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Ecuador Prison Violence Leaves Dozens Dead
Police and soldiers stormed a prison in Guayaquil, Ecuador, on Tuesday after days of unrest. They found dozens of bodies inside the prison, and more than a dozen prison guards were still being held hostage.
The violence began on Saturday when two rival gangs clashed inside El Litoral prison, Ecuador’s largest men’s jail. The fighting quickly spread to other jails across the country, and inmates took scores of guards hostage.
Officials said 31 inmates had been killed since Saturday, and more than 120 guards had been freed. However, more than a dozen guards were still being held hostage.
El Litoral prison is home to more than 5,000 inmates, many of whom are members of Ecuador’s most violent gangs. The prison has been the scene of a number of deadly clashes between rival gangs in recent years.
In April, 12 inmates were killed in a gang-on-gang confrontation. The most deadly incident occurred in September 2021, when 119 prisoners were killed inside El Litoral.
A total of 2,700 members of the security forces were deployed to retake control of El Litoral prison on Tuesday. Interior Minister Juan Zapata said that the security forces had taken control of the prison, and he published photos and videos showing handcuffed inmates surrounded by armed security personnel.
Twitter Rebrands, Dropping The Legendary Blue Bird
Twitter has rebranded its official handle on the social networking platform from @twitter to @X, as part of an ongoing rebranding effort by its owner Elon Musk.
As of Wednesday morning, most of the platform’s other official handles had either dropped the “Twitter” name or replaced it with X. For example, @TwitterSupport is now @Support, and @TwitterSports is now @XSports. The @TwitterMusic handle was still unchanged.
The rebranding began with Musk replacing the platform’s bird logo with X. He made the announcement on Sunday, and on Monday, he tweeted that X.com now points to Twitter.com. He also shared a photo of Twitter’s headquarters lit up by a giant new X.
According to TechCrunch, Twitter had not reached out to the original owner of the @X handle, photographer Gene X Hwang. However, on Tuesday, Hwang tweeted from his new handle, @x1234567998765, “Alls [sic] well that ends well.” It is not clear if he sold the handle to Twitter.
By the end of Monday, the platform’s logo had been changed to X, although the blue bird can still be seen on the site, especially on the mobile app and tweet embedding pages. Musk has previously said he was bidding “adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds.”
Twitter has used the bluebird emblem for more than a decade. The rebrand comes in the backdrop of Musk’s recent warning that the company was facing steep losses in ad revenue and was on the edge of bankruptcy.
Earlier this month, Facebook parent company Meta launched Twitter rival Threads, which surpassed 100 million user sign-ups in its first week. However, its popularity has waned in the weeks since its launch. In comparison, Twitter had 238 million active users prior to being acquired by Musk in October 2022.
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