International
Twitter Threatens To Sue Meta Over Threads
The owner of Twitter has threatened to sue Meta just hours after the Instagram parent company launched Threads, an app it hopes will beat out the struggling site owned by Elon Musk.
In a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, published by online news outlet Semafor on Thursday, Musk lawyer Alex Spiro accused the company of “unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property.”
The letter accused Meta of hiring dozens of former Twitter employees who “had and continue to have access to Twitter’s trade secrets and other highly confidential information.”
Threads is the biggest challenger yet to Musk-owned Twitter, which has seen a series of potential competitors emerge but not yet replace one of the world’s biggest social media platforms, despite its struggles.
Zuckerberg’s latest move against Musk further heightened the rivalry between the two multibillionaires who have even agreed to meet for hand to hand combat in a cage match.
And in his first tweet in over a decade, Zuckerberg posted a Spiderman pointing at Spiderman meme in an apparent reference to the similarities between Threads and Twitter.
Threads went live on Apple and Android app stores in 100 countries at 2300 GMT on Wednesday, and early feedback noted its close, but scaled back, resemblance to Twitter.
Within a few hours, more than 30 million people had downloaded Threads, Zuckerberg said Thursday.
“Feels like the beginning of something special, but we’ve got a lot of work ahead to build the app,” Zuckerberg wrote on his official Threads account Thursday.
Accounts were already active for celebrities such as Jennifer Lopez, Shakira and Hugh Jackman, as well as media outlets including The Washington Post and The Economist.
On Threads, Zuckerberg wrote: “It’ll take some time, but I think there should be a public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it.”
Twitter has said it has more than 200 million daily users.
‘Be Kind’
Threads was introduced as a spin-off of Instagram, giving it a built-in audience of more than two billion users and sparing the new platform the challenge of starting from scratch.
Instagram chief Adam Mosseri told users that Threads was intended to build “an open and friendly platform for conversations.”
“The best thing you can do if you want that too is be kind,” he said.
Zuckerberg is taking advantage of Musk’s chaotic ownership of Twitter to push out the new product, which Meta hopes will become the go-to platform for celebrities, companies and politicians.
Analyst Jasmine Engberg from Insider Intelligence said Threads only needs one out of four Instagram monthly users “to make it as big as Twitter.”
“Twitter users are desperate for an alternative, and Musk has given Zuckerberg an opening,” she added.
Under Musk, Twitter has seen content moderation reduced to a minimum with glitches and rash decisions scaring away celebrities and major advertisers.
He also fired more than half of Twitter’s staff, some of whom presumably went to other tech companies, including Meta.
EU ‘Many Months’ Away
Meta has its legion of critics too, especially in the major market of Europe, which could slow the growth of Threads.
The company has been criticized for its handling of personal data, the essential ingredient for targeted ads that help it rake in billions of dollars in profits.
Mosseri said he regretted that the launch was delayed in the European Union, but had Meta waited for regulatory clarity from Brussels, Threads would have been “many, many, many, months away.”
According to a source close to the matter, Meta was wary of a new law called the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which sets strict rules for the world’s “gatekeeper” internet companies.
One rule restricts platforms from moving user data between products, as would potentially be the case between Threads and Instagram.
Globally, the Threads hashtag on Twitter has garnered three million tweets, with many users jokingly suggesting people will return to Musk’s platform.
Others expressed privacy concerns.
“Meta loves to collect private information and I don’t trust the way it treats private information,” a Japanese user tweeted.
“I also have the impression that this is a company hated by EU, so I’m reluctant.”
But some said they would permanently move to Threads.
One Threads user wrote: “Now I truly can say goodbye to Twitter forever.”
International
“Mother of all bombs,” Trump Plans To Hit Iran
The 21,600-pound airburst weapon is designed to affect surface targets over a wide area and has so far not been deployed by the U.S. in previous strikes on targets inside Iran. It was used in Afghanistan in 2017 during the previous Trump administration.
The U.S. military is considering use of the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) bomb if it resumes strikes inside Iran, CNN reported Thursday, citing U.S. officials.
The 21,600-pound airburst weapon is designed to affect surface targets over a wide area and has so far not been deployed by the U.S. in previous strikes on targets inside Iran. It was used in Afghanistan in 2017 during the previous Trump administration.
Trump said Oct. 8 that he would not resume U.S. strikes on Iran before the Nov. 3 midterm elections, while attacks on shipping near the Strait of Hormuz and deadly Houthi strikes in Saudi Arabia have raised regional tensions.
Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said Tehran will combine military capabilities and negotiations to press its demands.
International
Child marriage in southern Germany: Over 350 cases recorded, some brides as young as 11
The most recent entries in the overview relate to 2026. They include, among other things, marriages of 16- and 17-year-old girls to adult men.
• Child marriage / UNICEF
In the southwestern German state of Baden-Württemberg, a total of 358 so-called child marriages have been officially recorded since 2012.
Euro News reported that only eight of these forced marriages have so far been legally annulled.
According to authorities, the other 350 cases were brought to an end in other ways.
This alarming finding comes from a response by the Baden-Württemberg state government to a minor inquiry submitted by AfD state parliament members Nikolaos Boutakoglou and Emely Knorr.
The Tübingen regional authority is responsible for recording the data, the answer came from the Ministry of the Interior.
The eight final annulments took place between 2018 and 2024. Among the documented cases was the marriage of an 11-year-old girl from Iraq to a 17-year-old Iraqi, which was annulled in 2020.
As early as 2018, the marriage of a 14-year-old Afghan girl to a 30-year-old man had been ended.
In 2024 two further annulments were added: they concerned a 16-year-old German girl and a 25-year-old Pakistani man and a 16-year-old Syrian girl and a 27-year-old man from the same country.State parliament member Nikolaos Boutakoglou wrote on Facebook that the issue was “really awful” but was being treated as a taboo.
According to its own account, the ministry deals exclusively with such marriages entered into abroad.
Since summer 2017, the Act to Combat Child Marriages has been in force in Germany.
In 2024, the Bundestag adopted new rules to protect minors in marriages concluded abroad.
Hundreds of cases without state intervention
The significantly higher number of cases concluded in other ways raises questions about how these marriages continued.
For the period from 2015 to 2026, the regional authority lists a total of 350 proceedings under the heading “other disposals.”But what became of the other child marriages?
The state government cites, among other things, the death of a spouse, reaching adulthood, a decision not to seek annulment or a new marriage concluded abroad.
In these cases, there was therefore no legally binding annulment.
For 2023, the records include the case of a 12-year-old Afghan girl who was married to a 21-year-old Afghan man. Girls aged 13 and 14 also appear several times in the statistics.
The most recent entries in the overview relate to 2026. They include, among other things, marriages of 16- and 17-year-old girls to adult men.
The statistics record the age of the spouses at the time of marriage and their respective nationalities.
Pope Leo XIV has announced that he will undergo surgery in the coming days to remove a small, localized nodule found on his lung during a recent routine medical checkup.
The 71-year-old pontiff made the disclosure himself during his weekly Angelus prayer in St. Peter’s Square. “Doctors found a localized nodule in my lung,” he said. “It was detected at a very early stage and is well-contained.
The doctors believe it is advisable to intervene, so, following their advice, I have decided to undergo surgery to remove it.”
The Vatican confirmed the operation is scheduled for the first days of this week at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital, which has a dedicated papal suite. Holy See spokesman Matteo Bruni said the Pope is expected to need about a week to recover. On Monday, the Vatican added that Leo will be admitted Tuesday morning.
The nodule’s nature—whether benign or malignant—has not been specified. Medical experts note that most lung nodules are non-cancerous, and early detection generally carries a favorable outlook.
This marks the first significant health issue of Leo’s papacy since his election in May 2025. The American-born pope, known for remaining physically active, has continued his full schedule of audiences and is still expected to proceed with a planned trip to Latin America next month.
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