Twitter will roll out verified gold and grey check marks as it relaunches the coveted blue check service next Friday, Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said in a tweet, after holding off the rollout earlier this week.
"Gold check for companies, grey check for governments, blue for individuals (celebrities or not). Painful, but necessary," Musk said in a tweet.
All verified accounts will be manually authenticated before the check is activated, Musk said.
"Individuals can have a secondary tiny logo to show they belong to an organisation if verified as such by that organisation," Musk said in another tweet, adding that he will give a longer explanation next week.
The company had paused its recently announced $8 blue check subscription service as fake accounts mushroomed, and had said the sought-after blue check subscription service will be relaunched on November 29.
The blue check mark was previously reserved for verified accounts of politicians, famous personalities, journalists and other public figures.
Bangladesh Nationalist Party acting Chairman Tarique Rahman returned from nearly 17 years in exile on Thursday, a homecoming the party hopes will energise supporters with Rahman poised to be the top contender for prime minister in February.
Syria will start swapping old banknotes for new ones from January 1, 2026, Central Bank Governor Abdelkader Husrieh said on Thursday, under a plan to replace Assad-era notes to try to strengthen the currency's value.
At least 5 were killed and 35 others injured when a bomber detonated an explosive inside a mosque in Maiduguri, the capital of Nigeria's Borno state, during evening prayers, police said.
A helicopter has crashed on Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro, killing five people, the civil aviation authority said on Thursday, while local media reported that the aircraft was on a medical rescue mission.
Fourteen countries including Britain, Canada, and Germany have condemned the Israeli security cabinet's approval of 19 new settlements in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, saying they violated international law and risked fuelling instability.