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(NEW YORK) — Kim Kardashian West is selling a stake in her beauty brand for $200 million, in a deal that values the TV reality star's three-year-old business at $1 billion.

The buyer is Covergirl owner Coty Inc., which will get a 20% stake in KKW Beauty. Coty seems to be enamored with the Kardashians: Last year, it bought a 51% stake in the makeup line started by Kardashian West's younger sister, Kylie Jenner.

"Kim is a true modern day global icon," said Coty CEO Peter Harf, which is similar to what he said about Jenner in November.

Kardashian West, who stars on the long-running reality TV show "Keeping Up with the Kardashians," founded KKW Beauty in 2017 and tapped into her hundreds of millions of social media followers to sell lip gloss, body foundation and perfume.

The 39-year-old will still promote KKW Beauty online and will help create new products.

Coty plans to expand the brand into more countries around the world and possibly into other categories, like skin creams and shampoos. It also hopes that the buzzy brand can help boost sales and connect with younger shoppers who spend a lot of time on social media.

Coty's brands, including Max Factor makeup and Sally Hansen nail polish, can't compete with KKW Beauty's reach. Max Factor, for example, has 585,000 Instagram followers. KKW Beauty has 4.4 million.

Coty, which expects the deal to close next year, didn't reveal any sales data for KKW Beauty. Shares of New York-based Coty rose more than 13% to close at $4.74 Monday.

It's been a busy summer for Kardashian West's family. On Friday, her husband Kanye West announced a deal to design fashions for the Gap under his Yeezy brand.

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Nearly four months into the COVID-19 crisis, we are witnessing continued evidence of not just cost in lives lost but the economic devastation as well, with the new surge in cases in states previously spared casting doubt on everything from the opening of theme parks and sporting events to the viability of interstate travel. And yet, as bad as things are economically, it remains an open question why things aren't worse. The answer is simple, and challenging: we may all be in this together as humans facing a virus but we are not equally in this together in bearing the economic toll.

We are not all in this together, by class or, as the recent protests amply highlight, by race, but we have a story in this country that says we are, and that story subtly shapes how we tell our economic narrative as well. We act as if the fact that many of us are hard hit means that the system must therefore be as well. And make no mistake, a less-bad economy in the age of COVID-19 is still a very bad one. But it is not an equally distributed less bad, just as it was not an equally or even equitably distributed good when times were better. The upside to that downside is that the system itself isn't as harshly impacted; the downside is that the brunt hits those least able to bear it.

The national unemployment rate is likely at about 15%, given that 20 million people are receiving unemployment benefits, and the number who are underemployed is considerably higher. You would think that would translate into an economy-wide catastrophe, but while specific industries have been devastated, overall economic activity has not declined in sync with job losses. The sharp hit during April has been followed by a sharp rebound in many industries. Retail sales increased 17% in May and are only down 6% from May of 2019, which is bad but nowhere near as extreme as the job losses or the catering of air travel and the shuttered movie businesses for instance. New home sales in May not only rebounded from their April crater but were up from May of 2019, which is rather extraordinary given how challenging things are now and how robust the economy was a year ago.

And of course, then there is the stock market, which is up nearly 40% from the lows in March and as of late June is down about 5% year to date for the S&P 500. Markets have one benefit that no person has: the backstop of the Federal Reserve, which is committed to supplying almost endless liquidity in order to ensure no repeat of the 2008-2009 financial collapse. It is undoubtedly a good thing that the financial system is not currently imperiled, but it creates an even starker contrast when 20 million Americans are receiving unemployment benefits and millions more not even seeking employment.

Markets aside, why aren't those tens of millions out of work having a more immediate negative impact? Why isn't there an echo of the Great Depression when some of the numbers are Great Depression-like?

There are two reasons, one positive and one decidedly not. The positive reason is that for all the clunky ineptitude of the social safety nets created in April by Congress in the form of direct payments, small business relief and expanded unemployment benefits, those considerable amounts of money ended up buoying the depressed fortunes of tens of millions of people. In fact, given the extra $600 a week emergency supplement provided by the federal government, many people at the lower end of the wage spectrum pre-COVid have been taking home more money weekly than when they were employed. The average amount earned by the 40 million people who have received unemployment at some point since March was less than $750 a week; the average amount received under the various emergency programs? $970 a week. That helps explain why overall economic activity hasn't declined in lock-step with unemployment or with the contraction of so many industries. Those juiced benefits are due to expire in July, however, raising the prospect that unless those are extended further the trajectory will worsen.

The other reason isn't so benign. In terms of unemployment statistics and how we discuss work, a job is a job is a job. But in terms of wages and a living wage, all jobs are not created equal. Not even close. For many millions of jobs, the pay is barely above what constitutes the poverty line and isn't enough to cover food and shelter for one person let alone a family. Hence the strong push in recent years to raise the minimum wage to at least $15 an hour, which many cities such as Seattle have done but which the federal government has not.

In the current crisis, the preponderance of job losses have been human service industries, ones that depend of face-to-face contact and cannot be shifted via Zoom into the digital realm. Those industries – restaurants, hospitality, travel, tourism, retail stores, events – are also amongst the lowest paid. Overall, average earnings in the U.S. are $28 an hour. But earnings for leisure and hospitality are $16 an hour and for retail $20 an hour. Those tens of millions of workers were never accounting for the same level of consumer spending or home sales or travel dollars or economic activity as the tens of millions who work in construction or manufacturing or technology or higher-end service industries such as finance and consulting or public servants like teachers and police. The result is that you can have 15-20% unemployment with 40 million people out of work at one point or another in the past months and not have a one-to-one hit to economic activity.

One powerful lesson of the past months is that massive government assistance actually matters and when it is large and direct and not funneled through humiliating hoops of means-testing and people having to justify their vulnerability and need, you can actually maintain a fair amount of human activity and meet people's needs. Providing nearly $1,000 a week to people for a few months has been a raise for many of them, which has provided a glimpse into how much we have fallen short of providing a basic level to all people in an affluent society. It is hard to see silver linings in a crisis this deadly, but if we learn that no, we aren't all in this equally, but yes we have the means to ameliorate those inequities, then the crisis will not have been all for the worst. It will have been the long-needed wake up that we have the power to provide basic economic security to everyone. All that has been lacking till now is the will to do so.

Starbucks announced in a statement Sunday that the global coffee chain would "pause advertising on all social media platforms" as it works to address how to "stop the spread of hate speech."

The moves comes as dozens of companies, including Coca-Cola, The North Face, Honda, Levi's, Patagonia, Unilever and Verizon have joined the #StopHateForProfit campaign to temporarily pause advertising on Facebook and Instagram. Starbucks did not say it would be joining the campaign, which intends to protest hate and disinformation being spread on Facebook, and it is not listed as one of the participating businesses.

"We believe in bringing communities together, both in person and online, and we stand against hate speech," the company's statement said. "We believe more must be done to create welcoming and inclusive online communities, and we believe both business leaders and policy makers need to come together to affect real change."

Starbucks' recent social media posts pledge support for the Black Lives Matter movement.

Starbucks confirmed to TIME that this pause on social media advertising would not include YouTube. The coffee chain does not consider the video platform a social media platform per se and they said they're already working with site to ensure appropriate guidelines. Starbucks also confirmed that it will continue posting on social media, but will refrain from paid promotions.

Additionally, Starbucks confirmed to TIME that it would not be signing up for the #StopHateForProfit campaign and pledged its support to have conversations internally and with social media platforms about what parameters should look like regarding hate speech.

As the #StopHateForProfit campaign grew, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg pledged some changes on Friday in a post on the website. He said the company would change its policies to ban hate speech in advertisements. Those new rules would ban ads that claim people from a specific race, ethnicity, nationality, caste, gender, sexual orientation or immigration origin are a threat to the physical safety or health of anyone else, Zuckerberg said. Zuckerberg also said Facebook would look to stop advertising on the platform which expressed contempt or disgust towards immigrants, migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers.

Facebook's website says "we remove hate speech, harassment, threats of violence and other content that has the potential to silence others or cause harm."

But the Stop Hate for Profit Campaign is not satisfied with his remarks, calling them "small changes" instead of systemic solutions. The campaign details a list of 10 recommended policies as a starting point. They include calls to "stop recommending or otherwise amplifying groups or content from groups associated with hate, misinformation or conspiracies to users" and to "find and remove public and private groups focused on white supremacy, militia, antisemitism, violent conspiracies, Holocaust denialism, vaccine misinformation and climate denialism."

Facebook has long faced accusations of failing to address the spread of hate speech, especially in languages other than English and criticism has often come from within its own ranks. Dozens of Facebook employees staged a virtual walk out earlier this month, in protest of the company's decision not to take action on inflammatory posts by President Donald Trump, who said "when the looting starts, the shooting starts," in response to nationwide protests over Georgia Floyd's death. Many criticized the threat of violence against protesters and Black people. Twitter let Trump's message remain on the platform, but flagged it as violating the "Twitter Rules about glorifying violence," while Facebook left the message alone.

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Margaret Keane, CEO of Synchrony—a company that financed $140 billion in purchases for American shoppers last year, via a range of credit card programs—has lived all sides of the debt equation. When she was 10, growing up as one of six kids in Queens, her father, a police officer, developed a costly and ultimately fatal illness that she says left her family burdened with thousands in medical bills. "We were getting calls to shut the electric off," she says. "I don't think you could ever forget that."

She put herself through college working as a debt collector, earning $5.50 an hour, making 90 calls a day, while a student at St. John's University. She excelled and ended up in the management training program at Citibank before rising to run Synchrony, where she now presides over an army of employees approving loans, and also collecting them when borrowers fall behind.

The ability of consumers to keep paying their bills will play an outsized role in the post-pandemic recovery. So far, Keane is not seeing a spike in delinquencies one might expect given the plunge in economic activity, though the stimulus is clearly aiding those bill payments. "The consumer is definitely hanging in there," she says.

Keane, 60, recently joined TIME for a video conversation on the mindset of the American consumer, the impact of small business health on any recovery, and what corporations need to do to help address systemic racism in society.

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(This interview with Synchrony CEO Margaret Keane has been condensed and edited for clarity)

Your company was founded in 1932, another time of great financial distress, to help people buy appliances on credit. Now there are tens of million of Americans out of work. What parallels do you see?

What's interesting about our company is the culture and the roots of how we came about was really during a time of crisis. And honestly, back in the day, when you think back, I know it doesn't feel innovative now, but actually lending people money was a big deal.

What products were being sold?

Back in the '30s, people would literally go to their local corner appliance store and pay weekly to get the appliance. You can imagine people weren't working and GE wanted to sell appliances. So they came up with this idea, 'Okay, how do we finance appliances?' And that's how the company started—GE wanted to sell appliances. Appliances were still relatively new for them. Having that at home was a big deal. It allowed the average American to have access to those kinds of luxuries back then.

How concerned are you about the health of the American consumer right now?

Coming into the crisis the consumer was very strong. People were paying their bills. Right now, we are not seeing real change to our performance on delinquencies. There's two big unknowns. The first unknown is there's been a lot of stimulus for people. I'm sure you've read, people put a lot more in savings.

Savings are at a record rate, right?

Record high, and then a second piece is people are paying their bills. Now the question is, is it the stimulus that's helping them pay their bills, tax returns? What's interesting to me is that consumers are being conservative. They're being thoughtful about how they're using their dollars. So what we need to do is say, 'Okay, what happens when the stimulus stops? And then when the stimulus stops, how many people actually get back to work?' That's really the piece that's a little uncertain right now.

With your partnerships with so many big retailers such as Lowe's, Sam Clubs and the newly announced Verizon card, you have a lot of insights into consumer behavior. What are people buying now?

There's a lot being spent around the home, home improvement. You can't find plants now.There's a lot being spent around the home, home improvement. You can't find plants now. You can't find vessels to plant in. Furniture obviously dropped, but didn't drop completely. People are still buying online. What we did see though is that the ticket size was smaller because you didn't have a sales person saying, 'Oh, if you're going to buy that chair, you might want to think about this table."

Anything else?

Bikes. Fishing rods. All outdoor stuff now is kind of hard to get. I was just talking to someone who said you can't find kayaks right now. People have just said I'm not going to take vacation. So I'm going to have vacation at home. And then there are people who say, 'Okay, I really want to make my house more of my vacation.'

I've heard you mention that all of these Zoom calls are going to drive demand for another service that you finance.

We have our health care business, CareCredit. We do a lot with plastic surgeons. And I joked that the plastic surgery business is going to take off. And sure enough, it has taken off now that things have reopened.

Is that true? Do you think that's driven by Zoom?

I use myself as an example. I'm looking at my face every day and there's some things I should be getting. [LAUGHTER]. One of our employees, their wife is a nurse in a plastic surgery center, and she told her husband that she saw 32 patients in one day. It's the most she's ever seen in her entire career.

What economic indicators do you monitor to tell how consumers are feeling financially?

We look at things like are people paying less than their minimum payment? Are payment levels holding? And honestly, all of that's holding. So that's a sign for us that right now, the consumer is definitely hanging in there.

Purchase volume is the number of times people use their credit card?

Yeah, these are purchases on our card. Our cards across our merchant and retail and health care networks. When we started the pandemic, it started out, in March we were down 26%. It moved down to about 31% [in the first half of April.] And it's now down 10% (in late May.)

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How are brick and mortar retail stores going to come out of this?

We have been over-retailed for a long time. There was a retail transformation happening even before COVID. And there were a number of retailers that were struggling. What the COVID experience has done is accelerate that transformation. And we're seeing more bankruptcies and reductions in retail. We're seeing, obviously, more and more people buy online than ever before. But people still like to go to a mall and get out and see things and touch things.

I know your view is that some of the problems in retail went beyond competition from e-commerce, right?

Online is not the only driver of why retail has had its troubles in opening. I think there were some fundamental challenges underneath. Too many stores. No investment in the stores themselves. Lack of inventory. I was in a store before this whole thing happened and, honestly, I had to really search to find someone to pay for something. You're like, 'Oh, my God, why am I even here?'

What is your biggest concern about the economy?

I've been through many crises before where we've modeled a lot of things out. We tend to model unemployment. I don't think we'll be at this 40 million unemployment number. I think the real concern that I have when I think of employment is more around the small business constituents here. And how many of them actually survive, right? I think the real question is how many people survive in the small business segment, and then what does that do to unemployment?

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And what are your models showing right now?

It will be a double-digit unemployment number we think going into 2021.

What's your favorite letter these days to describe the expected shape of the recovery?

I think it's going to be somewhat of a U, but it's going to be a little elongated It's going to be a little slower coming up.

How important are small businesses to the American economy overall?

We need a robust small business community here to make our economy in the U.S. work. Studies show they employ the most people. They keep our communities strong. As a country, small business is the heart of who we are. [On June 17, after the interview was conducted, Synchrony committed $5 million to support small business; $2 million of that amount is directed to minority and women owned businesses in underserved communities.]

And people still value the connection with local businesses.

I live in a little town here [In Connecticut] and I walk down my Main Street, and I keep saying 'I love that store, I hope they're going to be back. And that store, I hope they're going to be back. The restaurants, I hope they're going to be back.' These are real businesses with real expenses that have been shut for quite awhile.

The majority of your 17,000 employees work in call centers. How is that going in the pandemic?

We moved the entire company to home. That's much easier said than done because we literally had to give everyone the technology. We had to create a whole logistics process. We put those packets, if you will, together: Their work-at-home technology. And then they'd come into our call centers, pick it up. We had like a whole process. We have some funny stories of people driving in the middle of the night to meet the FedEx guy to get the headsets because they weren't going to make it in the morning.

What's in that kit?

It's a laptop, it's a camera, it's headsets, it's speakers. A mouse. But in addition to that, we had to work with them and make sure their network could handle it, too. There was a lot of back-and-forth on just getting them set up in the right environment at home.

That sounds expensive. What did that cost?

I have no idea how much we spent. I know it was a lot. But I didn't even ask. If we weren't in a pandemic, we would have had our 55 meetings before we got to the decision of, Okay, we're going to move everybody home. Then we would have done the budget. Then we would have said, well, whatever. We didn't do any of that. We moved.

When you were a debt collector back in the day, did you have a good spiel? Did you go off script?

Look, I always try to tell people, what you do learn in collecting is there are people that have real tragedies and really are trying to pay and they're lawful. And there are those people who are trying to beat the system. And I think the trick of a collector is figuring out who those other people are, and just making sure you have empathy for the people that have hit something.

Did you have a good nose for the people that are trying to beat the system?

You don't have it at the beginning. But then you do. I went into it with a very rose-colored kind of glass thing, And then you're like, 'Okay, now I realize what people are talking about.' It's the repeat offender that gets you.

How is your workforce doing, mental-health wise?

You know the whole work-at-home is a good thing, but it puts a lot of stress, particularly for women who are trying to home-school.If you asked our staff out in the field, they're saying this is the biggest challenge we're facing right now is a lot of anxiety, a lot of depression. You know the whole work-at-home is a good thing, but it puts a lot of stress, particularly for women who are trying to home-school.

How do you respond to that?

We were working on mental health before COVID because it's been very clear to me that we have a very stressed environment in our work right now. And there's a lot of people who need extra support. So we were actually piloting some things in our call center, where some wellness coaches that were actually there at the site. So we now just transformed that to wellness through telemedicine. And we've expanded to offer free consultation with psychologists.

What has been your response to the outpouring of support to address systemic racism in society?

I have to as a leader recognize that we have some real work to do in society and the country. And we're part of that. What can we do internally?

I didn't want this to be like a check mark, like, We sent the note out. We all said 'We're sad.' And then move on. This is a pivotal moment in our country that Synchrony can play a role inside its company, and then we've got to think about what we do outside the company. [On June 25, Synchrony announced a $5 million donation to organizations supporting social justice and equity.]

So corporations should be involved in this solution?

There's no way we're going to solve this, because there's so many things that need to be solved, without corporations stepping up, engaging in our communities, and engaging with government. I think it's all about how we lift everybody up through this. There's how do we hire more diverse people in our company? How do we give more people of diversity, no matter what diversity, the opportunity inside our company? And we've been working on a lot of this. And we were very focused coming into this year on Black and Hispanic leadership. And particularly Black … because we don't have enough. We're doing a lot of soul-searching because we could pat ourselves, great places to work. We get all these awards. We're great. But like let's look at the numbers on some of these things and how we make a difference. We have to double down on all this right now.

KEANE'S FAVORITES

BUSINESS BOOK: I like leadership books. I loved Hamilton. I loved the Grant book. I love historical novels of people who have led. I'm very into those types of figures because look, they made a lot of very difficult decisions to bring our country together both times.

AUTHOR: I'm a big Nelson DeMille fan. I actually like his older stuff better because they're so good

APP: Twitter. I use it to really stay abreast of what's happening.

TIME MANAGEMENT TIP: I never go to sleep with an unread email. It's zero every night.

PREFERRED STRESS RELIEF METHOD: In the middle of the day, I try to make an hour of time for myself to go take a walk outside. Just getting outside has a whole different feeling. And it's funny because it's not like I did that in my office. I would work all day, but for some reason I just need to get up, get out, clear my mind, and come back a little refreshed.

(Miss this week's The Leadership Brief? This interview above was delivered to the inbox of Leadership Brief subscribers on Sunday morning, June 28; to receive emails of conversations with the world's top CEO's and business decision makers, click here. The Leadership Brief will not be published over the Fourth of July weekend. The next weekly edition will hit your inbox July 12.)

PARIS — French cosmetics giant L'Oreal said Saturday that it will remove words like "whitening" from its skin care products, a move that comes amid global protests against racism sparked by the death of George Floyd in the United States.

The company said in a statement Saturday that it "has decided to remove the words white/whitening, fair/fairness, light/lightening from all its skin evening products."

L'Oreal's decision follows a similar move by Anglo-Dutch firm Unilever on Thursday. It is among a number of companies that have been the target of criticism in the wake of Floyd's death following his arrest in Minneapolis.

Earlier this month, L'Oreal tweeted that that it "stands in solidarity with the Black community and against injustice of any kind. … Speaking out is worth it." The post drew a negative reaction from people who see the company's business model and advertising as focused on white consumers.

English model Munroe Bergdorf notably accused the beauty brand of hypocrisy for having fired her three years ago. Bergdorf was sacked as L'Oreal UK's first openly transgender model in 2017 for decrying "the racial violence of white people."

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Nick Hill was excited to get back behind the bar. In late May, the bartender and student at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley had been cooped up and living on unemployment for months. When his local Brownsville Irish pub decided to reopen over Memorial Day weekend, Hill jumped at the chance, especially because the impact of COVID-19 on his city had thus far been low.

"I felt perfectly safe, because I was like, 'there's no way I'm going to get coronavirus,'" Hill says. His bar opened at 25% capacity, and then doubled that a couple weeks later, with regulars streaming in.

"Then stuff started hitting the fan," Hill says.

In early June, a rumor began to circulate that a local bartender had become infected. Soon, waitstaff at Chili's had also tested positive, forcing the location to close. Because bartender circles in the city are close knit, Hill decided to get tested—and he, too came up positive, along with, he says, other employees at his bar. Hill says the bar, which he declined to name, shut down temporarily as cases in Brownsville ballooned.

Then on Friday, governor Greg Abbott conceded defeat to the virus when he once again shut down bars and scaled back restaurant dining. Hill, meanwhile, has been quarantined at home for more than a week, recovering from a nasty cough and nighttime fevers.

"In hindsight, it was obviously a bad idea," Hill says. "Everyone in the valley is freaking out now, taking it seriously."

Similar scenes are playing out across the nation. The national count for new infections is higher than it's ever been, with 30 states currently trending upward. Younger people are making up a growing percentage of these cases. And health officials are linking some clusters of outbreaks to bars, where patrons, eager to shake off the solitude and boredom of quarantine, have reemerged in full force. From Boise to Miami to Scottsdale, photos have captured revelers packing into bars without a face mask in sight. On Friday, Florida also suspended alcohol consumption in its bars after seeing a sharp uptick in cases.

This situation has been a nightmare for many bartenders, who are forced to juggle conflicting responsibilities: of earning a living after months of unemployment; of keeping their patrons safe without alienating them; of facilitating both a relaxed ambiance and a squeaky-clean environment. Now, many are worried that the fate that befell Texas and Florida could happen everywhere, throwing an already-fragile industry even deeper into prolonged crisis.

LaShan Arceneaux, the vice president of the Houston chapter of the United States Bartenders' Guild (USBG), advises bartenders to use this time to think about making a living in an adjacent field—like working in a distillery—or doing something else entirely. "This is the downtime to train yourself in something else–learn a new skill," she says. "I think COVID has shown that the bar industry nationwide is broken."

'All I Can See Is Germs'

There are more than 600,000 bartenders in the country, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Many aspects of their job—the social and physical nature of their workspaces, low base salaries, unreliable shift assignments, and frequent lack of health insurance—make them disproportionately vulnerable to the coronavirus.

In March, as the coronavirus shut down bars and restaurants across the country, the USBG National Charity Foundation saw the number of applications for their emergency assistance program skyrocket from 5 applications a month to 50 a minute. In total, 300,000 applications streamed in since the beginning of the crisis, according to USBG board chairman and national president Kyle McHugh.

The foundation scrambled to pull together a fundraiser, and has doled out $9 million to 30,000 bartenders across the country. But McHugh says that the program's funds are running low once again, and that there are still tens of thousands of bartenders whose applications have been approved but not paid out. "We have some real need out there that we just don't have the dollars to pay," McHugh says.

Given this need, it was unsurprising to McHugh that many bartenders returned to work once their states announced reopenings. Another factor that made it difficult not to return was that if bartenders chose to stay home, they would lose their ability to collect unemployment. "A lot of our members of the hospitality community didn't feel like they had a choice," McHugh says.

To mitigate the risk factors, some bartenders and owners set strict rules upon arrival. At Bar Mateo at Zinc Cafe & Market in Los Angeles, for example, a plexiglass was installed separating bartenders from guests; garnishes were moved from the bar top to behind the counter; stools were removed entirely. In Florida, Kristina Page returned to her Panama City, Fl. bar with a mask and a self-imposed rule to remain behind the bar as much as possible, eschewing table service.

But Page didn't anticipate the volume or attitude with which patrons would arrive. "It's starting to just get busier and busier, because a lot of people are still not working," she says of her day shift. "And when happy hour begins, it gets really nerve wracking. Basically, all I can see is germs."

Page, who has been a bartender for over 30 years, is particularly nervous about the younger clientele that arrives in the evening and is now statistically contracting the coronavirus in greater numbers. "They don't have a care in the world," she says. "They're leaning on each other, talking in each other's faces—the things that drunk people do." Over the last 30 days, the number of cases in the surrounding Bay County has more than doubled.

When patrons act recklessly, bartenders are thrust into agonizing situations, since a confrontation runs the risk of angering the very people responsible for giving them most of their earnings. McHugh says that he's heard stories of patrons who threaten violence when asked to wear a mask. In Wilton Manors, Florida, a bartender's request that a patron wear a mask led to the patron spitting on him.

Back in Brownsville, Hill says he had to deescalate a situation with one customer who got increasingly agitated as his meal went on. "When I served him his whiskey in a plastic cup, he was like, ''This is so stupid—Crown Royal is a premium beverage. I can't believe this sh*t,' Hill says. "It was really funny."

Inevitable Spread

Even when bartenders implement strict safety measures and get patrons to follow in-house rules, they're still very much at risk of falling victim to the coronavirus, especially given the many ways in which local bars are intertwined. At Trophy Fish in St. Petersburg, Fla., for example, restaurant operations and bar manager Julio Hernández set up a separate ordering counter, placed tables six or more feet apart, forbade people from sitting at the bar or even standing near it, and implemented mask and glove-wearing. Things seemed to be running smoothly and safely.

But then another employee, who works at another bar, contracted COVID-19. The restaurant was forced to shut down temporarily and undergo a deep clean; the rest of the staff, including Hernández, tested negative, but he went into quarantine for 14 days to be safe. The St. Petersburg bar scene as a whole has been decimated, and now Florida bars will once again be unable to serve patrons on site.

"The moment bars opened, people abused it. You would walk down the strip and look at these bars and be like, 'man, did the pandemic not happen?,'" Hernández says. "Now, these bars are crickets."

Dr. Krutika Kuppalli, a global health physician and vice chair of the Infectious Diseases Society of America's global health committee, says there are a number of reasons that make bars prime hotspots for coronavirus spread. They often have suboptimal ventilation and strangers from unknown places streaming in and out, with lowered inhibitions that might impair decision-making. "With everything going on last week and a half, it's hard to imagine that people are continuing to go out and engage in these types of social gatherings," she says. "Keeping bars closed would be in the best interest of society."

A Bleak Future

At the moment, the majority of bars across the United States are still either completely closed, or open but receiving just a trickle of patrons. Industry insiders say the way coronavirus containment has been handled will have long-lasting impacts for the entire industry. "I'm terrified of seeing my business—and indeed, my entire profession—go down the dump sink in a matter of months," says Aaron DeFeo, the owner and bar director at Little Rituals in Phoenix, where cases are also spiking locally.

DeFeo says that before coronavirus, a culture in which bartenders themselves opened up craft establishments with their own unique visions was beginning to gain momentum across the country. Following coronavirus, these small businesses, which operate on thin margins, didn't receive income for months; they may have taken out a PPP loan that placed them further in debt, or undertaken costly reopenings and reclosings. They face further rocky waters at the end of July when enhanced federal unemployment benefits end, stripping away even more of the disposable income that patrons might have had to spend at the bar.

DeFeo says many new and old owners will choose to cut their losses and exit the industry, leaving prospective bartenders with significantly less job opportunities—and consumers with fewer watering holes to pull up a stool. "I think you'll see large swaths of completely abandoned real estate," he says. "And we might be facing a landscape that is entirely Applebee's, Chili's, TGIF-type places."

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Kanye West's Yeezy fashion label is coming to Gap.

The rapper and designer is teaming with Gap Inc. on a new line of apparel for men, women and kids called Yeezy Gap. Products are expected to debut in stores and online next year, the company said in a statement.

The deal is a multiyear partnership, according to a Yeezy spokesperson. West has been traveling to Gap's San Francisco headquarters from his ranch in Wyoming to work on the line, which is still in its design phase, the spokesperson said. The line won't include footwear, a market in which Yeezy already collaborates with Adidas AG.

The arrangement will expose West's upscale brand to a broader market while letting Gap capitalize on Yeezy's recent growth. Mark Breitbard, global head of the Gap brand, said in the statement that the new line would build on "the aesthetic and success" of the Yeezy brand.

Gap could use a lift as it grapples with a difficult turnaround effort. In January, it called off a plan to separate its Old Navy brand from the rest of the business. Last quarter, net sales fell 50% as it struggled to cope with prolonged store closures due to the pandemic.

West's compensation will be tied to sales and his business will earn royalties and potential equity under the terms of the deal. West, who worked at a Gap store as a teenager in Chicago, will also have input on presentation in stores and the e-commerce website.

Last year, Bank of America Corp. valued the sneaker side of the Yeezy's business alone at as much as $3 billion, Bloomberg has reported. The shoes are made and distributed by Adidas, while West retains creative control and sole ownership of his brand.

Yeezy's agreement with Adidas is in place through 2026. The brand was on track to generate $1.3 billion of shoe revenue in 2019, a 50% increase from a year earlier, according to Bank of America.

(Bloomberg) — Verizon Communications Inc. said it is pausing the placement of ads on Facebook Inc. and Instagram until the social networks can get better control over posts that spread disinformation.

"We have strict content policies in place and have zero tolerance when they are breached, we take action," Verizon Chief Media Officer John Nitti said in a statement. "We're pausing our advertising until Facebook can create an acceptable solution that makes us comfortable and is consistent with what we've done with YouTube and other partners."

Verizon is one of the largest advertisers to pull its ads from Facebook as part of an effort by civil rights organizations to pressure the social-media company to take action on hate speech and misleading content. Groups including the Anti-Defamation League and Color of Change started the campaign, called Stop Hate For Profit, to encourage advertisers to boycott Facebook ads in July. Verizon's move follows participation by Recreational Equipment Inc., Patagonia Inc., Upwork Inc., Ben & Jerry's and other brands.

"We applaud Verizon for joining this growing fight against hate and bigotry by pausing their advertising on Facebook's platforms, until they put people and safety over profit," Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive officer of ADL, said in a statement. "This is how real change is made."

Facebook has been telling advertisers that it bases its policies on principles, not business interests, according to its communications with marketers. The Menlo Park, California-based company has been reaching out to advertisers to discuss its recent initiatives on registering voters and distributing verified election information.

But it's not just advertisers that are upset. U.S. lawmakers have also put pressure on Facebook, Twitter Inc. and Google to combat disinformation, including during a House Intelligence Committee hearing last week.

"We respect any brand's decision, and remain focused on the important work of removing hate speech and providing critical voting information," Carolyn Everson, vice president of Facebook's global business group, said in a statement. "Our conversations with marketers and civil rights organizations are about how, together, we can be a force for good."

Verizon's move was reported earlier by Ad Age.

Amazon.com Inc. bought the naming rights to Seattle's KeyArena, the new home for the city's expansion hockey team and the WNBA's Seattle Storm, but the company isn't putting its own name on it.

The venue will be called the Climate Pledge Arena, a nod to Amazon's push to get companies to have net-zero carbon emissions by 2040. It unveiled the pledge last year, which requires businesses to reach the goal a decade ahead of the Paris Agreement.

The stadium will be the first net-zero carbon certified arena in the world, Amazon Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos said in a post on Instagram. The site will "generate zero waste from operations and events, and use reclaimed rainwater in the ice system to create the greenest ice in the NHL," Bezos said.

The site was developed in partnership with Oak View Group and the as-yet-unnamed Seattle NHL franchise. The team is slated to take the ice in the 2021-2022 season. The arena, which first opened in 1962, is being extensively renovated — in part to make it eco-friendly.

"Everyone loves to talk about being carbon-neutral, but it's really hard and really expensive," said Tim Leiweke, CEO of Oak View. "We're spending tens of millions of dollars on this. We're trying to set a precedent others will follow."

Leiweke said he was inspired by musicians such as Billie Eilish, who have pushed for arenas to reduce their carbon footprint by reducing plastic and embracing renewable energy.

The sports venue will be entirely powered by renewable energy, in part with solar panels. Tickets to NHL and WNBA games will double as free public-transit passes, and fans will be encouraged to take Seattle's refurbished monorail.

Leiweke reached out to Amazon early on about getting involved with the arena, seeing as the company is the largest business in the city. Amazon was at first reluctant since it didn't need help promoting its name, he said, but came around to the focus on climate.

Amazon services will be also integrated throughout the area, including in the technology used for food and beverage and parking.

"Amazon will be everywhere," Leiweke said.

The arena also has the space to accommodate a team from the National Basketball Association, should that league choose to return to Seattle.

The Seattle SuperSonics moved to Oklahoma City before the 2008-2009 season, leaving one of the largest cities in the U.S. without an NBA team.

(ORLANDO, Fla.) — Amid calls to change the Splash Mountain theme park ride because of its ties with Song of the South, the 1946 movie many view as racist, Disney officials said Thursday it was recasting the ride to make it based on The Princess and the Frog, the 2009 Disney film with an African American female lead.

The changes to the ride will be made at Disneyland in California and the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World in Florida, the company said in a post.

Disney said the changes had been in the works since last year, but the announcement comes as companies across the U.S. are renaming racially-charged, decades-old brands in the wake of protests for racial justice around the globe following the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minnesota last month.

"The new concept is inclusive — one that all of our guests can connect with and be inspired by, and it speaks to the diversity of the millions of people who visit our parks each year," the Disney post said.

The ride first opened at Disneyland in the late 1980s.

With racist stereotypes and Old South tropes, Song of the South was a mix of live action, cartoons and music featuring an old black plantation laborer named Uncle Remus who enchants a white city boy with fables of talking animals.

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Walt Disney Co. indefinitely delayed the reopening of its theme parks in Anaheim, California, because it didn't think it could get approvals from the state and reach agreements with its unions in time.

The company still plans to open its Downtown Disney shopping district on July 9, but it is no longer moving ahead with the planned July 17 reopening of its Disneyland and California Adventure parks. A new date wasn't given.

"Given the time required for us to bring thousands of cast members back to work and restart our business, we have no choice but to delay the reopening of our theme parks and resort hotels until we receive approval from government officials," the company said in a statement.

The Downtown Disney district reopening remains on track under state guidelines for restaurant and retail openings, the company said. And the Master Services Union, which represents the district's retail workers, previously signed an agreement to return to work.

Opening the theme parks themselves has proven more contentious. A union representing hotel and restaurant workers at Disneyland had planned to protest the reopening, saying it isn't yet satisfied that it's safe to return to the resort.

Austin Lynch, a negotiator at Unite Here Local 11, said Disney hasn't responded to all of their questions regarding the coronavirus. A coalition representing 17,000 Disneyland workers sent California Governor Gavin Newsom a letter last week expressing concerns about safety protocols for the reopening. Unite Here is planning a car-based protest outside the resort Saturday morning.

"Unfortunately, despite intensive talks with the company, we are not yet convinced that it is safe to reopen the parks on Disney's rapid timetable," the coalition said in its letter to the governor.

Disney, which has already reopened its resorts in Shanghai and Hong Kong, put in place a number of safety measures. In a blog post, Chief Medical Officer Pamela Hymel said she's been working with a team of experts on enhanced cleaning, social distancing and other precautions.

The company said it had reached agreements with unions representing a large part of its workforce.

Cases Rising

Covid-19 case numbers have been rising in a number of states that have started to reopen their businesses. California reported a record 7,149 new infections Wednesday, with Disneyland's home of Orange County showing the fourth-biggest increase in the state, at 360 cases.

In Orange County, Florida, locale of the Walt Disney World Resort, the number of cases has tripled over the past three weeks.

Disney plans to start opening its Florida theme parks on July 11. Other theme-park operators, including Comcast Corp.'s Universal Studios and SeaWorld Entertainment Inc., have already opened their Florida resorts. A spokesman for Florida's Department of Health said Friday there was no data to support a connection between local increases of Covid-19 cases and the reopened theme parks.

Lynch, the union negotiator, said employee concerns include the spaces in which they will take their breaks. He asked whether those rooms will be cleaned and if social distancing will be enforced. Disney hasn't said whether it would use electrostatic sanitizing sprayers to limit the spread of the virus.

The company isn't paying for virus testing for employees, Lynch said, and some don't have health-care coverage.

"What happens when one person in a department gets coronavirus?" Lynch said in an interview. "Do they shut everything down? Until they they answer, they should not be allowed to reopen."

Orlando Outbreaks

In Orlando, members of the Orange County Reopening Task Force, a coalition of local business and municipal leaders, focused their meeting on Wednesday on the downtown bars and nightclubs that have been a major source of new outbreaks.

Local real estate developer Chuck Whittall summed up the issue as: "You have loud music. You have to talk loudly and spit on each other. That's the root of the problem, the younger people. I hate to see that kind of behavior cost the entire community."

Local bar owner Doug Taylor said proprietors were banding together to communicate best practices for checking the temperature of patrons and testing employees. Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings said local officials would suspend liquor licenses of clubs that didn't practice social distancing and other safety requirements. Visit Orlando, the local travel board, unveiled a new marketing slogan, "Safer, Stronger — Together," which representatives said would highlight businesses that were doing the right thing on virus safety.

Demings and Visit Orlando Chief Executive Officer George Aguel also applauded presentations from the local pro basketball and soccer franchises, whose leagues plan to play out their seasons under quarantine conditions at Walt Disney World's ESPN facility.

"The timing couldn't be better," Aguel said about the athletes' choosing to play in Orlando.

The NBA will come for training beginning July 7 for a season that could last until mid-October, Orlando Magic CEO Alex Martins said.

Only 35 people per team will travel to Orlando. Players will be tested daily and won't be allowed to interact with the general public while staying at three Disney hotels.

Martins also said the league would convey a social message to the public when it returns, in light of the Black Lives Matter protests. "We intend to use this platform to bring meaningful police and criminal-justice reform," he said.

CEC Entertainment, the parent of Chuck E. Cheese and Peter Piper Pizza, filed for bankruptcy protection after the coronavirus pandemic shuttered its locations and kept families at home.

The filing in the Southern District of Texas U.S. Bankruptcy Court makes CEC the latest in a string of companies upended by Covid-19. Lockdowns have drained revenue, keeping consumers at home and pushing corporations past the brink of bankruptcy.

CEC, acquired by private equity firm Apollo Global Management Inc. in a 2014 leveraged buyout, has more than 600 Chuck E. Cheese outlets and over 120 Peter Piper Pizza venues.

Entertainment and leisure have been among industries hardest hit by state and federal guidelines to stay at home. Though restrictions are starting to ease, it's unclear how many consumers are ready to return to family entertainment destinations.

Irving, Texas-based CEC was originally incorporated under the name ShowBiz Pizza Place Inc. The company changed its name in 1998 to CEC Entertainment and today its franchisees operate venues with locations in 47 states and 16 foreign countries and territories, according to its website.

A plan to take CEC's parent company Queso Holdings Inc. public through a merger with shell company Leo Holdings Corp. was abandoned last year — a deal that would have valued the firm at about $1.4 billion.

–With assistance from Ken McCallum.

The Pentagon put Huawei Technologies and Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology on a list of 20 companies it says are owned or controlled by China's military, opening them up to potential additional U.S. sanctions.

In letters to lawmakers dated June 24, the Pentagon said it was providing a list of "Communist Chinese military companies operating in the United States." The list was first requested in the fiscal 1999 defense policy law.

This list includes "entities owned by, controlled by, or affiliated with China's government, military, or defense industry," Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said in a statement.

"As the People's Republic of China attempts to blur the lines between civil and military sectors, 'knowing your supplier' is critical," Hoffman said. "We envision this list will be a useful tool for the U.S. government, companies, investors, academic institutions, and like-minded partners to conduct due diligence with regard to partnerships with these entities, particularly as the list grows."

The move's implications were not immediately clear. But it came as relations between the two superpowers continue to deteriorate, and as China has become an issue in the U.S. election campaign. China has for the past year threatened to produce its own "unreliable entities" list, but has so far not done so.

The list of companies said to be affiliated with the Peoples Liberation Army was mandated under the Defense Authorization Act of 1999, but no administration ever put out the required report. Trump has the authority under the International Emergency Economics Powers Act of 1977 to level financial sanctions against those companies.

'Baseless'

China's foreign and defense ministries, as well as the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, which oversees China's government-run companies, didn't immediately reply to a fax during a public holiday in the country. Huawei also didn't immediately reply to a request for comment.

Hikvision called the U.S. move "baseless," saying its ownership details have always been publicly available as a listed company and "independently operated enterprise." It said it would continue to work with the U.S. government "to answer questions and correct misunderstandings about the company."

"Hikvision strongly opposes the decision by the U.S. government to misapply a never-used provision of a 21-year-old law," a company spokesperson said. "Not only is Hikvision not a 'Chinese military company,' Hikvision has never participated in any R&D work for military applications."

In addition to Huawei and Hikvision, the list includes China Railway Construction Corp., China Telecommunications Corp, China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp. and Panda Electronics Group.

"The list put out today by the Pentagon is a start but woefully inadequate to warn the American people about the state-owned and -directed companies that support the Chinese government and Communist Party's activities threatening U.S. economic and national security," Republican Senator Marco Rubio said in a statement.

"The list only touches the surface of the Chinese government's exploitation of U.S. capital markets at the expense of retail investors and pensioners by omitting the networks of affiliated and subsidiary companies."

China hawks in Congress have long pushed him to direct his Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, to deploy such sanctions against Huawei. It's unclear, however, whether the president would be willing to take such aggressive action against some of China's most prized business champions in an election year, as the Beijing government would likely retaliate against American companies as they and the broader U.S. economy have been shaken by the coronavirus pandemic.

'Long Overdue'

Derek Scissors, a China expert at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said it was "long overdue for the government to indicate which Chinese firms have tight links to the PLA. But if there's no meaningful action coming with that, it would just be posturing, possibly in reaction to the Bolton book."

In his memoir, which on sale Tuesday, former National Security Advisor John Bolton asserted that Trump asked Xi Jinping, China's leader, to bolster purchases of American agricultural products to help him win re-election in November. Trump has rejected that claim.

The companies on the list are:

• Aviation Industry Corporation of China
• China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation
• China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation
• China Electronics Technology Group Corporation
• China South Industries Group Corporation
• China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation
• China State Shipbuilding Corporation
• China North Industries Group Corporation
• Huawei Technologies Co.
• Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co.
• Inspur Group; Aero Engine Corporation of China
• China Railway Construction Corporation
• CRRC Corp.; Panda Electronics Group
• Dawning Information Industry Co.
• China Mobile Communications Group
• China General Nuclear Power Corp.
• China National Nuclear Power Corp.
• China Telecommunications Corp.

–With assistance from Feifei Shen and Gao Yuan.