BOMBAY OR BUST: As brands and marketers continue to swarm music festivals, a less commercialized venue gets underway Friday on the West Coast.
The top-secret Bombay Beach Biennale is a mash-up of art, music, film and philosophy set in the desolate California community of the same name. Located on the southern end of the San Andreas Fault near the Salton Sea, Bombay Beach is nearly abandoned, pretty much unrecognizable from the high-flying resort town it was in the Fifties and Sixties when Frank Sinatra and The Beach Boys performed and went sport fishing there. Besieged with environmental problems like pollution, toxic fish and algae in the Seventies, the community has since pretty much dispersed.
Hoping to revive the community and draw attention to the area, the biennale does not charge admission to the festival or such attractions as Lectures in the Ruins, International Art Pavilions, the Bombay Beach Drive-In and the Bombay Beach Intergalactic Space Station. Organizers are encouraging attendees to support local establishments in what is known as “the town that once was” and is located 244 feet below sea level. Festivalgoers can also make donations to support the artwork which includes scale models of recently unearthed urban plans found in

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PARIS — The exit of Kering’s chairman and chief executive officer François-Henri Pinault from Puma’s board of directors on Wednesday has done nothing to calm persistent rumors that the French luxury group is looking to offload the sporting goods maker. But the focus for Kering, according to a company spokesperson, remains on getting Puma back on track in terms of profitability.
Defending the decision to shareholders attending Puma’s AGM on Wednesday at the company’s headquarters in Herzogenaurach, Germany, Jean-François Palus, group managing director of Kering, who will retain his role as chairman of the Puma board, put it down to a streamlining of the decision-making process.
“Six members, among them two employee representatives, are sufficient for an effective and flexible steering of the company,” he said. “The last six years have shown that a smaller board aligns better with the company’s size. We may also not forget that a smaller administrative board also enables the company to save costs.”
On the same day, Puma, in an ad-hoc announcement, said it was raising full-year guidance for 2017 on the back of strong first-quarter results, and released preliminary data for the period.
At the presentation of Kering’s full-year results in February, Pinault said he had no intention of selling

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FIGHTING WORDS: With her first Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition behind her, model Mia Kang is training for her first professional Muay Thai fight next month in Koh Samui, Thailand. And her connection with Time Inc. will endure, with staffers trailing her for a digital documentary for SI.
The Hong Kong-born Kang won last year’s model search, which secured her appearance in the latest SI Swimsuit edition. Now the budding professional fighter has green lighted behind-the-scenes access in the lead-up to next month’s main event in Thailand. It has not been determined how SI will use the documentary, a spokeswoman for Kang said. Since launching her modeling career in Hong Kong, she has appeared on international covers for Elle and Cosmopolitan, and has modeled for such brands as Chanel, Guess Jeans, Guess Accessories, Aveda and Nike.
Taking a 10-day break in Thailand last year, Kang wandered into a Muay Thai gym purely out of curiosity. Nine months later, she was still training there and living with fighters from the gym. Developed several hundred years ago, it is the national sport and cultural martial art of Thailand. Known as “The Art of Eight Limbs,” the name references eight points of contact and that the

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In a move to help digitalise the value chain for athletic footwear manufacturers and brands, technology specialist Lectra has developed a new VectorFootwear solution that transforms traditional cutting rooms into “state-of-the-art digitalised domains.”

The Alliance for Bangladesh says the country’s garment industry is moving toward being one of the world’s safest, having revealed around 72% of remediation work has been completed to date.

Access and retention of top talent, coupled with the difficulty and high cost of navigating America’s immigration system, are stopping the US from leading the world in fashion innovation, an industry organisation has warned.

The Sustainable Apparel Coalition and Avery Dennison have partnered with IoT smart products platform Evrything to explore how suppliers, manufacturers, retailers and consumers can access and share sustainability information by interacting with digital identities on products.

UK supermarket retailer Tesco moved to a loss in its last fiscal year as a result of one-off charges, but booked its first rise in UK sales for seven years.

Sage Hill sophomore pitcher Ashwin Chona will try Thursday to break the CIF-Southern Section baseball record for consecutive no-hitters.

The record is three, which he set last week.

Chona is the scheduled to go for his four straight no-hitter Thursday in the Lightning’s Academy League game at Brethren Christian. Sage Hill is 15-1-2 overall and 5-0 in league. Brethren is 4-10 overall and 1-6 in league.

His streak began March 20 when he no-hit Whitney of Cerritos in a league game. Chona next no-hit Santa Rosa Academy in an Anaheim Lions Tournament game March 27. His third straight no-hitter was in a league game against Calvary Chapel of Downey on April 6.

The Whitney no-hitter, a 9-0 win for Sage Hill, was a regulation seven-inning game. The no-hitters against Santa Rosa Academy and Calvary Chapel were five-inning games cut short by the mercy rule, 10-0 and 16-0 final scores respectively.

Chona, a left-hander, struck out 13 with two walks against Whitney. He had nine strikeouts with one walk against Santa Rosa Academy and 12 strikeouts with two walks against Calvary Chapel.

He is 4-0 with a 0.62 ERA, and 55 strikeouts with 11 walks in 34 innings.

Chona has some no-hitter competition on the Sage Hill roster. Lighting senior right-hander Brett Super on Tuesday pitched his second no-hitter of the season in an 11-0 win over Brethren.

Chona enjoys the no-hit rivalry.

“We just joke around with it,” Chona said. “’Anything you can do, I can do better.’”

The CIF State record for consecutive no-hitters is four. It ha been done a few times, most recently by Steven Perry of Maxwell High in 2011.

The state record for most no-hitters in a season is five, held by Perry (2011 season) and Troy Ankerson of Mater Dei in 1957.

Shareholders will have a chance to vent their frustrations on Irvine-based Ubiquity Inc. at a public hearing Monday, according to Strategic Capital Management Ltd.

Strategic owns more than 21 million shares in the video production company, which is under investigation for failing to disclose routine and necessary financial documents.

“Shareholders are bitterly distressed over the lack of transparency and respect provided by management and the board towards them. Since Ubiquity has never had a shareholders’ meeting in its multi-year existence, the SEC hearing provides the first real opportunity for shareholders to confront Ubiquity’s management in person regarding their actions that disregard the most basic shareholder rights,” the company said in a statement.

The company’s stock on the OTC Markets exchange was temporarily suspended by the SEC last month because of a “lack of current and accurate information about the company.”

The public hearing will be held at 9:30 a.m. at SEC headquarters: 100 F Street, NE, Washington, D.C., Room 2.

Ubiquity, a digital video and technology company, says it does some work in virtual reality. Other information about the company has been scant as it hasn’t posted financial data in nearly two years.

The SEC probe will determine if it will be necessary to suspend the company’s stock for up to 12 months or revoke the company’s registration.

In March, Strategic Capital and other shareholders demanded Ubiquity hold a meeting and replace the company’s management. The group wants to remove the entire board, elect a new board of directors and void the award to top executives of 500 million voting shares.

Ubiquity has not filed any periodic reports since September 30, 2015, the SEC stated.

Last month not the first time the media company came under fire.

In August, former interim Chief Executive Nicholas Mitsakos was arrested and charged with securities and wire fraud by creating a fund and faking assets at Matrix Capital, a hedge fund he manages. Charges were filed by both the SEC and the Department of Justice.

Last year, Ubiquity appointed Bola Ajere to its board as “an independent director to lead Ubiquity’s Audit and Governance committee and ensure the company becomes current in its filings,” according to a company press release.

In November, the company notified the SEC it would be delayed in filing a Form 10-K for the fiscal year that ended Dec. 31, 2015.

“Ubiquity’s market cap on June 16, 2016 exceeded $100 million, but a multitude of late SEC filings, missing SEC filings, and an opaque business financing model are significant red flags,” the financial site Seeking Alpha wrote in July.

“Executive compensation is literally ‘out of control’ – completely unrelated to Ubiquity’s financial performance,” the site added.

In October, Ubiquity was ordered to pay $7.7 million to Chicago-based Gerald D.W. North & Associates principal Gerald North over a 2014 breach of contract lawsuit.

When North & Associates entered into an agreement with Ubiquity Holdings in 2006, it found previously undisclosed bankruptcies and pending lawsuits alleging fraud by the company, according to the Orange County Business Journal.

In 2014, the Investment Protection Association received emails touting the company’s stock.

“The timing of the emails promoting UBIQ coincides with what seems to be an abnormal rise in the trading volume of the stock,” the group said. “The recent financials of the company appear to be very bleak due to nearly zero revenue and negative income. We have tried contacting the company via the online form on the company’s website; however, it appears to be out of service.”

“In our opinion, it is clear that the price of UBIQ has nothing in common with the stock’s true value. If we take a look at UBIQ’s income statement, we can see that the company’s revenue has remained nearly zero while the company’s net income has been negative during the entire year of 2014,” the Investment Protection Association said.

The group added that the company is “having its shares promoted and sold at over-inflated prices, rather than delivering or attempting to deliver a true product to the market.”

Ubiquity was co-founded by Chris Carmichael and his wife Connie Jordan, according to the company’s website.

The investor tab on the company’s website was not working Wednesday afternoon.