McDonald's settles Byron Allen's $10 billion lawsuit over commitment to Black-owned media

June 13 (Reuters) - McDonald's (MCD.N), opens new tab has settled a $10 billion lawsuit by the media entrepreneur Byron Allen challenging the fast-food chain's alleged refusal to advertise with Black-owned media.
Friday's settlement between McDonald's and two of Allen's companies, Entertainment Studios Networks and the Weather Group, averts a scheduled July 15 trial in Los Angeles federal court.
It also resolves Allen's related $100 million lawsuit against McDonald's in Los Angeles Superior Court.
McDonald's said it will buy ads "at market value" from Allen's companies "in a manner that aligns with its advertising strategy and commercial objectives."
Settlement terms are confidential. McDonald's, based in Chicago, denied wrongdoing in agreeing to settle.
In a statement, Allen's companies said "we acknowledge McDonald's commitment to investing in Black-owned media properties and increasing access to opportunity. Our differences are behind us."
Allen had accused McDonald's of "racial stereotyping" by not advertising with Black-owned media, and lying when it pledged in 2021 to boost national ad spending with those media to 5% from 2% by 2024.
He said he relied on that pledge when seeking new business from McDonald's, only to be rebuffed. Allen also said his Allen Media Group represented more than 90% of Black-owned media.
Allen's networks include The Weather Channel, Cars.TV, Comedy.TV, ES.TV, Justice Central, MyDestination.TV, Pets.TV and Recipe.TV.

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Sky News

an hour ago

• Sky News

US warplanes transit through UK: Here's what the flight tracking data shows

Flight tracking data shows extensive movement of US military aircraft towards the Middle East in recent days, including via the UK. Fifty-two US military planes were spotted flying over the eastern Mediterranean towards the Middle East between Monday and Thursday. That includes at least 25 that passed through Chania airport, on the Greek island of Crete - an eight-fold increase in the rate of arrivals compared to the first half of June. The movement of military equipment comes as the US considers whether to assist Israel in its conflict with Iran. Of the 52 planes spotted over the eastern Mediterranean, 32 are used for transporting troops or cargo, 18 are used for mid-air refuelling and two are reconnaissance planes. Forbes McKenzie, founder of McKenzie Intelligence, says that this indicates "the build-up of warfighting capability, which was not [in the region] before". Sky's data does not include fighter jets, which typically fly without publicly revealing their location. An air traffic control recording from Wednesday suggests that F-22 Raptors are among the planes being sent across the Atlantic, while 12 F-35 fighter jets were photographed travelling from the UK to the Middle East on Wednesday. Many US military planes are passing through UK A growing number of US Air Force planes have been passing through the UK in recent days. Analysis of flight tracking data at three key air bases in the UK shows 63 US military flights landing between 16 and 19 June - more than double the rate of arrivals earlier in June. On Thursday, Sky News filmed three US military C-17A Globemaster III transport aircraft and a C-130 Hercules military cargo plane arriving at Glasgow's Prestwick Airport. Flight tracking data shows that one of the planes arrived from an air base in Jordan, having earlier travelled there from Germany. What does Israel need from US? Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on 15 March that his country's aim is to remove "two existential threats - the nuclear threat and the ballistic missile threat". Israel says that Iran is attempting to develop a nuclear bomb, though Iran says its nuclear facilities are only for civilian energy purposes. A US intelligence assessment in March concluded that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon. President Trump dismissed the assessment on Tuesday, saying: "I think they were very close to having one." Forbes McKenzie says the Americans have a "very similar inventory of weapons systems" to the Israelis, "but of course, they also have the much-talked-about GBU-57". The GBU-57 is a 30,000lb bomb - the largest non-nuclear bomb in existence. Mr McKenzie explains that it is "specifically designed to destroy targets which are very deep underground". Experts say it is the only weapon with any chance of destroying Iran's main enrichment site, which is located underneath a mountain at Fordow. Air-to-air refuelling could allow Israel to carry larger bombs Among the dozens of US aircraft that Sky News tracked over the eastern Mediterranean in recent days, more than a third (18 planes) were designed for air-to-air refuelling. "These are crucial because Israel is the best part of a thousand miles away from Iran," says Sky News military analyst Sean Bell. "Most military fighter jets would struggle to do those 2,000-mile round trips and have enough combat fuel." The ability to refuel mid-flight would also allow Israeli planes to carry heavier munitions, including bunker-buster bombs necessary to destroy the tunnels and silos where Iran stores many of its missiles. Satellite imagery captured on 15 June shows the aftermath of Israeli strikes on a missile facility near the western city of Kermanshah, which destroyed at least 12 buildings at the site. At least four tunnel entrances were also damaged in the strikes, two of which can be seen in the image below. Writing for Jane's Defence Weekly, military analyst Jeremy Binnie says it looked like the tunnels were "targeted using guided munitions coming in at angles, not destroyed from above using penetrator bombs, raising the possibility that the damage can be cleared, enabling any [missile launchers] trapped inside to deploy". "This might reflect the limited payloads that Israeli aircraft can carry to Iran," he adds. Penetrator bombs, also known as bunker-busters, are much heavier than other types of munitions and as a result require more fuel to transport. Israel does not have the latest generation of refuelling aircraft, Mr Binnie says, meaning it is likely to struggle to deploy a significant number of penetrator bombs. Israel has struck most of Iran's western missile bases Even without direct US assistance, the Israeli air force has managed to inflict significant damage on Iran's missile launch capacity. Sky News has confirmed Israeli strikes on at least five of Iran's six known missile bases in the west of the country. On Monday, the IDF said that its strategy of targeting western launch sites had forced Iran to rely on its bases in the centre of the country, such as Isfahan - around 1,500km (930 miles) from Israel. Among Iran's most advanced weapons are three types of solid-fuelled rockets fitted with highly manoeuvrable warheads: Fattah-1, Kheibar Shekan and Haj Qassam. The use of solid fuel makes these missiles easy to transport and fast to launch, while their manoeuvrable warheads make them better at evading Israeli air defences. However, none of them are capable of striking Israel from such a distance. Iran is known to possess five types of missile capable of travelling more than 1,500km, but only one of these uses solid fuel - the Sijjil-1. On 18 June, Iran claimed to have used this missile against Israel for the first time. Iran's missiles have caused significant damage Iran's missile attacks have killed at least 24 people in Israel and wounded hundreds, according to the Israeli foreign ministry. The number of air raid alerts in Israel has topped 1,000 every day since the start of hostilities, reaching a peak of 3,024 on 15 June. Iran has managed to strike some government buildings, including one in the city of Haifa on Friday. And on 13 June, in Iran's most notable targeting success so far, an Iranian missile impacted on or near the headquarters of Israel's defence ministry in Tel Aviv. Most of the Iranian strikes verified by Sky News, however, have hit civilian targets. These include residential buildings, a school and a university. On Thursday, one missile hit the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, southern Israel's main hospital. More than 70 people were injured, according to Israel's health ministry. Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said that Iran had struck a nearby technology park containing an IDF cyber defence training centre, and that the "blast wave caused superficial damage to a small section" of the hospital. However, the technology park is in fact 1.2km away from where the missile struck. Photos of the hospital show evidence of a direct hit, with a large section of one building's roof completely destroyed. Iran successfully struck the technology park on Friday, though its missile fell in an open area, causing damage to a nearby residential building but no casualties. Israel has killed much of Iran's military leadership It's not clear exactly how many people Israel's strikes in Iran have killed, or how many are civilians. Estimates by human rights groups of the total number of fatalities exceed 600. What is clear is that among the military personnel killed are many key figures in the Iranian armed forces, including the military's chief of staff, deputy head of intelligence and deputy head of operations. Key figures in the powerful Revolutionary Guard have also been killed, including the militia's commander-in-chief, its aerospace force commander and its air defences commander. On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that US assistance was not necessary for Israel to win the war. "We will achieve all our objectives and hit all of their nuclear facilities," he said. "We have the capability to do that." 3:49 Forbes McKenzie says that while Israel has secured significant victories in the war so far, "they only have so much fuel, they only have so many munitions". "The Americans have an ability to keep up the pace of operations that the Israelis have started, and they're able to do it for an indefinite period of time." Additional reporting by data journalist Joely Santa Cruz and OSINT producers Freya Gibson, Lina-Sirine Zitout and Sam Doak.

Times

an hour ago

• Times

The missing link in the grooming gangs report: cousin marriage

When the US Department of Defence set up an interrogation unit at Guantanamo Bay after 9/11, it conducted a detailed study on the suspected terrorists it held. Agents wanted to understand the links between them, the way they had worked together, the better to infiltrate their wider networks. They found nothing. Diddly squat. They conducted audits, led themselves on a merry dance, but achieved zilch. • 'Wrongly prosecuted' grooming gang victims denied compensation Then they hired someone who understood the culture of the people they'd apprehended; someone steeped in Arabic mores. She instantly spotted a pattern in the names of the suspects. A startlingly high proportion were from two clans: the Qahtani and the Utaybi. When she mentioned this to her DoD colleagues, their first question was: what the hell is a clan? Only after she explained the significance of these social institutions, the subtle pattern of names that indicate clan affiliations and the codes of honour and secrecy that make them powerful vehicles for group action did they see the point. The agents were then able to infiltrate the networks and prevent future atrocities. Why am I telling you this? Well, because I read Baroness Casey of Blackstock's report on the rape gangs scandal with rising levels of frustration — indeed much the same emotion with which I read her 2016 report on social integration. I don't doubt Casey's work rate or integrity. But I think that, somewhat like the DoD at Guantanamo, she couldn't see what was before her eyes because she lacked the appropriate analytical lens. • 'Whitehall tried to block Rotherham grooming scandal exposé' You see, to understand many of the most urgent failures of integration, you need to understand the clan. These groups are held together not just by ideology or religion; they are cemented by cousin marriage, a common practice in Arabic cultures and, in the UK, many Pakistani immigrant communities, particularly those hailing from Kashmir. By marrying within small, tightknit groups, they ensure everything is kept within the baradari, or brotherhood — property, secrets, loyalty — binding clan members closer together while sequestering them from wider society. In her 2016 report Casey rightly talked about the failure to speak English, honour beatings and the like, but she missed the point that many of these problems are a function of marriage practices that isolate communities. The academic Patrick Nash of the Pharos Foundation has written of baradari life 'concentrated in small geographical areas spread across a few streets or nearby neighbourhoods where there is little need or opportunity to have much to do with wider society or practise the English language'. To write a report on failures of integration without seeing the link with cousin marriage is, I suggest, like writing on the power grid without noting the significance of electricity. • How the grooming gang report detailed abusers' ethnicity Casey's report on the rape gang scandal was flawed for the same reason. It was a strange experience to read her words as she edged ever closer to grasping the point without quite getting there. She noted that the problem is disproportionately concentrated among British Pakistanis. She even noted that 'two thirds of suspects offended within groups' that were 'based on pre-existing relationships — mainly brothers and cousins'. But then, stunningly, she suggested that these links were 'unsophisticated' and 'informal'. Anyone who studies these things — one thinks of Michael Muthukrishna at LSE — could have told her that this is the unmistakable pattern of clan-based crime: groups whose links are anything but informal and unsophisticated. Charlie Peters, who has investigated this problem for GB News, told me: 'The deeper you probe, the more you see the presence of clans. We know that such communities are more likely to see others as outsiders, of less moral value and, when it comes to young white girls, fair game. The perpetrators also knew that they could commit crimes without getting dobbed in since loyalty is owed to the clan but not victims. In some cases, abusers were aided by relatives in authority.' Nash put it this way: 'Cousin marriage sustains close-kin networks which incentivise clan members both to dehumanise out-group victims and to suppress knowledge of criminal activity to preserve family honour.' • Grooming gangs 'still at large, and the victims aren't believed' A couple of examples. Last year, Shaha Amran Miah, 48, Shaha Alman Miah, 47, and Shaha Joman Miah, 38, were convicted at Preston crown court of horrific abuse perpetrated in Barrow-in-Furness and Leeds. Yes, these were Pakistani men, but they were also brothers within an overarching baradari. In Rotherham in 2016, Arshid, Basharat and Bannaras Hussain groomed and raped children for nearly 20 years while Qurban Ali was found guilty of conspiracy to rape. Three of these men are brothers and Ali is their uncle. I have long advocated a ban on cousin marriage but should perhaps say that I've never regarded it as a panacea. Improving integration requires so much more: ending mass uncontrolled immigration, amending legal frameworks to stop the boats, deporting foreign criminals, not to mention other policies supported by large majorities but serially ducked by politicians. A ban on consanguinity would, though, be of huge value. American states with bans tend to be more prosperous and faster-growing. Nations with bans are richer and more integrated, with less corruption and lower rates of crime. A ban would also reduce the prevalence of the congenital diseases causing untold suffering in Kashmiri immigrant communities from Bradford to Luton. The good news is that Kemi Badenoch has adopted this as Tory policy after campaigning by her colleague Richard Holden, and a poll for YouGov last month showed that 77 per cent of the British people are in favour of a ban (only 9 per cent oppose it). But here's what astounds me: Labour remains against prohibition, despite (I am told) having read the evidence. Why? How? Permit me to suggest that I glimpse through the façade of prevarication a party still terrified of criticising any cultural practice out of fear of appearing racist. Isn't that why it was mute for so long on female genital mutilation and honour beatings and still can't bring itself to describe the burqa as a pernicious symbol of institutional misogyny? In other words, the reason the grooming scandal was not confronted for so long by both main parties (not to mention the police and social services) — namely, the fear of seeming bigoted for investigating ethnic minorities, even while they were gang-raping young girls — is still alive and well in the British government. As the son of a Pakistani immigrant who integrated into this nation (not least by marrying my mum) and came to love it, I find this sickening. One can perhaps forgive Casey for missing the significance of cousin marriage, given that it is a custom with which she is unfamiliar (although, frankly, she should have done her homework), but there can be no excuse for politicians who put cultural sensitivities before basic decency. So I say to Starmer, Hermer, Cooper et al: examine your consciences. Did you really go into politics to be apologists for the worst kind of moral relativism, to acquiesce in the nihilistic pretence that all cultural practices are of equal value, when they emphatically are not? If not, find your backbone, confront the Muslim bloc vote and ban cousin marriage. The alternative is betrayal of the most heinous kind. For here's a thought to focus minds: girls today, even as you read these words, are being abused by ethnic clans operating in this country. Fail to act now, and this is on you.

Daily Mail​

2 hours ago

• Daily Mail​

Minnesota shooting suspect was a 'prepper' who made a 'bailout plan'

The wife of the suspect charged with killing a Minnesota politician and attempting to assassinate another confessed the couple are 'doomsday preppers' and her husband had given her a 'bailout plan.' Vance Boelter, 57, is accused of fatally shooting former Democratic House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, in their home in the early morning hours of June 14 in the northern Minneapolis suburbs. He also allegedly shot and wounded another Democrat, Sen. John Hoffman, and his wife, Yvette, who lived a few miles away. While Boelter was on the run, his wife was pulled over with a trove of suspicious items in her car. Jenny Boelter, 51, was stopped by authorities at a convenience store while driving a car with the couple's children inside and found with a weapon, ammunition, cash and passports. According to an FBI affidavit obtained by WCCO, Boelter's wife told the investigator they were 'preppers,' meaning they 'prepare for major or catastrophic incidents.' She said her husband gave her a 'bailout plan,' with instructions to go to her mother's home in southwestern Wisconsin, which she initiated after receiving a text from her husband that 'they needed to get out of the house and people with guns may be showing up to the house.' The affidavit also stated that Boelter was driven to a bank in Robbinsdale, Minnesota, by an unnamed person and withdrew all $2,200 he had in a bank account in his name. The driver, listed in court documents as 'Witness 1,' is the same person investigators said sold Boelter an electric bike and a Buick sedan, which were found during the 43-hour manhunt last weekend. Boelter surrendered Sunday night after what authorities have called the largest search in Minnesota history. He has been charged with six federal crimes, including murder, stalking and firearms offense, as two murder and two attempted murder charges at the state level. Boelter has not entered any pleas and could face the death penalty if convicted on the federal charges. Meanwhile, Boelter's wife has remained in hiding - as the accused assassin's defiant family were tight-lipped concerning her whereabouts, telling a reporter to 'piss off.' Shaken mom-of-five, Jenny rang pals only to say she was in a 'safe' location but wouldn't reveal where she was. She fled the family's bucolic farmhouse home in Green Isle, Minnesota, the morning of June 14 after Boelter hinted that he had done something monstrous in a 6.18am text. 'Dad went to war last night,' wrote of her 57-year-old husband. 'There's gonna be some people coming to the house armed and trigger happy and I don't want you guys around.' As news broke that Boelter had allegedly gunned down two lawmakers and their spouses in Minneapolis, Jenny was pulled over driving through Onamia, 90 miles north. She had their youngest children in the car along with their passports, $10,000 in cash and two handguns, according to federal court filings. Jenny, the president of the couple's private security firm, consented to a voluntary search of her electronic devices but wasn't arrested during the 10am traffic stop. There's nothing in her husband's charging documents to suggest she had advance knowledge of his alleged plot to slaughter dozens of Democrat lawmakers and pro-abortion activists. Jenny has not commented publicly since Boelter was captured Sunday evening and charged with multiple counts of murder and stalking. Her brother Jason Doskocil, 54, had a blunt message for when we asked about her whereabouts.