Welcome To Siremmaxy's Blog

At least 29 children have been killed and 30 wounded in a Saudi-led coalition air strike in Yemen, the International Committee of the Red Cross says. The children were travelling on a bus that was hit at a market in Dahyan, in the northern province of Saada. The health ministry run by the rebel Houthi movement put the death toll at 43, and said 61 people were wounded. The coalition, which is backing Yemen's government in a war with the Houthis, said its actions were "legitimate". It insists it never deliberately targets civilians, but human rights groups have accused it of bombing markets, schools, hospitals and residential areas. Meanwhile the new UN special envoy to Yemen, former British diplomat Martin Griffiths, is planning to invite the warring parties to Geneva in September to discuss a framework for negotiations. Media caption UN envoy Martin Griffiths says that if peace efforts in Yemen fail, the world could be looking at “Syria-plus". He

Some of the world's biggest celebrities have lost millions of Twitter followers after the company cracked down on "locked" accounts. US singer Katy Perry, the most-followed user on Twitter, and Lady Gaga lost about 2.5 million followers. Barack Obama went down 2.1 million. Twitter said it had taken the decision due to its "ongoing and global effort to build trust". It follows renewed scrutiny over fake news and users on social media. The new measures mean that any user whose account is locked for unusual activity - such as being blocked or sending unusual volumes of Tweets - and who did not respond to a prompt to verify their identity would be excluded from Twitter follower counts. The head of the company's legal team, Vijaya Gadde, said that most accounts would only lose around four followers as a result of the new measures. But she warned that more popular accounts would "experience a more significant drop". Image copyright REUTER

Twitter shares have closed down more than 20% after the messaging platform reported a fall in active users. User numbers fell to 335 million in the second quarter of the year, down one million from the previous three months. During the quarter Twitter deleted many fake accounts - a move that chief executive Jack Dorsey said was reflected in the results. The slide to just under $35 a share came despite Twitter reporting record quarterly profits. It posted a profit of $100m, marking Twitter's third consecutive quarter in profits, with sales up 24% to a better-than-expected $711m. Under pressure "Our second-quarter results reflect the work we're doing to ensure more people get value from Twitter every day," Mr Dorsey said. "We want people to feel safe freely expressing themselves and have launched new tools to address problem behaviours that distort and distract from the public conversation." Tech firms have been under pressure in several cou

Donald Trump has offered to meet Iran's leaders with "no preconditions" and "any time they want". "I'd meet with anybody. I believe in meetings," the US president told reporters at the White House. Mr Trump's conciliatory approach comes after he and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani traded hostile warnings earlier this month. In May, the US left a deal which curbed Iran's nuclear activities in return for the lifting of international sanctions. Washington is preparing to re-impose sanctions on Tehran within days - despite objections from the UK, France, China, Russia and Germany, which also signed the 2015 agreement. The US is deeply suspicious of Iranian activity in the Middle East and is an ally of Israel and Saudi Arabia, two of Iran's foes. "If they want to meet, we'll meet," Mr Trump said. Hamid Aboutalebi, an adviser to President Rouhani, tweeted in response to Mr Trump that  "returning to the nuc