A Ukrainian official has taken credit for the assassination of Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the commander of Russia’s chemical, biological and radiation defense forces, and his assistant, who were killed in an explosion in Moscow on Tuesday.
Russia’s Investigative Committee said the explosive device was placed on a scooter near a residential apartment block on Ryazansky Avenue and triggered remotely, according to The Associated Press. The bombing came one day after Ukrainian Security Services charged Kirillov with crimes.
The bomb had the power of roughly 300 grams of TNT, according to Russian state news agency Tass.
Fox News Digital has confirmed that the Ukrainian Security Services, or SBU, claims credit for the killing. An SBU official who spoke with the Associated Press on condition of anonymity said Kirillov was a “war criminal and an entirely legitimate target.”
High-ranking Russian Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov and his assistant were killed in an explosion near a residential complex in Moscow, officials said.(The Associated Press)
“Investigators, forensic experts and operational services are working at the scene,” Russian Investigative Committee spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko said in a statement. “Investigative and search activities are being carried out to establish all the circumstances around this crime.”
Petrenko also said Russia is treating the explosion as a terrorist attack.
During a press briefing on Tuesday, Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters the Department of Defense was not aware of the operation in advance.
Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov was charged criminally by Ukraine’s Security Services just a day before he was killed in an explosion in Moscow.(Sefa Karacan/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“We do not support or enable those kinds of activities,” Ryder said, adding he had no other information to provide other than what he had seen in the press.
Kirillov was charged by the SBU on Monday with using banned chemical weapons on the battlefield. Several countries had also placed him under sanctions for his role in the war against Ukraine, The AP reported.
The deadly blast took place outside a residential building on Ryazansky Avenue in Moscow, Russia, on Tuesday.(Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty Images)
The SBU said it has recorded more than 4,800 uses of chemical weapons during Russia’s attack on Ukraine, which began in Feb. 2022.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This report has been updated to identify Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov as the commander of Russia’s chemical, biological and radiation defense forces.
Covered the Lakers and NBA for ESPNLosAngeles.com from 2009-14, the Cavaliers from 2014-18 for ESPN.com and the NBA for NBA.com from 2005-09.
Dec 17, 2024, 01:06 PM ET
Los Angeles Lakers rookie Bronny James, fresh off a string of promising performances for the South Bay Lakers, will participate in the G League Winter Showcase this week, sources told ESPN.
The showcase runs from Dec. 19-22 in Orlando, Florida, and is one of the most important events on the G League calendar, with personnel from all 30 NBA teams in attendance to scout the talent on display.
The Lakers’ front office and James’ agents at Klutch Sports partnered on the plan to have the guard head to Orlando as another step in his development, sources told ESPN.
James, 20, selected with the No. 55 pick in the second round by the Lakers, has averaged 20.7 points on 43.1% shooting (26.3% from 3) with 3.0 rebounds and 2.0 assists over his past three games for South Bay.
His father, LeBron James, said he watched his son’s games while he was recovering from left foot soreness that kept him away from the Lakers last week.
“Just keep stacking the days, keep putting in the work,” LeBron said of Bronny. “The work always prevails at the end of the day. It’s just great to see him getting back into the flow, getting back to his game, getting back to him just playing free and going out and just playing the game that he loves and knows how to play. I loved his aggressiveness.”
South Bay’s first game in Orlando is Thursday against the Greensboro Swarm.
Dave Wilson is a college football reporter. He previously worked at The Dallas Morning News, San Diego Union-Tribune and Las Vegas Sun.
Editor’s note: A version of this story originally ran on Sept. 6. The story has been updated ahead of SMU’s playoff game with Penn State.
IN THE 1980s, SMU and Dallas became synonymous with free-flowing money in college football, a small school in a big city that turned into a playground for rich boosters who would spare no expense to make sure their team became a major player. It worked, albeit not for long. The Mustangs became pariahs, ultimately getting crushed by the NCAA’s “death penalty” in 1987. SMU was the only program in history considered so corrupt that it had to be shut down.
If only those boosters could’ve fast-forwarded 40 years. The sins of SMU’s past are now virtues in college football.
The money — NIL means Now It’s Legal — is flowing again in Dallas, and SMU is in a major conference, the ACC, cutting an unprecedented deal to forgo television revenue for nearly a decade as a devoted group of deep-pocketed boosters pledges to cover the shortfall, while also funding a leading NIL collective. The Ponies are back in the game.
“We don’t embrace the mistakes of our past,” Mustangs coach Rhett Lashlee said. “But we do embrace the history of our past.”
For all this to happen, it took power players who knew how to wheel and deal, lots of money and some Dallas bravado — all of which are in abundance on the Hilltop. Most schools make a conference move to get more television revenue, not less. But SMU just wanted a seat at the table. SMU’s chairman of the board, David Miller, fired his metaphorical six-shooter in the air when he explained how the program could go without television revenue for nine years: The money didn’t matter to them.
“It’s a couple hundred million dollars,” Miller told Yahoo. “I’m not losing sleep over it.”
That’s because this is college football in Texas, and none of it looks like a risk to people like oilman Bill Armstrong, a billionaire who has made his name and fortune by risking it all. Considered perhaps the greatest wildcatter in history, he’s a protégé of legendary oilman (and Oklahoma State mega-booster) T. Boone Pickens, and his company made the third-largest oil discovery in U.S. history in Alaska in 2013.
He’s also old college buddies with former stars Eric Dickerson and Craig James, and his name, along with his wife Liz’s, now adorns the Mustangs’ practice facility as well as the football offices in SMU’s new Weber End Zone Complex, a $100 million facility that opened this season, with the Armstrongs pledging $15 million toward the project.
“I was at SMU when we were great,” Armstrong said. “I was there when the Pony Express was there, and I saw how important having a major college football team is to a good university.”
He watched as SMU minimized athletics, as his old friend Dickerson publicly suggested SMU should drop football if it wasn’t committed, and as the Mustangs suffered through decades of futility. Now, Armstrong is part of a generation of boosters who personally felt the pain of SMU being left behind after the Southwest Conference died, but now have the ability — and the balance sheets — to push their way back toward the top of the sport.
“I bet a lot of these schools look at SMU and go, ‘Oh, s—, here come all the billionaires,'” Armstrong said. “We’ve been the whipping boy for so long. We’re not going to blow it. There’s a lot of pent-up fun to be had.”
DALLAS WAS BOOMING in the 1980s and SMU was right in the middle of it. The downtown skyline was transformed by new skyscrapers, and “Dallas,” the prime-time soap opera, was No. 1 in the national Nielsen ratings, highlighting the oil and cattle scions of the Ewing family. And no place symbolized the ambition of Dallas like SMU, one of the nation’s priciest colleges in the city’s most affluent enclave.
SMU was starved for football success. Prior to the 1980 season, the Mustangs had had 10 consensus All-Americans in school history, and five of those played before 1952. The Dallas Cowboys arrived in 1960, and the city fell for pro football while the Mustangs fell on hard times. In the ’60s and early ’70s, Hayden Fry had just three winning seasons in 11 years at SMU, going 49-66-1 before becoming a legend at Iowa. His successor, Dave Smith, went 16-15-2 in three seasons and landed SMU on probation for paying players, before being fired and replaced by 35-year-old Ron Meyer, who arrived from UNLV and stepped right into the fire. The week he was hired in 1976, the NCAA extended SMU’s probation a year to 1977.
Meyer, a dapper, charismatic salesman, was a perfect fit. Keeping up with the Joneses was the nature of the old Southwest Conference, where every recruiting battle was personal between eight Texas teams and Arkansas, and Meyer wasn’t afraid to jump into the mix. In the conference in the 1980s, only Arkansas and Rice escaped probation. These were open secrets: Dickerson famously showed up at SMU in a Trans Am that was publicly rumored to have been paid for by a Texas A&M booster. It was commonly called the Trans A&M, despite Dickerson repeatedly claiming his grandmother bought it for him.
But SMU was offering plenty of cash and perks, too, including a payroll for players. As a result, the Mustangs earned NCAA investigators plenty of frequent-flyer miles. In 12 seasons, SMU was placed on probation five times for improper benefits.
It was almost a badge of honor, like the adage says: If you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin’.
“Certainly, the culture embraced the arrogance,” said Thaddeus Matula, an SMU alum and the director of “Pony Excess,” the ESPN documentary about the SMU scandal. Students wore T-shirts that celebrated: “Ponies. Polos. Porsches. Probation. Nowhere but SMU.”
Then the fun stopped. The NCAA was onto SMU’s slush-fund operation for players. But Bill Clements authorized payroll payments to continue, saying they had a “moral obligation” to finish the payments they’d promised. And who was going to tell him any different? Clements was not just the chairman of the board of governors at SMU, he was the governor of Texas. SMU’s president, Donald Shields, tried to dissuade Clements, according to “A Payroll to Meet,” a book about the scandal published in 1989. “You stay out of it,” the governor replied. “Go run the university.”
The NCAA didn’t stay out of it, opting instead for the nuclear option. On Feb. 25, 1987, NCAA director of enforcement David Berst held a news conference to announce that 13 players were still paid $61,000 over two seasons, with payments ranging from $50 to $725 per month. As a result of the brazen disregard of previous sanctions, Berst announced that SMU would receive the “death penalty,” then fainted into the arms of school officials.
The NCAA shut down SMU football for the 1987 season, and further restrictions led the program to remain idle in 1988 as well. The fallout was dramatic.
“It almost brought the entire university to its knees,” Miller said, noting that SMU has a large board. “Something like 40 or 42 trustees resigned and the university president was terminated. You’re talking about a rudderless ship. Applications for enrollment plummeted. And donor giving? Who in their right mind is going to write a big check to an institution that’s in turmoil?”
Football returned in 1989, and SMU won one or zero games seven times in the next 20 seasons. The woes were only exacerbated when the SWC dissolved in 1995. Nobody wanted the Ponies, and the Ponies weren’t even sure they wanted to play major college football, with the administration content to being relegated to the WAC and Conference USA. SMU finished .500 or better just twice in those two decades, once in 1997 and again in 2006.
Dickerson couldn’t believe it. In 1980, he and James had led SMU to an upset of Texas in Austin, its first win over the Longhorns since 1966. Long-suffering alums poured into the locker room, some on walkers, some in wheelchairs, with tears streaming down their faces, telling Dickerson they’d been waiting 20 years for that day.
“I’ll never forget,” Dickerson said. “I told my best friend, ‘Boy, I hope that’s not us one day.’ Sure enough, that’s been us.”
Dickerson earned the ire of fans when he said in 2014 that SMU should drop football if the university wasn’t going to commit the resources necessary, saying at the time that the program “doesn’t exist.”
“We’re only winning three or four games a year. It was a joke,” Dickerson said this week. “They got pissed at me when I said, ‘Why don’t we just get rid of the program?’ If you stop being a laughingstock, we’re not a laughingstock anymore.”
Phil Bennett, an east Texan who played for Texas A&M and coached at five different Texas schools in addition to stints at LSU, Oklahoma and Kansas State, is one of the most connected coaches in the state. The Mustangs hired him in 2002 to try to turn things around, but the program still wasn’t a priority.
Bennett went 18-52 over six seasons, admitting it was difficult watching TCU, one of his former employers and SMU’s biggest rival, go all-in. Meanwhile, SMU was still wary of dipping its toes back into the water, humiliated by the scandal and focusing on rebuilding the university’s reputation.
“The faculty senate ran the university,” Bennett said. “We didn’t take the initiative. … SMU was still in the phase of beating ourselves up and not being aggressive in changing leagues.”
SMU coaches had trouble getting players past its admissions office, and it was almost impossible to land transfers.
“It was harder for a football player to be accepted to SMU than to Stanford,” said Matula, a student from 1997 to 2001. “We couldn’t even offer a scholarship until after they were accepted to the university, which for the most part was after the signing date had happened. The energy just wasn’t there to turn the tide because not only was it set up to fail, people didn’t care. Around campus there’d be more T-shirts of other schools than for SMU. The average student SAT score went down a hundred points. That’s how much a draw major college athletics are at a school, especially in Texas.”
And donors didn’t want to write checks to support a team that used to play Texas but was now playing against East Carolina instead.
Meanwhile, Gary Patterson willed rival TCU to six top-10 finishes from 2008 to 2017. TCU admissions applications went up 42% after the Frogs’ 2010 undefeated season, including a Rose Bowl win over Wisconsin.
“We languished athletically at a time when a lot of universities around the country were embracing the fact that athletic success has a major, major impact on the overall brand of the university,” Miller said.
Administrators who could see TCU’s transformation started to warm up to competing in the sport’s upper echelons again, beginning with Dickerson reaching out to June Jones, the former Atlanta Falcons coach who had turned Hawai’i’s program around, to sell him on a rebuild in Dallas. After a 1-11 season in 2008 in his first season, Jones went 35-30 in his next five seasons, including SMU’s first bowl game in 25 years, and won three bowl games in four years. Suddenly, it didn’t seem so farfetched that the Mustangs could win.
In 2018, Sonny Dykes arrived and laid out a blueprint for winning at SMU, leaning into them as Dallas’ team. He aggressively mined the transfer portal, especially to persuade DFW area recruits who had gone elsewhere to return home. In 2019, SMU won 10 games for the first time since 1984, and there was a familiar feeling again.
“That season helped justify everybody’s feelings,” Lashlee said. “Like, man, we want to go all-in.”
But then Dykes, the coach who beat TCU in consecutive years for the first time since 1992-93 and went 25-10 over his last three seasons, was lured to Fort Worth when the Frogs parted ways with Patterson during the 2021 season. At TCU, Dykes landed a Big 12 job while SMU was still hoping and searching for a better home. Prior to Dykes’ arrival, Chad Morris left for Arkansas. The departures were yet another reminder SMU wasn’t all the way back, and only steeled the boosters’ resolve to stabilize the program.
“Nothing rallies an alumni base more than being stabbed in the back, or whatever you want to call what Sonny did,” Armstrong said. “He proved to the world that you can win here, you can recruit here. I totally get why he left to get into the Big 12. But there were a lot of pissed-off alums, me included.”
MILLER, THE 6-FOOT-8 former SMU basketball player, also happens to be a billionaire oilman who, along with his wife, Carolyn, has donated more than $100 million to the school, where the basketball teams play on David B. Miller Court. The 73-year-old founder of EnCap Investments, an oil and gas private equity firm, speaks in a soft Texas drawl, which he used to sell the virtues of SMU and Dallas to conference officials, eventually convincing the ACC.
As a player, Miller won a Southwest Conference title in basketball in 1972, and he believes the only thing holding SMU back in recent years was its Group of 5 status. “You’re never going to recruit a four-star or five-star football or basketball player,” he said. “The coaches can’t talk fast enough.”
So, when last year’s chaotic wave of realignment opened a door, SMU was ready to kick it down. The enthusiasm galvanized an SMU faithful convinced they had been blocked by other schools that saw the Mustangs as a threat if they had equal standing again. And that might be true: SMU raised a record $159 million during the 2023-24 fiscal year for athletics, including $100 million in just five days after the Sept. 1 announcement that SMU had landed an ACC spot.
“Is it endless in terms of what our donors can do? I wouldn’t say that,” Miller said. “But I’d say to you that there is a mountain of excitement and enthusiasm that we’re back.”
Those record-breaking donations didn’t just come from a few wealthy wildcatters. There were four donations of eight figures, 35 of seven figures and 82 of six figures.
“There are some oilmen in the mix that absolutely helped lead the charge,” Miller said. “But it took more than oilmen.”
Still, there are lots of oilmen. In 2022, boosters launched the Boulevard Collective, formed by Chris Kleinert, CEO of Hunt Realty Investments and the son-in-law of famed oilman R.L. Hunt (net worth: $7.2 billion, according to Forbes) who is also one of the boosters who helped with the ACC move, and Kyle Miller, son of David Miller and the president and CEO of Silver Hill Energy Partners.
By that fall, the Boulevard Collective signed every football and basketball player to standard NIL deals of $36,000 annually, according to On3. The Ponies have the payroll working again, and this time it’s all aboveboard.
“From the get-go, we’ve had what I would describe as a robust NIL program,” David Miller said.
SMU proved it this offseason, adding heft for the new ACC schedule with 18 Power 4 transfers, including eight on the defensive line. The Mustangs landed transfers from Michigan, Ohio State, Oregon, Georgia, Texas, Texas A&M, Utah, two from Oklahoma and three each from Miami and Arkansas.
“We’re getting serious again. If you’re half-assed in and half-assed out, it’s not going to work,” Dickerson said. “Look, Eric Dickerson didn’t just become a football player. I had some talent, and I worked my ass off at it. That’s what I did. That is what SMU is doing now. They’re working their ass off to get things done, to get people to come, get players to want to come.”
The Mustangs are no longer on the fringes of college football. Lashlee, who came to SMU with Dykes as his offensive coordinator in 2018, returned to Dallas in 2022 to replace his old coach, coming from Miami, where he spent two years as offensive coordinator. He was sold on the potential of the program based on his time under Dykes.
“When you take a job, the first impression you’re trying to figure out is, OK, what are the issues?” Lashlee said. “Like SMU, or when I went to Miami, why have they not been winning? [Sonny and I] had been here about six months and one day we looked at each other and said, ‘Other than the conference, what’s the reason we can’t win here?’ And there really wasn’t one.”
Last season, Lashlee led the Mustangs to an 11-3 finish and an AAC title, their first conference championship since 1984. When the ACC announcement came, Miller proclaimed to ESPN that day that “the beast is about to emerge,” while Lashlee remarked that SMU was the only school in Dallas-Fort Worth in a top-three conference, a not-so-subtle shot across the Metroplex at TCU, which calls itself “DFW’s only Big 12 school.” After years of envy, SMU alums are ready to be equals, aghast that they had to watch their former peers play big-time football.
“Everybody kept talking about TCU. It’s just TCU,” Lance McIlhenny, Dickerson’s old Pony Express quarterback, told ESPN in 2019. “They’re nothing special other than they’ve had deep pockets for 15 years. I want to win a bunch of games and play a team like Baylor in whatever setting and put a shellackin’ on ’em.”
Bennett said SMU being restored to its former standing, with administrative backing and a unified front of deep-pocketed donors, will make the Mustangs a threat.
“They’ve become legit,” Bennett said. “It’s almost beyond comprehension for those of us who’ve been involved in it. You look at the state of Texas, they’re right up there. I’m happy for them. I’m proud of David and Carolyn Miller because they’ve always been great alumni, but not many people are willing to put that much money where their mouth is.”
Those power players did what they had to do to get the Mustangs here. Now, thrilled to have a seat at the table in the ACC, they know they still need to capitalize, because in college sports, there are no long-term guarantees anymore.
“Is our expectation that we’re going to be able to compete for championships within two to three years?” Miller asked. “The answer to that is yes.”
Lashlee doesn’t mind hearing that from the people who write his checks.
“Yeah, we have high expectations. We welcome ’em,” Lashlee said. “We’re going to get so much from being a part of the ACC. That was really the last piece we needed in terms of recruiting and the chance to build our program back to the national level.”
It took four decades, a lot of patience and even more money to get here. Now it’s time for the Mustangs to Pony Up on the field.
“We’re in Dallas, Texas,” Armstrong said. “We’re in the center of the football universe. Moses roamed through the desert shorter than SMU has been roaming the bad football years. It’s about time we came back.”
An app-based delivery worker waits outside of a restaurant in New York City on July 7, 2023.
Spencer Platt | Getty Images
Grubhub will pay $25 million to settle a lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission and Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul over alleged unlawful practices that harmed diners, workers and small businesses, the FTC announced on Tuesday.
The complaint claims that Grubhub deceived diners about delivery costs and blocked access to their accounts. The company also deceived workers about how much money they would make delivering food and listed restaurants on its platform without their permission.
“Our investigation found that Grubhub tricked its customers, deceived its drivers, and unfairly damaged the reputation and revenues of restaurants that did not partner with Grubhub — all in order to drive scale and accelerate growth,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a press release.
Grubhub has had as many as 325,000 unaffiliated restaurants on its platform, more than half of all of the available restaurants on Grubhub, according to the complaint. The company allegedly listed unaffiliated restaurants to drive growth, but diners often had to pay more in delivery fees from those restaurants which, in turn, damaged their reputations.
The complaint further alleged that Grubhub would often avoid removing unaffiliated restaurants off the platform when requested, instead trying to sell them paid partnerships.
As part of the settlement, the food delivery company will stop adding surprise fees that are often labeled as “service fees” or “small order fees,” stop listing unaffiliated restaurants on the platform, be more transparent about driver earnings, notify customers if their account has been blocked and provide more simple methods to cancel memberships.
Rising prices among third-party food delivery services have continued to frustrate Americans looking to reduce extra fees. Between 2022 and 2024, consumers reported higher yearly increases in their total checks on third-party apps compared to orders made directly through restaurant sites, according to Technomic.
The FTC complaint alleged that Grubhub would add on junk fees to delivery costs, often labeled as “service fees” or “small order fees,” despite having advertised that diners would pay a single, low-cost amount for Grubhub’s services tied to deliveries.
“At Grubhub, we’re committed to transparency so that every single day diners, restaurants and drivers can make well-informed choices to do business with us,” a Grubhub spokesperson wrote in a statement to CNBC. “While we categorically deny the allegations made by the FTC, many of which are wrong, misleading or no longer applicable to our business, we believe settling this matter is in the best interest of Grubhub and allows us to move forward.”
The settlement includes a monetary judgment of $140 million, but is partially suspended as Grubhub is unable to pay the full amount, according to the press release. The company will instead pay $25 million, nearly all of which will be used to refund consumers harmed by the company’s conduct. If Grubhub is found to have misrepresented its financial status, the full judgment would become immediately due, according to the press release.
“We believe the FTC agreed to suspend a portion of the judgment because we negotiated with them in good faith and provided extensive details about our business and financial performance,” the Grubhub spokesperson said. “Monetary judgments are not intended to cause irreparable harm or undue hardship for companies.”
Beyoncé’s daughter Blue Ivy Carter marked her appearance alongside mother during the premiere of their upcoming movie, on December 9.
The 43-year-old and Blue coordinated their outfits to celebrate their forthcoming film Mufasa: The Lion King.
The Crazy In Love vocalist donned a striking strapless Balmain dress featuring a plunging neckline and bustier cups.
Whereas, Blue Ivy wore an appealing custom gold outfit, designed by Christian Siriano.
The 12-year-old glammed up her look with soft smoky eye, a slight blush, half lashes, and a glossy-tinted lip color, courtesy of makeup artist Rokael Lizama.
Many on social media praised the teenager’s appearance, calling her a ‘princess’ and noting her resemblance to her mother.
However, some users slammed the young artist for her seemingly extra ordinary makeup as per her age.
One user went on writing, “Blue Ivy wearing that dress and makeup at age 12… Do her stylist or her mom’s stylist know this?”
Another penned down, “God forgive me but Blue Ivy is too young for this makeup and outfit.”
As per the reports, It’s bewildering to believe that her light makeup is being considered as ‘inappropriate’ for her age.
Seemingly, the troll could have been a result of her dad Jay Z’s latest controversy about assaulting a 13-year-old.
For the unversed, a woman who alleges she was sexually assaulted by Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, has amended her lawsuit to include allegations that she was also assaulted by Jay-Z at the same party.
Frontier Airlines has announced an “all you can fly” pass, giving travelers unlimited flights to “GoWild!” visiting both domestic and international destinations.
The airline, headquartered in Denver, Colorado, made the limited-time offer available now for $299 per year, automatically renewing at $699, according to Frontier’s website.
“The GoWild! Pass is perfect for spontaneous adventurers, budget-savvy travelers, and anyone dreaming of limitless journeys,” said Bobby Schroeter, Frontier Airlines COO, in a press release.
In 2022, Frontier offered a similar pass extending to only domestic travel, FOX Business reported.
Frontier Airlines is offering an annual pass for unlimited flights for a year.(Tayfun CoSkun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images))
“Search & Book on FlyFrontier.com the day before flight departure for domestic travel and starting 10 days before flight departure for international travel,” says the budget airline’s site.
If passholders are booking a round-trip, they “will need to search and book the day before the return flight’s departure for domestic travel,” according to Frontier’s announcement.
The “GoWild!” pass gives passengers the opportunity to book unlimited flights for an entire year.(iStock)
While booking, passengers have the option to select bags and specific seats at an additional cost.
“For each flight, you’ll pay $0.01 in airfare plus applicable taxes, fees, and charges at the time of booking,” the site reads.
The pass gives passengers access to the entire fleet of Lady Ships and perks of unlimited Wi-Fi, access to events and $100 for bar credit per voyage, according to a Virgin Voyages press release.
Fox News Digital reached out to Frontier Airlines for comment.
Nima Momeni has been found guilty of second degree murder in the fatal stabbing of Cash App founder Bob Lee, a verdict reached by a San Francisco jury after seven days of deliberations.
The verdict of second degree murder carries a 15 years to life sentence and includes an enhancement for using a knife in the crime. Momeni was found not guilty of the more serious charge of pre-meditated first degree murder.
Prosecutors Dane Reinstedt and Omid Talai were present in the courtroom for the verdict, as was Sgt. Brent Dittmer – who testified in the trial – and a handful of members of the DA’s office.
Defense attorneys Tony Brass and Zoe Aron were also present along with Nima’s mother Mahnaz Momeni. The defendant’s sister Khazar Momeni was not in attendance at the verdict reading.
Bob Lee family speaks
Outside the courtroom, Lee’s brother Timothy Oliver Lee said the family was satisfied with the verdict.
“We we’re happy with the result today. We’re happy that Nima Momeni won’t be on the streets, no longer has the opportunity to harm anyone else in this world,” he said. “The verdict of murder two will put him away for a long time.”
He also noted that besides Momeni being found guilty of the murder, the proceedings showed that his family was complicit in the crime by trying to help him cover it up and had “blood on their hands.” He said that there were several dozen friends and supporters in the courtroom with the family when the verdict was read.
“We’re extremely thankful to the District Attorney’s Office, we’re extremely thankful for the juries. I think justice was done here today,” he added.
SF DA Jenkins defends city
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins was on hand for the verdict and thanked the attorneys who prosecuted the case outside the courtroom after the guilty verdict was read.
“I knew was confident that we had the best two handling this case,” Jenkins said. “And I think the verdict was a testament to the hard work they put in, to the great lawyers that they are, and to their commitment to justice and to making sure that this family received justice.”
She also pushed back on what Elon Musk and others said after the stabbing happened when critics claimed San Francisco is lawless and out of control as part of the popular “doom loop” narrative commonly aired on social media.
“I think that hopefully now, we have once again established what truly happened here. We all know that after Bob Lee was murdered, Elon Musk took to Twitter to make an effort to really shame San Francisco, and to make it seem like this was about lawlessness in San Francisco and about what’s going on in our streets,” Jenkins said.
She noted that law enforcement early felt the fatal stabbing of Lee was not a random crime.
“And we knew it was something different. And I think today proved once again, that we are a city committed to accountability, we are a city committed to public safety,” she added. “And that when something bad happens, which we can’t always control, that law enforcement at every level will respond to make sure that there is justice and accountability in each and every situation.”
Fatal stabbing of Cash App founder
Momeni was accused of fatally stabbing tech executive Lee in a secluded part of San Francisco’s East Cut neighborhood under the Bay Bridge in April 2023.
San Francisco Assistant District Attorney Omid Talai challenged Momeni’s version of the story and focused on his actions immediately after Lee’s death, including his calls to attorneys and text messages with his sister.
The defense showed a bombshell video during their closing arguments, presenting surveillance footage they claimed showed Lee doing cocaine on the street outside a private club with the same knife used to kill him hours later. Defense attorney Saam Zangeneh used a cardboard cutout of the knife in court so the jury could see the size of the paring knife he said the video proved Lee had in his possession all along.
That video sparked a tense exchange between Zangeneh and Lee’s former wife, who let out a loud, mocking laugh as he showed the footage.
Zangeneh turned to directly address her, saying it wasn’t funny. Prosecutors quickly objected and the judge intervened to restore order in the courtroom.
According to his Linkedin page, Momeni is the owner of Expand IT. His profile describes the company as providing IT solutions in the Bay Area since 2010.
Neighbors who lived near Momeni were shocked to hear of his arrest. After Momeni was taken into custody, Bay Area public relations veteran Sam Singer who worked next door to him said he had never had any issues with the defendant beyond hearing music being played a bit too loudly.
“Warm, welcoming, very nice fellow, like any other tech consultant here in the Bay Area, lives in a live-work space,” Singer said. “He handed us a stack of cards and said if you ever need anything let me know.”
It later emerged that Khazar Momeni had introduced Lee to her brother, thinking that the successful Cash App founder might work with him on one of Nima’s projects.
Dave Pehling is website managing editor for CBS Bay Area. He started his journalism career doing freelance writing about music in the late 1990s, eventually working as a web writer, editor and producer for KTVU.com in 2003. He began his role with CBS Bay Area in 2015.
Nash Grier has finally tied the knot with his long-term girlfriend Taylor Giavasis after 10-years of dating.
On December 16, the 26-year-old took to Instagram to announce the happy news.
“Romanticizing life,” he captioned the carousel which featured pictures of the ceremony along with their children, five-year-old Malakai, and two-year-old Noa.
The first two photographs captured at the beautiful and intimate ceremony featured their children, who were all smiles with their parents.
In the pictures following their wedding shots, Grier reminisced, sharing adorable and heartfelt images of himself and his now-wife throughout the years.
Giavasis stunned in a floor-length white gown, pairing it with a veil, while the former Vine star looked dapper in a simple yet classic white shirt and black pants.
The newlyweds, who began dating in 2015, were seen hugging their children while crouching down. The second photo captured the couple sharing a cheeky kiss.
Expressing her excitement, the You Get Me actor’s wife posted her own series of photos from her big day on Instagram, writing, “To have and to hold,” alongside a shot of the lovebirds sharing a sweet kiss as Giavasis held onto a colorful bouquet of flowers.
Real Madrid attacker Vinicius Junior won the Fifa Best men’s player of the year award at a ceremony in Doha on Tuesday, while Barcelona midfielder Aitana Bonmati picked up the women’s prize for the second time.
The award comes two months after 24-year-old Vinicius was second in the Ballon d’Or, with Real electing to snub the ceremony when they found out beforehand that Manchester City midfielder Rodri was set to win the trophy.
But the Brazilian was this time on hand to collect the prize in person as he is in Qatar with his club ahead of their Intercontinental Cup final clash with Mexico’s Pachuca on Wednesday.
Vinicius succeeds Lionel Messi as the Fifa Best men’s player after the Argentinian scooped up the last two editions of the award.
The live wire forward scored 24 goals and laid on 11 assists in 39 matches across all competitions as he led Real to a La Liga and Champions League double last season.
Having already wrapped up his third La Liga title in May, Vinicius secured the second Champions League trophy of his career as Real beat Borussia Dortmund 2-0 on June 1.
Vinicius was on the scoresheet at Wembley with a pinpoint finish inside the final 10 minutes to make the game safe for his team.
If Vinicius at times played second fiddle to clubmate Jude Bellingham in La Liga, he was undoubtedly the main man for Madrid in Europe once the going got serious.
He was the top scorer for the Champions League winners with six goals in the competition, including the strike in the final and a brace in Madrid´s 4-3 aggregate win over Bayern Munich in the semi-finals.
He also scored a hat-trick in a 4-1 victory in the final of the Supercopa against arch-rivals Barcelona in January.
But it was not all plain sailing last season for Vinicius as he endured a disappointing Copa America with the Brazilian national team over the summer.
He scored two goals in a group-stage win against Paraguay, but his side ultimately crashed out on penalties to Uruguay in the quarter-finals.
Serial winner Bonmati
The 26-year-old Spaniard Bonmati picked up the Best women’s player award for the second year running, adding to the two Ballon d´Or trophies she already boasts.
“I’m grateful, I’m proud to receive this award,” Bonmati said via video link from Barcelona’s Olympic stadium.
Last term, Bonmati led Barcelona to a historic continental quadruple of titles and claimed the Nations League with her national team.
She won every trophy available to her in club football in 2023/24 — the Spanish league, the Copa de la Reina, the Supercopa de Espana and a second-successive Women’s Champions League.
Bonmati scored a goal and put in a player-of-the-match performance as Barcelona beat Lyon 2-0 in the final of the Champions League to claim their third title in four seasons.
Manchester United’s Argentine forward Alejandro Garnacho won the Puskas award for the best goal of the year for his spectacular bicycle kick