Tag: news

While Tiger King “Joe Exotic” reportedly recovers from a rumored COVID-19 infection while awaiting trial on charges of murder for hire that could land him a lengthy stretch behind bars, a federal judge has granted Carole Baskin and her organizations, Big Car Rescue, control of the imprisoned impresario’s former zoo property in Oklahoma, according to a Courthouse News report.

US District Judge Scott L Palk ruled that the Tampa-based Big Cat Rescue “has sufficiently traced funds to allow for the imposition of a constructive trust” under state law regarding the 16.4-acre Wynnewood property”.

The property was formerly owned by Mr. Joseph Allen Maldonado-Passage – aka “Joe Exotic” – who shot to international stardom following the release of the Netflix doc “Tiger King”.

Of course, those who watched the documentary understand that part of its appeal stemmed from the fact that there were virtually no “good” actors, something the filmmakers did a masterful job of highlighting. After the documentary went live, police in Florida reportedly re-opened an investigation into the death of Baskin’s late ex-husband, amid rumors that Baskin played a role in his disappearance.

The ruling stems from a lawsuit judgment that Baskin won against Exotic during the legal battle that motivated much of the drama chronicled by the documentary.

Part of the 11-page order reads: “Big Cat Rescue’s constructive trust and equitable lien in and to the buildings shall survive any physical or title transfer of the building and shall follow any proceeds, except as to a good faith purchased for value.”

BCR was also awarded possession of several cars and cabins on the property that formerly belonged to “Joe Exotic”.

In 2019, an Oklahoma jury convicted Exotic of hiring a hitman to try and murder Baskin. He was convicted on two counts related to the murder-for-hire plot (which was exposed as a setup by the documentary filmmakers), eight counts related to violating the Lacy Act pertaining to falsifying wildlife records, and of violating the Endangered Species Act.

By Daphne Howland of Retail Drive

As protests against police killings of Black Americans spread worldwide, several brands pledged to join the fight for social justice.

Demonstrations erupted last week in the U.S. following the death of George Floyd, which two autopsy reports Monday listed as a homicide, after a policeman kneeled on his neck for over eight minutes.​ 

In some areas, retail stores were looted and damaged. Target and Nordstrom over the weekend closed locations in order to assess damage and ensure safety, but in statements lamented the deaths of Floyd and other recent victims and emphasized their support for the protestors’ social justice aims.

On Tuesday, Jide Zeitlin, the CEO of Tapestry and interim CEO of its top brand, Coach, went further. “We can replace our windows and handbags, but we cannot bring back George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Emmett Till, and too many others,” he wrote in a highly personal blog post on LinkedIn. “Each of these black lives matter.” (Emphasis Zeitlin’s.)

It wasn’t an easy letter to compose, he also said. “I sat down several times to write this letter, but stopped each time. My eyes welling up with tears. This is personal,” wrote Zeitlin, who is Black. “Over this weekend, over this last week, over a lifetime punctuated by sweltering summers of discontent.”

It is also personal for Marvin Ellison, CEO of home improvement retailer Lowe’s, who posted a public message to his employees. He noted that he “grew up in the segregated south and remember stories my parents shared about living in the Jim Crow South. During this time of Jim Crow, people of color were viewed and considered second class citizens.”

He said the company will provide resources for its leadership and support for communities. “I know many of you may be afraid as you try to determine what to say and what to do during these trying times,” he said, adding, “We need to remember that the best action we can take is to unite in solidarity and show that the legacy of racism and inequality has no place in our company, our hearts or in this world.”

What to say or do is now before many brands, especially those in fashion, according to Shawn Grain Carter, professor of fashion business management at the Fashion Institute of Technology. “Fashion reflects what is happening in the culture at large,” she told Retail Dive in an interview. “If you think about the 60s, fashion reflected the culture at large, and now we’re seeing it again in the 2020s. When you add social media, that reflection happens in a nanosecond, it’s reflected quickly and instantly. Many of these brands see this as an opportunistic way to capitalize on tragedy — but other brands have been consistent. If you don’t align your corporate values with the consumers’ core values, your brand will become nothing but a memory.”

Indeed, several brands took to social media to pledge solidarity with protestors and their dedication to change. Some also pledged donations. To name a few: Gap Inc. said it will give $250,000 to support the NAACP and EmbraceRace; Glossier will give out a total of $500,000 to Black Lives Matter, the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Equal Justice Initiative, the Marsha P. Johnson Institute and We The Protesters, plus another $500,000 in grants to Black-owned beauty businesses; Lululemon said it would give $100,000 to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which is providing bail to arrested protestors; Ulta joined others in pledging financial support but declined to say how much. 

But some brands garnered pushback on social media even so. Carter said that companies like Victoria’s Secret that remained tone deaf on social issues for so long will have trouble getting much respect now. “If you’re not going to be authentic in your messaging and your actions, consumers are very wise and savvy,” she said. “Then you have companies like Nike, who took the decision to hire Colin Kaepernick and allowed him to be the face of Nike, knowing that the NFL blacklisted him. And it resonated with consumers. This is structural discrimination and racism. People are tired of protests, they want results.”​

Nike in 2018 endured boycotts over a campaign featuring Kaepernick, who was blacklisted for kneeling during the pre-game singing of the national anthem to protest police brutality. Over the weekend, the brand posted an ad on Twitter taking back its iconic “just do it” slogan. “For once, don’t do it,” the ad read. “Don’t pretend there’s not a problem in America. Don’t turn your back on racism. Don’t accept innocent lives being taken from us. Don’t make any more excuses. Don’t think this doesn’t affect you. Don’t sit back and be silent.”

Let’s all be part of the change.#UntilWeAllWin pic.twitter.com/guhAG48Wbp

— Nike (@Nike) May 29, 2020

That didn’t help Nike be spared the wrath of the protesters who focused their looting on Nike outlets:

Nike store on Michigan Ave smashed and completely looted pic.twitter.com/IRZc4FuDBO

— Ben Pope (@BenPopeCST) May 31, 2020

I guess ANTIFA and BLM don’t understand that Nike is a supporter of their cause. First target.

— Chuck Woolery (@chuckwoolery) June 2, 2020

Rival sportswear brand Adidas retweeted that with the endorsement, “Together is how we move forward. ⁣Together is how we make change.”

“The beautiful thing about the Adidas retweet is that it really showed the industry coming together and not trying to one-up each other — it was about doing the right thing,” Matt Powell, NPD Group vice president and senior industry advisor of Sports, told Retail Dive in an interview. “Brands have to be careful about their response. They have to make sure that their organizations are as great as they can be. There is an opportunity for businesses to “reevaluate who they want to be,” he said.

Alas, it appears that all this virtue signalling has been lost on the looters.

The Nike Store, Adidas Store, Flight Club, Round 2 and many other stores have all been broken into and looted. This is disgraceful. It really isn’t for George anymore, people are using this as an excuse to loot and destroy there “beloved cities” pic.twitter.com/oI4Lg7pwlw

— hypednewsdaily (@hypednewsdaily) May 31, 2020

Senior editor Ash Bennington hosts managing editor Ed Harrison to delve into whether the pandemonium in the U.S. will ever spread into capital markets. They analyze the historical performance of markets during times of civil unrest and explore whether U.S. equities have “priced in” the possibility that the ongoing mass protests in the U.S. could accelerate the spread of COVID-19. Ed and Ash also discuss the yield curve and retracement levels for the S&P. In the intro, Real Vision’s Nick Correa talks about the 1957 pandemic, the Eisenhower recession, and how they may intersect.

Millions around the world have pondered how the WHO could have possibly been so completely duped by Beijing during the early days of the outbreak in January, when the organization parroted lies about the virus and praised Beijing as a “model” of pandemic response. Prior reports by the Associated Press and other Western media organizations have exposed how Beijing withheld critical information about the virus (including evidence of human-to-human spread) for days while China gobbled up all the PPE and other critical medical supplies. 

On Tuesday, as the US heals from a long weekend of violence and unrest, the AP has published a new report based on the details of a never-before-reported internal call where WHO higher-ups discussed what to do about China’s obstinance, fearing a re-run of SARS. The recording reveals that Beijing didn’t immediately cooperate with the WHO, as the WHO had previously claimed, but instead dragged its feet, much to the consternation of several top officials at the UN-linked NGO.

Not only did the CCP deliberately suppress critical info about the outbreak in Wuhan (identities and other patient-related data), but Beijing also withheld a map of the virus’s genome for roughly a week after researchers finished mapping it, among other transgressions (Remember when the WHO praised China’s decision to swiftly map and share the virus genome as unassailable evidence that Beijing cares about accountability?)

When China finally released the information to the WHO, they apparently only did so because a team of Chinese researchers had shared the information with another third party.

Throughout January, the World Health Organization publicly praised China for what it called a speedy response to the new coronavirus. It repeatedly thanked the Chinese government for sharing the genetic map of the virus “immediately,” and said its work and commitment to transparency were “very impressive, and beyond words.”

But behind the scenes, it was a much different story, one of significant delays by China and considerable frustration among WHO officials over not getting the information they needed to fight the spread of the deadly virus, The Associated Press has found.

Despite the plaudits, China in fact sat on releasing the genetic map, or genome, of the virus for more than a week after three different government labs had fully decoded the information. Tight controls on information and competition within the Chinese public health system were to blame, according to dozens of interviews and internal documents.

Chinese government labs only released the genome after another lab published it ahead of authorities on a virologist website on Jan. 11. Even then, China stalled for at least two weeks more on providing WHO with detailed data on patients and cases, according to recordings of internal meetings held by the U.N. health agency through January — all at a time when the outbreak arguably might have been dramatically slowed.

In fact, the WHO’s congratulatory approach during the early days of the outbreak was part of a strategy to coax more information out of the government in Beijing. During transcripts of the call, American staffers at the WHO (the likely source of these leaks) complained that Beijing was giving them information “15 minutes before it appears on CCTV.”

WHO officials were lauding China in public because they wanted to coax more information out of the government, the recordings obtained by the AP suggest. Privately, they complained in meetings the week of Jan. 6 that China was not sharing enough data to assess how effectively the virus spread between people or what risk it posed to the rest of the world, costing valuable time.

“We’re going on very minimal information,” said American epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove, now WHO’s technical lead for COVID-19, in one internal meeting. “It’s clearly not enough for you to do proper planning.”

“We’re currently at the stage where yes, they’re giving it to us 15 minutes before it appears on CCTV,” said WHO’s top official in China, Dr. Gauden Galea, referring to the state-owned China Central Television, in another meeting.

The story behind the early response to the virus comes at a time when the U.N. health agency is under siege, and has agreed to an independent probe of how the pandemic was handled globally. After repeatedly praising the Chinese response early on, U.S. President Donald Trump has blasted WHO in recent weeks for allegedly colluding with China to hide the extent of the coronavirus crisis. He cut ties with the organization on Friday, jeopardizing the approximately $450 million the U.S. gives every year as WHO’s biggest single donor.

Perhaps the most interesting segment of the AP’s reporting came two seconds before the agency appeared to dismiss the fact that China’s prevarications during the early days of the virus violated international law (it’s okay since the WHO has no enforcement powers).

At one point, the AP insisted, apropos of nothing, that the leaked transcript doesn’t support “either the US or China”, but merely offers a picture of an organization in turmoil. Somehow, we doubt this disclaimer will dissuade Trump and the China hawks in his administration from citing the report as just the latest evidence justifying their suspicions of Beijing.

The new information does not support the narrative of either the U.S. or China, but instead portrays an agency now stuck in the middle that was urgently trying to solicit more data despite limits to its own authority. Although international law obliges countries to report information to WHO that could have an impact on public health, the U.N. agency has no enforcement powers and cannot independently investigate epidemics within countries. Instead, it must rely on the cooperation of member states.

WHO staffers debated how to press China for gene sequences and detailed patient data without angering authorities, worried about losing access and getting Chinese scientists into trouble. Under international law, WHO is required to quickly share information and alerts with member countries about an evolving crisis. Galea noted WHO could not indulge China’s wish to sign off on information before telling other countries because “that is not respectful of our responsibilities.”

After all, while we might not possess any direct evidence that the novel coronavirus leaked from a biolab in Wuhan, it’s now become abundantly cleared that Beijing lied, and people died, and the WHO failed in its mission to safeguard the public health of the most vulnerable nations.