A prominent bodyguard to Saudi Arabia’s King Salman was shot and killed in what authorities described as a personal dispute, state TV reported Sunday, offering few details on an incident that shocked the kingdom. Tributes poured in across social media for Maj. Gen. Abdulaziz al-Fagham, with many including images of the bodyguard at work.
One included him bending down to apparently help tie the shoes of King Salman, the 83-year-old ruler of the oil-rich kingdom. Others show al-Fagham in the background of events with both King Salman and his predecessor, the late King Abdullah.Details remained vague. While officials posted condolences for al-Fagham, the first official word of his death came in a single tweet by Saudi state television. “Maj. Gen. Abdulaziz al-Fagham, bodyguard of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, was shot dead following a personal dispute in Jiddah,” the tweet read.Saudi crown prince denies ordering murder of Jamal KashoggiAl-Jazeera reports that senior adviser Turki al-Sheikh tweeted: “May you rest in peace, hero.” Saudi’s minister of health, Tawfiq al-Rabiah, also paid tribute on Twitter.State TV offered no other details. Hours later, the state-run Saudi Press Agency said a friend of al-Fagham shot and killed him, as well as wound another Saudi and a Filipino worker there. A gunfight erupted as security forces responded to the home that saw the shooter killed and five members of the security forces wounded, the news agency reported.
The daily newspaper Okaz, while offering no details on the shooting that led to his death, described al-Fagham in a headline as: “The Keeper of Kings.”Officials in the kingdom did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press.Gun crimes are rare in Saudi Arabia, where strict Islamic law sees convicted killers and drug smugglers routinely executed. In 2017, there were 419 reported homicides, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. Saudi Arabia is home to over 30 million people.
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Hours before whistleblower Christopher Wylie went public in The Guardian newspaper on March 17, 2018, exposing a complicated international scheme to use Facebook as a political tool to target voters with finely-tuned, manipulative misinformation, Facebook banned him.
Aware that a bombshell story, largely based on Wylie’s account, was about to hit, the social media giant removed from all its platforms the accounts of multiple people associated with political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. Wylie remains lumped in with his banned former colleagues a year and a half after he became a globally famous figure with his bombshell revelations. Wylie revealed in intricate detail a web of powerful characters stretching from the U.S. and Canada to the U.K. and Russia, who worked before the 2016 Brexit vote and U.S. presidential election to stockpile and “weaponize” an enormous trove of information about individual people. His work for Cambridge Analytica and its associates is recounted in his book “Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America,” released Monday.”I’m still banned,” Wylie said in an interview with CBS News Wednesday. “They they won’t speak to me. You know Facebook has this sort of bizarre culture of like really shunning people who raise legitimate concerns about how, you know, their company is operating.”
A Facebook spokesperson confirmed to CBS News that Wylie remains barred from the platform, and referred CBS News to a March 18 press release explaining that Wylie and others misled the company about data harvested from Facebook.In his interview with CBS News, Wylie said he believed banning him was an attempt to “get ahead of the story.””I guess in some way to vilify me or cast me in a particular light. I thought it was a really petty move,” he said.But Wylie said the experience has actually served to elucidate just how powerful and integral Facebook has become to the typical internet user.”When I looked at what happened after, they completely eviscerated my existence, my identity online. All of my photos were gone. My messages were gone, not only from my account but they went into everybody that I had talked to on Facebook and deleted the messages from their accounts also. My Tinder stopped working. Because I used Facebook sign on, countless numbers of apps stopped working. And one of the things that I realized was the scale of like how much I was actually using Facebook services,” Wylie said.Wylie witnessed firsthand the power a person or company can wield both by gathering data about individuals through those services, and by using Facebook to target and deceive those same individuals. In one particularly disturbing scene recounted in “Mindf*ck,” Wylie describes watching from afar an actual person’s real-time internet activity — a man in Trinidad simultaneously researching plantain recipes and viewing pornography — while his “giddy” boss laughed, “taking such deep, nasty pleasure in the chance to ridicule and exploit others.”Wylie said he doesn’t think many people understand that there are companies capable of surveillance that intrusive. He said previous whistleblower revelations — such as the NSA spy programs revealed by Edward Snowden — let people believe their data is “collateral” to agencies unconcerned with most individuals.
“What’s different with Cambridge Analytica and more broadly with social media is that you are the target,” Wylie said. “People want to harvest your information in as granular a way as possible in order to, like, create a picture, a complete picture of who you are, ultimately to either sell you things or make you believe things.”Facebook and the firms that target users on social media are like extremely effective stalkers, he said.”Imagine you’re on a blind date for a second and…you sit down with somebody and you’re chatting with that person, and you know, they happen to like the same music that you like. They watch the same TV shows that you watch. You know they know some of the same people, they hang out in the same places. They seem, like, perfect for you. Right? And the reason for that is because they’ve spent two years stalking you, you know, looking at your photos, reading your text messages, talking to your friends. following you at work,” Wylie said. “In that moment you are vulnerable to being manipulated because there is an imbalance in information. You can’t properly assess the meaning and context of the things that you’re being told because you don’t know the underlying motivation, or the underlying information that’s powering that. And so Facebook is like a scaled version of that stalker.”
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George Russell has revealed that he’s received no assurances from Mercedes about a possible elevation to the manufacturer’s driver line-up in 2022.
The 23-year-old from King’s Lynn is about to embark on his third season with Williams. But he memorably made his debut for Mercedes last December when he subbed for an unwell Lewis Hamilton in the Sakhir Grand Prix.
Russell would almost certainly have won the race if not for a rare pit stop blunder by the team and a subsequent puncture. Even so, his impressive performance has put him in pole position for promotion.
- Read also: Williams at ‘dawn of new era’ with Dorilton – Capito
But while Williams have exercised their option to hold on to Russell for 2021, the driver says that he’s received no promises from Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff about what might happen next year.
“Toto has always given me his word, and he has always given me the opportunity when they believe I deserve it,” Russell insisted. “But I’m not even thinking about it and no promises have been made at all.
“They have told me that I am a part of their future. Whenever that may be is again when they believe that the time is right.
“I think a lot of people think next year is the natural path,” he added. “But equally things change very, very quickly in motorsport, especially in F1, so I’m not even thinking about it to be honest.
“I obviously had a taste of life at the front of the grid last year,” he said, referring to his stand-in session at Sakhir. “But as I said, I’m just focused on the here and now, focusing on Bahrain.
“If I perform on track and I deliver, continuing on the same path and progress that I’ve been on so far, I guess the opportunity will come in the future.”
© Williams F1
Much depends on what happens to the current Mercedes line-up, with Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas both on single-year contracts. If one or both fail to sign further extensions then Russell would apear to be in pole position to step up.
“If that were not to happen, what most of you guys are speculating, it’s an interesting position for me,” Russell noted. “I guess I’ve got a very interesting decision on my hands towards the middle of this year.”
Staying at Williams would certainly be one option: “I see a very bright future here,” he told the media on Friday at the launch of the FW43B. “As it currently stands with the whole investment from Dorilton, the changes I’ve already seen taking place at Williams.
“Williams have finished last in the constructors’ for the past three season, and I don’t think that will be the case in 2022,” he stated confidently. “There’s a massive opportunity for every team in F1 for 2022.
“With the investment we’ve got, with the guys who are already here, with the guys like [new CEO] Jost [Capito] who are coming in, the relationship that has been built with Mercedes, it’s looking very exciting for the team.”
It’s less than a week to go before Russell will be at the wheel of his new car for the pre-season tests at the Bahrain International Circuit which get underway on March 12.
And the first race of the 2021 season follows in two weeks time on March 28, also in Bahrain.
“I’m really looking forward to driving again,” he said. “It’s been a couple of months since we last drove in Abu Dhabi. [I’m] really excited to drive, to find out how competitive the car is going to be, and just get back racing.”
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