Source: BBC
Security & Justice
Southern Lebanon Endures Massive Damage: 40,000 Homes Leveled Across 37 Towns
Israeli forces have systematically destroyed entire neighborhoods in southern Lebanon, leveling more than 37 towns and wiping out over 40,000 residential units, according to Lebanon's National News Agency.
Tuesday, November 5, 2024
Gaps in Coastal Radar Enabled Israeli Raid in Batroun, Army Commander Says
Lebanon’s army chief, General Joseph Aoun, detailed to Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati how Israeli forces likely exploited gaps in the country's coastal radar system during the recent raid carried out in Batroun. The briefing comes as Lebanese officials seek answers on how Israel’s elite Shayetet 13 unit carried out the landing undetected.
Monday, November 4, 2024
Opinion
The Emptying of Baalbek Is a Moment to Take Stock
“Large numbers of people continue to flee their homes every day, as Israel’s military operations in Lebanon have been going on unabated.” These disturbing words could be from almost any news report about Israel’s invasion of its northern neighbour over the past month. However, they can be found in a report by the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre issued on July 27, 2006.
Saturday, November 2, 2024
A Future Without Hezbollah
At the end of September, when Israel’s campaign to destroy Hezbollah was reaching its height, I met one of the group’s supporters in a seaside café in western Beirut. He was a middle-aged man with a thin white beard and the spent look of someone who had not slept for days. He was an academic of sorts, not a fighter, but his ties to Hezbollah were deep and long-standing.
Thursday, October 31, 2024
Sports
Tottenham Forward Son Heung-min Crowned Asia’s International Player of the Year
Tottenham forward Son Heung-min was crowned as Asia’s International Player of the Year for the fourth time by the Asian Football Confederation at its annual awards ceremony Tuesday.
Wednesday, October 30, 2024
Real Madrid Launch Investigation into Racist Insults After El Clasico Defeat
Real Madrid has launched an investigation into racist insults directed at players during Saturday’s 4-0 home loss to Barcelona in LaLiga, it said on Sunday.
Monday, October 28, 2024
Monday 17 July 2023 12:42:55
Twitter Loses Nearly Half Advertising Revenue Since Elon Musk Takeover
Twitter has lost almost half of its advertising revenue since it was bought by Elon Musk for $44bn (£33.6bn) last October, its owner has revealed.
He said the company had not seen the increase in sales that had been expected in June, but added that July was a "bit more promising".
Mr Musk sacked about half of Twitter's 7,500 staff when he took over in 2022 in an effort to cut costs.
Rival app Threads now has 150 million users, according to some estimates.
Its in-built connection to Instagram automatically gives the Meta-designed platform access to a potential two billion users.
Meanwhile, Twitter is struggling under a heavy debt load. Cash flow remains negative, Mr Musk said at the weekend, although the billionaire did not put a time frame on the 50% drop in ad revenue.
In a tweet he said: "Need to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else."
Lucy Coutts, investment director at JM Finn, told the BBC's Today programme she thought Mr Musk would be able to turn Twitter around "but it is just going to take longer".
"But unfortunately he has got $13bn of debt to pay by the end of July so we may see more pressure on the shares in Tesla if he has to sell more of his stake in that company."
Mr Musk is also the chief executive and majority shareholder of electric car-maker Tesla, which will report its latest quarterly financial results on Wednesday.
After laying off thousands of employees and cutting cloud service bills, Mr Musk said Twitter was on track to post $3bn (£2.29bn) in revenue in 2023, down from $5.1bn in 2021.
The development is the latest sign the aggressive cost-cutting measures have not been enough to ignite a return of advertisers who fled after changes to its content moderation rules.
That is despite an interview Mr Musk gave to the BBC in April, in which he suggested that most had returned to the site.
However, Meghana Dhar, the former head of partnerships at Snap and Meta, which owns the new Twitter rival Threads, said the company had been struggling prior to Mr Musk's buyout.
"Elon and Twitter are in a candidly tough position right now," she told the BBC's Today programme. "To be fair to Elon though, we've seen that decline in Twitter revenue and growth in revenue since pre-Elon - there's been kind of a steady decline."
Linda Yaccarino, previously head of advertising at NBCUniversal, was taken on as chief executive of Twitter in June - a move suggesting advertising sales are still a priority for the company.
Ms Yaccarino has said Twitter plans to focus on video, creator and commerce partnerships. It is said to be in early talks with political and entertainment figures, payments services, and news and media publishers.
