World

Kanye West and retail brand Gap announced an end to their partnership on Thursday, with the artist now known as Ye saying he plans to open his own stores.

“GAP left Ye no choice but to terminate their collaboration agreement because of GAP’s substantial noncompliance,” wrote the artist’s lawyer, Nicholas Gravante, in a letter, elements of which were seen by AFP.

The rapper, producer, fashion designer and mercurial personality inked a much-touted deal with Gap in 2020, with plans to marry the struggling retailer’s clothing classics with West’s Yeezy designs.

In a letter to employees on Thursday, a copy of which was obtained by AFP, Gap brand CEO Mark Breitbard said that management had decided to “wind down the partnership” with West.

“While we share a vision of bringing high-quality, trend-forward, utilitarian design to all people… how we work together to deliver this vision is not aligned,” he said.

Breitbard clarified that several Yeezy Gap branded products already in development before the breakup would continue to be released, “as planned.”

Wall Street took the news badly, with Gap shares dropping nearly three percent by around 1700 GMT.

The announcement caps months of social media complaints from West, which include accusations that he’s been left out of the creative process and criticisms of marketing delays.

Gravante said West has “diligently” tried to work through issues with the company but “he has gotten nowhere.”

“GAP’s substantial noncompliance with its contractual obligations has been costly,” he continued. “Ye will now promptly move forward to make up for lost time by opening Yeezy retail stores.”

Gap had been expecting $1 billion from Yeezy products alone within five years of the ten-year signed partnership, according to The New York Times.

West saw the collaboration as a way to increase the accessibility of his products, having previously put out limited series at high price points with financing from the German brand Adidas — which the rapper has also criticized in recent months.

His collection, launched in 2022, echoed West’s own style — dark, baggy clothes and variations on the hooded sweatshirt that was once Gap’s signature garment.

Gap Inc also owns the Banana Republic, Old Navy and Athleta brands.

Fading in popularity for years, the company has closed some 350 Gap and Banana Republic stores since October 2020.

Ukraine has lost nearly 15 percent of its grain storage capacity in the war with Russia, threatening its role as a key food supplier to the world, a new report said Thursday.

The US government-backed Conflict Observatory said Russians had seized 6.24 million tonnes’ worth of food storage capacity, and that another 2.25 million tonnes of capacity in Ukrainian hands had been destroyed.

In total, the war has removed around 8.5 million of Ukraine’s 58-million-tonne storage capacity, threatening the country’s future ability to get crucial supplies of wheat, corn and sunflower oil to the world market, according to the report.

As a result, farmers are running out of room to store their output for shipment, which could discourage plantings for the next crop, especially winter wheat, the report said.

“Russia and Russia-aligned forces’ damage and seizure of Ukrainian crop storage capacity threatens to turn Ukraine’s current agricultural crisis into catastrophe,” the report said.

“Millions of people around the world rely on Ukrainian agricultural products and are directly impacted by price spikes in global commodities markets caused by shortages linked to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”

The report, which was drawn up for the Conflict Observatory by the humanitarian research lab at Yale University’s School of Public Health and the government’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, used satellite photography and object detection algorithms to assess the damage of storage facilities such as silos and grain elevators across Ukraine.

It noted that even partial damage at a facility can spoil stored crops.

Most of the captured and damaged facilities are in Mykolayiv, Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk Oblast, and the largest parts were near transportation hubs, suggesting they were damaged in deliberately targeted attacks.

“Indiscriminate targeting of crop storage infrastructure can constitute a war crime and a crime against humanity under international law,” the report said.

Yvon Chouinard built an empire with his outdoor gear brand Patagonia, but the nature enthusiast has never done business like anyone else. And now, aged 83, he’s just taken his most drastic step: he has decided to give away the company to fight climate change.

It’s an unusual move in the United States, a thoroughly capitalist society, but it’s completely on brand for the California resident.

“I’ve been a businessman for almost sixty years,” Chouinard wrote in a book in 2006. “It’s as difficult for me to say those words as it is for someone to admit being an alcoholic or a lawyer.”

“Yet business can produce food, cure disease, control population, employ people, and generally enrich our lives. And it can do these good things and make a profit without losing its soul.”

Chouinard has worked hard to make Patagonia a socially responsible enterprise.

The company has given the equivalent of one percent of its sales to environmental groups every year since 1985, and it was one of the first clothing brands to switch entirely to organic cotton in 1996.

Patagonia also became the first to adopt California’s public benefit corporation status in 2012, meaning it became a company structured for charitable purposes, not private gain. 

In 2018, Patagonia made saving the planet its official purpose.

And now, almost 50 years after launching the company, Chouinard agreed with his wife and their two children to transfer 100 percent of their stock shares to a trust dedicated to making sure their values are respected, and a nonprofit dedicated to fighting climate change and protecting nature.

The latter will receive all of Patagonia’s profits, which are currently valued at about $100 million per year.

“Earth is now our only shareholder,” Chouinard said in a letter posted on the Patagonia website.

– Unwavering vision –

Kristine McDivitt Tompkins, a member of Patagonia’s board of directors, has known Chouinard since he was 24. And since then, “his vision has never wavered,” she said in a statement announcing Patagonia’s next phase.

“While he is in good health now, he wanted to have a plan in place for the future of the company and the future of the planet.”

Chouinard was born in 1938 in the northeastern US state of Maine, to a French-Canadian father from Quebec and a mother he described as “adventurous.” He moved to California in 1946.

It was there, in a falcon-watching club, that a few years later he discovered his passion for rock climbing.

He began making his own pitons, metal anchors for climbing ropes, and learned some metalworking in the process. Other climbers began to want their own.

And so, his business began, even if it barely brought in enough money to live on in the first few years.

He created Chouinard Equipment in 1965 with a partner, which quickly became a reference group in the climbing world.

During a trip to Scotland, Chouinard bought a rugby jersey for climbing. The fabric was strong, and the shirt’s collar helped protect his neck from the ropes.

Back in the United States, others asked where they could get one. Sensing another opportunity, he began to sell rugby shirts, among other clothing items. Patagonia officially launched in 1973.

The group has since diversified, with subsidiaries in food, media, surfboards, investments in like-minded startups and recycling used clothes.

Forbes magazine recently put Chouinard’s net worth at $1.2 billion.

But the entrepreneur drives a beat-up old Subaru. He doesn’t own a computer or cell phone and splits his time between two modest houses in California and Wyoming, The New York Times reported.

Speaking about his latest decision, Chouinard told the paper: “Hopefully this will influence a new form of capitalism that doesn’t end up with a few rich people and a bunch of poor people.”

The Biden administration announced plans on Thursday to expand the use of wind energy by building floating offshore wind platforms.

The Interior Department said the objective is to deploy 15 gigawatts of floating offshore wind capacity by 2035, enough to power more than five million homes.

It seeks to reduce the cost of floating offshore wind energy by more than 70 percent by 2035.

“We’re launching efforts to seize a new opportunity — floating offshore wind,” White House National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy said at a briefing for reporters.

McCarthy said the technology “will let us build in deepwater areas where turbines can’t be secured directly to the seafloor, but where there are strong winds that we can now harness.”

The Biden administration has previously announced a goal of deploying 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030.

Two-thirds of America’s offshore wind energy potential is in deep-water areas such as off the coast of California and Oregon that require floating platforms, officials said.

To kick off the program, the administration announced nearly $50 million in funding for research and development.

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said her department will coordinate with the Interior Department “to ensure that floating offshore wind can coexist with wildlife and with fishing.”

A jersey worn by basketball legend Michael Jordan during Game 1 of the 1998 NBA Finals, his last title victory, sold for a record $10.1 million Thursday, Sotheby’s said.

The iconic red Chicago Bulls jersey, with Jordan’s number 23 on the back, went for the highest amount of any game-worn sports memorabilia ever, the auction house said, and set a new record for a basketball jersey at auction.

The final sum was twice Sotheby’s high estimate, and the jersey drew a total of 20 bids.

The Jordan swag beat a record set in May for the most expensive sports memorabilia ever sold, which had been Diego Maradona’s “Hand of God” jersey.

The previous record for a game-worn basketball jersey was for one autographed by Kobe Bryant, who wore it in 1996-97. That piece of NBA memorabilia went for $3.7 million, according to Sotheby’s.

The Jordan jersey is only the second worn by the star during his six championships to be sold at auction.

Most of Jordan’s NBA Finals jerseys remain in private hands, according to Sotheby’s, although he has donated one to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Jordan, now 59, spent the bulk of his basketball career with the Bulls, with whom he won all six of his titles, but came out of retirement in 2001 to play two seasons with the Washington Wizards.

His final season with the Bulls was detailed in the hit ESPN/Netflix documentary “The Last Dance” released in 2020.

Brahm Wachter, head of streetwear and modern collectables at Sotheby’s, said in a statement that the sale “solidifies Michael Jordan as the undisputed GOAT, proving his name and incomparable legacy is just as relevant as it was nearly 25 years ago.”

The New York auction house, owned since 2019 by French-Israeli telecom magnate Patrick Drahi, previously sold a pair of Jordan’s sneakers for nearly $1.5 million.

The retired basketball star currently owns the Charlotte Hornets, located in his childhood home of North Carolina, and reportedly still earns millions in royalties each year from sales of Nike’s Air Jordan brand of sneakers.