Tweet Tweet: Pakistan Silences Twitter

Pakistan has officially blocked micro-blogging social media site Twitter, according to Al-Jazeera's news feed.

Government officials took the site offline to Pakistani citizens after it refused to remove "materials offensive to Islam". The hard line move came after a Facebook competition began to post images of the Prophet Muhammad, which is considered an act of blasphemy to many Muslims.

The chairman of the Pakistan Telecommunication's Authority, Mohammad Yaseen, stated that Facebook agreed to withdraw the offending images from its site, but they were unable to reach an agreement with Twitter.

"The ministry officials are still trying to make them [Twitter] agree, and once they remove that stuff, the site will be unblocked," Yaseen told Al-Jazeera News.

In 2010, the Pakistan government blocked Facebook for about two weeks due to a similar competition.

Sacha Baron Cohen Banned from Oscars Ceremony?

The Oscars ceremony proves once again that it doesn't have a sense of humor after telling the UK comic and actor Sacha Baron Cohen that he will be banned from the event if he plans on pulling any red carpet shenangians!

The controversial Borat and Bruno star has been warned by Academy officials that his tickets to the Oscars will be rescinded unless he promises not to show up at the event dressed as the sex-crazed  Gadhafi meets Saddam Hussein character he has invented for his latest parody film The Dictator.  The 40-year-old actor had been invited to the event as the star of one of the Best Picture nominated films, Martin Scorsese's animated Hugo.

"We haven't banned him," an Academy spokesperson assured the press. "We're just waiting to hear what he's going to do. But his tickets have not been pulled."

Perhaps the Academy is trying to prevent Cohen from pulling a stunt like the one he performed at the 2009 MTV Awards, where he descended from the ceiling dressed in angel wings and landed butt-first on equally controversial rapper Eminem.