Tag: twitter

  • President Alvi sets April 9 as election day for Punjab and KP

    President Alvi sets April 9 as election day for Punjab and KP

    President Dr Arif Alvi has announced that elections in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) will be held on April 9.

    It is pertinent to mention here that Section 57(1) of the Elections Act, 2017 says that the president is entrusted to announce the election date after consulting the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP)

    Earlier today, ECP said no to meeting President Alvi when he invited the commission to consult with him, citing that the matter of elections is sub judice.

    ECP says no to meeting with President Alvi

    On Monday, ECP, in a letter addressed to Alvi, has stated that the matter of deciding a date for elections is subjudice, hence, it cannot participate in a meeting on this issue with the president.

    The development comes days after Alvi wrote a letter to Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sikandar Sultan Raja, inviting him for an “urgent meeting” to discuss and consult on the election date in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). The meeting was set to take place today (Monday, February 20).

    Two federal ministers, Rana Sanaullah and Marriyum Aurangzeb, have defended the ECP.

    In a statement issued on Monday, Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb said the Presidency has become “Awan-e-Sazish” [centre of conspiracy], adding that the government will not allow it to become “Imran Khan’s Tiger Force”. She also advised Alvi against becoming a puppet of the former Prime Minister.

    Meanwhile, in a tweet, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah lambasted Alvi, stating that, “ECP is not your slave,” and adding that “Imran is now using the head of state [Alvi] for conspiracy”.

    President Alvi asks ECP for urgent meeting to consult on Punjab, KP’s election dates

    Earlier, in a letter to ECP, the president expressed displeasure over the “apathy and inaction” of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on not responding to his earlier letter as yet. The first letter was sent on February 8.

    The president stated that he had waited anxiously that the ECP would realise its constitutional duties to proceed and act accordingly, but was extremely dismayed by the commission’s “approach on this important matter”.

    The meeting will take place on February 20 (Monday).

    The president’s official Twitter account said that the two will discuss Section 57(1) of Elections Act, 2017 which details that the president is entrusted to announce the election date after consulting the ECP.

    Punjab and KP assemblies were dissolved in January to pave way for fresh elections.

    It is pertinent to mention that Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has been asking for the elections since the ouster of their chairman Imran Khan as Prime Minister.

  • Peshawar attack: Death toll reaches 100

    Peshawar attack: Death toll reaches 100

    The outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) took responsibility for Monday’s suicide bombing that claimed 100 lives and left more than 200 people injured, reports Geo News. However, now TTP claimed that it had nothing to do with the bombing.

    The bomb blast ripped through a mosque in Peshawar’s Police Lines area around 1:40 pm, right as people lined up to offer zuhr prayers. It has been reported that the suicide bomber was standing in the first row at the mosque when he exploded the bomb.

    According to Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) Peshawar Muhammad Ijaz Khan, a number of people are still stuck under the rubble after the roof collapsed. He also said between 300 to 400 police officials were present in the area at the time of the blast.

    Earlier, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif, while talking to Geo News, revealed that the roof fell due to the intensity of the blast, adding that the hospitals have been overwhelmed.

    He said that even though they receive threats, people cannot be stopped from entering a mosque.

    Condemnations by the politicians

    After the attack made waves across the country, Prime Minister (PM) Shehbaz Sharif condemned the brutal suicide blast. He said that the brutal murder of Muslims went against everything that was taught by Islam.

    Shehbaz added that they will form a policy to more effectively counter rising terrorism in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

    Similarly, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan strongly condemned the “terrorist suicide attack” and expressed sympathies with the families of the victims.

    Foreign Minister (FM) Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, condemning the incident, said that strict action will be taken against the terrorists, their backers and facilitators.

    Meanwhile, Caretaker Chief Minister (CM) Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Muhammad Azam Khan imposed a medical emergency in all hospitals of Peshawar. The interim CM also instructed rescue organisations to speed up relief activities.

  • Khan lashes out at govt on fuel hike

    Khan lashes out at govt on fuel hike

    Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman and former Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan lashed out at the incumbent government for Sunday’s surprise hike in petroleum prices.

    In a tweet, he said, “Total mismanagement of our economy by a corrupt and incompetent imported govt has crushed masses and salaried class with the latest hike in petrol and diesel prices”.

    Moreover, he claimed that 35 per cent “unprecedented inflation” is expected with Rs 200 billion mini-budget.

    Earlier in the day, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar announced that the federal government has decided to hike the prices of petrol and diesel by Rs 35 per litre.

    The decision came days before International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) officials are scheduled to visit Pakistan to discuss the stalled ninth review of the country’s current funding programme.

  • PTI decides to take back resignations of remaining MNAs: Asad Umar

    PTI decides to take back resignations of remaining MNAs: Asad Umar

    Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Secretary-General Asad Umar has said on Monday that 44 party lawmakers have decided to withdraw their resignations from the National Assembly (NA).

    Taking to Twitter, Umar announced that the remaining 44 MNAs of the party, whose resignations are yet to be accepted, have decided to take back their decision to leave the national assembly.

    “An email has been sent to the speaker,” said the PTI leader in his tweet. He also shared the names of the MNAs who have withdrawn their resignations.

    Meanwhile, PTI leader Fawad Chaudhry said 45 lawmakers had decided to withdraw their resignations so that the party could take back the post of the leader of the Opposition and parliamentary party leader.

    He added that the aim of the move was to get rid of the “fake” NA opposition leader and prevent “turncoats” from voting for Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in a vote of confidence.

    Following the announcement, the PTI lawmakers staged a sit-in outside the Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) headquarters after being barred from entering the speaker’s house.

    However, authorities restricted the MNAs from entering the building by placing barbed wires on the road leading to the ECP.

    The development comes about after the National Assembly Speaker Pervez Ashraf, in a surprise move accepted the resignations of 69 MNAs during the previous week.

  • Twitter bird statue sells for $100,000 as Musk auctions off old office mementos

    Twitter bird statue sells for $100,000 as Musk auctions off old office mementos

    A Twitter bird statue fetched $100,000 on Wednesday as owner Elon Musk auctioned off furniture, decorations, kitchen equipment, and more from the tech firm’s San Francisco headquarters.

    A 10-foot neon light in the form of Twitter’s bird logo was included in an online auction of “surplus corporate office assets of Twitter” that lasted just over 24 hours and received a winning price of $40,000, the Heritage Global Partners auction service reported.

    Espresso machines, ergonomically sound desks, televisions, bicycle-powered charging stations, pizza ovens, and a colourful planter in the form of a “@” sign were some of the 631 lots.

    As he set out to hire a new CEO for his struggling social media network, Musk claimed in December that drastic cost cutbacks at Twitter had fixed the company’s poor financial situation.

    At the time, the erratic billionaire claimed in a live chat room that Twitter would have lost $3 billion annually without the reforms, which included sacking more than half of its staff.

    At the platform he paid $44 billion for, Musk claimed to have been “reducing expenses like crazy.”

    Shortly after taking over Twitter, Musk let go roughly half of its 7,500 employees, raising concerns that the firm lacked the manpower to handle content moderation and alarmed regulators, advertisers, and governments.

    According to Musk, his strategy is to drastically cut expenses while increasing revenue and a new $8 monthly membership service dubbed Twitter Blue will aid in achieving this objective.

    Mass layoffs, the reinstatement of blocked accounts, and the suspension of journalists who criticise the wealthy South African-born Elon Musk have all contributed to the instability that has gripped Musk’s Twitter.

    Racist or offensive tweets also increased after Musk’s takeover, which attracted regulatory attention and drove away major advertisers, Twitter’s primary source of income.

  • ‘Schoolboy level trolling’: Twitter hits back at Moonis Elahi for his comment on PML-N’s Hina Parvez

    In the early hours of Thursday morning when Punjab Assembly was in chaos over the Vote of Confidence, Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) leader and former federal minister Moonis Elahi found time to take a jibe at his rival party Member of Provincial Assembly (MPA) Hina Parvez Butt.

    Moonis posted a picture of Hina sitting in the House while the session was underway on Twitter. In the photo, Hina has a scarf over her head and her hands on her cheeks. Moonis Elahi wrote, “Oh God, what happened!! This is the condition of the entire PML-N.” He also tagged Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah in the tweet.

    Shortly thereafter, many users reacted, taking Moonis to task for his tweet. One user called it “schoolboy level trolling”.

    https://twitter.com/s_4_g_/status/1613279991030059008?s=20&t=FQhaxIYP2boIKGgGLigKDQ

    After the picture went viral on social media, Hina also hit back at the trolls. Issuing a clarification on Twitter, she said that the picture was taken during Azaan.

  • Hackers put 200 million Twitter users’ private information for sale on dark web

    Hackers put 200 million Twitter users’ private information for sale on dark web

    Anyone can now download the data of more than 200 million Twitter users for free.

    According to Privacy Affairs‘ security researchers, who confirmed the database that’s currently posted on a hacker forum, this most recent data dump, which contains account names, handles, creation dates, follower counts, and email addresses, turns out to be the same — albeit cleaned up — leak reported last month that affected more than 400 million Twitter accounts.

    According to Privacy Affairs CEO and founder Miklos Zoltan, the removal of duplicate accounts is what caused the number of accounts to be cut in half. But this time, he added, “the data is available for download by anyone for free, as opposed to being marketed for sale at $200,000, as it was in December.”

    According to Zoltan’s blog article detailing the breach, some of the well-known individuals and companies in the new 63GB database leak include Donald Trump Jr., Google CEO Sundar Pichai, SpaceX, the US National Basketball Association, CBS Media, and the World Health Organization.

    There is no information on whether the Christmas Day Twitter account hack of British Education Secretary Gillian Keegan is connected. Miscreants hijacked Keegan’s account in that instance, altered her profile photo to one of Elon Musk, and sent out a string of tweets endorsing cryptocurrency.

    The exposed account owners are still at risk even if the disclosed data does not contain users’ phone numbers, physical addresses, or passwords, according to Zoltan.

    “Privacy Affairs cybersecurity experts reviewed the published data and believe this latest leak could lead to social engineering attacks and doxxing.”

    The genuine names and locations of individuals can be ascertained by combining the hacked email addresses connected to Twitter accounts with other publicly accessible data. Additionally, nation state goons and criminals continue to use phishing emails as a successful entry point for social engineering attacks.

    Of course, spammers or con artists can also utilise the listed email addresses; all they need to do is persuade one victim to click on a harmful link.

    Researchers cautioned that despite this week’s data leak having fewer accounts, it may be more dangerous because the thieves are giving away the entire information for free.

    “It is not certain at this moment how exactly this data was obtained,” Zoltan noted. “The most likely method used could have been the abuse of an application programming interface (API) vulnerability.”

    The data was allegedly hacked in 2021 due to a security flaw that Twitter claimed to have closed last year.

  • ‘Zero tolerance’; PM warns terrorists

    Amid rising terror attacks, Prime Minister (PM) Shehbaz Sharif has said that Pakistan will adopt the policy of zero-tolerance against terrorists.

    From his account on Twitter, the Premier said that the National Security Committee (NSC) has come up with two major decisions, which include adopting a zero-tolerance policy against terrorists and forming a roadmap to revive the economy of Pakistan.

    A day earlier, the second round of the National Security Committee (NSC) meeting reiterated a “zero tolerance” policy for terrorism in the country, according to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).

    A press release issued by the PMO after the meeting’s conclusion said the NSC reaffirmed its determination to take on “any and all entities that resort to violence”, adding that any violence would be dealt with the “full force of the state”.

    On December 30, 2022, the forum vowed to respond firmly to resurgent terrorism in the country and declared militants as “enemies of Pakistan”.

    On the other hand, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif on Monday said that Afghanistan’s soil is being used against Pakistan despite an agreement with the Taliban government.

    During Geo News’ programme ‘Aaj Shahzeb Khanzada Kay Sath’, the minister urged the Taliban to fulfill commitments made in the Doha deal.

    “The Pakistani government is in constant touch with Afghanistan in connection with border violations”, he said.

    Over the past few months, the law and order situation in the country has worsened, with terrorist groups like the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) executing attacks across the country.

  • Twitter sued for failing to pay San Francisco office rent

    Twitter sued for failing to pay San Francisco office rent

    Elon Musk’s social media company is being sued by California Property Trust, the owner of the building where Twitter’s headquarters are located, for failing to pay $136,250 in rent.

    Bloomberg reports (via The Verge) that on December 16th, the company informed Twitter that it would be in breach of its contract for the 30th floor of the Hartford Building in San Francisco if it did not make the unpaid rent payment within four days.

    Twitter was said to have disobeyed the order by California Property Trust in a complaint submitted this week to the San Francisco County Superior Court.

    The New York Times reported on December 13 that Twitter had just stopped paying rent on all of its international locations to reduce costs. In addition, the business is being sued for failing to reimburse Musk for $197,725 in charter flights he took during his first week working for Twitter. In the same time frame, Musk is said to have bolstered Twitter’s legal team with “more than half a dozen” attorneys from SpaceX.