Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Names and faces
■ The premiere of a virtual reality short by Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow was already a high-profile event at the Tribeca Film Festival on Saturday night. And then Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state and presidential candidate, walked onstage. Clinton was an unannounced panelist, there to discuss the scourge of elephant poaching — the subject of Bigelow’s eight-minute film The Protectors: Walk in the Rangers’ Shoes,
about park rangers trying to save elephants in Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She spoke about her work to save elephants from poachers slaughtering them for their ivory tusks, both as secretary of state in the Obama administration, and later with her family foundation, the Clinton Global Initiative. “We’ve got to bust this market so it can’t come back,” she said of the illegal ivory market. Clinton told the audience that she first became focused on what she called “the horrific slaughter of elephants” when she was secretary of state. “It became clear to everyone that this was not just a terrible crisis when it came to the elephant population, it was a trade, a trafficking that was funding a lot of bad folks, a lot of bad actors,” she said. Clinton noted that while China was the biggest market for illegal ivory, the United States was the second-biggest. “So China is going to be a key player but we are, too,” she said. Clinton told Bigelow that her virtual reality film was “so critical, because it is a portal — a portal that people can go into and think about, ‘Here we are in New York, what can I do?’ And there is a lot that can be done — stop the killing, stop the trafficking, and stop the demand.”
■ Bill O’Reilly
may no longer be on television, but he’s returning to the air today — with a new podcast episode. The longtime cable-news host’s run with Fox News ended last week amid a string of sexual harassment complaints against him. His ouster included $25 million in severance, equivalent to one year’s salary. O’Reilly’s No Spin News podcast will be released this evening, according to his personal website. It would mark his first on-air comments since his departure from Fox after revelations that the host and network settled five harassment allegations. That news prompted questions about his conduct at the network, more accusers to step forward and an advertiser exodus. After the split last week, O’Reilly released a statement saying “it is tremendously disheartening that we part ways due to completely unfounded claims.” The No Spin News podcast is only available for paid subscribers to his website.