Month: May 2026
Meta should not have removed advertisements from attorneys seeking clients that claim they were harmed by social media platforms, two U.S. senators said on Friday in a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, News.Az reports, citing CNN.
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Here are some details:
• Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn and Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar wrote a letter to Zuckerberg criticizing his company’s choice to purge the ads from its platforms after Axios first reported it and Meta confirmed it.
• The attorneys were trying to recruit new plaintiffs for ongoing lawsuits over social media addiction.
• “We’re actively defending ourselves against these lawsuits and are removing ads that attempt to recruit plaintiffs for them,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement. “We will not allow trial lawyers to profit from our platforms while simultaneously claiming they are harmful.”
• Meta, Google, Snapchat and TikTok are facing thousands of lawsuits accusing the companies of designing platforms that are fueling a youth mental health crisis.
• The removal of the advertisements is “nothing more than an attempt to preserve a harmful business model at all costs,” the senators wrote in the letter.
• Blackburn is running for governor in Tennessee and often touts her work on social media regulation to voters. Klobuchar is running for governor of Minnesota.
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The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights identified the target as Farhan Mansour, a member of the Shiite religious authority and a Friday preacher. The Britain-based monitor said unknown assailants attacked Mansour near the Safir al-Zahraa hotel after he left the Sayyida Zeinab shrine, leaving him severely wounded. His condition remained unclear, the group said, News.az reports, citing Xinhua.
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Syrian security authorities, cited by the state-run SANA news agency, said the blast was caused by a hand grenade but did not confirm the reported target or provide casualty figures. Security forces cordoned off the area and increased their presence to keep civilians away, while specialized teams examined the scene, authorities said.
There was no immediate official statement on Mansour’s condition.
Sayyida Zeinab, home to one of Shiite Islam’s most revered shrines, has been attacked multiple times during Syria’s more than 14-year civil war. Friday’s incident occurred against a backdrop of heightened sectarian tensions as the country emerges from the conflict.
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Sovereignty and Partnership in Energy Corridors: A Strategic Roadmap for the South Caucasus and Europe
#Turkic_States #Türkiye #Azerbaijan #Armenia #Germany #France #EU #SouthCaucasus #EnergySecurity #EnergyCorridors #StrategicAutonomy #WinWin pic.x.com/JGlWmmRzxk
— 🇹🇷Sinan Göktürk (@Gokturk0034) May 1, 2026
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said Friday a Cessna 421C crashed around 11:25 p.m. local time Thursday (0425 GMT Friday), with five people on board, News.az reports, citing Xinhua.
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Hays County Judge Ruben Becerra confirmed all five occupants died in the crash, adding in a post on social media that preliminary information indicates the aircraft was traveling at high speed at the time of impact.
Emergency responders were dispatched Thursday night to Wimberley, a city roughly 64 kilometers southwest of Austin.
FAA said the agency and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the cause of the crash.
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According to the agency, two brothers from the Kharrazi family, under a different surname—Aghamir—founded the exchange Nobitex in 2018, which became a central hub in a parallel financial system and allowed money transfers despite US sanctions, even during the current war, News.Az reports, citing Reuters.
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The Kharrazi clan occupies important positions in Iran’s ruling elite. Members of this family have advised the supreme leaders for generations, holding important positions. The clan is related to all the supreme leaders of the Islamic Republic.
According to Reuters, Nobitex processed hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions linked to sanctioned entities, including the Central Bank of Iran and the IRGC. The company itself quickly integrated into the Iranian economy. Nobitex claims to have 11 million users—more than 10% of the country’s population. After the imposition of sanctions, many Iranians used the exchange to buy and store cryptocurrency. According to Reuters, it handles approximately 70% of cryptocurrency transactions in Iran. Evidence linking Nobitex to sanctions evasion was provided by a convicted Iranian billionaire. In December, he published wallet addresses on his social media accounts, which allowed crypto analysts to uncover a sanctions-evasion scheme involving the company.
The agency discovered that Nobitex serves as Iran’s “bridge” to global markets. According to an analysis of blockchain records by Crestal Intelligence and interviews with four private financial investigators, Iran uses the exchange to funnel funds to allies without access to the banking system. Former exchange employees told Reuters that it also handles government funds subject to sanctions.
The company denies any direct ties to the government or providing assistance to the state, claiming that any illegal transfers that did occur were carried out without the approval or knowledge of management.
Reuters notes that Nobitex has done business with major players in the global cryptocurrency industry. In 2022, Binance transferred $7.8 billion to Nobitex, circumventing US sanctions against Iran. Sanctions, which have deprived Iranians of access to the global financial system, have significantly increased Nobitex’s appeal to Iranian clients.
In April, The Telegraph, citing transfer documents submitted to the US Treasury, reported that five major banks—HSBC, Standard Chartered, JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, and Bank of New York Mellon—would be investigated for involvement in Iranian money laundering.
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The vast majority of the figure represents an accounting-driven valuation tied to the 2025 CEO Performance Award, a 10-year equity package approved by shareholders last year, News.Az reports, citing foreign media.
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No shares under that award had vested as of the filing date, and any shares that do vest are subject to an offset of $334.09 per share unless Musk elects to pay that amount in cash. Musk walked away from 2025 with nothing in realized pay — Tesla cleared none of the required market-value or operational benchmarks — and has collected no salary from the automaker for several years.
About $26.1 billion of the reported total represented the grant date fair value of a separate interim award the Tesla board approved for Musk in August. That award was forfeited in its entirety in April 2026, following the reinstatement of a 2018 compensation package, according to Bloomberg.Tesla acknowledged in the filing that there may be a “significant disconnect” between the reported compensation figure and the value Musk may ultimately realize. The company noted the figures “rely on assumptions and projections made pursuant to accounting rules and which are not necessarily indicative of the actual value that was or may be realized.”
To put the disclosure in perspective, the median annual total compensation for Tesla employees other than Musk in 2025 was $62,786. This results in a pay ratio of 2,522,203 to 1. Based on realized compensation, the ratio was 0 to 1. As of December 31, 2025, Tesla had 135,623 qualifying employees, with about 43% working outside the U.S.
The 2025 CEO Performance Award is structured so that Musk stands to collect only if Tesla’s stock price rises substantially and the company clears a series of operational milestones. Among the targets required to unlock the maximum value: Tesla’s market capitalization would need to reach $8.5 trillion, a threshold that, if cleared along with all other milestones, would push the award’s total value to $1 trillion, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Through Thursday, Tesla shares had dropped roughly 15% on the year, a period during which the S&P 500 advanced more than 5%.
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Spirit had been talking with the White House about a potential $500 million bailout in exchange for warrants for a 90% stake in the company, News.Az reports, citing foreign media.
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The struggling ultra-low-cost airline had been working toward becoming solvent again by this summer, drastically shrinking its network, selling aircraft, and renegotiating its debt, after a failed merger with JetBlue and two bankruptcies since 2024.
But rising jet fuel costs from the Iran war, generally about 40% of a carrier’s operating costs, strained the Daria Beach-based carrier’s plans.
It’s unclear if final talks were over Friday afternoon or when Spirit flights might stop. The airline’s available funds were expected to run out within a matter of days, CBS News reported.
“We’re looking at Spirit. If we can help them, we will, but we have to come first,” Trump told reporters before leaving for an appearance in The Villages. “If we could do it, we’d do it, but only if it’s a good deal this weekend, because they haven’t gotten a deal looking at it,” adding that he expected an announcement sometime Friday.”
“We gave them a final proposal,” he said.
Some of Spirit’s creditors objected to the terms of the bailout, The New York Times reported, since they would be left in a worse financial position if Spirit eventually failed. “Some Republican lawmakers were also opposed to a government bailout of Spirit,” the Times said.
When will Spirit Airlines shut down?
As of the afternoon of May 1, the Spirit website is still selling tickets.
The carrier has not reported a profit since 2019, the Times said. Since last April, the number of Spirit flights has shrunk by more than half, according to Cirium, an aviation data firm.
This could leave some Florida travelers in the lurch, especially at Spirit’s main hub at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.
The White House has reached out to other airlines to discuss how to accommodate people who have Spirit tickets and could be stranded if the airline stops operating. United Airlines said it was preparing to support Spirit customers if the rival shuts down.
It is unknown at this point when the planes will be grounded and operations will end.
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