Brands and retailers including Lululemon and REI are being urged to press one of their supplier factories in El Salvador to remedy violations of workers’ associational rights after union members were reportedly laid off under false pretences.

Japanese casual clothing brand Uniqlo has installed a vending machine dispensing clothing at Oakland Airport in California, and says it plans to roll out the concept at select airports and malls nationwide.

US outdoor clothing giant Patagonia has launched a new workwear line that uses less harmful materials including a new hemp canvas, of which eight styles are manufactured in a Fair Trade Certified facility.

Global outdoor lifestyle brand Timberland has revealed its first speciality concept store, with themed installations to bring a fresh and innovative brand experience to consumers.

Further improvement in business practices and governance of the many labour standards in Bangladesh’s ready-made garment sector is still required to ensure the industry remains a key driver of the country’s economy and development, a new report has found.

Vasyl Lomachenko and Mikey Garcia might be one of those tough-to-make fights. Lomachenko is promoted by Top Rank Inc., which promoted Garcia until a contract dispute resulted in Garcia sitting out 2 1/2 years ahead of his departure from the company following a settlement.
This is an emotional sport. Some of that spilled out during a conference call this week promoting Lomachnko’s super featherweight title defense against Miguel Marriaga of Colombia on Saturday at Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles (on ESPN).
On the call were Lomachenko, his manager Egis Klimas and Todd duBoef, president of Top Rank. With the call came the realization that we might never see Garcia vs. Lomachenko come to fruition.
Klimas expressed some dismay about something Garcia said after his somewhat wide unanimous-decision victory this past Saturday over Adrien Broner on Showtime. Klimas wasn’t quite finished when duBoef interjected.
“Mikey Garcia, Mikey Garcia, after the fight he said clearly, ‘Whoever is willing to fight on Showtime, I will fight you,’” Klimas said. “He is over there choosing the network. I think we are in a different grade. I would love to fight Mikey Garcia. It would give a big name to Vasyl, but …”
In came duBoef.
“I don’t even think it’s a big name,” he said, laughing.
Didn’t Garcia’s victory over Broner make his name big? A reporter asked.
“After what victory?” duBoef said. “I saw the fight, believe it or not. I didn’t think it was an incredible performance. He outpointed Broner. I didn’t think it was a scintillating fight. I thought he won the fight clearly. I wasn’t thinking, ‘Oh my God, the masses are clamoring to see him.’
“I am being honest with you. I think he had a nice fight. He fought well. Broner wasn’t throwing a lot of punches and Mikey did a good job, but a big name? A big name is Mikey Garcia now? I don’t see that.”
Don’t be mad at duBoef. This is boxing. You won’t find a promoter who would really sing the praises of a fighter with whom he had a major beef. We get that.
But Garcia — from Moreno Valley via Oxnard — is one of the more talented fighters in the world. He has increased his popularity after being out of fans’ minds for some time. He holds a world title at lightweight and, frankly, is one of the few fighters who would have a chance to defeat Lomachenko.
Don’t know about you, but blowouts stink. Lomachenko’s fight against Marriaga could fall into that category. In April, Marriaga (25-2, 21 KOs) lost by five, nine and 11 points in a challenge to Oscar Valdez’s featherweight title.
We believe Lomachenko when he says he wants to fight the best, though.
“The biggest thing for me is I want to fight top, top fighters in the weight class that I am now fighting in,” the Ukrainian said. “That is my biggest goal. Then maybe it is different weight classes. I want to be in the history book of boxing. I want my name to be mentioned when people talk about the history of boxing.”
Garcia is 37-0 with 30 knockouts. He hits hard and is technically sound. Some think Lomachenko (8-1, 6 KOs) is the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world. The two-time Olympic gold medalist won his first of two pro titles in his third pro fight.
Oh, yeah, this is a big fight. If it gets made.
“Listen, if Mikey Garcia is interested in the fight, have his guys call us,” duBoef said. “We are in. Any time. I mean, the guy leaves us, then says, ‘The three guys I want to fight are (Manny) Pacquiao, (Terence) Crawford and Lomachenko.’
“Why would you leave? You went on strike for two years. I hate to call it how it is, guys.”
Pacquiao, Crawford and Lomachenko are all Top Rank fighters. Upon his return to the ring, Garcia said Pacquiao and Crawford were two guys he’d like to fight.
Lomachenko picked up the ball and ran with it.
“His trainer, Robert Garcia, mentioned that Mikey is a fighter A-class,” he said. “I hadn’t seen anything during that (Broner) bout that showed me he was class-A outstanding fighter.
“Yes, he won the fight. Yes, he did everything to win the fight, what he needed to be, but I haven’t seen anything outstanding and I haven’t seen him being an A-class fighter.”
And duBoef loved that.
“Hey, the promoter and the fighter think alike,” he said. “Can you believe this?”
Etc.
Raymundo Beltran (33-7-1, 21 KOs) of Phoenix via Mexico will take on Bryan Vasquez (35-2, 19 KOs) of Costa Rica directly underneath Lomachenko-Marriaga. Beltran is ranked No. 2 by three of the four governing bodies. … Also on the card, lightweight Mikaela Mayer – a 2016 U.S. Olympian from Los Angeles – will make her pro debut against Widnelly Figueroa (0-1) of Green Bay, Wis. … Charles Huerta (19-5, 12 KOs) of Paramount on Thursday will take on Miguel A. Gonzalez in the super featherweight main event at Belasco Theatre in Los Angeles (on Estrella TV).

The Buzz is the Register’s weekly political news column.

Despite going along with a new round of sanctions, President Donald Trump and Costa Mesa Rep. Dana Rohrabacher continue to be scrutinized for having urged friendlier relationships with Russia.

The Republican congressman told the Register he only voted for the sanctions because they included North Korea and Iran, and would have opposed the measure if it targeted Russia alone. As for Trump, several people close to the president appear to still be part of a federal investigation into election meddling by the Russians.

But Stelian Onufrei only sees one of the two at fault: Rohrabacher, who says that modern-day Russian should not be confused with Cold War-era USSR.

“I do not believe a regime like Russia today is that far off from the USSR,” counters the Romania-born Onufrei. 

Perhaps not coincidently, Onufrei is a Trump supporter and a Rohrabacher foe.

Last month, Onufrei, 52, declared his candidacy against the 15th-term incumbent, the only Republican among the nine challengers in the race so far. Within days of announcing his bid, he changed the address on his voter registration from a home outside the district, in Buena Park, to an apartment in the coastal congressional district. The construction-company owner says he plans to spend $500,000 of his own money on the campaign.

One target of Onufrei’s criticism is the congressman’s 2016 Moscow meeting with a Russian prosecutor in Moscow, an unofficial event that took place while Rohrabacher was leading a congressional delegation tour. The Russian official gave Rohrabacher a document defending Russia’s treatment of whistle-blower Sergei Magnitsky, whose suspicious death contributed to an earlier round of U.S. sanctions. Rohrabacher said he was simply collecting information in his role as a House foreign affairs subcommittee chairman.

Onufrei said Rohrabacher shouldn’t have taken that meeting on his own.

“Our intelligence people should have been there.”

But Onufrei is unconcerned when it comes to the controversial June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower, when people connected to the Russian government met privately with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Trump’s then-campaign manager, Paul Manafort, to provide information from the Russian government described as damaging to Hillary Clinton, Trump’s opponent in the race for president. The distinction Onufrei makes is that Rohrabacher was working in an official governmental capacity while the Trump associates were not.

“Do I believe Russia should be treated as an adversary? Absolutely,” the first-time candidate told me over lunch. “Do I believe Dana Rohrabacher thinks of them as an adversary? Absolutely not.”

Does Trump think of Russia as an adversary?

“He’s very, very cautious,” Onufrei said. “I would not presume to know what President Trump thinks about (Russian President Vladmir) Putin.”

Despite past advocacy for better relations with Russian, Rohrabacher drew the line at defending Putin during a July 30 appearance at the Politicon convention in Pasadena.

“There are some bad guys in Russia and Putin is one of them,” Rohrabacher said.

Climate change

While Onufrei’s criticizes Rohrabacher for the Moscow meeting, it’s a far gentler attack than that dished out by the congressman’s other challengers. And exactly how Onufrei would legislate differently from the incumbent remains unclear. Aside from calling for congressional term limits, nothing in the platform on Onufrei’s campaign website seems dramatically at odds with Rohrabacher’s positions.

In announcing his candidacy, Onufrei took a shot at Rohrabacher for having “the proud distinction of founding the Congressional Marijuana Caucus in D.C.” Rohrabacher has been a leading advocate for the federal government to respect state laws regarding pot. Stelian opposes legalizing recreational marijuana but supports legalized medical marijuana.

One of Rohrabacher’s most controversial positions is the belief that man is not a significant contributor to climate change — the only Orange County Congress member to unequivocally take that position. Onufrei, meanwhile, doesn’t seem to have an opinion on the high-profile topic.

“I do not have a specific answer for you at this time as I am still formulating my position on this issue in such a way as to best represent my district,” he said via email.

Orange County’s other three Republican House members all acknowledge that man is contributing to climate change, with Reps. Mimi Walters, R-Laguna Beach, and Darrell Issa, R-Vista, explicitly saying man’s contribution is significant. Except for Onufrei, all of the 23 challengers to the county’s four GOP incumbents say man is a significant contributor — and nearly all say humans are the biggest cause.

Onufrei says Rohrabacher has lost touch with the district and fresh blood is needed. There’s still plenty of time for challenger to emerge with bold, distinguishing policy positions, but it seems the launch of a campaign would be the prime time to reveal at least a couple.

Nonetheless, Onufrei’s candidacy could be a deterrence to any more Republicans entering the race. With seven Democrats running so far, it’s possible they split the left-leaning vote, allowing two Republicans to advance out of next June’s top-two open primary.

That possibility would increase if the second Republican was known and had a broad political network in place — somebody like former state Assembly GOP leader and former county GOP Chairman Scott Baugh, who has made no secret of his interest in the seat. But with two Republicans already in the race, the road to general election for a third Republican has become steeper.

That means Onufrei’s entry into the contest could benefit Rohrabacher, the very man he says needs replacing.

MISSION VIEJO Usually when people think of love, they think of the heart.

In the case of Mark and Lisa Halloran, it’s a kidney.

Six years ago, Mark Halloran, 56, was diagnosed with polycystic kidney disease. At a checkup at St. Joseph Hospital of Orange earlier this year, he learned he would need a kidney transplant.

“At the time, my kidney function was barely over the limit of what they like to see, so I put it on the backburner,” said Halloran, who owns a calibration company in Santa Ana. “Little did I know it was going to progress faster than I thought.”

Lisa Halloran, his wife of 26 years, got to thinking. Knowing the process of obtaining a healthy kidney would likely be much quicker if he had a live donor, she had her blood tested to see if she was a match.

Halloran, 56, had never had surgery, but any anxiety about an operation disappeared when she remembered it would help her husband.

As it turned out, she was a match, and within a month, on June 30, the surgery was performed by Dr. Ervin Ruzics at St. Joseph. If not for his wife’s selflessness, Ruzics said, Mark Halloran could have spent upwards of 10 to 11 years on the wait list for a transplant.

“She didn’t even hesitate,” Mark Halloran said. “She told me at the outset that she was getting tested. It wasn’t even a question.

“I can’t (say) how appreciative I am about her willingness to do that.”

Ruzics has worked at St. Joseph’s Hospital since 1984 and has been the primary transplant surgeon and medical director of the program since 1997.

He said kidneys need to operate at least 30 percent of capacity in order to maintain healthy function, but when that rate drops, patients either go on dialysis or require transplants.

Dialysis, he said, boosts kidney function by 12 percent, so even those on dialysis may not reach the required level for healthy function.

“Kidneys clean the blood, balance the chemical makeup of the blood and handle excess water,” Ruzics said. “The water quits coming out when the kidneys fail, so water swells up the body, then the heart can’t pump the water anymore and it can lead to heart failure.”

Without a live donor, Halloran would have been added to a national wait list of about 100,000. Of those, Ruzics said, 40 percent are on hold for special circumstances or illness, leaving approximately 60,000 on the wait list with about 11,000 to 12,000 available kidneys per year.

Officials said that while no records are kept for transplants between spouses specifically, it is exceedingly rare.

“He is the absolute ideal situation,” Ruzics said. “He became aware of his kidney failure early on….it was about as good a thing that could have happened for someone with kidney failure.”

On Friday, July 14, two weeks after the operation took place, Halloran said he felt great. He spent a total of three days in the hospital, while his wife spent two.

Lisa Halloran said she had felt both excited and nervous about the surgery. The couple have two kids, both delivered naturally, so she said the prospect of having surgery for the first time was “a little nerve-wrecking, but I was excited that it was going to work out.”

Within days, the couple was back at home recovering.

“We’re a little tired, but other than that we’re doing really well,” Lisa Halloran said.

BY THE NUMBERS

59

Kidney transplants are the most common, according to national data, accounting for more than half of all transplants since 1988. In that time, 415,074 kindey transplants have been performed.

117,000

People needing a lifesaving organ transplant. Of those, 75,581 people are active waiting list candidates.

17,157

Transplants performed from January to June 2017.

8,100

Donors from January to June 2017.

• Source: United Network for Organ Sharing

LOS ANGELES – An investigation was underway today into a traffic confrontation between a group of bicyclists and a motorist in the Koreatown area.

The incident occurred about 10:30 p.m. Thursday in the area of Hobart Boulevard and Third Street, the Los Angeles Police Department reported.

VIDEO – See LA bicyclists beat motorist in CBS2 report

Some members of a group of about 50-60 bicyclists were riding through the intersection on a green light when it turned red, said LAPD Officer Norma Eisenman. Some of the other bicyclists then entered the intersection on the red light, which was an apparent traffic violation, she said.

A car then entered the intersection legally on the green light, and slightly bumped one of the bicyclists, according to Eisenman. That’s when other bicyclists pulled the motorist from the vehicle and shoved him onto the street in a confrontation that was captured on video.

Police took a battery report and also took a traffic report, but no one was arrested or cited, pending further investigation, she said.

Always Hope. Enjoy.

Those words of wisdom from two surfers – “Soul Surfer” Bethany Hamilton and three-time world champion Mick Fanning – are set in cement after the duo were inducted into the Surfers’ Hall of Fame Friday morning, Aug. 4, in Huntington Beach.

The pair drew a massive crowd in front of Huntington Surf and Sport, with surf legends and fans watching as they put their marks in wet cement — their names, imprints and messages to live by — with a statue of Duke Kahanamoku, father of modern-day surfing, looming above.

“I wrote ‘Always Hope’ because I think hope is such a key thing to overcome and thrive and get past really tough times,” said Hamilton, 27, the surfer from Hawaii who was joined by her family and two-year-old son. “I think surfing has brought me a lot of hope.”

Both surfers have had their trials over the years.

Hamilton’s story is known around the world, and while surf fans have always marveled at her comeback after a shark took her left arm, she achieved mainstream fame after the biographical film “Soul Surfer” hit the big screen.

Fanning, of Australia, also had a shark encounter. In 2015, a great white ripped his leash during a big surf contest in South Africa, surf fans watching the encounter as it unfolded on a live webcast. He fought his way away from the shark, shaken but unharmed.

He came back the following year to win the event.

The Hall of Fame induction kicked off with Fanning, 36, putting his hands and feet in cement, as stories were told about his amazing feats as a competitive surfer.

Just a few years after joining the pro tour, Fanning ripped his hamstring off the bone, forcing him to be out of the water for six months, an injury that threatened his career as a pro surfer.

But in 2007 — and again in 2009 and 2013 — he won world championship titles.

“Besides his gifted surfing, his dedication to what he does to prepare is just unbelievable,” said Kelly Gibson, North America CEO of Rip Curl, the brand that sponsors Fanning.

Fanning, who simply wrote “Enjoy” next to his name in cement, said he always enjoys coming to Huntington Beach.

“It’s Surf City — it’s pretty hectic, but you always feel welcome here, which is pretty special,” he said.

Event announcer Todd Kline asked Fanning the secret to getting past challenges.

“That’s just life, there’s going to be peaks and valleys,” Fanning said. “Just believe in yourself. As long as you believe, you can do whatever you want, really.”

Hamilton is no stranger to overcoming challenges either.

She was already a top young competitor, winning amateur championships and making a name for herself when at age 13, in 2003, a tiger shark attacked her while she was surfing in Kauai, ripping off her left arm.

Hamilton’s father, Tom, talked Friday about how he was in the hospital getting knee surgery when Bethany was rushed into the same hospital. He said it’s her strong faith that has kept her going.

“She’s always honored God in everything she does. It’s just been an amazing journey,” he told the crowd. “It’s not over. She just keeps pushing on.”

For most, losing an arm to a shark would have meant the end of surfing, Kline said.

“They wouldn’t have gone into the ocean ever again,” he said. “But not Bethany. She was back surfing within one month.”

Hamilton earned a national amateur title, then won a contest at the heavy surf break Pipeline. More recently, and just six months after giving birth to her son Tobias, she towed into a 40-foot wave at Jaws, and last year she surfed in the women’s Fiji Pro and placed third against the best female surfers in the world.

But it was the movie “Soul Surfer,” released in 2011, that made her a household name. “She used this platform to inspire others,” Kline said.

The line that formed down Pacific Coast Highway, Friday, just to get a glimpse of Hamilton, shows how much inspiration she’s spread along her journey.

Angelina Bebek, 16, came from Downey to see her favorite surfer, and was thrilled when Hamilton walked by her. “She came back from something that significant, bounced back to became such a big star and athlete,” Bebeck said.

Hamilton said a natural drive and determination has fueled her, but the community that has surrounded her has been essential to her success.

“We all know we get to partake in the best thing ever, to be able to make it a living and travel the world,” she said. “I just love doing what I do.”

Mick Fanning shark attack footage courtesy worldsurfleague.com