Hackers breached the Twitter account of fast-food chain Burger King, posting the online equivalent of graffiti and sometimes making little sense.
Burger King Worldwide Inc suspended its Twitter account about an hour after it learned of the attack at 12:24 p.m. EST on Monday, company spokesman Bryson Thornton said in an email.
“It has come to our attention that the Twitter account of the BURGER KING® brand has been hacked,” the company said in a statement. “We have worked directly with administrators to suspend the account until we are able to re-establish our legitimate site and authentic postings.”
READ ON: Burger King takes down Twitter account after hack attack
After weeks of anticipation bordering on media frenzy, Pope Benedict solemnly put his finger to a computer tablet device on Wednesday and tried to send his first tweet - but something went wrong.
Images on Vatican television appeared to show the first try didn’t work. The pope, who still writes his speeches by hand, seems to have pressed too hard and the tweet was not sent right away. So, he needed a little help from his friends.
Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli of the Vatican’s communications department showed the pontiff how to do it, but the pope hesitated. Celli touched the screen lightly himself and off went the papal tweet.
“Dear friends, I am pleased to get in touch with you through Twitter. Thank you for your generous response. I bless all of you from my heart,” he said in his introduction to the brave new world of Twitter.
READ ON: Pope needs help sending out blessing in first tweet
The man suspected of killing three women and wounding four others in a shooting rampage at a Milwaukee-area spa where his estranged wife worked had recently posted pleas for help “to get out of Wisconsin” on his Facebook page.
Radcliffe Haughton, 45, was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the Azana Salon & Spa in suburban Brookfield, hours after the Sunday morning shooting.
Haughton had been placed under a restraining order and directed to surrender his firearms to authorities this month in connection with a domestic abuse case involving his wife, who worked at the spa. Police have not said whether she was among the victims.
On October 8, the same date he was ordered to stay away from his wife after police said he slashed the tires on her car, Haughton posted to his Facebook page: “Need to get out of Wisconsin, HELP …”
READ ON: Suspected spa gunman pleaded for help to leave Wisconsin
Twitter has blocked messages in Germany from a group banned by local authorities over right-wing extremism, using its powers to withhold content in one specific country for the first time.
“The account and all its content have been blocked for Germany, the content remains visible to Twitter users in other countries,” a spokesman for Twitter said.
Twitter announced plans for its so-called “Country Withheld Content” function earlier this year, which allows it to remove illegal content for one specific country, saying it believed that keeping messages up in other places would serve freedom of expression, transparency and accountability.
The spokesman said the move to block messages from the German group - which calls itself Besseres Hannover, which means “a better Hanover” - came at the request of police in the northern German city of Hanover.
READ ON: Twitter blocks neo-Nazi group’s messages in Germany
Jack Welch, the lionized former chairman of General Electric Co, provoked cries of outrage in Washington on Friday when he appeared to accuse the White House of manipulating September job figures for political gains.
White House officials dismissed as “ludicrous” a tweet Welch sent to his more than 1.3 million followers that suggested U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration rigged the data as a way of recovering from a poor Wednesday night showing in a debate against Mitt Romney, his Republican challenger for the White House.
“Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can’t debate so change numbers,” Welch said in a posting on Twitter, apparently referring to Obama, who formerly served as a senator from Illinois.
The tweet was repeated more than 2,000 times, with many mocking posts comparing Welch to New York real estate tycoon Donald Trump - who during his failed bid for the presidency loudly argued that Obama was not born in the United States - and Clint Eastwood, who gave a widely panned speech to an empty chair at the Republican National Convention in August.
Welch, who with his wife Suzy Welch, writes a column for Reuters, could not be reached to comment further on his view.
READ ON: Ex-GE CEO Welch sets Twitter on fire with jab at Obama on jobs
A new nationwide strategy to prevent suicides, especially among U.S. military veterans and younger Americans, will tap Facebook Inc as part of a community-driven push to report concerns before someone takes their own life.
The new Facebook service will allow users to report suicidal comments they see online from friends. The website will then send the potential victim an email urging them to call the hotline as well as chat confidentially online with a counselor.
“All too often, people in crisis do not know how - or who - to ask for help,” Facebook Global Vice President for Public Policy Marne Levine said in a statement. “We have a unique opportunity to provide the right resources to our users in distress, when and where they need them most.”
The effort, announced on Monday, is the first new plan in more than a decade to address what officials say is a growing public health issue and aims to curb deaths over 10 years.
“It takes the entire community to prevent suicides. It’s not just one individual,” U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin told Reuters. “We call can play a role.”
Twitter Inc and NBC Universal’s move to suppress a British reporter’s tweets related to the network’s Olympics coverage may have backfired after the incident became fodder for Twitter chatter around the world on Monday.
The microblogging service suspended Guy Adams, the Los Angeles correspondent for London-based daily The Independent, after he sent a tweet on Friday revealing NBC Olympics President Gary Zenkel’s email address.
Adams was among a number of Twitter users in the United States who vented their frustration with NBC, a Comcast Corp subsidiary, for showing the London Olympics’ opening ceremony on tape delay to coincide with evening prime-time in the United States.
“The man responsible for NBC pretending the Olympics haven’t started yet is Gary Zenkel. Tell him what u think! Email: Gary.zenkel@nbcuni.com,” Adams tweeted.
As part of his suspension, Adams’ account and his tweets were rendered invisible. But in a twist of irony, the incident went viral on Monday, as “Guy Adams” became a worldwide trending topic on Twitter.
In an email to Adams, Twitter informed the reporter that he had violated “Twitter Rules” by posting another user’s private information such as “private email address, physical address, telephone number, or financial documents.”
NBC confirmed that it had filed a complaint with Twitter.
Micro-blogging service Twitter suffered an outage Thursday that affected users on multiple continents.
“Users may be experiencing issues accessing Twitter. Our engineers are currently working to resolve the issue,” the San Francisco-based company wrote in a blog post shortly after 8:30 a.m. Pacific time (2100 IST).
The service went dark for several hours in June. That episode revived fears that stability issues may once again be plaguing Twitter, which suffered frequent outages in its early years, but has claimed to have improved its infrastructure.
READ ON: Twitter suffers widespread outage
