Twitter chief executive Elon Musk has become the most followed person on the social media platform.
Mr Musk, who bought the California-based company for $44 billion last October, had 133,072,571 followers at 11.22am UAE time, overtaking former US president Barack Obama, who had 133,043,280, according to their Twitter profiles.
The world's second-wealthiest person, who is also the chief executive of Tesla, is gaining an average of 100,000 users per day, according to Sawyer Merritt, an investor in the electric car company.
Mr Musk's move into the top spot came slightly later than some predicted. In November, analytics website Social Blade told the BBC that he would overtake Mr Obama on January 17.
At the time, Mr Musk was gaining roughly 270,000 followers a day, Social Blade said.
Canadian singer Justin Bieber is in third place with 113.31 million followers, followed by fellow artists Katy Perry and Rihanna, and footballer Cristiano Ronaldo, who all have more than 100 million followers.
Rounding out the top 10 are singer Taylor Swift, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, former US president Donald Trump and singer Lady Gaga.
Mr Musk, a prolific user of Twitter, has drawn polarising opinions for his tweets, which have at times also caused him legal trouble.
Probably the most infamous — and costliest — instance was in 2018, when he tweeted that he was taking Tesla private at $420 a share, with “funding secured”.
The deal never materialised and it resulted in Mr Musk and Tesla settling with the US Securities and Exchange Commission for $40 million.
Last month, Mr Musk was also accused of manipulating Twitter's algorithm to boost the reach of his own tweets.
He instructed a team of his engineers to tweak the algorithm in order for his tweets to gain traction, resulting in a flood of his messages appearing on users' feeds, Platformer.news reported.
Twitter's monthly active user numbers are lower than other social platforms — it had about 556 million in February, ranking at 14th place, according to the latest data from Statista.
However, it has become a key platform for public discourse and a flashpoint for discussions that at times have also led to dissemination of disinformation and harmful content.
Mr Musk, who championed free speech during his campaign to acquire Twitter last year, sparked concerns that the network might spiral out of control with fake news.
However, the company tried to address these concerns by policing its own content and imposing sanctions on offending accounts, including revamping Twitter's blue check verification system.
He is also attempting to make the platform more transparent by making Twitter's algorithm open source.
Twitter will make the algorithm for recommending tweets public on March 31, Mr Musk said.
It plans to use artificial intelligence to curb the manipulation of public opinion on the platform.
Mr Musk's time at the helm of Twitter has been tumultuous.
He has fired more than half of the company's employees and shut down units and offices around the world, raising concerns that there may not be enough people to carry out oversight roles in key areas of its operations.
Twitter's revenue and adjusted earnings plunged by 40 per cent on an annual basis in December as several advertisers withdrew after Mr Musk took charge of the company, The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month.
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
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Real estate tokenisation project
Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.
The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.
Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.
Will the pound fall to parity with the dollar?
The idea of pound parity now seems less far-fetched as the risk grows that Britain may split away from the European Union without a deal.
Rupert Harrison, a fund manager at BlackRock, sees the risk of it falling to trade level with the dollar on a no-deal Brexit. The view echoes Morgan Stanley’s recent forecast that the currency can plunge toward $1 (Dh3.67) on such an outcome. That isn’t the majority view yet – a Bloomberg survey this month estimated the pound will slide to $1.10 should the UK exit the bloc without an agreement.
New Prime Minister Boris Johnson has repeatedly said that Britain will leave the EU on the October 31 deadline with or without an agreement, fuelling concern the nation is headed for a disorderly departure and fanning pessimism toward the pound. Sterling has fallen more than 7 per cent in the past three months, the worst performance among major developed-market currencies.
“The pound is at a much lower level now but I still think a no-deal exit would lead to significant volatility and we could be testing parity on a really bad outcome,” said Mr Harrison, who manages more than $10 billion in assets at BlackRock. “We will see this game of chicken continue through August and that’s likely negative for sterling,” he said about the deadlocked Brexit talks.
The pound fell 0.8 per cent to $1.2033 on Friday, its weakest closing level since the 1980s, after a report on the second quarter showed the UK economy shrank for the first time in six years. The data means it is likely the Bank of England will cut interest rates, according to Mizuho Bank.
The BOE said in November that the currency could fall even below $1 in an analysis on possible worst-case Brexit scenarios. Options-based calculations showed around a 6.4 per cent chance of pound-dollar parity in the next one year, markedly higher than 0.2 per cent in early March when prospects of a no-deal outcome were seemingly off the table.
Bloomberg
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Gender pay parity on track in the UAE
The UAE has a good record on gender pay parity, according to Mercer's Total Remuneration Study.
"In some of the lower levels of jobs women tend to be paid more than men, primarily because men are employed in blue collar jobs and women tend to be employed in white collar jobs which pay better," said Ted Raffoul, career products leader, Mena at Mercer. "I am yet to see a company in the UAE – particularly when you are looking at a blue chip multinationals or some of the bigger local companies – that actively discriminates when it comes to gender on pay."
Mr Raffoul said most gender issues are actually due to the cultural class, as the population is dominated by Asian and Arab cultures where men are generally expected to work and earn whereas women are meant to start a family.
"For that reason, we see a different gender gap. There are less women in senior roles because women tend to focus less on this but that’s not due to any companies having a policy penalising women for any reasons – it’s a cultural thing," he said.
As a result, Mr Raffoul said many companies in the UAE are coming up with benefit package programmes to help working mothers and the career development of women in general.
