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Elon Musk has posted a series of explicit tweets about Mark Zuckerberg, including This week, Mr Musk tweeted that “Zuck is a cuck”, and followed it up with a post in which he proposed a “literal dick measuring contest”, alongside a ruler emoji. On Monday, he then responded to a post in which another user speculated that Mr Musk would lose such a contest. “This would so inappropriate & lacking in dignity … let’s do it!!!” Mr Musk wrote in a reply. It is just the latest in Mr Musk’s often intense responses to the launch of Threads, a Twitter competitor launched by Mr Zuckerberg’s company, Meta. He has also threatened to sue Meta over the similarities with his app, suggested that it is falsely joyful, and boosted posts that suggested the launch of Threads had actually helped the launch of Twitter. Mr Musk has also attempted to suggest that Twitter is both free of censorship and the pressure to be happy. “You are free to be your true self here,” he wrote in his most recent post on the topic. He has also promoted a post from Twitter’s chief executive, Linda Yaccarino, in which she suggested that Threads’ success had actually helped Twitter’s growth. “Don’t want to leave you hanging by a thread… but Twitter, you really outdid yourselves!” she wrote. “Last week we had our largest usage day since February. There’s only ONE Twitter. You know it. I know it.” It is not clear how much the launch of Threads has boosted or hurt Twitter’s usage. But external estimates suggest that the site’s usage is “tanking”, according to experts. Meta’s Threads surged past 100 million signups in its first five days, according to Mark Zuckerberg. In doing so, it became the fastest online platform to hit the milestone, overtaking ChatGPT. The app has been setting new records for user additions since its launch on Wednesday, with celebrities from Jennifer Lopez to Kim Kardashian joining the platform seen as the first serious threat to the Elon Musk-owned microblogging app. Twitter has responded by threatening to sue Meta over the app, alleging that the social media behemoth used its trade secrets and other confidential information. That claim, legal experts say, could be hard to prove. Threads shares some resemblance to Twitter, as do the numerous other social media sites that have cropped up in recent months. It allows posts that are up to 500 characters long and include links, photos and videos of up to 5 minutes. The app’s sprint to 100 million users was much faster than the two months OpenAI-owned ChatGPT took in January, which had made it the fastest-growing consumer application in history, according to a UBS study. Still, Threads has some catching up to do. Twitter had nearly 240 million monetizable daily active users, according to a company statement in July last year. Additional reporting by Reuters Read More Twitter gets strange endorsement from Taliban over rival Threads Tucker Carlson’s Twitter show is haemorrhaging viewers, reports says Twitter traffic ‘tanking’ after record-breaking Threads launch SpaceX smashes reusable rocket record as Elon Musk makes bold Starship claim Twitter restores TweetDeck’s old, ‘better’ version – but for how long? Account tracking Elon Musk’s jet is now on Threads after Twitter suspended it

Terrified families fleeing in fear of ethnic cleansing after the collapse of Nagorno-Karabakh are running out of water and fuel during the desperate two-day odyssey to neighbouring Armenia. More than 90,000 Karabakh Armenians – around three-quarters of the total population – have now left their homes in the breakaway enclave, which is internationally recognised as being part of Azerbaijan. The United Nations fears the stunning fall of the enclave could mean there will eventually be no Armenians left in Nagorno-Karabakh, prompting concerns of ethnic cleansing. It is the largest exodus of people in the South Caucasus since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The breakaway region - also known by Armenians as Artsakh - had enjoyed de facto independence for three decades before Azerbaijan launched a lightning military operation earlier this month. It forced separatist forces to lay down their weapons and fto agree to formally dissolve the breakaway government. Fearing reprisals, as Baku’s forces moved into the main cities and arrested Armenian officials, hungry and scared families packed what few belongings they could into cars and trucks and left their homes for good. Valeri, 17, fled the village of Kichan, 70 km north of the Armenian border with his family and neighbours. In total, they squeezed 35 people into a Ford Transit and made the four-day journey to safety, sitting on top of each other and sleeping in shifts. “We couldn’t take anything with us because the shelling was too intense as we escaped,” he told The Independent. They had to hide in a large waste water pipe to escape artillery fire, he said. In the chaos, families were separated and the mobile coverage in the mountainous regions means they are still trying to reconnect. His family has been forced to move six times since the early 1990s and, like so many Armenians, find themselves homeless again. “I don’t think it’s possible to go back to Kichan, even if we could go back everything will be wrecked or stolen,” he said. Others described a 40km hairpin road to Armenia at a near standstill, with some vehicles breaking down for a lack of fuel. In the lead-up to Azerbaijan’s operation, Baku had imposed a 10-month blockade on the enclave leading to chronic shortages of food and petrol supplies. “All you can see is a sea of cars stretching to the horizon, people are cooking by the side of the road,” said Gev Iskajyan, 31, executive director of the Armenian National Committee of Artsakh, as he arrived exhausted in the Armenian capital Yerevan. He fled the region’s main city Stepanakert, or Khankendi as it is known in Azerbaijan, fearing he could be arrested if he stayed. “Resources are so scarce there, people are running out of water and fuel on the road along the way out. If anything happens to children and the elderly, no one can get to them. Ambulances can’t move,” he told The Independent. He said most families believed they would not ever be able to return home and that this was the end of Armenian presence. “It weighs heavy. Nagorno-Karabakh isn’t just a place, it is a culture, it has its own dialect,” he said. “You look at the people in the back of trucks, they have to fit their entire life in a single box, they can’t bring everything, they can’t go back, it breaks your heart. “It is centuries of history lost.” Nagorno-Karabakh isn’t just a place, it is a culture, it has its own dialect Gev Iskajyan, an Armenian advocate who fled to Yerevan The centuries-old conflict that has raged through the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh remains the longest-running in post-Soviet Eurasia. The 4,400 square kilometre territory is officially part of Azerbaijan but after a bloody war following the dissolution of the USSR in the 1990s, the region’s Armenian-majority population enjoyed state-like autonomy and status. That changed in 2020 when Azerbaijan, backed by Turkey, launched a military offensive and took back swathes of territory in a six-week conflict that killed thousands of soldiers and civilians. Russia, which supports Armenia, brokered a tense cessation of hostilities. But that was broken earlier this month when Baku launched a 24-hour blitz which proved too much for Armenian separatist forces, who are outgunned and outnumbered. They agreed to lay down their weapons and dissolve the entire enclave. Residents still left in Nagorno-Karabakh told The Independent that Azerbaijani forces and police entered the main city. “People are intensively fleeing after the forces entered, and took over the governmental buildings,” said one man who asked not to be named over concerns for his safety. Baku has also detained prominent Armenians as they attempted to flee, prompting fears more arrests may follow. Among them was Ruben Vardanyan, a billionaire investment banker, who served as the head of Karabakh’s separatist government between November 2022 and February this year. On Friday, Russian state media reported that the Azerbaijani military had also detained former separatist commander Levon Mnatsakanyan as he also tried to escape. He led the army of the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh from 2015 to 2018. The UN, meanwhile, said they were readying themselves for as many as 120,000 refugees to flood into Armenia, a third of them children. “The major concern for us is that many of them have been separated from their family,” said Regina De Dominicis, regional director of the UN’s child agency. “This is a situation where they’ve lived under nine months of blockade,” added Kavita Belani, UNHCR representative in Armenia. “When they come in, they’re full of anxiety, they’re scared, they’re frightened and they want answers.” Read More More than 70% of Nagorno-Karabakh's population flees as separatist government says it will dissolve The fall of an enclave in Azerbaijan stuns the Armenian diaspora, extinguishing a dream AP PHOTOS: Tens of thousands of Armenians flee in mass exodus from breakaway region of Azerbaijan More than 70% of Nagorno-Karabakh's population flees as separatist government says it will dissolve The fall of an enclave in Azerbaijan stuns the Armenian diaspora, extinguishing a dream Why this week's mass exodus from embattled Nagorno-Karabakh reflects decades of animosity

Eurovision, that famously camp song contest which has a strong pro-LGBTQ+ stance and has this year acknowledged Putin’s war in Ukraine as the reason for it being held in Liverpool on the country’s behalf, has blocked President Volodymyr Zelensky from making a video address - because it would breach the event’s “non-political nature”. Organisers behind the show, who on Thursday saw no issue with drag queens absolutely slaying on the M&S Bank Arena stage and preaching messages of love and acceptance, rejected the request ahead of the grand final on Saturday. In a statement, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) – whose previous decisions to ban Russia and Belarus from participating definitely weren’t political, obviously – said the request from Mr Zelensky to address the Eurovision audience “while made with laudable intentions, regrettably cannot be granted by the European Broadcasting Union management as it would be against the rules of the event”. Belarus was disqualified from the contest in 2021 over political messaging in their planned entry (their second attempt before the deadline), while Russia was kicked out of Eurovision a year later for its illegal invasion of Ukraine. And the rules state “all participating broadcasters” must ensure that “the ESC [Eurovision Song Contest] shall in no case be politicised and/or instrumentalized and/or otherwise brought into disrepute in any way”. That’s ‘instrumentalise’ in the sense of using Eurovision as a platform to spread a political message, before anyone makes a musical pun (we know you want to)… Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter The EBU’s decision has since been criticised by Boris Johnson, the former prime minister who became a meme over how many times he’d meet with the Ukrainian president whenever he was experiencing a turbulent moment in his premiership. “It would have been right to hear from President Zelensky at tomorrow night’s Eurovision. There is only one reason the contest is not in Ukraine and that is because of Putin’s illegal war,” he tweeted. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s spokesman told reporters: “The prime minister believes it would be fitting for President Zelensky to address the event and we’re disappointed by the decision from the European Broadcasting Union. “The values and freedoms that President Zelensky and the people of Ukraine are fighting for are not political; they’re fundamental, and Eurovision themselves recognised that last year when they rightly suspended Russia’s participation from the competition.” No 10 added, however, that they are not planning to call on the EBU to change its mind. 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.

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ANOKA, Minn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 21, 2023--