Pak suspends BlackBerry services, blocks Twitter

May 22, 2010 - SHAFQAT ALI with agency inputs |

Islamabad

After banning Facebook, YouTube and scores of other websites to black out the blasphemous caricatures of Prophet Mohammed, the Pakistan government on Friday put on halt BlackBerry services “until further orders”.
“It has been noticed that the blocked websites or links were accessible on BlackBerry. So the government has directed to suspend BlackBerry services,” a senior government official told this newspaper. The cellular companies, he said, have been directed by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to halt BlackBerry services till the government takes a further decision.
Pakistani authorities also restricted access to popular social networking website Twitter.
Web users were unable to log on to Twitter after Internet service providers in Pakistan blocked access to the site. When users tried to log on to the site: their browsers displayed a message that said: “This site is restricted.” Over 450 URLs have been blocked so far by the authorities. The PTA on Thursday said that YouTube had been blocked due to “sacrilegious contents” but did not point to specific material on the website that prompted the authorities to block it.
The government acted against both Facebook and YouTube after it failed to persuade the websites to remove the “derogatory material,” the statement said. On Friday, hundreds of people took to streets in various cities of Pakistan to protest caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed on Facebook.

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‘Never created cartoon page on Facebook’
Washington, May 21: Molly Norris, an American cartoonist, on Friday said that she never created a page on social networking site Facebook that encourages users to post caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed and apologised to the Muslim community.
“Hello, I never created a Facebook page for EDMD (Everybody Draw Mohammed Day). A stranger to me did so. Thank You,” Seattle-based Norris, said in a large font posted on her website on Friday. —PTI

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