Month: December 2025

• Alicia Keys says her kids help her recognize and heal her own emotional triggers.
• While parents often project worries onto kids, the singer said it’s crucial to know when to step back.
• “I think that’s why they’re the most beautiful teachers because they bring to light what we have to see in ourselves,” she said.

Alicia Keys, 44, says having kids has taught her some lessons about herself.

During an appearance on Sunday’s episode of “The Drew Barrymore Show,” Keys spoke about being a mother and how it has made her more introspective.

When host Drew Barrymore said that she’s the type to “care myself to death” when it comes to parenting and asked Keys for advice, Keys said the goal is to embrace the experience.

“You have your instinct, and you know what you feel. And I think we also do have to learn how to separate ourselves from them, because I think that’s a big point that you’re bringing up,” Keys told Barrymore.

The “Empire State of Mind” singer and her husband, Swizz Beatz, have a blended family of five kids, three of whom are from his previous relationships.

While it might be common for parents to project their worries onto their kids, Keys said it’s important to recognize when to step back.

“Like, naturally, we do have our own triggers, and we do have our own histories and things that we’re working through,” Keys said. “And so knowing that they’re so pure, you know, knowing that they are a clean slate and a pureness, we can almost take a step and say, ‘Hold on, that’s mine. That’s not theirs. Let me just take a breather.'”

The singer added that it might be a “beautiful way” for parents to become conscious of unresolved issues they’re personally working through.

“It’s just like these things, they bring up things in you, and you’re like, ‘Ah, wait a minute. Is that me, though? It’s probably me,'” Keys said.

“I think that’s why they’re the most beautiful teachers because they bring to light what we have to see in ourselves,” she added.

Speaking to Bustle in 2021, Keys said that becoming a mother is “the reason I came into myself.”

“I know for sure that prior to it, I still didn’t know myself. I still didn’t understand my own worth and importance,” she said.

That same introspection is something she also tries to pass on to her kids.

In 2024, Keys told People that she encourages her kids to share their thoughts and trust their own intuition.

“If you don’t know what you think or what you feel, it’s going to be hard for you. I feel like I’ve spent a lot of time not fully understanding or not trusting what I felt, and so I want to teach them to trust their instincts.”

• Ukraine’s interceptor drones are countering Russia’s new jet-powered Geran-3 attack drones.
• Russia has deployed 138 Geran-3 drones, which are faster and more advanced than Geran-2 models.
• Ukrainian developers are rapidly adapting drone technology to meet evolving Russian drone threats.

Russia’s new high-speed attack drones are increasingly appearing on the battlefield, but Ukrainians said they’ve already destroyed some with cheap interceptors.

Serhii Sternenko, the leader of a volunteer organization specializing in donating drones to Ukrainian units, said on Sunday that the Sting — a locally built interceptor drone — successfully destroyed several jet-powered attack drones.

“A bit of a historic achievement,” wrote Sternenko in his Telegram channel. He published a photo that appears to show the back of a jet-powered Geran-3 in the sky, indicating that the footage was captured by an aircraft fast enough to catch the Russian drone.

The announcement is another sign of how Ukraine is finding ways to fight the growing threat of jet-powered strikes, amid concerns that Russia’s new drones are too fast to be reliably destroyed through inexpensive means.

On Sunday, Ukraine’s General Staff said in a description of a monthly briefing for officials that Russia had already deployed 138 of the new uncrewed aerial systems.

This turbojet drone is the Geran-3, Russia’s domestic version of the Iranian Shahed-238 long-range loitering munition. With an estimated top speed of 230 mph, the Geran-3 flies much more swiftly than its propeller-driven predecessor, which the Kremlin has been using to hammer Ukraine in large waves over the past year.

The Geran-2, modeled after the Shahed-136, flies at around 115 mph and is now the foundation of Moscow’s bombardment strategy.

Russia regularly accumulates these mass-produced drones to send in large waves over the border, pairing them with hundreds of decoys to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses. Kyiv officials have said Geran-2s can cost as little as $20,000 each.

A challenge for new interceptors

In response, Ukrainians are developing interceptor drones, or small first-person-view drones modified to fly at high speeds, as a low-cost way of countering the Geran-2. Each one typically costs between $2,000 and $6,000, and they’re now considered a crucial part of Ukraine’s air defense system, working in tandem with machine gun crews and a range of other interceptors.

The Sting, the interceptor mentioned by Sternenko, is one such drone that is frequently deployed. It was developed by the Ukrainian company Wild Hornets to fly at roughly 215 mph with four rotors.

Sporadic appearances of the Geran-3 over the last year, however, sparked fears that these interceptor drones would be too slow to catch waves of jet-powered Shaheds.

If that becomes the case, the war would resurface Ukraine’s key struggle in defending against such large-scale air attacks: cost. The country is already strapped for resources and cannot afford to use traditional expensive missiles to take down cheap Russian drones.

The General Staff’s latest briefing said Ukraine had destroyed most of the 138 Geran-3s used by Russia lately, but it’s unclear through what means.

Senior Ukrainian officials told Business Insider’s Jake Epstein last month that Russia is experimenting with the Geran-3 to test and probe Ukraine’s defenses.

But they also said that Moscow has deployed the new drones in limited numbers. That would indicate that Russia has yet to move into mass production on the scale it has reached with the Geran-2.

The Geran-3 is significantly more advanced than the Geran-2, of which Russia produces thousands each month, with newer features such as a satellite navigation system that enhances resistance to electronic warfare.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian drone developers previously told Business Insider that they’ve been preparing for the possibility of the Geran-3 taking over the skies.

The deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Pavlo Palisa, said in September that Kyiv had already developed drones “capable of fighting the Shaheds with jet engines.” However, he did not disclose details about these new interceptors.