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Twitter exploded with mentions of “Mubarak,” the name of ousted Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, after news broke that he had been pronounced “clinically dead” by Egyptian state media late on Tuesday. In the past hour alone, Topsy calculated that “Mubarak” was mentioned some 16,000 times on Twitter.
As of this story’s publishing, it appears that Mubarak is alive but in critical condition and is on life support in Cairo.
Reuters was the first Western news organization to report the news, which they said had been announced by state news agency MENA.
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Confusion ensued after many questioned what “clinically dead” actually meant. Several other reputable news sources began sharing the news, including CBS News Radio, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and the AP. However, soon after the initial Reuters tweet, another major news outlet, the Washington Post, tweeted this, countering Reuters earlier reports:
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Reuters would later release a report that Mubarak was not clinically dead, but that he was on life support.
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Here’s a collection of tweets from some of the top news agencies who shared the story via Twitter.
