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Happiness is taking control of a beloved comic strip. Sony is buying a 41% stake in the Charles M. Schulz comic Peanuts and its characters including Snoopy and Charlie Brown from Canada’s WildBrain in a $457 million deal, the two companies said Friday. The deal adds to Sony’s existing 39% stake, bringing its shareholding to 80%, according to a joint statement. The Schulz family will continue to own the remaining 20%. With this additional ownership stake, we are thrilled to be able to further elevate the value of the ‘Peanuts’ brand by drawing on the Sony Groups extensive global network and collective expertise, Sony Music Entertainment President Shunsuke Muramatsu said. Peanuts made its debut Oct. 2, 1950 in seven newspapers. The travails of the little round-headed kid Charlie Brown and pals, including Linus, Lucy, Peppermint Patty, and his pet beagle Snoopy, eventually expanded to more than 2,600 newspapers, reaching millions of readers in 75 countries. The strip offers enduring images of kites stuck in trees, Charlie Brown trying to kick a football, tart-tongued Lucy handing out advice for a nickel, and Snoopy taking the occasional flight of fancy to the skies. Phrases such as security blanket,” good grief and happiness is a warm puppy are a part of the global vernacular. Schulz died in 2000. Sony acquired its first stake in Peanuts Holdings LLC in 2018 from Toronto-based WildBrain Ltd. In Friday’s transaction, Sony’s music and movie arms signed a definitive agreement with WildBrain to buy its remaining stake for $630 million Canadian dollars ($457 million). Rights to the Peanuts brand and management of its business are handled by a wholly-owned subsidiary of Peanuts Holdings. WildBrain also owns other kids’ entertainment franchises, including Strawberry Shortcake and Teletubbies.
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E-Commerce
The Trump administration is calling on white men who believe they faced discrimination at work to file their complaints to a federal civil rights agency. The head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission urged white men to formally register their complaints with the government this week in a video posted to X. Are you a white male who has experienced discrimination at work based on your race or sex? You may have a claim to recover money under federal civil rights laws, EEOC Commission Chair Andrea Lucas said. Lucas urged white men who qualified to contact the EEOC as soon as possible and pointed them to the agencys website and its explainer on DEI-related discrimination. The EEOC is committed to identifying, attacking, and eliminating ALL race and sex discrimination including against white male employees and applicants, Lucas wrote. The EEOCs priorities have shifted dramatically during the second Trump administration. The EEOC, born out of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, was created to protect Americans from workplace discrimination and harassment. Given its origins, the agency had a historic focus on protecting minority employees from racial discrimination, but in more recent years its mission included investigations into instances of discrimination over gender, disability, age and national origin. At the same time that the EEOC is collecting complaints from white men, the agency has dropped six of its own cases representing transgender people who alleged workplace discrimination based on their gender identities. Dismantling diversity The Trump administration has deployed the EEOC in a very specific way over the course of the year, steering the agency toward its broader goals of dismantling diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. In March, the EEOC and the DOJ released a joint press release along with new documentation warning employers against unlawful DEI-related discrimination that could be interpreted to violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Far too many employers defend certain types of race or sex preferences as good, provided they are motivated by business interests in diversity, equity, or inclusion, Lucas said. But no matter an employers motive, there is no good, or even acceptable, race or sex discrimination. While the subtext was clear from the EEOCs recent changes, Lucas said the quiet part out loud on X. The Trump administration is keen to highlight perceived examples of anti-white discrimination in the country, and its willing to pull all the levers of government in pursuit of that goal. The White Houses framing of race in America increasingly reflects the language of once-fringe white nationalist theories, including debunked claims about a genocide of white South Africans and recent calls for remigration mass deportation for non-white immigrants. Trump himself has an extensive history of racist ideology, has repeatedly aligned himself with white nationalists and continues to promote a language of grievance around anti-white sentiment while stripping away federal policies designed to promote racial diversity. The EEOC has an unusual structure, but that hasnt been enough to block Trumps efforts to weaponize it during his second term. The agency is a commission made up of five members, with no more than three allowed to be from the same political party. The president can appoint commissioners, who serve a five year term, and can designate a chair to steer the agency, but generally the EEOC is designed to be bipartisan by definition, limiting the potential influence of whoever sits in the White House and keeping the commission independent. Quickly after taking office in January, Trump fired two of the federal agencys three Democratic commissioners an unprecedented departure from the commissions traditional five year terms. After filling one of the open slots with a lawyer who served in the Department of Education during his first term, two EEOC positions sit vacant, with one Biden appointee remaining in her role and two Trump appointees setting the agenda.
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E-Commerce
The livestream of a YouTube content creator talking about investments mysteriously appeared to take over a White House website, raising questions about whether the site was hacked. The livestream appeared for at least eight minutes late Thursday on whitehouse.gov/live, where the White House usually streams live video of the president speaking. It’s unclear if the website was breached or the video was linked accidentally by someone in the government. The White House said in a statement that it was aware and looking into what happened. The video that appeared on the government-run website featured some of a more than two-hour livestream from Matt Farley, who posts as @RealMattMoney, as he answered financial questions. Farley said in an email to The Associated Press on Friday that he had no idea what happened. If I had known my stream was going to go super public like that I would be dressed a bit nicer and had a few more pointed topics! And it likely wouldnt have been about personal finance, Farley wrote. President Donald Trump‘s administration and campaign have had a series of digital security breaches and challenges over the last year. In May, government officials began investigating after elected officials, business executives, and other prominent figures received text messages and phone calls from someone impersonating Susie Wiles, the Republican president’s chief of staff. Last year, Iran hacked into Trumps campaign. Sensitive internal documents were stolen and distributed, including a dossier on Vice President JD Vance, created before he was selected as Trumps running mate. Michelle L. Price, Associated Press Associated Press writer Bill Barrow contributed to this report.
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E-Commerce
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