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.
Israel bombarded northern Gaza overnight in some of the heaviest shelling in weeks, causing panic amongst residents and flattening neighbourhoods in an area from which the Israeli army had previously down its troops, residents said on Tuesday.
Russia launched a drone attack on Ukraine that injured seven people in the Black Sea port of Odesa, two of them children, and also targeted Kyiv, the capital, Ukraine's military officials said early on Tuesday.
A Delhi court on Tuesday extended the pre-trial detention of Indian opposition leader Arvind Kejriwal until May 7 in a corruption case, the legal news website Live Law reported.
Taiwan's quake-hit eastern county of Hualien was rattled by more than 200 aftershocks late on Monday and early on Tuesday, but only minor damage was reported and no casualties and major chipmaker TSMC said it saw no impact on operations.