According to National Security Council spokesman John Kirby during a White House press briefing Friday afternoon, a flying object the size of a "small car" was shot down over Alaska, a state on the extreme northwest of the North American continent.

"I can confirm that the Department of Defense was tracking a high altitude object over Alaska airspace in the last 24 hours," Kirby said. "The object was flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet and posed a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight."

Kirby said that based on the recommendation of the Pentagon, President Joe Biden "ordered the military to down the object. And they did. And it came in inside our territorial waters." He added that the "object" landed on frozen waters, and that "Fighter aircraft assigned to U.S. Northern Command took down the object within the last hour."

A Pentagon spokesman Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, said the object entered U.S. airspace on Thursday; and the cylindrical and silverish-gray object was shot down by an F-22 using an A9X missile out of Joint Base Elmendorf–Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska. He said the military has located a significant amount of debris from the object.

Friday's incident comes over a week after defense officials said that a Chinese spy balloon was spotted over Billings, Montana. It was shot down on Saturday by an F-22 using a single A9X missile.

WATCH John Kirby's remarks to the press.

The social media company announced Wednesday, that subscribers to its Twitter Blue plan, are now able to post a 4,000-character tweet. Users will see only the first 280 characters on the timeline, and can click on “Show more” link to read the rest of the tweet. Blue subscribers will also see ads reduced to half. CEO Elon Musk has said the company will soon introduce an ads-free tier.

Twitter also announced new daily tweets limit of 2,400. The site's Help Page notes, “the daily update limit is further broken down into smaller limits for semi-hourly intervals.” Retweets also count toward that limit.

Other limits outlined in the Help Page site include a maximum of 500 direct messages per day and a follow limit of 400 accounts per day, though additional site rules around “aggressive following behavior” may impact that number for individuals. Twitter is also capping the total number an individual user can follow to 5,000, and attempts to follow more accounts will be “limited by account-specific ratios,” the site said. The limits are meant to “alleviate some of the strain on the behind-the-scenes part of Twitter and reduce downtime and error pages.”

The social media company also announced it is shutting down free access to its Application Programming Interface(API) on Feb. 13; and will be charging $100 per month for the basic tier, to get developers access to a “low level of API usage.”

"A new form of free access will be introduced as this is extremely important to our ecosystem – limited to Tweet creation of up to 1,500 Tweets per month for a single authenticated user token, including Login with Twitter," Twitter announced Wednesday. Premium API which was part of v1.1, will be deprecated on February 13. The company said developers can apply for enterprise access.

Meanwhile for a couple of hours on Wednesday, Twitter and other social media platforms like Instagram, YouTube and Facebook, suffered temporary outages. Data from Downdetector showed that thousands of users globally reported issues with using the platforms. Some Twitter users were met with the prompt: "You are over the daily limit for sending tweets."

"Multiple internal & external issues simultaneously today," Musk tweeted. "Should be fully back on track later tonight. "

Twitter and the other social media platforms are now back up and running.

Comedian and host of HBO's Real Time, Bill Maher on his show Friday, said woke leftists want to "change reality by screaming at" people, and think they can "bend human nature by holding your breath." The liberal commentator compared woke zealots to Chairman Mao Zedong's communist Red Guard in China, who would publicly shame traitors to the cause and make them wear dunce caps.

Maher referenced Jason Kilborn, a law professor at the University of Illinois Chicago, who was suspended and forced to undergo diversity training after using redacted word 'nigger' in a test question about a hypothetical instance of discrimination in the workplace has filed a First Amendment suit against his employer. "The only thing that will hold UIC accountable for its unconstitutional actions is a lawsuit," Kilborn stated in the suit. "FIRE's Faculty Legal Defense Fund gave me the strong medicine of real legal action, and UIC has given me no choice but to use it."

The Real Time host said Kilborn had been made to wear the American version of the Red Guard's dunce cap.

Maher also slammed the woke left for pushing unhinged LGBTQ talking points claiming that babies are born without gender or that "it doesn't make sense" to divide sports between the sexes.

"Yes, it does, because we haven't reinvented homo sapiens since Crystal Pepsi came out!" the comedian exclaimed.

WATCH Bill Maher 'new rules' monologue

SpaceX confirmed in a tweet on Monday, that it has activated its Starlink satellite internet service in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country.

Starlink seeks to deliver a global broadband network, using a constellation of satellites in Low Earth Orbit to provide high-speed internet coverage with the capacity to penetrate rural and geographically isolated areas.

“Starlink is now available in Nigeria -- the first African country to receive service,” the space exploration company announced in a tweet. The nation is the 47th in the world to get Starlink Internet services.

Nigerian Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, recently said that following the licensing and operation of Starlink, the country had achieved 100 per cent broadband coverage.

“Based on the National Broadband Plan, we were to have 90 per cent broadband coverage by December 2025," Pantami said. "However, we recently gave a license to Starlink to provide services, and this has given us 100% coverage, about 3 years ahead of schedule.”

Twitter has reportedly been applying for the necessary licenses in states across America to become a payments platform, with plans to apply for regulatory approvals in Europe, in the future.

During a Twitter Spaces meeting with advertisers back in November, the social media company's new owner Elon Musk detailed his plans to enter the payments market, and suggested that users would be able to transfer money to other people on the platform.

Twitter’s new payment platform will first work with fiat currencies and payment methods, with plans to add support for cryptocurrencies in the future.

Musk has reportedly tapped Twitter's director of product management Esther Crawford, to work on the payments project, and she has been working on the infrastructure of the new service, with a small team.

The payments service is part of Musk's plan to launch an “everything app” that incorporates messaging, payments and commerce.

The new payment platform would essentially compete with payments giant PayPal and even Apple Pay. Musk co-founded X.com in 1999, one of the first online banks, which later became part of PayPal.

The SpaceX and Tesla CEO made the comments during Tesla’s Q4 2022 conference call Wednesday, following the electric vehicle manufacturer's release of its financial results.

Musk who acquired Twitter last October, was asked a question about the impact of his use of the social media platform on Tesla’s reputation, whether the EV company tracks favorability and how any brand damage may be mitigated.

"Let me check my Twitter account," the prolific social media user said as he paused appearing to check his account. "So I got 127 million followers and it continues to grow rapidly. That suggests that I’m reasonably popular. Now I might not be popular with some people, but for the vast majority of people, my follower count speaks for itself. I have the most interacted social account maybe in the world – certainly on Twitter."

The Tesla CEO said "Twitter is an incredibly powerful tool for driving demand for Tesla;" and that "the net value of Twitter is gigantic." He encourages companies "to make more use of Twitter."

During the call, Musk also said that so far in January Tesla has seen the strongest orders year to date than ever in history. The company is currently seeing orders almost double the rate of production, according to the CEO. He thinks demand will be "good" despite contraction in the auto market as a whole.

Tesla beat expectations earning (adjusted) $1.19 vs expected $1.13 per share; and revenue of $24.32 billion vs $24.16 billion expected, per Refinitiv.

In the year-ago quarter, the EV car maker reported revenue of $17.72 billion and adjusted earnings of $2.52 per share ($0.85 adjusted for an August 2022 stock split).

Facebook and Instagram banned Donald Trump from the social media platforms two years ago, after falsely claiming that the former US president praised the people that participated in the Capitol protest in Washington DC, on January 6, 2021.

Trump's lawyers in a recent letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, asked for the former president's accounts to be reinstated.

In a blog post Wednesday, Meta's global affairs president Nick Clegg, said "the suspension was an extraordinary decision taken in extraordinary circumstances."

Clegg said "the normal state of affairs is that the public should be able to hear from a former President of the United States, and a declared candidate for that office again, on our platforms." Trump has announced his candidacy in the 2024 presidential election.

"The public should be able to hear what their politicians are saying -- the good, the bad and the ugly -- so that they can make informed choices at the ballot box," Clegg wrote. "But that does not mean there are no limits to what people can say on our platform. When there is a clear risk of real world harm -- a deliberately high bar for Meta to intervene in public discourse -- we act."

The global affairs president says that if Trump posts violating content, it "will be removed and he will be suspended for between one month and two years, depending on the severity of the violation."

The uncrewed Dragon cargo spacecraft splashed down at 1019 UTC, Wednesday, Jan. 11, off the coast of Tampa, Florida. This marks the return of SpaceX’s 26th contracted cargo resupply(CRS-26) mission to the International Space Station(ISS) for NASA. The capsule carried approximately 4,400 pounds of scientific experiments and other cargo back to Earth.

Scientific experiments returned by the Dragon include: Deep space radiation protection vest, Bioprospecting in space, and XROOTS which used hydroponic (water-based) and aeroponic (air-based) techniques to grow plants without soil or other growth media.

The CRS-26 mission Dragon lifted off atop a Falcon 9 rocket on Nov. 26, 2022, carrying about 7,700 pounds of cargo to the ISS, including two new power-augmenting solar arrays, which NASA astronauts installed during two spacewalks in December.

WATCH SpaceX CRS-26 Dragon move away from the ISS

Popular Fox News' host Tucker Carlson in his monologue Wednesday night, slammed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy who is visiting the United States this week, his first foreign visit since Russia invaded his country in February.

United States congress is set to vote on a year-end spending package that includes about $45billion in emergency assistance to Ukraine. US is by far the largest donor country to the war-torn eastern European nation, sending $18.5billion for arms and equipment. Germany, at $2.34billion, is the second largest.

Carlson, who also called out congress and President Joe Biden administration over US' disastrous Ukraine policy, said that Zelenskyy is "dressed like the manager of a strip club."

Zelenskyy showed up to the White House wearing a casual outfit -- including a camouflage colored sweatshirt, similar colored pants and combat boots -- in contrast to Biden, who was wearing a suit. The Ukrainian president addressed congress Wednesday night.

WATCH Tucker Carlson's comments about Zelensky and US politicians

Workers at the largest iPhone factory in the world were protesting over low pay, horrific working conditions and harsh coronavirus restrictions. Apple's CEO Tim Cook have faced criticisms over the years for aiding and abetting the totalitarian regime in Beijing.

The protests in Zengzhou have exposed Apple's hypocrisy as the woke Cupertino-based Smartphone giant is known for its promotion of inclusivity and woke degeneracy in the west, while being in bed with the brutal Chinese Communist Party which enslaves millions in concentration camps.

Apple faced criticisms recently from new Twitter owner Elon Musk over the Smartphone giant's anti-free-speech App Store policies. The Smartphone giant has also been slammed by conservative politicians in the west after it was revealed the company disabled its AirDrop p2p communication feature in iPhones in China, which anti-government protesters have been using to organize outside of state surveillance.

Chinese President Xi Jinping have kept in place the draconian coronavirus pandemic-era restrictions. This has sparked protests in cities across China.

WATCH CNN report on the violent protests at iPhone factory in Zhengzhou

Hip hop mogul Ye made the remarks on Saturday, as he was leaving a church in Los Angeles. Fashion brand Balenciaga has been embroiled in controversy recently, over a photoshoot which depicts child sexual exploitation themes.

The rapper called out Hollywood celebrities for their silence over the Balenciaga controversy. The hip hop star has himself faced backlash recently for speaking out against the exploitative practices of Jewish executives in the entertainment industry. The Spanish fashion house cut ties with him over those comments.

“They try to destroy me in the press," Ye told a group of paparazzis outside the church. "They try to destroy all of my businesses at the same time, and the world saw it. And no one is saying anything. You know, as far as any of the celebrities are not saying anything, show that all celebrities are controlled... Nobody is talking about the Balenciaga situation. This just shows you all of these celebrities out here - don’t let them influence you in any way because they, in turn, are controlled by the people who really influence the world.”

The hip hop mogul also called out Elon Musk for not reinstating the Twitter account of Infowars founder Alex Jones.

WATCH Ye remarks during interview with paparazzi in Los Angeles

Following the recent reinstating of banned Twitter accounts by Elon Musk, many leftists and organizations have been smearing the platform's new owner for loosening the restrictions against free speech placed by the previous woke management of the company.

Conservatives have been at the receiving end of the censorship regime across Big Tech in the last decade. This means that almost all the accounts recently reinstated by Twitter are of right-leaning users.

Musk acknowledged the bias at the company in reply to a tweet by a popular conservative film maker.

"We don’t hear much about Democrats and leftists being let back on Twitter. Why?" Dinesh D'Souza tweeted. "Because they were never kicked off in the first place. Their lies and misinformation simply escaped all scrutiny. Censorship has been deployed as a one-way operation against conservatives @elonmusk" To which Musk replied simply: "Correct."

The new Twitter owner also tweeted a video Tuesday showing a closet he found at the company headquarters in San Francisco, filled with '#STAY WOKE' t-shirts. tweeting "Found this at Twitter HQ fr."

He later wrote and have since deleted, "#StayWoke shirts stem from the Ferguson protests," referencing the police shooting of a black man in Ferguson, Missouri, back in 2014, and the 'Hand Up Don't Shoot' hoax and riots that followed. "Obama's DOJ proved this & exonerated the cop. 'Hands up don't shoot' was made up. The whole thing was a fiction," he concluded with a link to the Department of Justice report about the case.

Since his takeover of the social media platform, Musk has been working to change the woke and anti-free-speech culture at the San Francisco-based company.

Hundreds of the remainig 3,000 Twitter employees reportedly resigned Thursday, ahead of the deadline of 5pm San Francisco time given by new owner Elon Musk as he tries to reset the culture at the company which was notoriously laissez-faire and unproductive under the previous woke management.

Musk asked employees to commit to building his new vision of the social media platform or leave. “Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore," he wrote to employees this week.  "This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.”

An FAQ sheet sent out to employees Wednesday evening, laid out details of what Twitter is offering to those who opted to stay on with the company. “This is not a phishing attempt,” the document begins. "if an employee doesn’t click “yes” on the form to confirm they want to stay, Twitter will “treat that as a resignation.”

Most US employees who choose to leave will receive two months on payroll with benefits, plus one month of severance pay if they sign a forthcoming separation agreement.

Musk also clarified the new remote work policy, telling employees in an email on Thursday they would be allowed to work remotely if their managers asserted they were making “an excellent contribution.”

Following reports of the resignations at Twitter Thursday, left-wing trolls took to Twitter to declare 'RIPTwitter,' claiming that that the social media platform will shutdown any day now. Ironically, the hashtag trended for several hours on the platform.

Reacting to a tweet about reports of the resignations, Musk wrote "the best people are staying. so I'm not super worried."

In a companywide culling, that impacted roughly 13% of its overall workforce, Facebook parent company Meta laid off more than 11,000 employees this week -- the most significant layoffs in the company’s history. The company had more than 87,000 employees globally.

The job cuts impact employees across Meta’s “family of apps,” according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. This includes Instagram and WhatsApp, as well as the Reality Labs division responsible for building the metaverse. Meta’s recruiting team will be “disproportionately affected” by the layoffs as the company pulls back on hiring.

“Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected,” Zuckerberg said in an apologetic letter to employees. “Not only has online commerce returned to prior trends, but the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss have caused our revenue to be much lower than I’d expected. I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that.”

The CEO in the letter, also outlined additional cost-cutting moves, including cuts to “discretionary spending” and extending a companywide hiring freeze through the first quarter. Meta will require desk sharing for employees “who already spend most of their time outside the office,” he added.

Other Big Tech companies including Stripe and Twitter also laid off employees this week.

The SpaceX and Tesla CEO made the endorsement Monday on his newly acquired social media platform Twitter. American voters are heading to the poll this week, to choose candidates to represent them in various federal and state offices including the US congress.

"To independent-minded voters: Shared power curbs the worst excesses of both parties, therefore I recommend voting for a Republican Congress, given that the Presidency is Democratic," Musk tweeted, adding, "Hardcore Democrats or Republicans never vote for the other side, so independent voters are the ones who actually decide who’s in charge!"

Earlier this year, Musk made his political leaning categorically clear saying that he will be voting for the conservative Republican Party, and slammed members of the left-wing Democrat Party for their extreme woke and hateful ideology.

The new Twitter chief also revealed at the time, that he is leaning toward voting for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for president in 2024. The popular Republican governor, who is up for re-election on Tuesday.

The new Twiiter owner fired nearly half of the platform's 7,500 employees Friday, a cost-cutting measure as he tries to fix the company's finances. "Regarding Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day," Elon Musk tweeted, amid whinning by leftists online. "Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required."

Some brands like car makers GM and Volkswagen have recently "paused" advertising on the platform apparently over content moderation concerns. Musk has said he wants to end the type of biased censorship practices under the previous owners of the platform.

Musk met with far-left anti-free-speech groups like the ADL, this week, who raised concerns over so-called hate speech on the platform.

"Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists," Musk tweeted Friday, after more companies announced they 'pause' advertising on the platform. "Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America."

Musk recently announced plans to introduce a new verification subscription service on Twitter, as part of his strategy to make the company less reliant on advertising revenue.

Dragon Freedom spacecraft undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) at about 1535 UTC Friday, Oct. 14.  It Splashed down off the coast of Florida at about 2055 UTC.

Aboard Dragon Freedom are NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Bob Hines, and Jessica Watkins, as well as ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, all returning to earth after 170 days in space.

During their stay on the ISS, Crew-4 members contributed to ongoing and new scientific investigations and generating innovations and benefits for humanity on Earth.

WATCH: Crew-4 mission splashdown off the coast of Florida

Dragon Freedom spacecraft undocks with the four crew members of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-4 mission aboard: NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Bob Hines, and Jessica Watkins, as well as ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti.

Undocking from the International Space Station (ISS) is targeted for 1535 UTC Friday, Oct. 14. Splashdown is targeted several hours later at 2055 UTC off the coast of Florida.

During their stay of nearly 6 months on the ISS, Crew-4 members contributed to ongoing and new scientific investigations and generating innovations and benefits for humanity on Earth.

WATCH: Crew-4 mission undock from ISS