TV News LIES

Jeff Webb, a cheerleading pioneer and mentor to the late Charlie Kirk, died at 76 after a “tragic accident,” according to his family.

Webb was the founder of Varsity Spirit and helped turn cheerleading into a sport recognized by the International Olympic Committee, according to The Associated Press.

A family spokesperson said Webb died after a “tragic accident,” and the family declined to share more details.

People reports that Webb suffered a fall while playing pickleball two weeks before his death. He reportedly sustained a severe head injury and the family later decided to remove him from life support.

Webb started the Universal Cheerleaders Association in 1974 and developed camps, new uniforms and the first national competition.

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A California jury on Wednesday found that Meta and Google were to blame for the depression and anxiety of a woman who compulsively used social media as a small child, awarding her $6 million in a rare verdict holding Silicon Valley accountable for its role in fueling a youth mental health crisis.

The jurors concluded that Meta and Google should pay the woman $3 million in compensatory damages and an additional $3 million in punitive damages, with Meta on the hook for 70% of that amount.

While the financial punishment is miniscule for companies each worth trillions of dollars, the decision is still consequential. It represents the first time a jury has found that social media apps should be treated as defective products for being engineered to exploit the developing brains of kids and teenagers.

The verdict validated the plaintiff's lawyers' approach of shifting the legal target; instead of focusing on the content people see on social media, the case put the spotlight on how social media services were designed. Meta's apps, including Instagram, and Google's YouTube, the jury concluded, were deliberately built to be addictive and the companies' executives knew this and failed to protect their youngest users.

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A group of eight architecture and cultural organizations is suing President Trump and the board of the Kennedy Center over the planned renovations of the arts complex, which are set to begin in just over three months. The lawsuit seeks to have the White House and the Kennedy Center board comply with existing historic preservation laws and secure Congress' approval before moving ahead with the renovations.

The lawsuit was filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., by the American Institute of Architects, the American Society of Landscape Architects, the Committee of 100 on the Federal City, the Cultural Landscape Foundation, the DC Preservation League, Docomomo US and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Collectively, these groups have over 1 million members.

In an email sent Monday to NPR, White House spokesperson Liz Huston wrote: "President Trump is committed to making the Trump-Kennedy Center the finest performing arts facility in the world. We look forward to ultimate victory on the issue." NPR also requested comment from the Kennedy Center, but did not receive a response.

In the lawsuit, the groups wrote that the Kennedy Center has stood since 1971 "as a living memorial to a slain president, a national gathering place for the arts and a defining landmark within the monumental core of the Nation's capital. Its Modernist design, grand public spaces and role as a premier cultural institution together form an irreplaceable legacy of history, architecture and civic purpose."

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A California jury found Bill Cosby guilty of sexual assault in a civil trial on Monday, awarding Donna Motsinger $59.25m in damages. Motsinger alleged in the case that while working as a restaurant server in 1972, she was drugged and raped by Cosby after he gave her a glass of wine in his limousine.

Motsinger sued Cosby after California amended its laws to change the statutes of limitations on when accusers can file sexual assault cases. In remarks after the jury’s verdict, she described the trial as a five-decade-long effort to get justice.

Cosby, once one of the most successful men in comedy and an entertainment icon, has largely disappeared from public view in the past decade amid widespread allegations of sexual misconduct. In addition to the dozens of women who have accused Cosby of drugging and sexual assault, he has faced a series of civil trials – including Los Angeles county jurors in 2022 finding that he sexually assaulted a 16-year-old girl at the Playboy mansion in 1975.

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The union representing Transportation Security Administration officers has a message for President Donald Trump: Thanks, but no thanks.

On Monday morning, the president dispatched Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to several airports to supposedly alleviate long security lines created by the partial government shutdown. But union representatives for TSA officers say the president’s plan is unhelpful at best and could actually make things more dangerous.

“Our guys are going to be pissed,” said Joe Shuker, a regional vice president for the American Federation of Government Employees, the union representing TSA officers.

Shuker told HuffPost he received a text message Monday morning about ICE officers showing up at Philadelphia International Airport, one of 14 locations where the administration planned to send them. He wasn’t sure exactly what the ICE officers would be doing, but he knows they aren’t trained to do what TSA officers do: spot airport-specific security threats such as homemade bombs inside luggage and fake passports.

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At least two people were killed and dozens were At least two people were killed and dozens were injured after an Air Canada Express jet collided with a fire truck on a runway at New York's LaGuardia airport late on Sunday, March 22.

The Air Canada Express CRJ-900 jet carrying 72 passengers and four crew members collided with the vehicle just before 11:40 p.m. on Sunday, Kathryn Garcia, the executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said at a news conference. The Port Authority Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting vehicle was responding to another aircraft operated by United Airlines, which had reported an issue with odor, Garcia said.

Jazz Aviation, which operates as Air Canada Express, confirmed in a statement the incident involved a flight headed to LaGuardia from Montreal.

The company, citing Port Authority of New York and New Jersey officials, said the deceased were identified as the pilot and the first officer.

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