- Osama bin Laden’s infamous ‘Letter to America’ after 9/11 promoted by TikTok influencers, goes viral Fox News
- Osama bin Laden’s ‘Letter to America’ Goes Viral 21 Years Later — on TikTok Rolling Stone
- Bin Laden’s Letter to US Stuns Young Americans: ‘He Was Right’ Newsweek
- Osama bin Laden Is Duping Young People on TikTok from the Grave National Review
- TikTok shredded as influencers promote Osama bin Laden’s ‘terrorist propaganda’ tirade dubbed ‘Letter to America’ ahead of 9/11 attacks New York Post
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: promoted
Christian radio host Dave Ramsey faces $150 million lawsuit from listeners who say they were defrauded by a timeshare exit company he promoted – Yahoo Finance
- Christian radio host Dave Ramsey faces $150 million lawsuit from listeners who say they were defrauded by a timeshare exit company he promoted Yahoo Finance
- Dave Ramsey sued after listeners say they were defrauded by a timeshare-exit company The Washington Post
- Christian financial advisor Dave Ramsey sued for $150 million over timeshare-exit company endorsement USA TODAY
- Ex Dave Ramsey followers sue him for more than $150M over endorsement of failed timeshare exit company The Christian Post
- Dave Ramsey being sued for $150 million by former listeners WATE 6 On Your Side
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Gerad Parker Promoted To Offensive Coordinator – Notre Dame Fighting Irish – Official Athletics Website – Notre Dame Athletics
- Gerad Parker Promoted To Offensive Coordinator – Notre Dame Fighting Irish – Official Athletics Website Notre Dame Athletics
- Notre Dame promotes Gerad Parker to replace Tommy Rees as offensive coordinator Yahoo Sports
- It’s Official: Notre Dame Names Gerad Parker Offensive Coordinator Sports Illustrated
- Notre Dame makes it official: Gerad Parker is offensive coordinator Fighting Irish Wire
- Friday at 4: Angst over Notre Dame’s hiring, or not hiring, an offensive coordinator is ‘misplaced’ at best NBC Sports
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Ty Gibbs promoted to replace Kyle Busch in JGR’s Cup car
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Ty Gibbs was promoted to NASCAR’s top Cup series on Tuesday in an expected announcement that was void of any celebration as Joe Gibbs Racing continues to mourn the loss of Gibbs’ father.
Coy Gibbs died in his sleep hours after his 20-year-old son won the Xfinity Series championship on Nov. 5 at Phoenix Raceway. He was 49, the same age as older brother, J.D., when he passed away in 2019.
Joe Gibbs, the NASCAR and NFL Hall of Famer, has lost both his sons a month before their 50th birthdays. Coy Gibbs was vice chairman of his father’s NASCAR team at the time of his death.
The Gibbs family has made no public statements since confirming Coy Gibbs’ passing shortly before the NASCAR season finale. Ty Gibbs did not race in the Nov. 6 finale and has made just one public appearance since, courtside at a Charlotte Hornets game last week with his younger brother, a cousin and another driver.
The Tuesday announcement that Ty Gibbs will replace Kyle Busch in JGR’s Cup lineup came in a four-paragraph press release that said Gibbs will move up with Chris Gayle, his crew chief during this year’s championship season.
Ty Gibbs will drive the No. 54 Toyota Camry next year and JGR said it plans to use the No. 18 for future use. Joe Gibbs chose the No. 18 when he launched his NASCAR team in 1992 and Busch spent the past 15 years with the number.
Ty Gibbs has used the No. 54 the past two seasons in the Xfinity Series, where he won 11 of 51 races and the championship in the season finale at Phoenix. His first national series title ended a bumpy season for Ty Gibbs, who scrapped with other drivers, was fined by NASCAR, and then cost JGR driver Brandon Jones a spot in the championship finale by spinning him out of the lead on the final lap at Martinsville Speedway.
If Gibbs had simply stayed in second behind Jones, both JGR drivers would have made the championship race and Toyota would have had two entries. Joe Gibbs promised consequences would be coming for his grandson, but the team had to get through championship week first.
Ty Gibbs then won the title but learned of his father’s passing at a Phoenix-area hotel the next morning.
Before the incident at Martinsville, Toyota Racing Development president David Wilson had defended Gibbs’ growth while noting he’s younger than most of his peers. He’ll join a JGR lineup that includes 42-year-old Martin Truex Jr. and Denny Hamlin, who turns 42 later this week, as well as Christopher Bell, who turns 28 next month. Bell raced for the Cup title at Phoenix, finishing third in the title race.
“What we have to remember is, particularly if you contemplate him continuing to drive at the Cup level, he’s still got a lot to learn. He just turned 20. He’s going to make mistakes,” Wilson said in October. “Early in the season, he was not just getting into scraps, but once he got out of the car, he was handling that aggressively. He’s done a much better job handling the emotion once he gets out of the car.
“But he’s still seeing things that are new to him, and it’s going to be a very dynamic time for him.”
Ty Gibbs spent the week leading into the finale apologizing for the Jones incident, which he admitted was selfish and lacked big picture awareness for the entire Gibbs organization. He also copped to being over-aggressive and maybe even dirty at times on the track.
He was booed at both Martinsville after spinning Jones, and again at Phoenix after winning the title.
“Definitely have made some mistakes in the past and last weekend, but the best thing for me is to move on. And that’s what I did (at Phoenix) in my race, and we won,” Ty Gibbs said after the race. “Just moving on and learning from my mistakes. I can’t go back and change the past; and if I could, I would. But we can’t do that, and the best thing for me is to learn from it.”
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AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
‘Butcher of Mariupol’ promoted in Russian Army shakeup
Vladimir Putin ousted the Russian general who was responsible for the chaotic logistics operation that hamstrung his army as its Ukraine invasion floundered — and named a notoriously brutal replacement.
Gen. Dmitry Bulgakov, 67, was “released” Saturday, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Telegram, so that he could transfer into a new but unspecified role.
Bulgakov’s successor, Col. Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev, is the infamous “Butcher of Mariupol” who ordered some of the Ukraine invasion’s worst atrocities — including an airstrike on a maternity hospital and an attack on a theater that was sheltering hundreds of children.
Previously, Mizintsev was responsible for the siege of Aleppo in Syria, where he ordered cluster-bomb strikes on residential areas to pound the city into submission.
Bulgakov has been blamed for Russia’s chronic inability to keep its troops in Ukraine fed and armed — forcing the humiliating retreat from Kyiv and the purchase of artillery and drones from North Korea and Iran, two of the only countries willing to deal with the pariah nation.
Meanwhile, the British Ministry of Defense reported, Russian troops attacked a dam on the Siverskyi Donets River with short-range ballistic missiles in an effort to flood Ukrainian military crossing points and slow their advance.
The bombing missions, which came on Wednesday and Thursday, “are unlikely to have caused significant disruption to Ukrainian operations,” the ministry noted.
Armed Russian troops continued their door-to-door efforts in the occupied Ukrainian areas of Donetsk and Luhansk to force locals to “vote” in a sham referendum to break away and join Russia.
The voting “looked more like an opinion survey under the gun barrels,” Luhansk Gov. Serhiy Haidai said.
About 100 refugees from ruined Mariupol gathered in Kyiv to protest the faux election, which echoes the 2014 referendum that Russia used as a pretext for its annexation of Crimea.
“It’s an illusion of choice when there isn’t any,” Elina Sytkova, 21, told CNBC.
In New York, China continued to signal its displeasure over Putin’s invasion.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who met with his Ukrainian counterpart this week during the UN General Assembly, “call[ed] on all parties concerned to keep the crisis from spilling over and to protect the legitimate rights and interests of developing countries,” he said Saturday in a General Assembly speech.
Christine Lee: UK government promoted firm at center of alleged Chinese influence operation for years
On Thursday Britain’s domestic counter-intelligence service, MI5, issued an “interference alert” about a “potential threat” posed by Christine Ching Kui Lee, a lawyer with offices in China and the UK.
The alert said Lee “acted covertly” with the United Front Work Department of the Chinese Communist Party to interfere in UK politics by cultivating links with parliamentarians “across the political spectrum” and facilitating donations “on behalf of foreign nationals,” MI5 said.
Lee’s firm was advertised on a website of the Department of International Trade as recently as Friday, before being taken offline.
CNN has contacted Lee for comment but has not received a reply. On Friday, China’s Foreign Ministry denied that Lee was a Chinese “agent” and said Beijing “has no need and will not engage in so-called interference activities.”
“We urge relevant British officials to refrain from making groundless remarks or hyping up the ‘China threat’ theory for ulterior political purposes,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said.
A CNN analysis of Britain’s parliamentary register, by which lawmakers record donations, shows Lee gave at least £461,000 ($639,000) to Barry Gardiner, an elected member of the opposition Labour party between 2014 and 2020, mostly through funding of his staff. Her son even worked in his office and had a parliamentary pass.
Lee also donated £5,000 ($6,800) to the leader of the Liberal Democrat party Sir Ed Davey in 2013.
It is not illegal for Lee to make the donations as the UK does not yet have a foreign agents registration act like the United States, nor is it illegal for a British citizen or foreign national working in the UK to be affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party. Lee is listed as a British national in the UK’s corporate registry.
In a statement to CNN, Gardiner said he had not benefitted personally from Lee’s donations in any way. The money had been properly reported and its source verified.
“I will continue to work closely with our security services in this and all other matters that relate to the security of our country,” Gardiner said.
Davey told CNN his local association had accepted the donation, that it was reported properly, and that “this was the first time he had been given cause to be concerned.”
“The government must make it a national security priority to protect the UK’s democracy from threats and interference by foreign actors,” Davey said.
Lee’s services advertised on UK government portal
The payments were made through Lee’s eponymous law firm Christine Lee & Co Solicitors, which since at least 2016 has been included in the directory of the “UK Advisory Network” — a list of business services compiled by what is now the Department for International Trade to, as the directory says, “provide an accessible route” “to foreign investors setting up in the UK.”
A preface to the directory says it is “facilitated by invitation from the UK government” and that “members go through a robust vetting procedure to join.”
“The Network provides a forum for feedback to the government on issues affecting the business environment and ultimately informs efforts to make the UK even more business friendly,” it says.
Lee’s services could still be accessed through the Department of International Trade on Friday via a government portal recently revamped to attract overseas investment for UK projects.
The advertisement for Lee’s firm on the UK’s great.gov website offered the first hour of legal advice for free, as did the other firms listed.
A disclaimer on the site said the department does not “endorse the character, goods, services or ability of the members of the directory” and that there is no legal relationship between the department and the service providers listed.
“This case shows is an abject failure of government vetting, and shows extraordinary naivety on the part of the government when it comes to the purpose of these kinds of institutions and individuals,” said Luke de Pulford of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which is pushing for tougher rules on China.
To have somebody who MI5 published an alert about “advertising their services on the government website truly is remarkable and needs to be dealt with as soon as it possibly can be,” he said.
Photographed with prime ministers
Lee, a former legal advisor to China’s embassy in London, has been active in political circles for 15 years.
She first set up the British Chinese project in 2006 to encourage British citizens with Chinese ancestry to vote in the UK. From 2011 onwards she was involved in a now-defunct All Party Parliamentary Group called Chinese in Britain.
She has been photographed with former Conservative Prime Ministers David Cameron and Theresa May. The latter even gave her an award two years ago for her work with Britain’s Chinese community.
According to the UK’s Companies House register, Lee has a web of property, legal, cultural and educational ventures under her name.
A copy of a letter sent by the Lords Speaker in the House of Lords, the UK’s upper chamber, and obtained by CNN said Lee has facilitated donations “on behalf of foreign nationals based in Hong Kong and China. This facilitation was done to covertly mask the origins of the payments.”
“This is clearly unacceptable and steps are being taken to ensure it ceases.” the letter reads.
The Home Office launched a consultation last year on new legislation designed to shore up safeguards against hostile state action. Parliamentary sources told CNN the bill is expected be presented to the House of Commons during the early part of this year.
When CNN visited the London office of Lee’s law firm, in the heart of Soho, it appeared to have been shuttered for some time with the windows thick with dust. It was empty with a notice in the window saying it had closed because of the pandemic. Emails and calls to the contact details provided in the sign went unanswered.
In a piece written for the UK’s Daily Mail in 2020, the firm said: “Christine Lee & Co is proud of its record of public service and the support it has provided to the democratic process. We have never sought to influence any politician improperly or to seek any favours in return for the support that we have provided.”
Ian Duncan Smith, the former leader of the ruling Conservative party and a fervent critic of China, raised the alarm about Lee in Parliament on Thursday, saying MI5 had warned the House Speaker Lindsay Hoyle that “an agent of the Chinese government” had been actively working to “subvert” the process of parliament.
“This is a matter of grave concern,” he said.
CNN’s Allegra Goodwin contributed to this report.
Instagram promoted pages glorifying eating disorders to teen accounts
The extreme dieting accounts were promoted to an Instagram account set up by Sen. Richard Blumenthal’s staff. The Connecticut Senator’s team registered an account as a 13-year-old girl and proceeded to follow some dieting and pro-eating disorder accounts (the latter of which are supposed to be banned by Instagram). Soon, Instagram’s algorithm began almost exclusively recommending the young teenage account should follow more and more extreme dieting accounts, the Senator told CNN.
Blumenthal’s office shared with CNN a list of accounts Instagram’s algorithm had recommended. After CNN sent a sample from this list of five accounts to Instagram for comment, the company removed them, saying all of them broke its policies against encouraging eating disorders.
“We do not allow content that promotes or encourages eating disorders and we removed the accounts shared with us for breaking these rules,” a spokesperson for Facebook, Instagram’s parent company told CNN. “We use technology and reports from our community to find and remove this content as quickly as we can, and we’re always working to improve. We’ll continue to follow expert advice from academics and mental health organizations, like the National Eating Disorder Association, to strike the difficult balance between allowing people to share their mental health experiences while protecting them from potentially harmful content.”
Speaking to CNN Monday, Blumenthal said: “This experience shows very graphically how [Facebook’s] claims to protect children or take down accounts that may be dangerous to them are absolute hogwash.”
Blumenthal’s experiment is not an anomaly, and may come as little surprise to regular uses of Instagram who are familiar with how the platform’s algorithm recommends accounts that it has determined a user might be interested in.
Blumenthal’s experiment goes a layer deeper, showing how quickly Instagram’s algorithm promotes harmful content to young users.
CNN set up an account last week using the same methodology as the Senator’s office, also following some extreme dieting and pro-eating disorder accounts. On Sunday, Instagram promoted accounts with names like “Sweet Skinny,” “Prettily Skinny,” and “Wanna Be Skinny” to the experiment CNN account that was also registered as belonging to a 13-year-old girl. CNN has reached out to Instagram to ask if these accounts also violate its policies.
The danger of eating disorder content on Instagram
Viewing content from these extreme dieting accounts — which included, for example, images of extremely thin bodies and information about a user’s “current weight” versus their “goal weight” — can act as validation for users already predisposed to unhealthy behaviors, experts say.
“We’re constantly looking for validation that we’re right, even if that validation is really, really harmful to our personal health,” Keel added, raising the stakes for Instagram to avoid promoting such content.
Instagram has also pushed back on claims about its role in perpetuating harmful behaviors by saying that social comparison is a widespread issue and that potentially problematic images are also available elsewhere. Indeed, “pro-anorexia” online communities have been around for years, predating the rise of Instagram. However, Instagram’s broad reach among young women and girls means that such content posted to its platform can be especially dangerous, according to Keel.
“The dominance of Instagram among the age group that was already at greatest risk of eating disorders is one [issue],” Keel said. “You’ve got a vicious cycle: You’ve got a group who are at elevated risk of these problems demonstrating to this artificial intelligence that this is what grabs their attention, and then that artificial intelligence says, ‘Here let me give you more of this.’ … It’s just a perfect storm.”
Chelsea Kronengold, communications lead for the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA), added that while Instagram and other social media sites may not cause eating disorders and other body image issues, “we know it’s definitely a strong risk factor in these situations.”
“There’s no long-term benefit to killing members of your largest user base, because eating disorders are incredibly dangerous, there’s no way that’s what [Instagram] wants,” Keel said. “My one request would be just to be more transparent. You’re tracking this, you’re trying to do things to minimize the risk of your site, and just be more transparent about what you’re trying to do.”
Kim Yo Jong: Sister of North Korean leader promoted to nation’s top ruling body
Seven others were promoted alongside her as part of a shake-up of the SAC, though Kim Yo Jong was the only woman. Nine members were retired or demoted, including 82-year-old Pak Pong Ju, Kim Jong Un’s economic policymaker for the past decade.
Why is Kim Yo Jong’s promotion significant?
In 2020, South Korea’s spy agency told lawmakers she had been put in charge of relations with the South and the United States.
Last week, Kim Yo Jong demanded the South make “the correct choice” if it genuinely wants reconciliation and development in inter-Korean relations, including another summit. She also warned the US and South Korea to stop their “hostile” policy against North Korea, before discussions can resume on a proposal by the South Korean President to declare an end to the war between the North and South.
But Kim Yo Jong’s rise to the top has not been smooth.
Earlier this year, she was removed as an alternate member from North Korea’s powerful politburo and demoted from “first vice department director” to “vice department director.”
CNN’s Joshua Berlinger contributed reporting.