Twitter to hand @POTUS account to Joe Biden on Jan 20, even if Trump doesn't concede
Los Angeles: Micro-blogging site Twitter will hand control of the presidential @POTUS account to President-elect Joe Biden the moment he is sworn in on inauguration day on January 20, even if President Donald Trump has not conceded his election loss, the company has said.
The @POTUS account is the official account of the President of the United States and is separate from the @realDonaldTrump account that Trump uses to tweet.
Biden, 78, will be the 46th US President when he is sworn in.
The handover requires no sharing of information between the outgoing Trump team and the incoming Biden team, Twitter said, adding that all existing tweets on those accounts will be archived and Twitter will transfer the accounts reset to zero tweets to the Biden White House that day.
"Twitter is actively preparing to support the transition of White House institutional Twitter accounts on January 20th, 2021," Twitter spokesperson Nick Pacilio told Politico in an email.
"As we did for the presidential transition in 2017, this process is being done in close consultation with the National Archives and Records Administration," Pacilio said.
The same goes for @whitehouse, @VP, @FLOTUS, and a handful of other official accounts associated with the presidency, the report said on Friday.
Twitter also confirmed that staffers will meet with representatives from the Biden-Harris transition team in the coming months to review how the new administration plans to use its government-related accounts, The Hill reported.
The @POTUS account has more than 32 million followers and will provide Biden with another way to communicate with the public while in office.
Trump, the 45th US President, has so far refused to concede the November 3 presidential race to Biden, even though results released by election officials clearly give the race to the former US vice president. He has filed multiple lawsuits challenging the poll results in several states.
Biden was declared the winner of the US presidential election on November 7 after flipping the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin to the Democrats' column.
Biden now has 306 electoral votes to Trump's 232 votes. To win the race to the White House, the successful candidate should have at least 270 electoral votes out of the 538-member Electoral College.
An archive of Obama's @POTUS account can be found under the handle @POTUS44.
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Delhi court sentences Haryana gangster Vikas Gulia, associate to life imprisonment
New Delhi (PTI): A Delhi court has sentenced Haryana gangster Vikas Gulia and his associate to life imprisonment under MCOCA provisions, but refused the death penalty saying the offences did not fall under the category of 'rarest of the rare cases'.
Additional Sessions Judge Vandana Jain sentenced Gulia and Dhirpal alias Kana to rigorous imprisonment for life under Section 3 (punishment for organised crime) of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA).
In an order dated December 13, the judge said, "Death sentence can only be awarded in 'rarest of the rare cases' wherein the murder is committed in an extremely inhumane, barbarous, grotesque or dastardly manner as to arouse umbrage of the community at large."
The judge said that on weighing the aggravating and mitigating circumstances, it could be concluded that the present case did not fall under the category, and so, the death penalty could not be imposed upon the convicts.
"Thus, both the convicts are sentenced to undergo rigorous imprisonment for life and to pay a fine of Rs 3 lakh each, for committing the offence under Section 3 of MCOCA," she said.
The public prosecutor, seeking the death penalty for both the accused, submitted that they were involved in several unlawful activities while they were on bail in other cases.
He argued that the accused had shown no respect for the law and acted without any fear of legal consequences, and therefore did not deserve any leniency from the court.
The court noted that both convicts were involved in offences of murder, attempt to murder, extortion, robbery, house trespass, and criminal intimidation. Besides, they had misused the liberty of interim bail granted to them by absconding.
It said, "The terror of the convicts was such that it created fear psychosis in the mind of the general public, and they lost complete faith in the law enforcement agencies and chose to accede to the illegal demands of convicts. Despite suffering losses, they could not gather the courage to depose against them."
The court noted that Gulia was involved in at least 18 criminal cases, while Dhirpal had links to 10 serious offences.
It underlined that MCOCA had been enacted "keeping in view the fact that organised crime had come up as a serious threat to society, as it knew no territorial boundaries and is fuelled by illegal wealth generated by committing the offence of extortion, contract killings, kidnapping for ransom, collection of protection money, murder, etc."
Both accused persons had been convicted on December 10 in a case registered at Najafgarh police station. The police filed a chargesheet under Section 3 (punishment for organised crime) and 4 (punishment for possessing unaccountable wealth on behalf of member of organised crime syndicate) of MCOCA.
