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By Carlos Eduardo Ruiz and Vanessa Jaramillo
Basic English II

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Twitter ad sales surge, shares rise 11 percent

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Twitter ad sales surge, shares rise 11 percent

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Twitter said the number of its daily active users rose by 9 percent year-on-year, weaker than an 11 percent jump in the previous quarter and its slowest growth rate in two years. The company does not disclose the total number of daily users.

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Twitter Inc () shares jumped as much as 22 percent on Thursday, putting them on track for their biggest one-day gain, as the social media company easily beat Wall Street's revenue and profit estimates by selling more ads even though it lost users after purging millions of fake accounts.

The surge in shares reversed a 19 percent fall three months ago when Twitter shocked Wall Street with a similar decline in users. This time, investors welcomed Twitter removing accounts used for disinformation, hate speech and other abuse as the best way to solidify a base of high-quality users who are attractive to advertisers.

"If they are getting rid of bots, fake accounts and fighting hate speech, then it's actually good for the health of the platform overall," said Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser. "That is certainly more appealing to advertisers."

Twitter's advertising revenue jumped 29 percent to $650 million in the third quarter from a year earlier, boosted by ad sales on broadcasts from media companies including Live Nation Entertainment, Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer.

That contributed to a similar jump in overall revenue from a year earlier to $758 million, beating analysts' average estimate of $702.6 million, according to Refinitiv data.

The company reported adjusted profit of 21 cents per share, well above the average estimate of 14 cents.

TWEET PURGE

Twitter has deleted millions of suspicious accounts after it and other social media services were used in misinformation campaigns attempting influence voters in the 2016 U.S. presidential race and other elections. Last week it disclosed it had removed some 10 million tweets that it thought were the work of Russian and Iranian government-backed influence operations.

Twitter said in a conference call on Thursday that the cleanup effort, which it launched in March and calls a "health" initiative, will allow it to grow revenue faster than users for a sustained period.

"Health ultimately is a growth factor for the service, and we do believe that's important not just for the overall experience, but in terms of making Twitter long-term enduring as well," Twitter Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey said during the call.

Neither Dorsey nor Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal clearly answered questions from analysts on a call after the results on how Twitter would ultimately reverse the decline users.

Monthly active users (MAUs) fell to 326 million in the third quarter, below the average analyst forecast of 331.5 million, according to FactSet. Twitter said it expects them to fall below 326 million in the current quarter, missing the average forecast of 333.4 million.

Twitter usage has been stagnant for more than a year, causing some analysts to worry that growth has peaked.

Twitter "did a superb job of explaining the monthly active user decline, which buys them time, but the stock will come under pressure if MAUs don't start to grow again in 2019," said Michael Pachter, managing director of equity research for Wedbush Securities.

AD GAINS

Those concerns have been somewhat offset by increases in advertising sales from video which suggest the company is succeeding in efforts to generate more cash from each user and investors have been looking for solid evidence that it would lead to sustainable growth in revenue and profits.

"Twitter continues to 'do a lot with a little.' User growth is lackluster, but the company is eking out more from current users," said Jim Cridlin, global head of innovation at WPP's Mindshare media buying agency.

Distribution deals with U.S. Major League Baseball, video game publisher Activision, Sony Music and Vice are starting to lure advertisers to Twitter's live premium video, he said.

Twitter said the number of its daily active users rose by 9 percent year-on-year, weaker than an 11 percent jump in the previous quarter and its slowest growth rate in two years. The company does not disclose the total number of daily users.

Twitter shares were up 17 percent at $32.05 in morning trade. They are still down about 42 percent from their 3-1/2 year high of $47.79, hit in June.

(This version of the story was refiled to add CEO Jack Dorsey after quote in paragraph 9)

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Twitter shares hit biggest one-day gain as ad sales surge

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Twitter Inc shares jumped as much as 22 percent on Thursday, putting them on track for their biggest one-day gain, as the social media company easily beat Wall Street's revenue and profit estimates by selling more ads even though it lost users after purging millions of fake accounts.

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First for adventure: Sri Lanka ranked top country for travel in 2019 by lonely planet.

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First for adventure: Sri Lanka ranked top country for travel in 2019 by lonely planet.

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Improved train services mean it’s easier than ever to explore Sri Lanka but campaigners warn a surge in tourism could ruin its natural beauty

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Mail bombs: Robert De Niro and Joe Biden latest targets

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Mail bombs: Robert De Niro and Joe Biden latest targets

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A suspect package similar to those sent to senior public figures has been sent to a New York restaurant owned by the actor Robert De Niro, the FBI has said.

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A suspect package similar to those sent to senior public figures has been sent to a New York restaurant owned by the actor Robert De Niro, the FBI has said.

The device was found at the Tribeca Grill in Manhattan early on Thursday local time, said the city's mayor.

Former Vice-President Joe Biden has also received two suspect packages.

The latest incident marks the eighth critic of President Donald Trump to receive such a package this week.

De Niro - the star of films Raging Bull and Meet the Parents - is a vocal Trump opponent.

What we know about US mail bomb threats

In the past he has called him "a national disaster", "a mutt who doesn't know what he's talking about" and said that he wanted to "punch him in the face".

When the Oscar-winner attacked him at the Tony Awards in June, the president responded by calling De Niro a "very low IQ individual".

The New York Police Department said the restaurant building - which also houses his production company TriBeCa Films - was empty at the time the suspicious device arrived, NBC reports.

Trump attacks 'media hostility' after mail bombs

De Niro offered Italy escape from Trump

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio praised the "really quick-witted work of a security guard" who alerted authorities.

According to the Associated Press, the security guard was off work on Thursday and had seen an image in a news report of the packages others had received.

That individual then recalled spotting something similar in the building's mailroom and immediately called authorities who removed the device around 06:30 local time (11:30GMT), AP reports.

"We have to be ready for any eventuality," Mr de Blasio said. "It might be hours, it might be days, it might be weeks."

Shortly after the news about De Niro's restaurant broke, President Trump appeared to pin the blame on the media, tweeting: "A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News."

He made no direct reference to the device found at the restaurant, or any of the earlier incidents.

The series of bomb alerts began on Monday, when explosive devices were sent to locations in New York, the Washington DC area and Florida.

The first was found in the post box of billionaire businessman George Soros, a major Democratic Party donor.

Other devices were sent to the following individuals, according to the FBI:

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

Former President Barack Obama

Former Vice-President Joe Biden

Former CIA Director John Brennan, care of CNN

Former Attorney General Eric Holder

California Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters

CNN's New York office was evacuated on Wednesday morning, after the package addressed to Mr Brennan was found in its mailroom.

Two devices were sent to separate offices for Congresswoman Waters.

Two devices addressed to former Vice-president Joe Biden were discovered in his home state of Delaware on Thursday, investigators said.

None of the devices went off. The FBI has launched a manhunt for their sender.

The attempted bombings come just under two weeks before the mid-term elections, with US politics highly polarised.

President Trump first responded on Wednesday by calling for more civility in public life, saying: "Those engaged in the political arena must stop treating political opponents as being morally defective.

"No-one should carelessly compare political opponents to historic villains, which is done often."

The president made no specific reference to the intended recipients of the packages.

He later told the media to end the "constant negative and oftentimes false attacks".

Former CIA Director John Brennan, who was targeted at the CNN office on Wednesday, tweeted to Mr Trump on Thursday: "Stop blaming others. Look in the mirror. Your inflammatory rhetoric, insults, lies, & encouragement of physical violence are disgraceful."

Why is this so political?

The president's critics have called his remarks hypocritical, as he often uses vicious language against his opponents and the press.

Last week, he said Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Hillary Clinton and former Attorney General Eric Holder - who were all targeted with suspicious packages - "are losing it", and that "they've gone so far left that they can't even believe that they're over there".

During his campaign Mr Trump promised to pay the legal bills of anyone who assaults a protester and vowed to jail his opponent Hillary Clinton after the election.

CNN's President Jeff Zucker on Wednesday condemned the "total and complete lack of understanding at the White House about the seriousness of their continued attacks". He added that Mr Trump "should understand their words matter".

But conservatives say Democrats are to blame for the state of political discourse in the US.

They say Democrats, including those who were targeted in the bomb scare, have encouraged "angry mob" behaviour.

Republican Congressman Steve Scalise, who nearly died after he was shot in 2017 by a deranged supporter of progressive Senator Bernie Sanders during a morning softball practice, wrote in Fox News on Thursday of the "growing list of violent or threatening actions taken against conservatives by Democrats".

"The threats and the violence have not let up and instead of seeing my Democrat colleagues calling for an end, there have been calls for their supporters to keep going, to do even more to threaten Republicans," he wrote.

He cited multiple examples of Republicans being "chased out of restaurants" and of Republican lawmakers who have received death threats against themselves and their families.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders praised Mr Trump's reaction to the bomb scares on Fox News, saying: "The President, I think could not have been more presidential."

She added that "certainly the media has a role to play in this process" adding that "90% of the coverage of this president is negative despite the historic successes".

"That is not helpful to the American discourse," she added.

Some of Mr Trump's supporters have said they believe the packages are part of a Democratic plot to win votes in the mid-terms, but there is no evidence for this.

Why Trump attacks the media

An FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force "will continue to work to identify and arrest whosoever is responsible for sending these packages," the agency's director Christopher Wray said in a statement.

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De Niro and Biden targeted by 'mail bombs'

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A suspect package similar to those sent to senior public figures has been sent to a New York restaurant owned by the actor Robert De Niro, the FBI has said. The device was found at the Tribeca Grill in Manhattan early on Thursday local time, said the city's mayor.

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Strictly: BBC denies fixing allegation after Seann Walsh survives

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Strictly: BBC denies fixing allegation after Seann Walsh survives

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DJ Vick Hope, who was voted off Strictly Come Dancing this weekend, said she witnessed a ‘very strange’ conversation between the producers and judges before the comedian was saved

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Strictly: BBC denies fixing allegation after Seann Walsh survives

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DJ Vick Hope, who was voted off Strictly Come Dancing this weekend, said she witnessed a 'very strange' conversation between the producers and judges before the comedian was saved

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Colombia’s congress needed only 29 seconds to sink anti-corruption bill.

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Colombia’s congress needed only 29 seconds to sink anti-corruption bill.

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It took Colombia’s Congress less than 30 seconds on Tuesday to sink the first of seven anti-corruption proposals President Ivan Duque promised to support, but didn’t.

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It took Colombia's Congress less than 30 seconds on Tuesday to sink the first of seven anti-corruption proposals President Ivan Duque promised to support, but didn't.

The country's opposition, and in particular the Green Alliance party that had promoted the anti-corruption measures, is furious and accused the government of betrayal.

Following a referendum in August, Duque promised to work together with all political parties to guarantee the approval of the measures to curb corruption in Congress, widely perceived as Colombia's most corrupt institution.

But twenty-nine seconds after the chairman of the House, Alejandro Chacon ( Liberal Party), called to vote on a three-term limit for lawmakers, he ended the vote already.

The move surprised many lawmakers who didn't even have the time to walk to their seat and press the voting button, according to Representative Juanita Goebertus of the centrist Green Alliance Party.

Former Senator Claudia Lopez, who organized the anti-corruption referendum, accused Duque of deceiving the opposition when he promised to guarantee the approval of the anti-corruption measures.

The president failed to fulfill his promise to send a message of urgency regarding the proposals of the referendum. This is why, as expected, the proposals were betrayed.

Former Senator Claudia Lopez

According to the popular anti-corruption advocate, Duque and Congress have no intention to approve the anti-corruption measures and instead are preparing a counter-reform that could result in even more nepotism and corruption.

"It's called a 'political reform' and will be presented in the senate. It's a mockery of citizenship frankly," Lopez was quoted as saying by newspaper El Espectador.

Ruling party Representative Gabriel Santos ( Democratic Center), the son of Colombia's ambassador to Washington DC Francisco Santos and a nephew of former President Juan Manuel Santos, hit back and said Lopez should blame herself for accusing Congress of corruption.

The guilty one is she who devoted herself in the media to labeling many congressmen, including myself, as corrupt. That's not the way to do politics.

Gabriel Santos

Without a whiff of irony, the youngest heir of the Santos dynasty claimed that "there exist no clientelism anymore."

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Colombia's congress needed only 29 seconds to sink anti-corruption bill

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It took Colombia's Congress less than 30 seconds on Tuesday to sink the first of seven anti-corruption proposals President Ivan Duque promised to support, but didn't. The country's opposition, and in particular the Green Alliance party that had promoted the anti-corruption measures, is furious and accused the government of betrayal.

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Authoritarians like Trump target trans people for a reason Mischa Haider

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Authoritarians like Trump target trans people for a reason Mischa Haider

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Transgender rights are crucial in the struggle not only for human rights, but women’s liberation

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Authoritarians like Trump target trans people for a reason | Mischa Haider

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Transgender rights are crucial in the struggle not only for human rights, but women's liberation writes Mischa Haider, a transgender researcher at Harvard