Month: June 2023

Bird founder Travis VanderZanden officially leaves the nest

Bird founder Travis VanderZanden officially leaves the nest

Travis VanderZanden’s slow-motion departure from Bird is now complete. The scooter rental company announced in a late-Friday news dump that the executive has stepped down from his role as chairman of Bird’s board, “effective immediately.” Replacing VanderZanden is John Bitove, who played a role in saving Bird’s bacon last year via its merger with Bird Canada. VanderZanden had led Bird from its inception as the company’s president and founding CEO, but that all changed last year when Bird’s declining stock price culminated in a delisting warning from the New York Stock Exchange. Soon after, VanderZanden stepped down from his role as president, handing over the title to Bird’s then-chief operating officer Shane Torchiana. Torchiana went on to assume the CEO post as well several months later. At the time, VanderZanden called the reorg a “long-planned transition.” According to Bird, VanderZanden “decided to step down [from the board] to pursue other ventures.” In a similarly vague yet intriguing statement, VanderZanden added that he intends to return to his “entrepreneurial roots and incubate some new ideas.” TechCrunch has …

Fears for people and firms as China’s new anti-espionage law comes into effect | China

A revised law dramatically expanding China’s definition of espionage has come into force, giving Beijing even more power to punish what it deems threats to national security. The US government, analysts, and lawyers say that the revisions to Beijing’s anti-espionage law are vague and will give authorities more leeway in implementing already opaque national security legislation. The US National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC) said the law, which came into effect on Saturday, gives Beijing “expanded legal grounds for accessing and controlling data held by US firms in China”. The NCSC said the new law is ambiguous on what fits its definition of national security secrets, but believes Beijing’s view could include information companies use as a normal part of their business. US companies and individuals could “face penalties for traditional business activities” if Chinese authorities label them espionage or says they are assisting foreign sanctions on China, the NCSC said in an advisory notice. Originally released for public comment in December 2022, the revisions were formally approved by China’s top legislative body in April. …

Joe Biden lays out new student debt relief plan after supreme court ruling | Joe Biden

Joe Biden vowed the “fight was not over” on Friday after the US supreme court ruled against his landmark student debt forgiveness plan. “I think the court misinterpreted the constitution,” the president said, delivering remarks at the White House and announcing his intention to pivot to another law to find another path forward. The 6-3 decision from the court dealt a blow to an estimated 40 million borrowers who had hoped the $430bn plan would allow the 2003 Heroes Act to help curb the ongoing costs of their education. The law gave the secretary of education authority to make changes to any provision of applicable student aid program laws in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001. Biden said 16 million people had already been approved for the program, which would have given them $10,000 to $20,000 in relief. “More homes would’ve been bought, more businesses would’ve been started,” he said. Biden promised to now turn to the Higher Education Act of 1965 to restore student debt relief. He also plans to …

Jeremy Clarkson’s Sun article on Meghan was sexist, says press regulator | Ipso

Jeremy Clarkson discriminated against the Duchess of Sussex when he used an article in the Sun to describe his “hatred” of her with a series of sexist tropes, a press regulator has ruled. Clarkson used his national newspaper column to describe how he hated Meghan on a “cellular level” and suggested she had used “vivid bedroom promises” to transform Prince Harry into a “warrior of woke”. He said he disliked the duchess more than the serial killer Rose West and dreamed of the day “when she is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowds chant ‘shame!’ and throw lumps of excrement at her”. The Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) concluded that, taken collectively, these references discriminated against Meghan as a woman. It ordered the Sun to publish a front-page statement explaining out how its star columnist breached anti-discrimination rules, which will run in Saturday’s print edition and on its website. Clarkson’s piece attracted more than 25,000 complaints from members of the public when it was published last …

Andrew Neil show is latest victim of Channel 4 cuts | Channel 4

Andrew Neil’s Sunday night political show has become the latest victim of cuts at Channel 4 The veteran broadcaster moved to the channel last year following his departure from GB News and received plaudits for his eponymous half-hour weekly Sunday evening programme. However, the Guardian has learned that the show will not be returning this year and Neil and the broadcaster have not yet decided if it will be back in 2024. There have so far been three series of The Andrew Neil Show, starting in May last year and finishing this April. Channel 4 has axed or paused a number of shows recently due to a slump in advertising, which it relies on to generate money to commission shows. Casualties include a reboot of reality series Four Weddings, hairdressing show The Big Blowout and Rescue: Extreme Medics. Channel 4 has also held off on other programmes in order to save money, such as a planned daytime series of Kirstie Allsopp’s one-off festive special Kirstie’s Handmade Christmas. However, with a general election looming next year, …

New Zealand falls out of love with sheep farming as lucrative pine forests spread | New Zealand

Across one of the ridgelines of High Peak station, a line of sheep is on the move: gradual at first, and then in a heaving rush, an avalanche of dirty white wool heading into the valley. They flow around Hamish Guild like an eddy. He looks across the valley, to where a slope of grassland splits in half, a velvety black expanse of pine forest sweeping over the hill. “We’ve made a decision as a family, we’ll hold on as long as we can,” says Guild, a second-generation sheep farmer whose family has occupied this land outside Christchurch since the 1970s. “Ultimately, if we’re an oasis in a sea of forestry, that probably gives us a distinctive, compelling selling point,” he says, and laughs. “We might become a museum: this is how we used to farm in New Zealand in the 2020s.” These sweeping high country sheep stations, thatched by golden tussock, are at the centre of New Zealand’s international image. For almost a century, lamb, mutton and wool were New Zealand’s largest source of …

Supreme court leaves intact Mississippi law disenfranchising Black voters | US supreme court

The US supreme court turned away a case on Friday challenging Mississippi’s rules around voting rights for people with felony convictions, leaving intact a policy implemented more than a century ago with the explicit goal of preventing Black people from voting. Those convicted of any one of 23 specific felonies in Mississippi permanently lose the right to vote. The list is rooted in the state’s 1890 constitutional convention, where delegates chose disenfranchising crimes that they believed Black people were more likely to commit. “We came here to exclude the negro. Nothing short of this will answer,” the president of the convention said at the time. The crimes, which include bribery, theft, carjacking, bigamy and timber larceny, have remained largely the same since then; Mississippi voters amended it remove burglary in 1950 and added murder and rape in 1968. It continued to have a staggering effect in Mississippi. Sixteen per cent of the Black voting-age population remains blocked from casting a ballot, as well as 10% of the overall voting age population, according to an estimate …

Disney owes female workers more than $150m in wages, pay gap suit alleges | California

The Walt Disney Company has systematically underpaid women, depriving female employees of more than $150m in wages in California since 2015, according to a new analysis of salary data carried out as part of a class-action lawsuit alleging widespread pay gaps at the company. Attorneys for a group of women suing Disney alleged in state court in Los Angeles on Friday that the entertainment and media corporation has paid women on average 2% less than men doing equivalent jobs, in violation of California’s Equal Pay Act. The analysis is based on salaries for non-union employees below the vice-president level and includes workers at Disney Studios, parks and resorts, its music label, Disney+, ABC, Lucasfilm, Searchlight Pictures and other major entities that the lawsuit says are all subject to the same compensation system. The estimate that women are owed $151.6m was revealed in the attorneys’ motion for class certification for the more than 10,000 women employed by those Disney entities from 2015 to the present. The case excludes Hulu, ESPN, Pixar, 21st Century Fox and several …

Are corporations too influential? | TechCrunch

Are corporations too influential? | TechCrunch

Welcome to Startups Weekly. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. This week, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how some of the biggest companies in the world have as much — if not more — power than entire countries. Most countries, at least, have some level of democratic oversight, but that isn’t true in the same way for companies. My question, then: In a world where the policies of, say, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter become de facto standards all around the world, should we have a greater degree of say (TC+) in what those policies are? The other thing that’s kept me busy this week is fundraising. Alex talked with 11 VCs (TC+) about how hard it was for their companies to raise so far this year. Meanwhile, I talked with a number of founders who were really struggling to raise money. The truth is, the founders struggling the most have three things in common (TC+). Now let’s take a look at what happened in the world of …

The Swell review – a gasp-inducing love-triangle mystery | Theatre

The wonder of Isley Lynn’s gorgeous play about the love between three women is in its connections. In a time-hopping narrative spanning 28 years, we meet Bel, Annie and Flo at two different points during their changing intimate relationship, with different actors playing the older and younger versions of each character. The past and present bleed together fluidly and beautifully as The Swell expands into a complicated drawing of modern queer love across the decades. Entirely lifelike … Sophie Ward (top) and Shuna Snow in The Swell. Photograph: Ali Wright In the earlier story Bel and Annie are engaged after a whirlwind romance but when Annie’s childhood friend Flo – a volcano of fun, trouble and life – comes to visit, the ease of their new bond is uprooted. In the later thread, Flo and Bel live in an isolated home, away from everything and everyone else. But how did they get there? From the start we’re eager to know, but Lynn keeps the mystery of these adjoining stories devilishly held back, until suddenly the …