AFP

German sportswear giant Adidas said Tuesday it was ending its partnership with Kanye West after a series of anti-Semitic outbursts by the controversial rapper.

Recent comments by West — now known formally as Ye — were “unacceptable, hateful and dangerous”, Adidas said in a statement. 

“After a thorough review, the company has taken the decision to terminate the partnership with Ye immediately”.

Adidas said it would “end production” of the highly successful “Yeezy” line designed together with West and “stop all payments to Ye and his companies”.

The abrupt end to the collaboration between the sports outfitter and rapper would slash Adidas’s net income in 2022 by “up to 250 million euros ($246 million)”, the company estimated.

Adidas’s decision to dump the artist was “overdue”, said Josef Schuster of the Central Council of Jews in Germany.

“For weeks, West has caused worldwide furore with his anti-Semitic remarks,” Schuster said, adding that the rapper’s comments had become “intolerable”.

– T-shirt statement –

Adidas began a review of its relationship with West earlier this month after he appeared at a Paris fashion show wearing a shirt emblazoned with “White Lives Matter”, a slogan created as a backlash to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Days later he was locked out of Twitter and Instagram for threatening to “Go death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE”, using a reference to US military readiness.

Comments made by West “violate the company’s values of diversity and inclusion, mutual respect and fairness”, Adidas said Tuesday.

The artist was associated with rival sportswear company Nike for years but broke away in 2013, lending his name to Adidas as they launched their first Yeezy shoe together in 2015 — a partnership that went on to make him a billionaire.

Along with Beyonce, Stella McCartney and Pharrell Williams, West’s has been one of the top names used by Adidas to boost sales, especially online.

Adidas’s announcement was followed later Tuesday by US company Gap, which said it was taking “immediate steps to remove Yeezy Gap product from our stores” in addition to shutting down YeezyGap.com.

West and Gap had announced in September that they planned to end their partnership, although Gap said at the time it planned to release several co-branded products already in development.

Paris-based fashion house Balenciaga also ended ties with the rapper last week, saying it “no longer (has) any relationship nor any plans for future projects related to this artist”.

One of Hollywood’s biggest talent agencies, CAA, said on Monday it was dropping West, while film and TV producer MRC said it was shelving an already-finished documentary about the artist.

– Inflammatory remarks –

Adidas’s decision would stop West from “using the company’s immense platform to amplify his hateful ideology about Jews”, the World Jewish Congress said in a statement.

The German group’s “delayed move” in response to the anti-Semitic comments had come after “massive public outcry”, the WJC said.

Rights campaigners and entertainment world figures had heaped pressure on Adidas to stop working with the rapper.

“Those who continue to do business with West are giving his misguided hate an audience”, wrote Hollywood super-agent Ari Emanuel in the Financial Times.

“There should be no tolerance anywhere for West’s anti-Semitism.”

West’s ex-wife Kim Kardashian also appeared to join the pile-on, without mentioning the father of her children by name.

“Hate speech is never OK or excusable,” she wrote Monday on Twitter and Instagram.

“I stand together with the Jewish community and call on the terrible violence and hateful rhetoric towards them to come to an immediate end.”

Adidas fell on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange following its announcement, finishing 3.2 percent lower.

Israel’s president said Tuesday he was sharing intelligence with the United States to prove Iran supplied Russian-operated drones that have reaped destruction in Ukraine, as he urged a tough response.

The United States and European Union have already reached a similar conclusion but Israel has been pushing for tough action against Iran’s clerical state, which it views as its biggest threat.

President Isaac Herzog, who holds a largely ceremonial role, held talks with Secretary of State Antony Blinken on a visit to Washington in which he will meet President Joe Biden on Wednesday.

“Iranian weapons play a key role in destabilizing our world, and the international community must learn its lessons, now and in the future,” Herzog said.

“The world must speak with Iran in the same language — a tough, united and uncompromising language.”

Herzog’s office in a statement said he would share images assessed by Israel that show similarities between drones downed in Ukraine and parts tested in Iran in December 2021 and displayed at an exposition in Iran in 2014.

Blinken, at the start of a meeting with Herzog, said the United States and Israel were “standing together against the dangerous, destabilizing and terrorizing actions that Iran is taking.”

“The provision of drones by Iran to Russia to enable further aggression against Ukraine and Ukrainian people is showing horrific results on the ground in Ukraine,” Blinken said.

The top US diplomat also weighed in on violence in the occupied West Bank, where major raids on Tuesday targeting a militant group killed six Palestinians, bringing thousands of mourners into the streets.

Blinken said he would speak to Herzog about “the real concern that we have about violence that we’re seeing on the West Bank.”

“We’re urging everyone to take the necessary steps to try to de-escalate that violence and to avoid actions or statements that may incite it,” Blinken said.

Herzog’s visit comes days ahead of Israel’s fifth election in less than four years in which hawkish ex-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has had tense relations with Democratic US administrations, is seeking a comeback.

Despite Israel’s findings on Iranian drones, it has been cautious in how far to support Ukraine, mindful of Russia’s active military role in the Jewish state’s neighbor Syria.

Israel has not been willing to provide Ukraine with the Iron Dome, its state-of-the-art defensive air umbrella developed with the United States.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, addressing an Israeli forum on Monday, said that Russia had ordered 2,000 drones from Iran and urged Israel to “help Ukraine for real.”

“This alliance of theirs simply would not have happened if your politicians had made only one decision at the time… it seems that it was adopted a long time ago -– in 2014, when Russia began its aggression against Ukraine,” Zelensky told a conference organised by the newspaper Haaretz.

Ashton Carter, who served as US secretary of defense during Barack Obama’s administration, has died at age 68, his family said Tuesday.

“It is with deep and profound sadness that the family of former Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter shares that Secretary Carter passed away Monday evening in Boston after a sudden cardiac event,” his family said in a statement.

“He was a beloved husband, father, mentor, and friend. His sudden loss will be felt by all who knew him.”

Carter held the top job at the Pentagon from 2015 to 2017 — a period that covered the height of the war against the Islamic State (IS) group, which lost swathes of territory it seized in Iraq and Syria to local ground forces backed by a US-led international coalition.

He also oversaw sweeping changes to the US military, including the opening of combat positions to women and the lifting of a ban on transgender personnel openly serving in the armed forces.

Donald Trump sought to reverse the latter move during his presidency, but his administration’s restrictions on transgender personnel were overturned by Joe Biden when he took office in 2021.

Biden — who was vice president during Carter’s time as defense chief — praised him as a “great American of the utmost integrity.”

He “was a leader on all the major national security issues of our times — from nuclear deterrence to proliferation prevention to missile defense to emerging technology challenges to the fight against Al-Qaeda and ISIS,” Biden said, using an acronym for IS.

Obama also mourned his former defense secretary, saying he was “a keen student of history, a brilliant physicist, and a steadfast defender of our men and women in uniform.”

He “left America — and the world — safer through his lifetime of service,” the former president said.

And US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Carter “was both a defense intellectual and a skillful policymaker who tirelessly sought a more secure America in a more just world.” 

After leaving the Pentagon, Carter became the director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School.

He is survived by his wife and two children.

Left-wing US lawmakers on Tuesday withdrew a letter that appealed to President Joe Biden to negotiate with Russia, saying they were not joining Republicans who question support for Ukraine.

Days before congressional elections, Representative Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, took responsibility and said that staff released the letter Monday that had been drafted months ago and was not vetted.

She regretted that the letter was being “conflated” with recent remarks by House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy who warned there would be no “blank check” to Ukraine if his party wins control of the chamber on November 8.

“The proximity of these statements created the unfortunate appearance that Democrats… are somehow aligned with Republicans who seek to pull the plug on American support for President (Volodymyr) Zelensky,” Jayapal said in a statement.

“Nothing could be further from the truth. Every war ends with diplomacy, and this one will too after Ukrainian victory,” she said.

The original letter, signed by 30 Democrats, urged the Biden administration to negotiate directly with Russia,  saying that funding for weapons created a “responsibility for the United States to seriously explore all possible avenues.”

The appeal held out the possibility of sanctions relief for Russia and a potential new European security framework with guarantees for all sides.

Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in February demanding that the former Soviet republic never be allowed to join NATO, a stance that US officials saw as a red herring as Kyiv was unlikely to enter the alliance anytime soon.

The Biden administration says that Russia is not serious about diplomacy, unleashing a slew of devastating attacks on Ukraine including on civilian infrastructure.

The letter on Monday triggered defensiveness among some Democrats who had signed it, with some questioning the timing.

Representative Mark Takano, one of the signatories, released his own statement vowing to back continued funding “to aid Ukrainian self-determination and ensure the people of Ukraine have the tools they need to protect their hard-won democracy.”

Lawmakers across party lines backed a $40 billion package for Ukraine in May, with the limited opposition coming mostly from hard-right Republicans close to former president Donald Trump, who in the past has professed admiration for Putin.

A 19-year-old gunman who shot dead two people on Monday at a St Louis high school had 600 rounds of ammunition and the rapid response by police prevented an even more “horrific scene,” the city police chief said.

Orlando Harris, who graduated last year from Central Visual & Performing Arts High School, was killed by police officers who responded swiftly to the attack at the school.

St Louis police chief Mike Sack said Harris was armed with an AR-15 style semi-automatic rifle and had multiple magazines of ammunition strapped to his chest and in a bag that he was carrying.

“It appears that he came into the building with more than 600 rounds of ammunition on his person,” Sack said at a press conference on Tuesday. “600 rounds is a lot of ammunition.”

“This could have been a horrific scene,” Sack said. “It was not, by the grace of God.”

According to police, armed officers responded within four minutes to the report of an “active shooter” at the school and killed Harris in an exchange of gunfire.

Sack also said a handwritten document had been found in Harris’s car in which he expressed a desire to “conduct the school shooting.”

“I don’t have any friends. I don’t have any family,” he quoted the document as saying. “I’ve never had a girlfriend. I’ve never had a social life. I’ve been an isolated loner my entire life.

“This was the perfect storm for a mass shooter,” it said.

A 61-year-old physical education teacher and a 16-year-old student were killed in the attack and seven other people were injured.

St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones also attended the press conference and said mass shootings in the United States constitute a “public health crisis that requires federal action.”

“The scourge of gun violence that continues to claim the lives of our children and families in their communities is a national emergency,” Jones said.

In May, a teenage gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. Days earlier, a young white man killed 10 Black people in a racist attack in a supermarket in New York state.

Those shootings helped galvanize support for the first significant bill on gun safety in decades, which President Joe Biden signed into law in June.

It included enhanced background checks for younger buyers and federal cash for states introducing “red flag” laws that allow courts to temporarily remove weapons from people who are considered a threat.

But the measure fell far short of an assault weapons ban sought by Biden.

The United States on Tuesday authorized the departure of diplomats from the Nigerian capital Abuja, stepping up precautions over what it said was the threat of attacks.

The State Department said in a statement it was permitting but not requiring non-emergency US personnel and their families to leave Abuja “due to the heightened risk of terrorist attacks.”

It did not order an evacuation and overall travel advice to Americans was unchanged, with the State Department advising citizens to reconsider non-essential travel to Nigeria due to concerns over crime and unrest.

The latest US security move comes after the embassy on Sunday urged Americans to limit their movements due to an “elevated risk of terror attacks in Nigeria, specifically in Abuja,” a warning repeated by Britain, Canada and Australia.

The United States did not specify the threat. Abuja, a pre-planned capital of six million people built in the 1980s, has historically been seen as safe but insurgents linked to the Islamic State group have claimed several attacks in surrounding areas over the past six months.

Nigeria’s domestic security agency has urged residents to stay calm and to take “necessary precautions,” with police ordering a counter-terrorism exercise in Abuja.