The week started with the unfortunate incident of a temple in Kollam, Kerela catching fire. The fire, which was an outcome of a defective rocket falling onto a batch of fire-crackers, resulted in over 100 deaths and left close to 350 injured. Relatives, friends and well-wishers staying in the Gulf used the #Kollam to give their condolences. Hopefully this incidence will make the rules for use of fire-crackers stricter in the country.
Moving on from man-induced calamity to natural calamity, earlier this week a powerful earthquake measuring 6.8 on Richter scale with epicenter in Hindukush mountain range in Afghanistan was reported. Thankfully no loss of life has been reported so far in this incident. However, yesterday another earthquake was felt in Burma with a magnitude of 6.9. The tremors of both the earthquakes were felt in India where the royal couple are currently staying. The twitter used #earthquake to discuss the event.
On a lighter note, this week we saw the latest video of the Pakistani Youtube sensation Taher Shah that was titled ‘Angel’. The video that was released last Friday, has been viewed on YouTube for more than a million times now. Various spoofs and jokes have also been made on the video. Incase you have missed the video, here it is. (Read the comments on the video, they are more entertaining according to me)
Another happening in Pakistan was the Jamaate-e-Islami arranged ‘Corruption Free Pakistan Walk’ which raised slogans against corruption and demanded Prime Minister (PM) Nawaz Sharif’s resignation. In an attempt to give support to the movement, many Pakistan nationals living in the Middle East took the help of twitter with #MyPMisCorrupt with reference to what was revealed in #PanamaPapers.
In UAE, we saw two big trending news this week. One was the announcement of a bigger tower than Burj Khaleefa to be built before the 2020 expo. And the second was the launch event of a new LG phone where LG Electronics Gulf launched LG G5. Both news were seen trending with the #Khaleefa and #LGG5UAE.
In sports, IPL began last weekend and its craze can surely be seen on social media with everyone promoting and cheering for their teams through twitter and facebook. The biggest soccer match this week was the last night’s Atletico Madrid and Barcelona, where Atletico Madrid won by 2-0 to move into the semi-finals of Champions League. The #Barca and #AtletiFCB trended during and even after the match was over.
