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Good morning.
The chaos at Twitter has escalated today and speculation of the platform’s imminent collapse is swirling as hundreds of employees were reported to have rejected Elon Musk’s ultimatum to keep working for the business, threatening its ability to keep operating.
As the company temporarily closed its offices to staff, Twitter users began saying their goodbyes and linking to accounts on other platforms.
#RIPTwitter, #TwitterDown, #Mastodon and #Myspace were all trending on the platform after the deadline passed on Musk’s ultimatum for the remaining workforce to sign up for “long hours at high intensity”, or leave. It has been estimated that hundreds of the remaining staff opted to go.
The departures include many engineers responsible for fixing bugs and preventing service outages, raising questions about the stability of the platform and prompting hurried debates among managers over who should be asked to return, current and former employees said.
Mohammed bin Salman should be granted sovereign immunity in a civil case involving the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the Biden administration has told a US court, in effect ending a last ditch attempt to hold the Saudi crown prince legally accountable for the 2018 killing.
In a filing released late last night, the Biden administration said the crown prince’s recent promotion to the role of prime minister meant that he was “the sitting head of government and, accordingly, immune” from the lawsuit.
“The United States government has expressed grave concerns regarding Jamal Khashoggi’s horrific killing and has raised these concerns publicly and with the most senior levels of the Saudi government,” the Department of Justice said in its filing, adding that the US had also imposed financial sanctions and visa restrictions related to the murder.
“However, the doctrine of head of state immunity is well established in customary international law and has been consistently recognized in longstanding executive branch practice as a status-based determination that does not reflect a judgment on the underlying conduct at issue in the litigation,” it said.
