Last week at his bar in Nashville, TN, Kid Rock went on a profanity-laced rant about Oprah Winfrey, “The View” co-host Joy Behar and comedian Kathy Griffin.
Kid Rock said, “I’m not a bad guy I’m just an honest guy who says hey I don’t like Oprah Winfrey or Joy Behar. They can suck dicks sideways.”
As an audience member accused him of being drunk and racist, Kid Rock said, “Hey, you’re a fucking racist.”
He continued, “Fuck Oprah Winfrey, Fuck Kathy Griffin.”
He added, “Oprah Winfrey is like ‘Hey, I’m going to get some white woman to believe in this shit.’ Fuck her.”
Taxi drivers block Toulouse's ringroad in April this year during a protest against Uber | Remy Gabalda/AFP via Getty Images
Uber case on hold over Le Pen fears
Fearing populist backlash, Commission chief overrules colleagues to pause infringement case against France.
Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker’s team is holding back a legal case against France over its treatment of Uber at least until after the country’s elections next year, according to two people briefed on the case.
The American ride-hailing company’s complaint was last week left off the Commission’s monthly list of actions against countries that violate the European Union’s laws. Uber’s Chief Executive Travis Kalanick had visited Brussels earlier this month to lobby officials, and Internal Market Commissioner Elżbieta Bieńkowska last week said there was no legal reason the case could not proceed.
Juncker’s decision to overrule at least four Commissioners and hold off on the case reflects his concerns about the growing appeal of populist parties in the EU, the people briefed on the case said. Uber is a symbol of globalization and a lightning rod for irate incumbent taxi companies, particularly in France. The National Front of Marine Le Pen, which pushes an anti-globalization and anti-EU agenda, is polling strongly ahead of May’s presidential election.
A Commission spokeswoman said the EU’s executive arm “decides on infringements cases based on their merits and legal complexity, not for political reasons. There are no deadlines for assessing complaints.”
The paperwork for the case has been ready since the summer, according to three people at the Commission with first-hand knowledge. Transport Commissioner Violeta Bulc, whose legal team drafted the case; Commissioner Bieńkowska and Vice Presidents Jyrki Katainen and Andrus Ansip, all supported moving forward with the case, according to multiple sources with first-hand knowledge.
Rather than reject Uber’s complaint, a senior Commission official said Juncker’s team is employing “the black box technique, where something goes into the president’s cabinet and it disappears.”
In 2014, France barred private-hire vehicles like Uber’s from using certain digital tools to match riders with drivers, and the country now requires private-hire drivers — other than licensed taxis — to return to a base after every ride. The company has been the subject of mass protests by taxi drivers complaining about Uber’s arrival in the French market. Two French executives were arrested in June of 2015 over enabling illegal taxi services, among other charges, and the company’s Paris offices were raided. In February, the two executives were banned from running a company for five years and each faced fines of €50,000 and €70,000 respectively.
Uber’s complaints from 2014 and 2015 say France’s actions constitute a violation of several EU laws, including the E-Commerce Directive and the Services Directive.
Senior Uber lobbyists met with Juncker’s Chief of Staff Martin Selmayr and his Senior Legal Adviser Michael Shotter on November 8, according to the Commission’s meeting register.
During the gathering, Selmayr told the company’s lobbyists, including Agata Wacławik-Wejman, that the Commission would not launch legal action against France based on Uber’s complaint for an indefinite amount of time, according to two people briefed on the meeting.
“Obviously we try to handle complaints as fast as possible,” adding that the Commission is “engaged in dialogue with the relevant authorities to clarify the merits of the complaints,” Commission spokeswoman Lucia Caudet said.
After Commission Vice President Ansip met with Uber’s Kalanick on November 15, he tweeted: “Just saw@travisk again — but issues stay same: we need more progress in workable@Uber / gov’t cooperation and less unnecessary pushback.”
“The meetings are a matter of public record,” said Gareth Mead, a spokesman for Uber. “Across Europe there is significant and growing recognition of the value that companies like Uber can offer the citizens of the EU and the cities in which we live.”
The Commission is also watching a parallel case between Uber and Spain before the European Court of Justice. The court is expected to rule on whether Uber should be classified as a transportation service or a passive digital intermediary. That case likely won’t be resolved until well into 2017.
Uber also complained to the Commission last year about laws restricting its freedom to operate in Spain and Germany, and filed a complaint against Hungary in 2016.
None of them has moved forward.
Nicholas Hirst and Nicholas Vinocur contributed reporting.
The animated movie Abominable is experiencing a geopolitical snowball effect of its own making after a scene in the movie showing the contested South China Sea has angered a growing number of Southeast Asian countries.
Abominable is a coproduction between DreamWorks Animation and the Shanghai-based Pearl Studio, and the controversy surrounding the movie marks the latest twist in Hollywood’s close relationship with China, which has come under scrutiny following months of pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong.
Studios including the Walt Disney Company have been criticized for maintaining warm ties with authoritarians in Beijing while remaining silent on the Hong Kong issue.
Abominable tells the story of a Chinese girl who befriends a massive Yeti, or abominable snowman, and embarks on a journey to reunite the creature with its family.
The scene in question shows a map of the South China Sea and the controversial “nine-dash line,” which China uses to show the extent of its territorial claims in the contested waters.
As a result of the map, Abominable has been yanked from cinemas in Vietnam after screen shots of the scene were posted on social media. Officials in Malaysia have banned the movie altogether after the distributor refused a request to cut the scene. The Philippines government has also objected to the movie.
The South China Sea has been a major source of contention between China and its Southeast Asian neighbors for decades. In 2016, an international tribunal in the Hague ruled that China can’t claim rights to most of the sea, a decision that China rejected.
Other countries that dispute China’s claims include Brunei and Taiwan.
In the past decade, Hollywood studios have developed increasingly close business ties with China, which is the world’s second largest movie market.
Authorities in Beijing put strict limits on the number of foreign films that can be shown on local screens, and studios hoping to land their moves in those coveted slots have grown increasingly wary of offending Chinese censors.
To help secure a release in China, Hollywood studios will often partner with a Chinese company to co-produce a movie, which is what the Comcast-owned DreamWorks Animation did in the case of Abominable.
The entertainment industry’s appeasement of China’s Communist Party has become so pronounced that the animated series South Park recently lampooned the issue in a recent episode, “Band in China.”
Disney’s ESPN recently forbade its journalists from discussing the Hong Kong protests while on air, after the Houston Rockets general manager expressed support for the pro-democracy demonstrators.
Disney chairman and CEO Bob Iger recently said that “caution is imperative” when discussing China and that taking a position that could harm the company would be “a big mistake.”
Abominable has grossed a lackluster $54.6 million in the U.S. since being released last month. Ironically, the movie has been a box-office disappointment in China, bringing in just $14.8 million since opening earlier this month.
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China goes to war with EU and US on trading status
Beijing’s legal challenge comes only a day after it argues it won market economy status.
Beijing has wasted no time in launching legal action against the EU and the U.S. for failing to recognize China as a market economy by a December 11 deadline.
The decision is likely to heighten the risks of a trade war, as U.S. President-elect Donald Trump ratchets up his rhetoric against China, which he has criticized for its military build-up in the South China Sea and for failing to pull its weight in reining in nuclear-armed North Korea.
Market economy status in the World Trade Organization has long been one of China’s most coveted political goals. Winning such a designation would not only represent a highly symbolic economic coming-of-age for the Communist nation, but would also make it far harder for other countries to slap anti-dumping tariffs on tides of ultra-cheap Chinese imports.
Beijing argues that it is automatically entitled to market economy status from December 11 according the terms of its accession agreement to the WTO. This would mean that other WTO members would have to switch to a new anti-dumping methodology that would make it far more difficult to pursue cases against bargain-rate consignments of Chinese steel, ceramics and textiles.
Only one day after the expiry of the deadline, the WTO confirmed on Monday that China had launched a dispute resolution case against the EU and the U.S. in an instant riposte to their failure to change their anti-dumping methodology in time.
“We regret that China is launching this dispute now despite the fact that the Commission has already made a proposal to amend the legislation in question,” a European Commission spokesperson said. “We will now study the request and accept, as usual, China’s request to enter into consultations,” he added.
Chinese state broadcaster CCTV quoted Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng as saying: “China’s lawful rights and interests must be maintained and the country reserves the right to take further action. Several WTO members have failed to fulfil their obligations.”
Analog antics
Washington and Brussels both use a so-called analog country methodology to determine tariffs for dumped goods on the understanding that China is a “non-market economy.” This methodology makes it relatively easy to prove Chinese dumping as it allows the use of prices of a third country to determine what the price of Chinese goods would be if market conditions were in place.
China insists this methodology must now be dropped.
Beijing’s legal challenge will have no immediate effect, but the move increases pressure on lawmakers in Brussels and Washington. The EU is divided over a proposal revamp of bloc’s trade arsenal that still needs approval from the European Council and European Parliament.
A dispute at the WTO must first pass through a consultation phase where representatives of China, the EU and the U.S. meet to discuss the case behind closed doors.
Following the consultations, China can request a panel to be set up. The EU and the U.S. have the right to refuse the request for such panel once, causing a delay. They are then obliged to accept a second request.
A timeline prepared by Van Bael & Bellis, a Brussels-based law firm dealing with trade disputes, puts 2020 or 2021 as likely dates for the end of the cases.
“The bottom line is that the only way to get definitive clarity about the correct legal interpretation of Section 15 [the relevant section of the accession protocol] post-December 11 is from a WTO dispute settlement,” said Laurent Ruessmann, a partner at Fieldfisher, who is representing Aegis, a lobby representing 30 European manufacturing industries that oppose market economy status for China.
“Since China is obviously not happy that other major trading partners do not simply adopt their view of the text, it makes sense that they bring it to the WTO for dispute settlement,” he added.
DETROIT (AP) — Kid Rock won’t renew his licensing agreement for Kid Rock’s Made in Detroit restaurant, the owners of the sports arena in which it’s housed said Wednesday.
The news comes after the singer and musician was recently filmed delivering a vulgarity-laced rant against Oprah Winfrey.
Chris Granger, group president of sports and entertainment for Ilitch Holdings, said in a statement that Kid Rock “voluntarily decided” not to renew the deal that comes up in April for the restaurant inside Little Caesars Arena. The statement says the Ilitch organization had been in contact with the musician, a Detroit-area native whose real name is Robert Ritchie.
The Associated Press sent an email seeking comment from a spokesman for Kid Rock.
The Ilitch statement says its “venues are open, inviting, inclusive and respectful to all.” The restaurant opened in 2017 in the arena that’s home to the Detroit Pistons and Red Wings.
Apparent cellphone video obtained by TMZ shows Ritchie onstage last month at his steakhouse in Nashville, Tennessee, using graphic language to convey his dislike of Winfrey and Joy Behar, co-host of ABC’s The View talk show.
A Detroit activist group said it plans to hold a news conference Wednesday about what it calls a “reprehensible tirade.
Finally, ‘climate change’ has revealed its true, heaven-sent purpose: Coldplay are so worried about it that they have decided not to tour their new album.
The pantywaist band’s chief-bedwetter, singer Chris Martin has said that he doesn’t want to take their show on the road till he can be sure it’s carbon neutral.
So let’s make it our mission to show Chris that this is an impossible dream: the jet flights; the pantechnicons transporting all that gear; the fossil fuels powering the lighting rigs and the sound systems…
Even if Sir Elton John were to donate his entire fortune to paying for their carbon offsets, like he did for Prince Harry and Meghan, it still wouldn’t be anywhere near enough to undo the environmental and acoustic damage inflicted on the world every time Chris Martin steps onto a stage and sings Yellow.
It’s quite possibly true that for every one of their mawkish, piano-driven, stadium rock, wave-your-iPhone-in-the-air-like-it’s-a-cigarette-lighter crowdpleasers Coldplay inflict on the audience, the following animals die painfully:
If true, this is appalling – and should be more than reason enough to stop Coldplay touring forever.
If not true, well, you can’t be too careful. Perhaps they should be banned from touring anyway, just in case.
Once Coldplay have got the message, it’s important that we encourage other eco-conscious bands to follow their noble example. U2, surely, will see sense and henceforth confine themselves to that fancy hotel they have in Dublin, if it’s still going; also, in my view Bruno Mars would do his reputation the power of good if he no longer played anywhere in the world to anyone; ditto The 1975, a band which recently recorded a track with Greta Thunberg.
You’ll all be able to think of other suitable candidates to help save the planet, I’m sure.
Every cloud has a silver lining. It has certainly made me look on Extinction Rebellion in a much more favourable light now I realise that their facile, scientifically illiterate, eco-fascist scaremongering has had the beneficial effect of creating an environment where Coldplay no longer feel able to perform.
Having proved watertight at the back recently, Al Hain-Cole expects the Red Devils to ease to victory without conceding against Clement’s men
Manchester United will be looking to book their place in the Europa League last 16 when they welcome Club Brugge to Old Trafford on Thursday.
The Red Devils are in the driving seat going into the tie, having secured a 1-1 draw in the away leg at the Jan Breydelstadion.
Manchester United vs Club Brugge latest odds
Unbeaten in 12 home matches in this competition, they are 1/2 (1.50) favourites with bet365 to complete the job by coming out on top here.
More teams
However, Philippe Clement’s team has not lost any of the last 13 fixtures, and can be backed at 13/2 (7.50) to pull off a shock win.
Three of the guests’ last four away games have resulted in draws, and you can get odds of 3/1 (4.00) on them grinding out another stalemate in this one.
Manchester United vs Club Brugge team news
Paul Pogba and Marcus Rashford are both ruled out through injury, while Axel Tuanzebe remains short of match fitness.
Krepin Diatta is the only injury concern for the hosts, as he struggles with the same muscle issue that kept him out of the first leg.
Manchester United vs Club Brugge preview
With an away goal already in the bag, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s men should be feeling particularly confident of progression.
Having conceded just once in the last six fixtures, they will certainly back themselves to keep at bay an opposition attack that has struck only three times in their last five European ties and failed to score in their two most recent league games on the road.
What’s more, Club Brugge have failed to win in seven European matches, losing three of the most recent five.
All in all, odds of 6/5 (2.20) seem generous on United easing into the next round by winning to nil for their fourth Europa League home game in four this season.
All odds correct at time of publish. Please gamble responsibly.
Manchester United to win to nil at 6/5 (2.20) for a 1pt stake with bet365
The European Commission will on Wednesday unveil new rules for smartphone applications, such as Skype and WhatsApp, as part of its reform of EU telecoms regulation.
It’s not clear how the measures will affect Europeans’ enjoyment of social media, but at least one change could have an immediate effect on one of the most popular online tools: the emoji. Buried deep in an annex* of a leaked draft of the proposal, we found a list of approved European symbols that can be used to express emotions in emails, text messages, tweets and Facebook comments.
Here are a few of the EU-sanctioned emojis:
I support the European Union
I have a new proposal for addressing EU challenges
I am working on my policy proposal
I am presenting my policy proposal to journalists
My policy proposal is being considered by the Council
Lundi à Paris se déroulait l’avant-première de World War Z, le film post-apocalyptique de zombies avec Brad Pitt. L’acteur avait fait le déplacement et, comme à Londres la veille, il était accompagné d’Angelina Jolie. Les couples ont ensuite profiter de leur soirée avec un dîner au restaurant et une sortie dans un bar à la mode.
Invitée surprise à Londres dimanche soir, lors de l’avant-première de World War Z, Angelina Jolie a littéralement illuminé le tapis rouge, volant presque la vedette à Brad Pitt pourtant héros du blockbuster. Il faut dire que c’était la première apparition publique d’Angie après la révélation de sa double mastectomie. Lundi, l’équipe du film était à Paris et tout le monde se demandait si Angelina Jolie allait suivre une nouvelle fois Brad Pitt sur le tapis rouge. La réponse fut oui.
L’actrice est sortie radieuse de la limousine qui a emmené le couple devant l’UGC Normandie des Champs Elysées. Plus sobre que la veille, où elle arborait une magnifique robe de soirée Saint Laurent, elle portait un strict tailleur pantalon noir, toujours Saint Laurent. Le chic parisien à l’état pur pour le plus grand plaisir des fans. D’autant que les Brangelina ont joué le jeu, en signant des autographes et posant le temps d’une photo souvenir. Angie s’est même improvisée photographe en prenant quelques clichés avec les appareils qui lui étaient tendus.
Brad Pitt, cheveux attachés cette fois, et Angelina Jolie se sont ensuite engouffrés dans la salle du cinéma pour présenter World War Z, le film de zombies qui devrait cartonner cet été.
Bien qu’en pleine tournée marathon pour la promotion du film, le couple a voulu profiter de son passage à Paris pour profiter des délices de la Ville Lumière. Ils se sont offerts un dîner romantique au restaurant Il Vino, situé dans le VIIe arrondissement de Paris près des Invalides. Puis, Brad Pitt et Angelina Jolie ont terminé la soirée au Silencio, le célèbre bar branché de David Lynch.
Pas de déclaration cette fois sur la courageuse opération d’Angelina Jolie et les mérites de Brad Pitt. Juste une soirée romantique. Ou presque.
À l’occasion de sa prestation sous forme de clin d’œil dans un épisode de Plus belle la vie diffusé ce soir, Joyce Jonathan revient sur ses aspirations de chanteuse et non petite amie de…
Du caractère elle en a et elle s’en défend. Rien d’étonnant donc que Joyce Jonathan est choisi ce trait de sa personnalité pour illustrer son deuxième album. Du caractère donc pour la jeune fille de 23 ans s’autorise tout. Ce soir les téléspectateurs la découvriront même dans leur poste afin de chanter mais pas seulement. Joyce Jonathan est l’invitée des habitués du Mistral de Plus belle la vie à l’occasion de la Fête de la musique. La chanteuse y joue son propre rôle et interprète son dernier single Ça ira.
Un titre pop et pétillant d’une amoureuse passionnée. Un titre dont beaucoup confère l’inspiration à un certain Thomas Hollande… Au Parisien, aujourd’hui, Joyce Jonathan revient a demi-mot sur cette histoire d’amour qui la fait vibrer. La chanteuse révèle avoir rencontré le fils du Président de la République «il y a un an, juste avant l’élection, chez des amis communs».
Sereine sur cette relation amoureuse pas comme les autres, au yeux du public, Joyce Jonathan ne se pose pas trop de question. Pour elle «François Hollande, c’est le père de mon copain. Il a les parents qu’il a» et voilà tout. Une décontraction comme un modèle à suivre pour toutes les jeunes filles qui appréhenderaient de rencontrer beau-papa. Celui de Joyce est Président de la République…
C’est encore une fois ce caractère si bien géré par la jeune fille qui parle, quand elle affirme ne «pas mettre en avant cette relation pour vendre disques», et on la croit volontiers.