Emarketer on Wednesday forecast that ad revenue at X, formerly Twitter, will grow this year as brands fear retaliation by politically connected owner Elon Musk if they stay away.X’s billionaire owner, the world’s richest person, is a major financial backer of US President Donald Trump, and heads a Department of Government Efficiency that has been slashing the ranks of government employees.”Many advertisers may view spending on X as a cost of doing business in order to mitigate potential legal or financial repercussions,” said Emarketer principal analyst Jasmine Enberg.”But fear is not a sustainable motivator and the situation remains volatile, partly as some consumers’ discontent toward Musk grows.”Also factored into the expectation that X will have its first year of positive ad growth since 2021 was Meta’s decision to drop or amend content moderation protocols, as the tech giant cozies up to Trump.Industry watchers expect the hateful content that has flourished on X under Musk to also pervade Meta’s platforms as the changes go into effect. Emarketer expects X ad revenue worldwide to grow 16.5 percent this year, after losing ground annually since Musk bought Twitter for about $44 billion in late 2022.”X’s ad business is recovering, but it’s too soon to call it a rebound,” Enberg said.The social media platform’s forecasted revenue this year will still be less than it was in 2019, according to Emarketer.X has managed to attract advertising from small- and medium-sized businesses that Twitter historically struggled to win over, the analyst said.Meta’s recent decision to ease off on moderating content could be benefitting X, Enberg reasoned.Emarketer forecast that Meta ad revenue will grow slightly more than 11 percent in the United States this year.”While advertisers still care about brand safety, many are getting a reality check that they may not have as much control over where and how their ads show up as they thought,” Enberg said.”The kind of hateful and controversial content that prompted advertisers to flee X is no more acceptable, but there is a sense that it could become unavoidable.”

US President Donald Trump ramped up his claims to Greenland on Wednesday, saying ahead of a visit by Vice President JD Vance that the United States needed to take control of the Danish island for “international security.”Since coming to power in January, Trump has repeatedly insisted that he wants the self-governed territory to be in Washington’s grip, refusing to rule out the use of force to do so.”We need Greenland for international safety and security. We need it. We have to have it,” Trump told podcaster Vince Coglianese. “I hate to put it that way, but we’re going to have to have it.”Greenland, which is seeking independence from Denmark, holds massive untapped mineral and oil reserves, though oil and uranium exploration are banned.It is also strategically located between North America and Europe at a time of rising US, Chinese and Russian interest in the Arctic, where sea lanes have opened up because of climate change.Asked if he thought Greenlanders were eager to join the United States, Trump said he did not know.”We have to convince them,” he said. “And we have to have that land, because it’s not possible to properly defend a large section of this Earth, not just the United States, without it.”Trump’s comments prompted Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen to say on her Facebook account: “We mustn’t have illusions — President Trump’s interest in Greenland is not going away”.”They know that Greenland is not for sale. They know that Greenland doesn’t want to be part of the United States,” she added, saying the message had been communicated “unambiguously.”- Dogsled visit dropped -Trump’s latest strident comments come as Vice President Vance is due to accompany his wife Usha on a visit to the US-run Pituffik Space Base in Greenland on Friday.Frederiksen and Greenland’s outgoing Prime Minister Mute Egede had earlier harshly criticized plans by a US delegation to visit the Arctic island uninvited for what was initially a much broader visit.Egede had characterized the initial plans as “foreign interference,” noting that the outgoing government had not “sent out any invitations for visits, private or official.”On Wednesday, Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen welcomed the decision to limit the visit to the US space base.”I think it’s very positive that the Americans have canceled their visit among Greenlandic society. They will only visit their own base, Pituffik, and we have nothing against that,” he told public broadcaster DR.Formerly known as Thule Air Base, the Pituffik Space Base is the United States’ northernmost military installation and supports missile warning, missile defense and space surveillance missions.The White House on Tuesday said the Vances’ visit to the space base would take place in lieu of the second lady’s scheduled visit to a dogsled race in Sisimiut, where an anti-US demonstration was reportedly planned.- ‘Respect this process’ -Greenlandic officials have repeatedly said the territory does not want to be either Danish or American, but is “open for business” with everyone.”There is no doubt we find ourselves in a tough situation,” Frederiksen said of Trump’s repeated comments on a takeover, predicting “a situation that will ebb and flow, maybe for a long time yet.”According to opinion polls, most Greenlanders support independence from Denmark but not annexation by Washington.Following March 11 elections, Greenland has only a transitional government, with parties still in negotiations to form a new coalition government.Marc Jacobsen, a senior lecturer at the Royal Danish Defense College, called the decision to limit the US visit “a de-escalation,” a term also used by Foreign Minister Lokke.”You do not come to another country when you haven’t been welcomed,” he told AFP.Jacobsen added that the planned anti-US demonstration in Sisimiut, after a similar protest in the capital Nuuk on March 15, may have also factored into Vance’s decision to contain the visit.

US authorities have detained a Turkish university student, the latest action taken against a foreign learner associated with pro-Palestinian campus activism as President Donald Trump cracks down on the movement.Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk was detained by federal agents late Tuesday in the town of Somerville, Massachusetts, the school’s president said in a statement.Ozturk filed a motion demanding authorities show lawful grounds for her detention and a judge issued a decision barring officers from removing her from Massachusetts, according to legal filings made public Tuesday.Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s detainee locator tool showed that Ozturk was in custody Wednesday, although it did not state where.Ozturk co-authored an article in the university student newspaper The Tufts Daily in March 2024 criticizing the college’s handling of student anger around Israel’s war in Gaza.According to the newspaper, Ozturk is a doctoral candidate in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development.A protest was planned for 2130 GMT Wednesday in Somerville to oppose Ozturk’s detention, according to the Cambridge Day news site.Trump has targeted prestigious universities that became the epicenter of the US student protest movement sparked by Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, stripping federal funds and directing immigration officers to deport foreign student demonstrators.Critics argue that the campaign amounts to retribution and will have a chilling effect on free speech, while its supporters insist it is necessary to restore order to campuses and protect Jewish students.At New York’s Columbia University, immigration officers detained one student, permanent resident Mahmoud Khalil whose lawyers are fighting his deportation, while a judge thwarted efforts to detain another, Yunseo Chung.Separately, a number of university professors sued the Trump administration in Massachusetts Tuesday, arguing its campaign targeting foreign academics was illegal.”The policy prevents or impedes Plaintiffs’ US citizen members from hearing from, and associating with, their non-citizen students and colleagues,” the lawsuit reads.In addition, the American Association of University Professors and the American Federation of Teachers asked a New York judge to declare Trump’s slashing of $400 million from Columbia’s budget unconstitutional and to restore the funding.Columbia announced Friday a package of concessions to the Trump administration around defining anti-Semitism, policing protests and oversight for specific academic departments.They stopped short however of some of the more strenuous demands of the Trump administration, which nonetheless welcomed the Ivy League college’s proposals.

US President Donald Trump’s homeland security chief visited El Salvador on Wednesday for talks on migrant deportations and to see a mega-prison housing Venezuelans expelled by his administration.Relatives and Caracas say the 238 deported Venezuelans are innocent migrants, but Washington accuses them of belonging to the Tren de Aragua criminal gang, which it has designated a “terrorist” organization.The deportations “sent a message to the world that America is no longer a safe haven for violent criminals,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on social media before her visit.She welcomed the opportunity to see for herself “the detention center where the worst-of-the-worst criminals are housed,” on the first stop of a regional tour that will also include Colombia and Mexico.Noem said she would meet Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to discuss how the United States “can increase the number of deportation flights and removals of violent criminals from the US.”Trump invoked rarely used US wartime legislation to fly the Venezuelans to El Salvador on March 16, without the migrants being afforded any kind of court hearing.The deportations took place despite a US federal judge granting a temporary suspension of the expulsion order, and the men were taken in chains, their heads freshly shorn, to El Salvador’s maximum security “Terrorism Confinement Center” (CECOT).On Monday, a law firm hired by Caracas filed a habeas corpus petition, demanding justification be provided for the migrants’ continued detention.Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said the motion seeks the release of countrymen he described as having been kidnapped.According to the White House, Washington paid the Bukele administration around $6 million for the detention of the deportees.- ‘Dangerous step’ -Rights group Amnesty International said the mass expulsion “represents not only a flagrant disregard of the United States’ human rights obligations, but also a dangerous step toward authoritarian practices.”It said there was “a clear and troubling connection” between Bukele’s methods and the recent US actions, as “both rely on a lack of due process and the criminalization of individuals based on discriminatory criteria.”Bukele is hailed at home for his crackdown on violent crime — with tens of thousands of suspected gangsters sent to the maximum security CECOT facility.Human rights groups have criticized the drive for a wide range of alleged abuses.Salvadoran Minister of Justice and Security Gustavo Villatoro will accompany Noem on the visit to CECOT, considered the largest prison in Latin America.Guarded by soldiers and police, the jail has high electrified walls and a capacity for 40,000 inmates, who are denied family visits.Human rights organizations have voiced concern that more innocent migrants risk being incarcerated at the prison.”There is growing evidence that many people who were sent to El Salvador are not part of Tren de Aragua, and that they are exposed to serious human rights violations,” said Juan Pappier, deputy Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “The main danger is that the US continues sending innocent people” to Salvadoran prisons, he told AFP.Salvadoran authorities have arrested more than 86,000 suspected gang members under Bukele’s crackdown, although several thousand were released after being found innocent.Collaborating with Trump “could be a risky move” for Bukele, despite the potential benefits, said Diego Chaves-Gonzalez, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute in the United States.”It could also generate tensions if a future US administration considers that these practices violate human rights or affect bilateral cooperation,” he told AFP.Salvadoran analyst and academic Carlos Carcach said the cooperation would “reinforce the negative image” that the Central American country already has due to Bukele’s methods.”What we are witnessing is the consolidation of an authoritarian regime in El Salvador with the support of the world’s greatest power,” he said.