Barcelona announced a new structure of its sporting operations on Wednesday, which included the return of La Masia graduate Bojan Krkic to the club.

UPS and the Teamsters have reached a tentative deal on a new contract. That could potentially avoid a strike, which could have started as soon as next week and crippled US supply chains.

Oil held a decline on signs that supply is rebounding while concerns linger about demand in China, the

By Humeyra Pamuk WASHINGTON Palestinians should govern Gaza once Israel ends its war against Hamas, the United States

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 17, 2023--

Adverts promoting crypto scams are appearing on X, formerly Twitter, amid an exodus of major brands from the platform. Many of the scam ads use the likeness of Elon Musk, who bought Twitter for $44 billion last year, to promote fake cryptocurrency giveaways. The scam ads work by promoting a fake pre-sale of “X Token”, which fraudulently offers early investors large profits if they buy the cryptocurrency before it officially launches on exchanges. Some of the adverts seen by The Independent have even appeared on the profile page of Elon Musk, who has 165 million followers on X – more than any other user. The scammers have paid for the sponsored posts, providing much-needed revenue for X as the company struggles with retaining traditional advertisers. Over 100 brands and other advertisers have pulled their ads from X in recent weeks, according to internal documents seen by The New York Times, which could lead to losses of around $75 million in earnings this year. The exodus reportedly began after Mr Musk engaged with a controversial tweet about an antisemitic conspiracy theory. The X owner responded to claims that he is antisemitic by saying “nothing could be further from the truth”. Companies to have withdrawn ads include Airbnb, Apple, Coca-Cola, Disney, IBM, Netflix and Uber. X disputed the figure reported, claiming it “represented an internal exercise to evaluate total risk” and that the true figure was closer to $11 million. The emergence of scam crypto ads has already resulted in significant financial losses for X users, according to the MalwareTips forum, with some victims reporting they lost their entire crypto savings. “The anonymity of cryptocurrency enables the scammers to quickly withdraw funds without being tracked down,” a post to MalwareTips notes. A twitter-hackers-cryptocurrency-a8620436.html">2018 investigation by The Independent found that crypto scams shared on Twitter had tricked people into sending hundreds of thousands of dollars to cyber criminals posing as Mr Musk. Hackers were able to take over Twitter accounts belonging to verified brands like Matalan and Pantheon Books, before switching the name and profile picture in order to impersonate the tech entrepreneur. They then posted messages offering fake giveaways that required people to send cryptocurrency in order to verify their bitcoin address. Analysis of the addresses found that more than 400 people sent bitcoin to one address, with transactions totalling 28.2 bitcoins ($1.1m at current exchange rates). Mr Musk cited the cryptocurrency scam epidemic as one of the motivating reasons for his purchase of Twitter, pledging to fix the issue upon his takeover. “If our Twitter bid succeeds, we will defeat the spam bots or die trying,” he tweeted in April 2022. In June 2022, Mr Musk also criticised YouTube for fake cryptocurrency promotions that featured on the platform. “YouTube seems to be nonstop scam ads,” he tweeted. Efforts to defeat the bot endemic have included subscriptions and a $1 charge to new users, which was introduced in New Zealand and the Philippines last month. The “Not a Bot” subscription method is designed to “reduce spam, manipulation or our platform and bot activity,” the company said at the time. It is not clear how this approach will prevent accounts from promoting crypto scams, with all of the ads seen in October and November coming from verified X accounts. X did not respond to a request for comment from The Independent about the issue of crypto scam ads. Read More Elon Musk mocked for trying to resurrect QAnon Pizzagate conspiracy Elon Musk set to meet Netanyahu and hostage families in Israel Elon Musk weighs in on Dublin riots claiming country’s PM ‘hates the Irish people’ X introduces limits to prevent non-paying users from replying to posts

Dallas Keuchel carried a perfect game into the seventh inning before allowing a double to Pittsburgh’s Bryan Reynolds, and Edouard Julien drove in a pair of runs for the Minnesota Twins in a 2-0 win against the Pirates

An Arsenal fan got an unexpected boost ahead of a job interview after receiving a message from player Vivianne Miedema. Dutch forward Miedema had a few words of encouragement for a nervous supporter after they shared their worries about the upcoming interview as it was on Zoom. A Twitter user by the name of Beth, who makes clear she’s a big fan of Arsenal Women’s FC, was looking for support – but she never would have expected one of her favourite footballers. “I got an interview for my dream job but i dont know if i can do the interview… its via zoom and the only people i can call are my girlfriend, mum and sister,” Beth wrote, without tagging anyone. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter To her amazement, Miedema replied out of the blue to Beth and had some inspiring words. “I’m pretty sure you will be just fine. Relax and just show them your qualities, good luck,” the 26-year-old. Not quite believing her luck, Beth replied: “thank you so much… oh my god I love you.” It’s not every day you get one of your favourite footballers encouraging you, and social media users were full of goodwill messages for her. “The way I checked to see if it's THE Vivianne Miedema,” one said, to which Beth replied: “pls so did i. i was so confused.” Another added: “If the GOAT has faith in you, you can smash it! Goodluck.” Meanwhile, Arsenal Women side narrowly missed out on the Women’s Super League title last season, finishing a point behind Chelsea despite losing just once all season and beating West Ham on the final day. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

A Nashville teacher made headlines this month for removing a White elementary student's shirt because it was emblazoned with the letters of her historically Black sorority.

Florida Gulf Coast's women's basketball team this season has 16 players on the roster and they're all listed as having the same position

Court documents made public in 2022 shed light on abuse allegations made by Angelina Jolie regarding a 2016 plane ride involving their 6 children

Rebecca Rans' family has also sued Maui Electric and Bishop Estate for the death of the 57-year-old