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New York Post
30 minutes ago
- New York Post
Jaguar sales plummet after botched rebrand, EV pivot
Jaguar sales in Europe plunged a shocking 97.5% following a botched rebrand that included a commercial featuring men in skirts to announce its upcoming pivot toward an all-electric fleet — but the cars have yet to arrive at dealerships. The luxury British automaker registered just 49 vehicles in Europe in April, compared with 1,961 vehicles in the same month last year, according to data from the European Automobile Manfucaturers' Association. Sales between January and April plummeted 75.1%, with just 2,665 cars sold across the continent. \The stunning decline comes after Jaguar rolled out a controversial ad last November that featured non-binary models wearing a rainbow of colors with slogans like 'Copy Nothing' and 'Live Vivid' — but exluded any images of its sleek sports cars as it touted its transition to a fully electrical, ultra-luxury company. 3 Jaguar The uproar over the 'woke' ads was likened to Bud Light's bizarre 2023 partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, which led to a boycott of America's best-selling beer and severely damaged the brand. However, the collapse in sales can mostly be attributed to the delay in releasing its flagship model, a four-door GT. The EV, expected to cost around $200,000 won't be out until late 2025, according to India-based The Economic Times. Making matters worse is that the company has effectively 'gone dormant' this year as it phased out all of its gas and diesel-powered models ahead, leaving dealerships empty, Bloomberg reported. 3 Rawdon Glover, the UK Md of Jaguar Land Rover, defended the campaign last year, claiming its message had been lost 'in a blaze of intolerance.' Jaguar The rest of its EVs, which were a lightning rod for President Trump during his 2024 election campaign, are set to go on sale by next summer at the earliest, according to Bloomberg The Post reached out to Jaguar for comment. Jaguar's EV pivot and ad campaign was seemingly intended to attract younger customers, but it instead drew sharp criticism from industry experts, dealers, and longtime fans as the iconic company failed to halt a slide in sales. 3 The campaign was likened to the 2023 Bud Light rebrand with a trans influencer. Anheuser-Busch The automaker sold just over 180,000 units worldwide in 2018, but that figure shrank to just under 27,000 last year. Jaguar was once owned by Ford, but the Detroit-based firm sold the brand and its sister company, Land Rover, to India's Tata Motors in 2008 for $2.3 billion. Ford bought Jaguar for $2.5 billion in 1989, but it never made a profit. It later acquired SUV manufacturer Land Rover for $2.7 billion in 2000.
Yahoo
43 minutes ago
- Yahoo
UN report lists companies complicit in Israel's ‘genocide': Who are they?
The United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) has released a new report mapping the corporations aiding Israel in the displacement of Palestinians and its genocidal war on Gaza, in breach of international law. Francesca Albanese's latest report, which is scheduled to be presented at a news conference in Geneva on Thursday, names 48 corporate actors, including United States tech giants Microsoft, Alphabet Inc. – Google's parent company – and Amazon. A database of more than 1000 corporate entities was also put together as part of the investigation. '[Israel's] forever-occupation has become the ideal testing ground for arms manufacturers and Big Tech – providing significant supply and demand, little oversight, and zero accountability – while investors and private and public institutions profit freely,' the report said. 'Companies are no longer merely implicated in occupation – they may be embedded in an economy of genocide,' it said, in a reference to Israel's ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip. In an expert opinion last year, Albanese said there were 'reasonable grounds' to believe Israel was committing genocide in the besieged Palestinian enclave. The report stated that its findings illustrate 'why Israel's genocide continues'. 'Because it is lucrative for many,' it procurement of F-35 fighter jets is part of the world's largest arms procurement programme, relying on at least 1,600 companies across eight nations. It is led by US-based Lockheed Martin, but F-35 components are constructed globally. Italian manufacturer Leonardo S.p.A is listed as a main contributor in the military sector, while Japan's FANUC Corporation provides robotic machinery for weapons production lines. The tech sector, meanwhile, has enabled the collection, storage and governmental use of biometric data on Palestinians, 'supporting Israel's discriminatory permit regime', the report said. Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon grant Israel 'virtually government-wide access to their cloud and AI technologies', enhancing its data processing and surveillance capacities. The US tech company IBM has also been responsible for training military and intelligence personnel, as well as managing the central database of Israel's Population, Immigration and Borders Authority (PIBA) that stores the biometric data of Palestinians, the report said. It found US software platform Palantir Technologies expanded its support to the Israeli military since the start of the war on Gaza in October 2023. The report said there were 'reasonable grounds' to believe the company provided automatic predictive policing technology used for automated decision-making in the battlefield, to process data and generate lists of targets including through artificial intelligence systems like 'Lavender', 'Gospel' and 'Where's Daddy?' The report also lists several companies developing civilian technologies that serve as 'dual-use tools' for Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory. These include Caterpillar, Leonardo-owned Rada Electronic Industries, South Korea's HD Hyundai and Sweden's Volvo Group, which provide heavy machinery for home demolitions and the development of illegal settlements in the West Bank. Rental platforms Booking and Airbnb also aid illegal settlements by listing properties and hotel rooms in Israeli-occupied territory. The report named the US's Drummond Company and Switzerland's Glencore as the primary suppliers of coal for electricity to Israel, originating primarily from Colombia. In the agriculture sector, Chinese Bright Dairy & Food is a majority owner of Tnuva, Israel's largest food conglomerate, which benefits from land seized from Palestinians in Israel's illegal outposts. Netafim, a company providing drip irrigation technology that is 80-percent owned by Mexico's Orbia Advance Corporation, provides infrastructure to exploit water resources in the occupied West Bank. Treasury bonds have also played a critical role in funding the ongoing war on Gaza, according to the report, with some of the world's largest banks, including France's BNP Paribas and the UK's Barclays, listed as having stepped in to allow Israel to contain the interest rate premium despite a credit report identified US multinational investment companies BlackRock and Vanguard as the main investors behind several listed companies. BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, is listed as the second largest institutional investor in Palantir (8.6 percent), Microsoft (7.8 percent), Amazon (6.6 percent), Alphabet (6.6 percent) and IBM (8.6 per cent), and the third largest in Lockheed Martin (7.2 percent) and Caterpillar (7.5 percent). Vanguard, the world's second-largest asset manager, is the largest institutional investor in Caterpillar (9.8 percent), Chevron (8.9 percent) and Palantir (9.1 percent), and the second largest in Lockheed Martin (9.2 percent) and Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems (2 percent). The report states that 'colonial endeavours and their associated genocides have historically been driven and enabled by the corporate sector.' Israel's expansion on Palestinian land is one example of 'colonial racial capitalism', where corporate entities profit from an illegal occupation. Since Israel launched its war on Gaza in October 2023, 'entities that previously enabled and profited from Palestinian elimination and erasure within the economy of occupation, instead of disengaging are now involved in the economy of genocide,' the report said. For foreign arms companies, the war has been a lucrative venture. Israel's military spending from 2023 to 2024 surged 65 percent, amounting to $46.5bn – one of the highest per capita worldwide. Several entities listed on the exchange market – particularly in the arms, tech and infrastructure sectors – have seen their profits rise since October 2023. The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange also rose an unprecedented 179 percent, adding $157.9bn in market value. Global insurance companies, including Allianz and AXA, invested large sums in shares and bonds linked to Israel's occupation, the report said, partly as capital reserves but primarily to generate returns. Booking and Airbnb also continue to profit from rentals in Israeli-occupied land. Airbnb briefly delisted properties on illegal settlements in 2018 but later reverted to donating profits from such listings to humanitarian causes, a practice the report referred to as 'humanitarian-washing'. According to Albanese's report, yes. Corporate entities are under an obligation to avoid violating human rights through direct action or in their business partnerships. States have the primary responsibility to ensure that corporate entities respect human rights and must prevent, investigate and punish abuses by private actors. However, corporations must respect human rights even if the state where they operate does not. A company must therefore assess whether activities or relationships throughout its supply chain risk causing human rights violations or contributing to them, according to the report. The failure to act in line with international law may result in criminal liability. Individual executives can be held criminally liable, including before international courts. The report called on companies to divest from all activities linked to Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory, which is illegal under international law. In July 2024, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion ruling that Israel's continued presence in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem should come to an end 'as rapidly as possible'. In light of this advisory opinion, the UN General Assembly demanded that Israel bring to an end its unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory by September 2025. Albanese's report said the ICJ's ruling 'effectively qualifies the occupation as an act of aggression … Consequently, any dealings that support or sustain the occupation and its associated apparatus may amount to complicity in an international crime under the Rome Statute. 'States must not provide aid or assistance or enter into economic or trade dealings, and must take steps to prevent trade or investment relations that would assist in maintaining the illegal situation created by Israel in the oPt.'
Yahoo
44 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump's NJ golf courses can sell liquor for 6 more months, but he can't pocket the cash just yet
Liquor licenses for two of Trump's NJ golf courses remain under review due to his felony conviction. On Tuesday, state officials said they have extended the two licenses for another six months. Trump can't touch any liquor-sale proceeds for the clubs at Colts Neck and Bedminster — for now. The Champagne will keep flowing for another six months at two of President Donald Trump's New Jersey golf courses, despite his felony conviction. For now, though, the Trump Organization is barred from touching the proceeds. Officials with the New Jersey Attorney General's Office said Tuesday that they have issued temporary, half-year extensions for the liquor licenses at the Trump National Golf Club in Colts Neck and the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster. The last-minute extensions were necessary to keep the drinks flowing while state officials continue to review Trump's application to renew the licenses for the coming year. Without the extension, the licenses at the Colts Neck and Bedminster clubs would have expired outright on Monday, June 30. But the extensions come with heavy strings attached — including that Trump, as a convicted felon, and any other corporate members of the clubs' LLCs must keep their hands out of the bar tills at the two clubs indefinitely. The attorney general's Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control is requiring that proceeds from the two clubs' liquor licenses be held in untouched accounts kept separate from those for the clubs' other income. It's a constraint that Peter Rhodes — a lawyer who's specialized for 30 years in New Jersey liquor licensing — says he's never seen imposed. Usually, when a license owner or beneficiary becomes a felon, they are simply given time to walk away from the license, Rhodes said, usually by selling or transferring their interest to a non-felon. "One might infer that the ABC is struggling with how to handle this issue — with how to deprive a felon of the proceeds of their license," he told BI. "In short, I find it peculiar," said Rhodes, whose Haddonfield-based firm, Cahill, Wilinski, Rhodes & Joyce, has served for 50 years as counsel to the New Jersey Licensed Beverage Association. "What they don't say is what happens to that money if, in fact, they find that he is disqualified," Rhodes added. "They can't just confiscate it." A spokesperson for New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin told Business Insider that the special conditions "are consistent with the division's obligation to ensure that all liquor licensees comply with the law." "New Jersey statutes state that profiting from a liquor license is a privilege, not a right granted by law," the spokesperson said in a statement. It was soon after Trump's May 30, 2024, conviction that New Jersey officials first said that the two golf club licenses were under review. In June of 2024, they announced that they did not intend to renew the licenses due to Trump's new status as a felon. Both the Bedminster and Colts Neck licenses are in the name of Donald Trump, Jr., the president's son, but the state AG's office ruled at the time that Trump himself is the primary beneficiary of the clubs' liquor sales. A license-revocation hearing — at which Trump would bear the burden of proving he was qualified to be a license beneficiary — was initially set for July 2024, only to be repeatedly canceled. A new hearing date has yet to be announced. New Jersey law requires liquor licenses be revoked if their owner or primary beneficiary is sentenced for a crime of moral turpitude, a category which includes felony falsifying business records. That's the state charge Trump was sentenced to in Manhattan in January, nine days before his inauguration. This week's license extension further requires that by September 30, the Trump Organization provide the alcoholic beverage control officials with details of "the corporate structure, ownership, and beneficiary interests" behind the licenses. Trump's third New Jersey golf club is the Trump National Golf Club Philadelphia, which is 45 minutes from that city in Pine Hill. The town, not the state, regulates that license, which was also due to expire June 30. Officials in Pine Hill and a food and beverage manager at the golf club there did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The chief legal officer of the Trump Organization also did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the license renewals and the required special conditions. Read the original article on Business Insider
