The latest crop of compositions spans the era’s jazz standards, show tunes, pop music and more.

They include: Arthur Freed’s Singin’ in the Rain (which was featured in the film The Hollywood Revue of 1929, also entering public domain), George Gershwin’s An American in Paris, Maurice Ravel’s Bolero, Jack Yellen’s Happy Days Are Here Again (the campaign song for FDR’s 1932 presidential run), Cole Porter’s What Is This Thing Called Love? and Tiptoe Through the Tulips (the Joseph Burke version, not the 1968 Tiny Tim one).

“But if you felt like singing like Tiny Tim for some reason, and you could, you can record your own version of Tiptoe Through the Tulips next year because that song’s going to be public domain,” Jenkins says.

The Center for the Study of Public Domain specifies that musical compositions refer to “the music and lyrics that you might see on a piece of sheet music, not the recordings of those songs.” Those are covered by a separate copyright.

Sound recordings

Marian Anderson became the first Black singer to perform at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York in 1955. One of her early recordings from 1924 will enter the public domain next year.

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Under the 2018 Music Modernization Act, sound recordings are protected by copyright for 100 years. It’s the particular recordings that eventually enter the public domain, not the song’s music or lyrics or later recordings from those artists.

These are some of the 1924 performances that will become available for legal reuse in January: Marian Anderson’s “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen,” George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” Jelly Roll Morton’s “Shreveport Stomp,” “Deep Blue Sea Blues” by Clara Smith, and “Everybody Loves My Baby (But My Baby Don’t Love Nobody But Me)” recorded by Louis Armstrong and Clarence Williams’ Blue Five.

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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

An Azerbaijan Airlines plane carrying 62 passengers and five crew has crashed while making an emergency landing at a Kazakhstan airport, with 29 survivors, including two children, taken to hospital.

Videos on local media showed a large explosion after the aircraft crashed into an empty field. Images from the scene showed passengers climbing out of the tail of the fuselage aided by emergency workers.

Those aboard were from Azerbaijan, Russia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, Russian state Ria news agency reported, citing Kazakhstan’s transport ministry.

Local media outlets reported that nine of those taken to hospital were in serious condition and that search and rescue operations were under way.

The plane, an Embraer 190, was travelling to Grozny in the southern Russian republic of Chechnya from Azerbaijan’s capital Baku, but was diverted to Aktau after flying into heavy fog.

Early media reports suggested that the plane hit a flock of birds, which affected control of the aircraft.

“After a collision with birds, due to an emergency situation on board the aircraft, its commander decided to go to an alternate airfield and Aktau was chosen,” Ria reported, citing Russia’s aviation agency Rosaviatsia. Local media also shared unconfirmed reports of an explosion of an oxygen canister onboard, leading many passengers to lose consciousness.

Baku has sent an official delegation to Kazakhstan to investigate the incident, Azerbaijan’s APA news agency said. The country’s president, Ilham Aliyev, left an informal summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States in Russia to return to Baku. He expressed his condolences to the those affected by the crash.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russian President Vladimir Putin had also extended his condolences to Azerbaijan’s leader.

Chechnya’s leader Ramzan Kadyrov expressed his condolences to the relatives of the deceased on social media. “We pray to the Almighty for [the survivors’] recovery.”

Photos on social media showed relatives gathering in Grozny airport to wait for news of their loved ones.

One man at Grozny airport said he had just received a video in which he could see his nephew had survived the crash. “Of course I am very happy,” he told a Ria news reporter.