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The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported in 2018 that a private zoo in Alberta, Canada, was charged after a bear from the facility was taken through a Dairy Queen drive-thru in a pickup truck and fed ice cream through the vehicle's window.

A video of the feeding was posted to Twitter and Facebook by Discovery Wildlife Park, but the posts were later deleted. It showed a one-year-old chained bear leaning out of a truck's window and being fed ice cream by the owner of the local Dairy Queen. Another video posted by the zoo around the same time showed the bear licking frosting off an ice cream cake.

A trainer at Discovery Wildlife Park said there was no safety concern at the Dairy Queen because the bear was on a chain in the truck the entire time.

Wildlife officers charged the zoo with one offence relating to the bear being taken for ice cream, and another for incidents where the bear left the facility on multiple occasions without the proper authorities being notified.

The novel coronavirus COVID-19 has impacted the consulting industry in ways that seem potentially ruinous. But do not lose hope. Yes, consultants are used to traveling a lot, and widespread travel restrictions make that impossible. And much of consultancy work is done face-to-face in internal and client meetings, which can’t be done when gatherings are prohibited. There is also the fear that businesses will suspend contracts in the economic downturn.

But we have an advantage this time that we haven't had in past catastrophes. We have the internet. We can have virtual meetings, share documents online and even give presentations with conference software that lets everyone be in the same “room” at the same time. So travel restrictions are less disruptive than in the past—people can do much of what’s needed almost as well from home.

And, with so many employees now working from home, many businesses need to upgrade their systems without delay. This creates a demand for consultants to help them make those changes efficiently and effectively.

So although the pandemic is horrible, and we all feel anxious about our future, consultants can be confident that the industry will survive. And inventive survival strategies might just become lasting improvements.

This simple equation is at the heart of the global economy: One person’s spending = another person’s income.

It’s referred to as “supply and demand”—producers will supply as much as consumers demand. So if consumers aren’t buying anything, producers won’t be able to sell anything. In other words, whenever you buy something, you pay someone else’s wages.

So the current COVID-19 pandemic is not just a global health crisis but also an economic one. When people are told to stay at home, they stop going to restaurants, bars, and movies. They can’t travel, so they don’t spend money on gas or airfare, and they don’t stay at hotels. And when no more than 10 people can be together in one place, everything from birthday parties to music festivals to major world sports events are canceled.

COVID-19 has already had a serious impact on the hospitality, entertainment, sports, energy, and transportation industries, and the pandemic isn’t over yet. In some places, it’s just getting started. No one knows when it will end or how long it will take to recover.

The Japan Times published an opinion piece arguing that the issue of people hoarding surgical masks has served to show people’s true nature. It notes that the outbreak has resulted in the spread of fake news and racism, and some unscrupulous people have been reselling face masks and even toilet paper at highly inflated prices on sites such as Mercari.

The author says that social media has also become a tool for shaming those engaged in bad behavior in Japan. Sites such as Twitter have made it simpler to spread footage of morally dubious activity. For instance, users uncovered truly ridiculous posts, including one in which 35 packs of masks were being sold for ¥75,000 by someone who claimed to have risked their health getting them.

The opinion piece concludes that this issue has revealed the fractured moral impulse of the Japanese internet at large, split between those taking advantage of a horrible situation for profit and those operating for the greater public good.

For nearly a century, Kowloon Walled City stood out as a rare modern example of an ungoverned territory. When Great Britain took Hong Kong from the Chinese, they left a Chinese enclave in Kowloon, near Hong Kong island. As the 20th century unfolded, consecutive Chinese governments neglected the governance of the enclave, the British refused to get involved, and it took on a life of its own.

By the 1980s, nearly 50,000 people lived in 300 illegally built structures connected together by an interconnecting maze of passageways and staircases. Drugs and prostitution were common in the walled city, and people from nearby neighborhoods would come to visit cheap unlicensed doctors and dentists. Residents cooked and baked goods that they sold to vendors outside the enclave.

Kowloon Walled City was demolished in 1993, a few years before Hong Kong was returned to China, and is now a public park. Its residents were moved to public housing, and they have said that they remember a tough life in the walled city, but that they were mostly happy. 

California has been trying to ban the delicacy foie gras for quite some time. The French dish is well-known in fine dining, but it is made from the liver of a duck or goose that has been force-fed to increase the fat content. Many have said the process constitutes animal cruelty.

The ban was passed into law back in 2004, but it was phased in gradually. It finally went into full effect in 2012, at which time foie gras producers promptly sued the state government. Fast forward to 2015, and a federal judge overturned the ban, stating that it was unconstitutional and went against federal poultry law.

Two years after that, the higher Ninth Circuit court ruled 3-0 that the federal judge had made an error, and allowed California to keep the ban. Again, foie gras producers appealed, this time to the U.S. Supreme Court. But the Supreme Court declined to hear the case, making the previous Ninth Circuit ruling final. 

Foie gras producers say that the consumer should be able to make the choice about what they do and don't want to eat. Restaurants, for their part, have tried to find loop-holes. For example, some have given away foie gras for "free" when other expensive dishes were purchased. 

Animal rights advocates are happy about the ban. Some celebrities have publicly denounced the food, though it has gained popularity in places like the Middle East. 

Electronic waste is a huge problem. There's an estimated 51,000 tonnes of it globally per year, says the European Union. But a new law could put an end to one part of it.

The E.U. has passed a law that as of 2024, all phones will have a standard USB-C charger. Having a single type of smartphone charging port will make cables interchangeable and more reusable. This standard charger would also improve the customer experience. 

Maybe you've been using your phone when the battery runs low, and your friend offers you a charger, but it's the wrong kind. Many of us have had our phone die while we are out and about, far from our charger. A standard charger would solve this problem.

Not everyone is on board, though. Apple has pointed out that creating a new universal charger would still create tonnes of electronic waste because people would have to buy new universal chargers and, presumably, trash their old ones. It's estimated that nearly 1 billion consumers use an Apple proprietary lightning port. Changing that overnight would certainly create a mountain of e-waste. 

The Italian football world is again experiencing racism within its ranks. A series of players have been subject to racist abuse by fans, with little or no response from clubs, officials, or the media. Hard-core fans claim they have the right to abuse players any way they want, and certain clubs deny that racism even exists.

Finally, Lega Serie A, the organization that oversees the country’s highest division, launched an anti-racism campaign, but the campaign itself has been accused of racism. One of the initiatives in the campaign uses the image of a series of monkey faces in club colors. The image was created by artist Simone Fugazzotto, who often uses monkeys and apes in his work.

But people of African descent have long been dehumanized by calling them "monkeys", and several players in Italy’s top league have been victims of monkey chants. So the image perpetuates the very racism it is supposed to combat. Anti-discrimination network Football Against Racism in Europe calls the initiative "a sick joke".

Even now, the fight against racism continues. 

The idea of universal basic income (UBI) has been gaining steam around the world. A Japanese billionaire and an American presidential candidate, among others, have both thrown their weight behind it.

The concept is simple: the government provides unconditional money to their citizens. The theory is that in order to provide basic services for all citizens and to stimulate the economy, a small amount of money can be given to each person, equally. 

In the United States, presidential candidate Andrew Yang has even given away $12,000 to a random Twitter follower. In his plan, each adult would receive that amount of money every year. Yang argues people will continue working, even with UBI. $12,000 a year is barely enough to live on in many places and certainly not enough to afford much in the way of experiences or advancement. To get ahead meaningfully, people will still need to get out there and work.

In Japan billionaire Yusaku Maezawa also announced via Twitter about his plan to give away 1 billion Japanese yen, about 9 million dollars to 1000 random Twitter followers. 

Maezawa has called it a serious social experiment, and he's not alone. Many people, especially those in Silicon Valley, have worried that incredible increases in automation to push workers out of jobs. It's been theorized that universal basic income could stimulate the economy dramatically.