Latest news with #Peta
The Guardian
6 hours ago
- General
- The Guardian
Animal rights group warns over ‘misleading' footwear labelling
British consumers trying to avoid animal-derived products are being misled by unclear footwear labelling, a leading animal rights charity has said. Under current legislation in the UK, all footwear must be labelled to show the main materials – at least 80% – used in the upper, lining and sock, and outer sole. However, if no single material makes up 80%, the two main materials must be listed. For example, a label or pictogram might show '30% rubber, 70% leather'. Wool is not required to be named on footwear labels. Even when it is a main material, it is grouped under 'textile', which also includes plant-based and synthetic fibres such as cotton, hemp and polyester, unless a brand chooses to specify it. As a result, consumers trying to avoid animal products might unknowingly buy shoes containing wool, believing them to be vegan, said Kate Werner, a senior campaigns manager at Peta, an animal rights organisation. '[Wool] is labelled with the same symbol as vegan textiles, leading consumers to believe that a product with that symbol is 'safe' to purchase from an ethical standpoint,' she added. In a letter to Jonathan Reynolds, the secretary of state for business and trade, Peta has called for regulations to be updated so consumers can make informed choices that align with their values. It also asked for wool to be given a unique symbol 'that clearly communicates its animal origin, such as the one currently used for leather'. It added: 'Many people choose products based on ethical considerations and environmental concerns, and they deserve transparency. If wool is grouped with humane and non-animal materials, it prevents consumers from making informed decisions aligned with their values.' Richard Matthews, the lead officer for fair trading at the Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CTSI), said it was the responsibility of the manufacturer to ensure footwear was properly labelled and not misleading. 'At present, if the footwear is made up of 'mixed materials' the word 'textile' is permitted in the description. If shoes are described as vegan, we would expect this description to be honest. However, if the shoes are generically labelled, and are labelled according to the regulations, this complies with legislation.' Peta pointed to the 'significant suffering' sheep experienced in the wool industry. Grouping wool under the textile symbol 'is misleading, as it obscures the fact that wool production, like leather and sheepskin, involves the exploitation and slaughter of animals', the letter states. A spokesperson for Ethical Consumer, a nonprofit that investigates corporate ethics and product sustainability, said: 'People have a right to know what materials they are buying so they can make informed decisions, because many people do want to avoid supporting animal exploitation and see wool as part of that. Therefore the use of the word 'textile' without reference to wool is misleading, or at very least insufficiently transparent.' A Department for Business and Trade spokesperson said: 'Regulations require the main materials used in shoes to be stated clearly. We encourage anyone who needs more information to speak to their retailer.' CTSI urged consumers with concerns about the presence of animal fibres in footwear to double check before buying them.
Business Insider
a day ago
- Business
- Business Insider
How investors went from stagflation panic to bull market euphoria
The market has gone through a stark transformation in the last few months. A crescendo of panic about the economic impacts of tariffs has slowly but surely given way to a chorus of euphoric voices on Wall Street calling for a new bull market. What happened? How did markets go from fearing the dreaded S-word to shrugging off the most dramatic upheaval of trade policy in a century? A few months ago, recession calls were springing up on Wall Street, and investors were fretting over stagflation, a situation where inflation remains stubbornly high while economic growth slows, and which economists warn is even worse than a normal recession. Those fears have seemingly been wiped off the table, even more so now that second-quarter GDP data released on Wednesday showed the US economy returned to growth mode this spring. Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and other forecasters have lifted their economic outlooks in recent weeks, and most investors now expect the economy to avoid a recession, with 65% of global fund managers saying they expected a soft landing, according to a July BofA survey. Meanwhile, meme stocks have come roaring back, another sign that animal spirits have returned to markets. And yet, Donald Trump's tariffs are still on. The US tariff rate is about 18.2%, according to the latest update from the Yale Budget Lab. That's the highest the overall tariff rate has been since 1934, the researchers said. "If you'd had told me a year ago or six months ago that we were going to have 15% across-the-board tariffs, I would have thought the S&P 500 would be considerably lower than where it is now. I certainly wouldn't think it would be making new highs," Doug Peta, the chief US investment strategist at BCA Research, told Business Insider. Market pros who spoke to BI say two things led the market to stage a dramatic turnaround. Tariffs aren't as bad as feared The fact that tariffs are still on hardly matters to the market. It's more so that they aren't as bad as initially feared, Peta said. Stocks have climbed as Trump has announced more trade deals with key partners, generally setting tariff rates below what he had initially proposed. "Perhaps it is a tribute to the administration's salesmanship, that if you tell people things are going to be really horrible — it's going to be 50%, it's going to be 125%, which is what we got to during the tit-for-tat with China — and then you say, 'Oh, you know what? It's just going to be 15%.' I think markets have really relaxed on that," Peta said. And even when Trump has dialed up his tariff threats, like when he posted letters to 23 countries on Truth Social, markets have been confident in the TACO Trade, Peta added. He was referring to the idea that investors have been buying stocks despite the president's unfriendly policies, due to the assumption that Trump Always Chickens Out. Paul Hickey, the co-founder of Bespoke Investment Group, told BI that the apocalyptic mood that accompanied Liberation Day was due to the "shock value" of Trump's tariffs. "Market doesn't just rally 20% in a short period of time for nothing," he said. "Usually there was either a major event to cause that, or else there was a major sell-off beforehand where there was an overreaction." The improbably strong US economy And then there's the economy, which has bucked calls for a dire slowdown alongside higher tariffs fueled by inflation. While fears of stagflation were running rampant several months ago, GDP is expanding again after contracting in the first quarter. Bank of America recently dialed down its stagflation calls, saying it sees a number of reasons the economy could thrive in the coming quarters, including Trump's pro-growth agenda and big capex plans among US companies. Meanwhile, inflation has drifted slightly higher but overall price growth is relatively close to the Fed's 2% inflation target. The final and most important leg of any stock market rally— corporate earnings —has also been holding up well. Of the S&P 500 companies that have reported results so far this quarter, 80% have beaten earnings estimates, according to the latest update from FactSet. "People were expecting just terrible commentary from companies reporting and a weakness in the economy and that didn't materialize," Hickey said. Is there a shoe to drop? It is still possible that the full impact of tariffs has yet to be felt in markets and the economy. "I think most right now are just sort of waiting for the effect of the tariffs to become more clear," Parag Thatte, director of global asset allocation and US equity strategy at Deutsche Bank, told BI. That also means there's a chance investors could be getting ahead of themselves, BCA's Peta said. "I do think some of the optimism is unwarranted," he told BI, adding that he was skeptical some of the US's recent trade deals would counterbalance the negative growth impact of tariffs. Talk of a pullback has been swirling on Wall Street since major indexes climbed back to record highs. Evercore ISI, Stifel, Pimco, and HSBC are among the firms that have recently flagged the risk of a stock correction, even as major indexes power past record after record in the last several weeks. In the short term, Hickey also believes optimism could soon start to fade, especially considering that the market is entering historically weak seasonal stretch from late July through September. "The pendulum has really shifted," Hickey said of the market's seasonal backdrop. "It wouldn't surprise us to see the market rally pause in the short term."
BBC News
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Peta calls for Skegness mascot Jolly Fisherman to be replaced
An animal rights group is calling for a seaside town's century-old mascot to be for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) said it was calling for the Jolly Fisherman in Skegness to be replaced with a "Happy Plaice"."There's absolutely nothing jolly about killing fish," Jennifer White, from the group local councillor and former mayor Steve Kirk described the campaign as "nonsense". The original Jolly Fisherman poster, which features the slogan "Skegness is so bracing" was commissioned by the Great Northern Railway to encourage visitors to take the train on their seaside breaks to was commissioned in 1908 for 12 guineas and has become synonymous with the Lincolnshire is also represented by a statue in the White said the best thing would be for the statue to be replaced with a "happy fish" to remind people that fish have a "desire to live and can feel pain and love and joy just as any other animal".She said: "We have sent a letter to the mayor offering to contribute to the cost of a new statue that would replace the so-called Jolly Fisherman."We can all be kind to fish and other animals by simply eating vegan foods and that's really what this statue would represent." In response, Kirk said the Jolly Fisherman was loved throughout the world and was an integral part of Skegness."Anyone who has been around for a while will realise that around once every ten years or so, when they are desperate to raise their profile they [Peta] pick on the poor Jolly Fisherman."It's publicity for them," he week, an appeal was made to find people to don a Jolly costume to go out and about in the resort to meet Kirk said they now had several potential candidates for the has previously been in the news when he was redrawn by New European with the slogan Skegness is so mascot also appeared on the cover of Bill Bryson's book The Road to Little Dribbling. Listen to highlights from Lincolnshire on BBC Sounds, watch the latest episode of Look North or tell us about a story you think we should be covering here. Download the BBC News app from the App Store for iPhone and iPad or Google Play for Android devices
The Guardian
23-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Peta praises bat-biting Ozzy Osbourne for ‘the gentle side he showed to animals'
Perhaps the most notorious of Ozzy Osbourne's outrageous on-stage antics was biting the head off of a bat. So as tributes for the late rocker poured in from around the globe, one stuck out as particularly surprising – from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta). The 76-year-old Black Sabbath frontman's death was announced on Tuesday, with his family saying Osbourne – who suffered from various ailments, including a form of Parkinson's disease – 'was with his family and surrounded by love'. Tributes soon poured in for Osbourne from musical world luminaries such as Elton John, Ronnie Wood and Rod Stewart … and Peta, the famously strident animal-protection group. 'Ozzy Osbourne was a legend and a provocateur, but Peta will remember the 'Prince of Darkness' most fondly for the gentle side he showed to animals – most recently cats, by using his fame to decry painful, crippling declawing mutilations,' Peta said on its website and social channels. 'Ozzy may have been the singer, but his wife, Sharon, and his daughter, Kelly, were of one voice when it meant protecting animals. 'Ozzy will be missed by animal advocates the world over.' Osbourne had famously partnered with the organisation in 2020 to speak out against the declawing of cats, and lent his face to an ad campaign showing his bloodied hands with the tagline: 'It's an amputation. Not a manicure.' 'Amputating a cat's toes is twisted and wrong. If your couch is more important to you than your cat's health and happiness, you don't deserve to have an animal! Get cats a scratching post – don't mutilate them for life,' Osbourne was quoted as saying at the time. Peta suggests that those looking to protect their pets to seek out 'humane ways to prevent cats from scratching on furniture'. As well as biting the head off a dead bat, he believed to be a stage prop in 1982 while performing in Iowa – and later going to hospital for a rabies inoculation – Osbourne also claimed to have bitten the heads off two doves during a record label meeting the year before, supposedly having brought them to the meeting to release as a sign of peace.
Daily Mail
23-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Rock's wildest wildman: He once said he'd only be remembered for biting the head off a bat - but his marriage to Sharon and a pioneering reality TV show changed all that... the astonishing success of Ozzy Osbourne as he dies aged 76
The night Ozzy Osbourne went to dinner with the US president nearly turned into the biggest disaster of his career. Yet somehow, thanks to the mix of goofy charm and outrageous good luck that had protected him throughout his career, he turned it into a triumph. As always Ozzy, who has died aged 76 after a long battle with Parkinson's disease, was reckless, self-destructive... and got away with it. His invitation to attend the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner in 2002 was predictably improbable. The heavy metal superstar was being honoured for his animal welfare work. Ozzy couldn't quite believe it himself. True, he and wife Sharon were famous for their menagerie of pets, seen on their pioneering reality TV show The Osbournes. And he'd recently joined animal activists Peta to campaign against the fur trade. But if the former Black Sabbath frontman was famous for one thing above all, it was for biting the head off a bat during a concert in Iowa, in 1982. He always insisted it was a drunken mistake – a fan threw the bat at him and, thinking it was a rubber toy, he ripped it apart with his teeth. When he realised what he'd done, he cut short the gig to get a rabies jab. 'Whatever else I do,' he used to lament, 'my epitaph will be, 'Born December 3, 1948. Died, whenever. And he bit the head off a bat'.' So his presence at the dinner as a guest of President George W. Bush and wife Laura was unlikely to say the least. And although American news reports of the night described Ozzy as a 'recovering alcoholic', there wasn't much recovery going on: as he sat down with Fox News journalists, he grabbed a bottle of red and downed it in three long draughts. By the time the compere announced his presence, Ozzy was in party mood. He leapt up and greeted the 1,800 guests with a scream of 'Yeeehaaa!' – then climbed on the table and did it again. Footage of the night picks up Bush's response: 'OK Ozzy.' And then the president muttered: 'This might have been a mistake.' As the boozed-up star collapsed back into his seat, the president began to pay tribute. 'The thing about Ozzy is, he's made a lot of big hit recordings – Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Face In Hell, Black Skies and Bloodbath In Paradise,' Bush said. And then came the punchline: 'Ozzy, Mom loves your stuff.' The room erupted. The night was saved. Ozzy, who nearly got himself thrown out by security moments earlier, emerged the hero of the event. A few months later, he was one of the opening acts at the Queen's Golden Jubilee celebrations. That was the night Brian May played a solo on the roof of Buckingham Palace. Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys were headliners. But the biggest surprise of the night was hearing Black Sabbath's Paranoid booming down the Mall, and a bellow like an injured bullock: 'Finished with my woman cos she couldn't help me with my mind! People think I'm insane because I am frowning all the time!' That was Ozzy. He was the wildest man of rock, a working-class Brummie boozehound and ex-jailbird, whose speech was so slurred and foul-mouthed that half of what he said on TV got bleeped out and the rest needed subtitles. And he remained a showman to the very end, performing his final gig less than three weeks ago from a black throne carved with giant bats' wings to a delirious audience of hard-rock faithful at his beloved Villa Park. Born in Aston, Birmingham, he was one of six children in a house with no inside toilet. At school, unable to read (he was later diagnosed with severe dyslexia), he was regularly beaten by teachers with shoes or lengths of wood. He responded by causing mayhem: in a metalwork class, he once heated a copper penny with a blowtorch and placed it with tongs on the teacher's desk, waiting to see him pick it up. At 15, he left with no qualifications, only to be sacked from a series of dead-end jobs for stealing, skiving or doing drugs. The only one he enjoyed was working a dawn shift in an abattoir, because that meant he could get to the pub in time for lunchtime opening. Always a practical joker, he liked to fill his pockets with cows' eyeballs and drop them into people's pints. An afternoon's drinking was followed by a night in a club, dancing to soul music till 5am, and then – fuelled by amphetamines – heading back to the slaughterhouse. Sacked from the abattoir for attacking a fellow worker with an iron pole and putting him in hospital, Ozzy turned to burglary, stealing clothes and a TV set from a shop. He knew enough about fingerprints to wear gloves... but chose a pair with one thumb missing. 'Not exactly Einstein, are we?' said the copper who arrested him. Unable to pay his £40 fine, he was sentenced to three months in jail, serving his time in Birmingham's notorious Winson Green. When he got out in 1966, he bought an amplifier on hire purchase and put an advert in a guitar shop window: vocalist seeks band for gigs. He couldn't play an instrument, but he didn't want to go back to jail and he couldn't think of anything else to do. That's when his luck changed – and never left him. A former schoolmate, Tony Iommi, was putting together a group with a couple of mates, and needed a singer. Tony, it turned out, was a brilliant rock guitarist, despite an accident in a sheet metal factory that lopped off two fingertips. The other guys, bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Bill Ward, made a rhythm section as thunderously heavy as the other hard rock group to emerge from 1960s Birmingham, Led Zeppelin. Ozzy was a screamer, not a warbler. He detested the flower-power and hippie ditties of the decade. But he had bellowing lungs and a demented stage presence, and that suited Iommi's dark, satanic blues riffs. Calling themselves Earth, they got their first gigs by turning up uninvited at live music clubs and offering to play if a band failed to turn up. When punters complained that their music was too loud, too aggressive and too demonic, they changed their name to something more ominous: Black Sabbath. Their first single, in 1970, was called Evil Woman. An LP followed and was panned: Rolling Stone magazine called it 'dogged wooden claptrap'. That set the tone for Ozzy's career – critics always hated his music. But Black Sabbath weren't making music for critics, they were making it for young men like them: frustrated, rebellious, working class and bursting with energy. The album sold a million, and earned them a reputation for devil worship. When fans urged him to join them for black masses and satanic rituals, Ozzy told them: 'Look, mate, the only evil spirits I'm interested in are whisky, vodka and gin.' Despite growing fame in America and world tours, boosted by a top-five hit with Paranoid that saw them appear on Top Of The Pops alongside Cliff Richard and Pan's People, Sabbath remained a Brummie band. Ozzy still drank in the same pubs, and he met his first wife Thelma at Birmingham's Rum Runner nightclub. American tours followed. Ozzy discovered pizza, Harvey Wallbangers, groupies and cocaine. At a Holiday Inn in California, he ended a phone call to Thelma – who was pregnant with the first of their two children – and went to the bar. Finding it empty, 'I took the lift up to the pool on the roof, and when the doors opened, it was like Caligula up there. Dozens of the most amazing chicks you could ever imagine, all stark naked, and blowj**s and threesomes going on left, right and centre. 'I lit up a joint, sat down on a recliner between two lesbian chicks, and began to sing God Bless America.' At a rented house in Bel Air, the band did so much coke that they called their next LP Snowblind (a title the record company rejected: the album was eventually called Vol. 4). Ozzy claimed he had to smoke a bag of dope a day, just to stop the coke from giving him a heart attack. When the weed stopped working, he switched to Valium and then heroin. In an effort to clean himself up, he moved back to England and bought a country house. The detox didn't work out, and the rural retreat became known as Atrocity Cottage. Obsessed with shotguns, he blasted stuffed animals, shop mannequins, chickens and stray cats. His marriage did not survive, and neither did his Black Sabbath career: in 1979 the band fired him. He was rescued by Sharon Arden, the daughter of his ex-manager Don – a brutal thug, who was furious at losing Ozzy to his own daughter. He later set his dogs on her, causing her to have a miscarriage. Sharon believed Ozzy could be a superstar in his own right, something he'd never imagined. At first she matched him drink for drink and blow for blow. 'Our fights were legendary,' she said. 'At a gig, Ozzy would run off stage during a guitar solo to fight with me, then run back on to finish the song. I realised that if we both carried on, we'd wind up a washed-up pair of old drunks living in a hovel somewhere. So I stopped drinking.' Ozzy did not. His comeback album, Blizzard Of Ozz, was a global hit, and on tour he partied as hard as ever. In Tokyo, after a gig, Sharon was woken up in their hotel room by Ozzy as he climbed into the bed with a groupie. He'd forgotten his wife was there. 'It's funny now,' she remarked 20 years later. 'It wasn't then.' In San Antonio, he got so drunk that Sharon hid his clothes to stop him from leaving the hotel. He stole one of her dresses, went on a bar crawl and was arrested for relieving himself on the cenotaph at the Alamo, the most sacred spot in Texas. In 1986 he went AWOL, forcing Sharon to issue a newspaper appeal: 'God knows where he is. He could be in Brazil for all I know. I'd just like to say – Ozzy, darling, please call me. You know where to find me. I miss you.' After a silence that lasted months, he sent a peace offering: all his hair, in a shoe box. She tracked him down to a drug dependency unit in Minneapolis, where he had shaved his head. The debauchery came to a crashing halt in 1989 when, after drinking four bottles of vodka, Ozzy tried to strangle Sharon during an argument. She called the police and he was arrested for attempted murder. With her husband facing 20 years in prison, Sharon agreed to drop the charges. 'These things happen,' she said. But she insisted he went into rehab for three months, partly for the sake of their three children, Aimee, Kelly and Jack. For the rest of his life, despite frequent relapses, he moderated his excesses – not always on the wagon but at least within sight of it. A series of health scares in the 1990s, including a misdiagnosis of multiple sclerosis, forced him to cut back on touring. Instead, Sharon encouraged him to launch OzzFest, a heavy metal festival, and to continue recording. They went on to star in a ground-breaking TV show, the first of the reality formats, with cameras following them round their home for months on end. The series was a colossal hit, earning them $20million for the first two seasons. Half the time, Ozzy seemed barely aware that he was being filmed, which added to the hilarity. His wailing cry of 'Sha-rrrron?' became an international catchphrase. When Sharon was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2002, he started drinking again, and two years later had a near-fatal accident on a quad bike. His bodyguard saved him, giving him the kiss of life. 'My heart stopped twice,' he said. 'I was in a coma and I remember having a terrible dream – I was no longer with Sharon. She's met another guy who had his own aeroplane.' He recovered and so did Sharon. Against the odds, so did their marriage. The fear of losing her to cancer made Ozzy understand at last how lucky he was to be alive and to have his wife. 'She's not a Pamela Anderson or a Bo Derek,' he once said, with typical clumsiness. 'She was fat when I fell in love with her. But I'd love Sharon if she was the size of ten houses or as skinny as three twigs. I love her, the soul, the person.'
