After President Joe Biden announced a ban on oil and gas drilling off most of the U.S. coastline in early January, President-elect Donald Trump quickly vowed to reverse it after he takes office on January 20. But there is one section of the California coast that has gained more permanent protection from drilling – a new national marine sanctuary. Genia Dulot takes us underwater for a look.
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Washington — TikTok said Sunday it was restoring service to users in the United States after the popular video-sharing platform went dark in response to a federal ban that President-elect Donald Trump said he would try to pause by executive order on his first day in office.
Trump said he planned to issue the order to give TikTok’s China-based parent company more time to find an approved buyer before the popular video-sharing platform is subject to a permanent U.S. ban. He announced the move on his Truth Social account as millions of U.S. TikTok users awoke to discover they could no longer access the TikTok app or platform.
Google and Apple removed the app from their digital stores to comply with the law, which required them to do so if TikTok parent company ByteDance didn’t sell its U.S. operation by Sunday. The law, which passed with wide bipartisan support in April, allowed for steep fines for non-compliance.
The company that runs TikTok said in a post on X that Trump’s post had provided “the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties providing TikTok to over 170 million Americans.”
Some users reported soon after TikTok’s statement that the app was working again, and TikTok’s website appeared to be functioning for at least some users. Even as TikTok was flickering back on, it remained unavailable for download in Apple and Google’s app stores.
The law that took effect Sunday required ByteDance to cut ties with the platform’s U.S. operations due to national security concerns posed by the app’s Chinese roots. However, the statute gave the sitting president authority to grant a 90-day extension if a viable sale is under way.
Although investors made a few offers, ByteDance previously said it would not sell. In his post on Sunday, Trump said he “would like the United States to have a 50% ownership position in a joint venture,” but it was not immediately clear if he was referring to the government or an American company.
Trump said his order would “extend the period of time before the law’s prohibitions take effect” and “confirm that there will be no liability for any company that helped keep TikTok from going dark before my order.
“Americans deserve to see our exciting Inauguration on Monday, as well as other events and conversations,” Trump wrote.
The on-and-off availability of TikTok came after the U.S. Supreme Court held in a unanimous ruling Friday that the risk to national security posed by TikTok’s ties to China outweighed concerns about limiting speech by the app or its millions of users in the United States.
When TikTok users in the U.S. tried to watch or post videos on the platform as of Saturday night, they saw a pop-up message under the headline, “Sorry, TikTok isn’t available right now.”
“A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S.,” a pop-up message informed users who opened the TikTok app and tried to scroll through videos on Saturday night. “Unfortunately that means you can’t use TikTok for now.”
The service interruption TikTok instituted hours earlier caught most users by surprise. Experts had said the law as written did not require TikTok to take down its platform, only for app stores to remove it. Current users had been expected to continue to have access to videos until the app stopped working due to a lack of updates.
“The community on TikTok is like nothing else, so it’s weird to not have that anymore,” content creator Tiffany Watson, 20, said Sunday.
Watson said she had been in denial about the looming shutdown and with the time on her hands plans to focus on bolstering her presence on Instagram and YouTube.
“There are still people out there who want beauty content,” Watson said.
The company’s app also was removed late Saturday from prominent app stores, including the ones operated by Apple and Google. Apple told customers with its devices that it also took down other apps developed by TikTok’s China-based parent company, including one that some social media influencers had promoted as an alternative.
“Apple is obligated to follow the laws in the jurisdictions where it operates,” the company said.
Trump’s plan to issue an executive order to spare TikTok on his first day in office reflected the ban’s coincidental timing and the unusual mix of political considerations surrounding a social media platform that first gained popularity with often silly videos featuring dances and music clips.
During his first term in the White House, Trump issued executive orders in 2020 banning TikTok and the Chinese messaging app WeChat, moves that courts subsequently blocked. When momentum for a ban emerged in Congress last year, however, he opposed the legislation. Trump has since credited TikTok with helping him win support from young voters in last year’s presidential election.
Despite its own part in getting the nationwide ban enacted, the Biden administration stressed in recent days that it did not intend to implement or enforce the ban before Trump takes office on Monday.
In the nine months since Congress passed the sale-or-ban law, no clear buyers emerged, and ByteDance publicly insisted it would not sell TikTok. But Trump said he hoped his administration could facilitate a deal to “save” the app.
TikTok CEO Shou Chew is expected to attend Trump’s inauguration with a prime seating location.
Chew posted a video late Saturday thanking Trump for his commitment to work with the company to keep the app available in the U.S. and taking a “strong stand for the First Amendment and against arbitrary censorship.”
Trump’s choice for national security adviser, Michael Waltz, told CBS News on Sunday that the president-elect discussed TikTok going dark in the U.S. during a weekend call with Chinese President Xi Jinping “and they agreed to work together on this.”
On Saturday, artificial intelligence startup Perplexity AI submitted a proposal to ByteDance to create a new entity that merges Perplexity with TikTok’s U.S. business, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Perplexity is not asking to purchase the ByteDance algorithm that feeds TikTok user’s videos based on their interests and has made the platform such a phenomenon.
Other investors also eyed TikTok. “Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary recently said a consortium of investors that he and billionaire Frank McCourt are part of offered ByteDance $20 billion in cash. Trump’s former treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, also said last year that he was putting together an investor group to buy TikTok.
In Washington, lawmakers and administration officials have long raised concerns about TikTok, warning the algorithm that fuels what users see is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities. But to date, the U.S. has not publicly provided evidence of TikTok handing user data to Chinese authorities or tinkering with its algorithm to benefit Chinese interests.
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WASHINGTON — TikTok stopped working in the United States late on Saturday and disappeared from Apple and Google app stores ahead of a law that takes effect Sunday requiring the shutdown of the app used by 170 million Americans.
President-elect Donald Trump said earlier in the day he would “most likely” give TikTok a 90-day reprieve from the ban after he takes office on Monday, a promise TikTok cited in a notice posted to users on the app.
TikTok, which is owned by China’s ByteDance, told users attempting to use the app around 10:45 p.m. ET (0345 GMT): “A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok for now. We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned.”
Other apps owned by ByteDance, including video editing app Capcut and lifestyle social app Lemon8, were also offline and unavailable in U.S. app stores as of late Saturday.
“The 90-day extension is something that will be most likely done, because it’s appropriate,” Trump told NBC. “If I decide to do that, I’ll probably announce it on Monday.”
It was not clear if any U.S. users could still access the app, but it was no longer working for many users and people seeking to access it through a web application were met with the same message that TikTok was no longer working.
TikTok, which has captivated nearly half of all Americans, powered small businesses and shaped online culture, warned on Friday it would go dark in the U.S. on Sunday unless President Joe Biden’s administration provides assurances to companies such as Apple and Google that they will not face enforcement actions when a ban takes effect.
Under a law passed last year and upheld on Friday by a unanimous Supreme Court, the platform has until Sunday to cut ties with its China-based parent or shut down its U.S. operation to resolve concerns it poses a threat to national security.
The White House reiterated on Saturday that it was up to the incoming administration to take action.
“We see no reason for TikTok or other companies to take actions in the next few days before the Trump administration takes office on Monday,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.
TikTok did not respond to a request for comment on the new White House statement.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington on Friday accused the U.S. of using unfair state power to suppress TikTok. “China will take all necessary measures to resolutely safeguard its legitimate rights and interests,” a spokesperson said.
Users move to alternatives
Uncertainty over the app’s future had sent users — mostly younger people — scrambling to alternatives including China-based RedNote. Rivals Meta and Snap had also seen their share prices rise this month ahead of the ban, as investors bet on an influx of users and advertising dollars.
“This is my new home now,” wrote one user in a RedNote post, tagged with the words “tiktokrefugee” and “sad.”
Minutes after TikTok’s U.S. shutdown, other users took to X, formerly called Twitter.
“I didn’t really think that they would cut off TikTok. Now I’m sad and I miss the friends I made there. Hoping it all comes back in just a few days,” wrote @RavenclawJedi.
NordVPN, a popular virtual private network, or VPN, allowing users to access the internet from servers around the world, said it was “experiencing temporary technical difficulties.”
Web searches for “VPN” spiked in the minutes after U.S. users lost access to TikTok, according to Google Trends.
Users on Instagram fretted about whether they would still receive merchandise they had bought on TikTok Shop, the video platform’s e-commerce arm.
Marketing firms reliant on TikTok have rushed to prepare contingency plans this week in what one executive described as a “hair on fire” moment after months of conventional wisdom saying that a solution would materialize to keep the app running.
There have been signs TikTok could make a comeback under Trump, who has said he wants to pursue a “political resolution” of the issue and last month urged the Supreme Court to pause implementation of the ban.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew plans to attend the U.S. presidential inauguration and attend a rally with Trump on Sunday, a source told Reuters.
Suitors including former Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt have expressed interest in the fast-growing business that analysts estimate could be worth as much as $50 billion. Media reports say Beijing has also held talks about selling TikTok’s U.S. operations to billionaire and Trump ally Elon Musk, though the company has denied that.
U.S. search engine startup Perplexity AI submitted a bid on Saturday to ByteDance for Perplexity to merge with TikTok U.S., a source familiar with the company’s plans told Reuters. Perplexity would merge with TikTok U.S. and create a new entity by combining the merged company with other partners, the person added.
Privately held ByteDance is about 60% owned by institutional investors such as BlackRock and General Atlantic, while its founders and employees own 20% each. It has more than 7,000 employees in the U.S.
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Labels on wine, distilled spirits and malt beverages in the U.S. would be required to list alcohol content and nutritional information per serving, plus notification of potential allergens, under two new rules proposed Thursday by the Treasury Department.
The department’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau is seeking public content on proposals to require an “alcohol facts” box — similar to nutrition labels on food — that would list alcohol content, calories, carbohydrates, fat and protein per serving. A second rule would require labels to declare top allergens, including milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, wheat, peanuts, soybean and sesame.
The changes are consistent with the bureau’s mandate “to ensure that labels provide consumers with adequate information about the identity, quality and alcohol content of alcohol beverages,” according to a notice published in the Federal Register.
Similar rules were first proposed nearly two decades ago and later championed in petitions submitted by advocacy groups, including the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
“The proposals represent a momentous step toward ensuring consumers have access to the information they need to make informed choices, follow health guidelines and avoid allergic reactions,” CSPI officials said in a statement.
Companies have been allowed to provide the information voluntarily for several years. In August 2021, a survey from the Beer Institute indicated that 95% of beer volume sold by several top producers contained nutrition information provided voluntarily, the bureau noted. Advocates, however, maintained that a limited number of companies used voluntary labels, “underscoring the need for a mandatory policy.”
The Wine Institute, a trade group, said it would support digital labels that contained the required information. “Given the unique nature of winemaking, the most accurate and least burdensome approach to providing nutrition information to consumers would be to allow the option of off-label disclosure via QR code or other electronic means,” the group said.
The Distilled Spirits Council of the United States also suggested QR codes or website references.
Comments will be accepted through April 16. The rules would take effect five years from the date of final approval.
The move is the second major change for alcohol labels announced in the waning days of the Biden administration. On Jan. 5, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called for new warnings about the link between alcohol and cancer.
The new proposals come as the government is updating dietary guidelines, including those around alcohol, that will form the cornerstone of federal food programs and policy. The updated guidelines are expected later this year.
The current guidelines recommend women have one drink or fewer per day while men should stick to two or fewer.
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PHUKET, THAILAND — Plastic bottles and empty beer cans roll on the sea floor in the waters around Phuket in southern Thailand, while ever more garbage piles up on the island itself, a tourist hotspot better known for its pristine beaches and stunning sunsets.
In one corner of the island, trucks and tractors trundle back and forth moving piles of trash around a sprawling landfill, the final destination for much of the more than 1,000 tonnes of waste collected on Phuket every day.
In a matter of months, the landfill has grown so large it has replaced the previous serene mountain view from Vassana Toyou’s home.
“There is no life outside the house, (we) just stay at home,” she said. “The smell is very strong, you have to wear a mask.”
To cope with the stench, Vassana said she keeps her air conditioner and air purifiers switched on all the time, doubling her electricity bill.
Phuket, Thailand’s largest island, has undergone rapid development due to its tourism sector, a major driver of the Thai economy as a whole. Of the country’s 35.5 million foreign arrivals in 2024, about 13 million headed to the island.
“The growth of (Phuket) city has been much more rapid than it should be,” said Suppachoke Laongphet, deputy mayor of the island’s main municipality, explaining how a tourism and construction boom has pushed trash volumes above pre-COVID levels.
By the end of year, the island could be producing up to 1,400 tonnes of trash a day, overwhelming its sole landfill, he said.
Authorities are pushing ahead with plans to cut waste generation by 15% in six months, expand the landfill and build a new incinerator, he said, as the island strives to become a more sustainable tourist destination.
But increasing capacity and incinerators is only part of the solution, experts say.
“If you just keep expanding more waste incinerators, I don’t think that would be just the solution,” said Panate Manomaivibool, an assistant professor in waste management at Burapha University.
“They need to focus on waste reduction and separation.”
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SpaceX says a fire might have caused its Starship to break during liftoff and send trails of flaming debris near the Caribbean.
SpaceX’s Elon Musk said preliminary indications are that leaking fuel built up pressure in the cavity above the engine firewall. The resulting fire would have doomed the spacecraft.
On Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered SpaceX to investigate what went wrong. The FAA said there were no reports of injuries from Starship debris.
The 400-foot Starship — the world’s biggest and most powerful rocket — launched from the southern tip of Texas on a test flight early Thursday evening. The booster made it back to the pad for a catch by giant mechanical arms, only the second time in Starship history. But the engines on the still-ascending spacecraft shut down one by one, and communication was lost 8-1/2 minutes into the flight.
Dramatic video taken near the Turks and Caicos Islands showed spacecraft debris raining down from the sky in a stream of fireballs. Flights near the falling debris had to be diverted, the FAA said.
SpaceX said Starship remained in its designated launch corridor over the Gulf of Mexico and then the Atlantic. Any surviving wreckage would have fallen along that path over water, the company said on its website.
Starship had been shooting for a controlled entry over the Indian Ocean, halfway around the world. Ten dummy satellites, mimicking SpaceX’s Starlink internet satellites, were on board so the company could practice releasing them.
It was the seventh test flight of a Starship, but it featured a new and upgraded spacecraft. The FAA said it must approve SpaceX’s accident findings and any corrective actions.
SpaceX said the booster and spacecraft for the eighth demo are already built and undergoing testing. Musk said on X the loss was “barely a bump in the road” in his plans to build a fleet of Starships to carry people to Mars.
NASA already has booked two Starships to land astronauts on the moon later this decade under its Artemis program, the successor to Apollo.
“Spaceflight is not easy. It’s anything but routine,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson posted on X after the accident. “That’s why these tests are so important.”
Earlier Thursday, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin company also had mixed results with the debut of its massive New Glenn rocket. It achieved orbit on its first try, putting a test satellite thousands of miles above Earth. But the booster was destroyed after failing to land on a floating platform in the Atlantic.
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BLANTYRE, MALAWI — Malawi’s government launched a plan Thursday to stop cholera outbreaks by 2030.
Officials say that if the government and international partners can effectively cooperate, they can greatly reduce the prevalence of cholera in the southern African country, where it has killed at least 1,700 people over the past three years.
Partners include the World Health Organization, or WHO, and UNICEF.
Minister of Health Khumbize Kandodo-Chiponda said, “The goal of the plan is to reduce the annual cholera rate by 90% and achieve the case fatality rate of less than 1% by the year 2030, as recommended by WHO.”
Kandodo-Chiponda said there are several ways to achieve the goal, all of which involve the government, development partners, civil society organizations and other stakeholders supplying expertise and funding to support prevention and control efforts.
She said those efforts will be “to increase access to safe water and sanitation facilities and promote improved hygiene practices; to raise awareness and promote community-led initiatives to prevent and to respond to outbreaks.”
Malawi has experienced cholera outbreaks over the past three years, with the most severe occurring in 2022, resulting in over 1,700 deaths nationwide.
During Thursday’s event, the Malawian government launched an oral cholera vaccine campaign targeting four districts — Mzimba, Karonga, Balaka and Machinga — to address a recent resurgence of cholera there.
Statistics from the Presidential Task Force on Cholera show the disease has caused 14 deaths since September.
Shadrack Omol, UNICEF’s representative in Malawi, said the 2024 resurgence of cholera shows that root causes of the infectious bacterial disease persist.
“Health interventions … are complimentary in support,” Omol said. “The key to addressing the root causes is in provision of safe drinking water across our country, improving sanitation and improving hygiene practices.”
Malawi’s public health experts say goals to eradicate the disease within five years will depend on stakeholder commitments.
George Jobe, executive director of the Malawi Health Equity Network, said, “If financial investments [and] technical investments from partners are done, we believe we can win this battle. It should not be a document that should grow dust on the shelves.”
Kandodo-Chiponda said the operational plans will be reviewed at least once every year to keep ahead of any possible cholera outbreaks.
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WASHINGTON — Hours after Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin nailed its first-ever orbital mission, SpaceX seized back the spotlight on Thursday as its latest test of Starship, its gargantuan next-generation mega rocket, ended with the upper stage dramatically disintegrating over the Atlantic.
In terms of sheer excitement, Elon Musk’s company didn’t disappoint, underscoring its technical prowess by catching the first stage booster in the “chopstick” arms of its launch tower for a second time.
But the triumph was short-lived when teams lost contact with the upper stage vehicle. SpaceX later confirmed it had undergone “rapid unscheduled disassembly,” the company’s euphemism for an explosion.
A taller, improved version of the biggest and most powerful launch vehicle ever built blasted off from the company’s Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, at 4:37 p.m. (2237 GMT) for its seventh test.
The gleaming prototype rocket is key to Musk’s ambitions of colonizing Mars, while NASA hopes to use a modified version as a human lunar lander.
Around seven minutes after liftoff, the Super Heavy booster decelerated from supersonic speeds — generating sonic booms — before descending gracefully into the launch tower’s waiting arms, prompting an eruption of applause from ground control teams.
The maneuver was first successfully executed in October, but not November, when Super Heavy made a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico instead.
Soon after the latest booster catch, however, announcers on a live webcast confirmed the upper stage vehicle had been lost following a propulsion anomaly.
The FlightAware tracker showed several planes in the Atlantic altering course near the Turks and Caicos Islands, while users on X shared dramatic footage purportedly capturing the spaceship breaking apart in a fiery cascade during atmospheric reentry.
“Success is uncertain, but entertainment is guaranteed!” Musk wrote on X, sharing one of the clips. He added the cause of the explosion appeared to be an “oxygen/fuel leak” and that the company would take corrective steps.
A Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) spokesperson said the agency “briefly slowed and diverted aircraft around the area where space vehicle debris was falling.”
Well wishes
Ahead of the SpaceX launch, Blue Origin’s massive New Glenn rocket reached orbital space for the first time, marking a potential turning point in the commercial space race.
SpaceX has long dominated orbital launches with its Falcon 9 rocket, securing contracts from private companies, the Pentagon and NASA.
In contrast, Blue Origin had been limited to short hop suborbital flights with its smaller New Shepard rocket — but could now look to erode SpaceX’s market share.
Although the two tech titans have had a contentious past, Musk congratulated Bezos “on reaching orbit on the first attempt,” and Bezos returned the goodwill a few hours later.
“Good luck today @elonmusk and the whole spacex team!!” the Amazon founder wrote on X.
NASA’s outgoing chief Bill Nelson meanwhile offered his congratulations to SpaceX for the booster catch, adding: “Spaceflight is not easy.”
For this flight, SpaceX announced it had made numerous upgrades, and increased Starship’s size to 123 meters tall. New Glenn stands 98 meters tall.
While its Falcon rockets remain steadfast workhorses, SpaceX has made clear it sees Starship as its future.
The first three test flights ended in dramatic explosions, resulting in the loss of vehicles. However, SpaceX has rapidly iterated on its design, reflecting its “fail fast, learn fast” philosophy.
Musk is now aiming to drastically ramp up the frequency of tests, requesting permission from the FAA to carry out 25 in 2025, compared to just four in 2024.
The agency is holding public meetings on potential environmental and regulatory concerns, amid accusations that SpaceX has harmed ecologically sensitive areas and violated wastewater regulations.
But with Musk now part of Trump’s inner circle, the billionaire may find a smoother path under the incoming administration.
Meanwhile, Bezos and fellow tech mogul Mark Zuckerberg are set to attend the president-elect’s inauguration on Monday, signaling warming ties.
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With a pending law declaring the social media application TikTok illegal in the United States, set to take effect on Sunday, the incoming administration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is signaling that it plans to try to find a way to prevent the service from going offline.
Under current law, the service’s parent company, China-based ByteDance, must either sell TikTok to a non-Chinese firm or see it banned in the U.S.
Representative Mike Waltz, who has been tapped to serve as Trump’s national security adviser, told Fox News on Thursday that the president-elect has options available to postpone enforcement of the law while a possible deal is worked out to sell the company. That includes a section of the law allowing the president to give ByteDance a 90-day extension to finalize a sale.
“We will put measures in place to keep TikTok from going dark,” Waltz said, “as long as a viable deal is on the table. Essentially that buys President Trump time to keep TikTok going.”
Executive action reportedly considered
Also on Wednesday, several media outlets reported that Trump is considering issuing an executive order that would protect TikTok.
The legality of such a move is unclear and is thrown further into doubt by the fact that the Supreme Court is poised to rule on a request by the company to overturn the law.
The high court heard arguments in the case last week and is expected to rule shortly. The outcome is not certain. However, in oral arguments, a majority of the justices appeared to favor upholding the law.
Trump’s attitude toward TikTok has evolved considerably over the years. During his first term in office, he attempted to shut the service down in the U.S. Since then, though, he has used the service, with considerable success, to connect with his supporters.
In a press conference in Florida last month, Trump said, “I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok,” and credited the app with helping him get his message out to younger American voters.
Trump has denied that his change of heart about TikTok was influenced by a brief meeting in March with Republican megadonor and ByteDance investor Jeff Yass. Lobbying disclosure reports from 2024 show that ByteDance paid a former Trump campaign aide to lobby lawmakers in Washington in favor of TikTok, and that former senior Trump aide Kellyanne Conway has been paid to advocate for TikTok in Congress via the Yass-funded conservative group Club for Growth.
Trump also said TikTok was not mentioned during his meeting with Yass.
Economic concerns
In the years since TikTok took off, thousands of U.S.-based content creators have developed large audiences on the app, and in many cases have been able to monetize their TikTok feeds.
Many small businesses have found success advertising their products to TikTok users. Other TikTok personalities have parlayed fame on the app into broader celebrity that has led to lucrative product endorsements and other deals.
Some members of Congress have expressed concern that abruptly shutting the app down could have economic consequences.
On Monday, Democratic Senator Edward Markey introduced legislation that would delay the TikTok ban by 270 days.
“Let me be clear: TikTok has its problems,” Markey said in a statement released by his office. “Like every social media platform, TikTok poses a serious risk to the privacy and mental health of our young people. I will continue to hold TikTok accountable for such behavior. But a TikTok ban would impose serious consequences on millions of Americans who depend on the app for social connections and their economic livelihood. We cannot allow that to happen.”
Viability of sale unclear
As the Sunday deadline nears, there have been a number of rumors about a possible sale of the company. Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that Chinese officials were considering the possibility of selling the service to billionaire Elon Musk, a close Trump adviser who already owns the social media service X, formerly Twitter.
Another U.S. billionaire, real estate developer Frank McCourt, told Reuters on Thursday that a consortium of investors he had formed has already made a formal offer to purchase TikTok, valuing the service at $20 billion.
However, it is far from clear that a sale is something the Chinese government is prepared to allow. Any sale worth the buyer’s investment would have to include the “recommendation engine,” TikTok’s name for the algorithm that makes the service so popular and, many would say, addictive.
Last year in a court filing, TikTok characterized such a deal as unavailable.
“Just as the United States restricts the export of U.S.-origin technologies (e.g., certain computer chips), the Chinese government regulates the transfer of technologies developed in China,” the company argued in a court filing. “The Chinese government has made clear in public statements that it would not permit a forced divestment of the recommendation engine.”
Privacy, national security worries
A wildly popular service for sharing short videos, TikTok has an estimated 170 million U.S. users. Federal officials have been concerned about TikTok for years because it collects vast amounts of information about its user base. They have argued that Chinese laws compelling domestic companies to cooperate with intelligence agencies could be used to force the company to share that data with the Chinese Communist Party.
U.S. officials have expressed concern that China could misuse the private information about U.S. users of the service. They have also warned that Beijing could use TikTok’s powerful recommendation algorithm to shape public discourse in the U.S. to the benefit of China.
In December, when a federal appeals court upheld the law mandating the company’s sale or shutdown, Democratic Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, one of the original sponsors of the law, released a statement expressing the thoughts of many of the law’s supporters.
“With today’s opinion, all three branches of government have reached the same conclusion: ByteDance is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, and TikTok’s ownership by ByteDance is a national security threat that cannot be mitigated through any other means than divestiture,” Krishnamoorthi said.
“Every day that TikTok remains under the Chinese Communist Party’s control is a day that our security is at risk,” Krishnamoorthi added.
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People hospitalized for flu should be tested for bird flu within 24 hours, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday, in an expansion of the agency’s efforts to tackle increasing infections in humans.
The advisory is intended to prevent delays in identifying human cases of avian influenza A (H5N1) viruses amid high levels of seasonal influenza.
The risk to the general public from bird flu is low, and there has been no further evidence of person to person spread, the agency said.
Still, influenza A-positive patients, particularly those in an intensive care unit, should be tested ideally within 24 hours of hospitalization to identify the viral subtype and determine whether they have bird flu, the agency said.
Prior to Thursday’s guidance, hospitals generally sent batches of samples to labs for subtyping every few days.
Faster testing also aims to help doctors identify how people became infected and provide their close contacts with testing and medicine more quickly, if needed, said Nirav Shah, the agency’s principal deputy director, on a call with reporters.
The CDC does not believe it has been missing bird flu infections in people, Shah said. No surveillance system detects 100% of cases, he added later.
“The system is working as it should,” said Shah, adding that health officials want results sooner in case any public health action is needed. “What we need is to shift to a system that tells us what’s happening in the moment.”
Nearly 70 people in the United States, most of them farmworkers, have contracted bird flu since April, as the virus has circulated among poultry flocks and dairy herds. Three people have tested positive without a clear source of exposure to the virus, according to CDC.
Most infections in humans have been mild, but one fatality was reported in Louisiana last week.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has more than 300 personnel working on its bird flu response and has spent $1.5 billion on its efforts to curb the spread among poultry and dairy cattle, said Eric Deeble, a deputy undersecretary at the agency.
The USDA last week said it would rebuild a bird flu vaccine stockpile for poultry.
USDA officials have met several times with the transition team of the incoming Donald Trump administration to try to ensure a smooth handoff on agency actions to curb the spread of the virus, including a tabletop exercise at the White House on Wednesday, Deeble said.
Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services, which encompasses CDC, also have repeatedly met with the transition team on Zoom calls and have shared their bird flu playbook, officials said on the press call.
HHS said on Thursday it plans to put $211 million toward mRNA-based vaccine technology to better respond to emerging infectious diseases such as bird flu.
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GENEVA — The World Health Organization appealed Thursday for $1.5 billion for emergency operations this year, warning that conflict, climate change, epidemics and displacement had converged to create an “unprecedented global health crisis.”
The U.N. health agency estimated that health crises would leave 305 million people in need of urgent humanitarian assistance this year.
“WHO is seeking $1.5 billion to support our lifesaving work for the emergencies we know about and to react swiftly to new crises,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said as he launched the appeal.
The agency’s emergency request, which was for the same amount as last year’s request, outlined the critical priorities and resources needed to address 42 ongoing health emergencies.
“Conflicts, outbreaks, climate-related disasters and other health emergencies are no longer isolated or occasional — they are relentless, overlapping and intensifying,” Tedros said in a statement.
He pointed to the emergency health assistance provided in conflict zones ranging from the occupied Palestinian territories to the Democratic Republic of Congo to Sudan, as well as its work conducting vaccination campaigns, treating malnutrition and helping control outbreaks of diseases like cholera.
“Without adequate and sustainable funding, we face the impossible task of deciding who will receive care and who will not this year,” Tedros said at Thursday’s event.
“Your support helps to ensure that WHO remains a lifeline, bridging the gap between sickness and health, despair and hope, life and death for millions of people worldwide.”
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U.S. President-elect Donald Trump says he wants the United States to be the world leader in artificial intelligence and crypto currency. To that end, he has tapped a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor to be the AI and crypto czar. Michelle Quinn has the story.
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — Blue Origin’s giant New Glenn rocket blasted off from Florida early Thursday morning on its first mission to space, an inaugural step into Earth’s orbit for Jeff Bezos’ space company as it aims to rival SpaceX in the satellite launch business.
Thirty stories tall with a reusable first stage, New Glenn launched around 2 a.m. ET (0700 GMT) from Blue Origin’s launchpad at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, its seven engines thundering for miles under cloudy skies on its second liftoff attempt this week.
Hundreds of employees at the company’s Kent, Washington headquarters and its Cape Canaveral, Florida rocket factory roared in applause as Blue Origin VP Ariane Cornell announced the rocket’s second stage made it to orbit, achieving a long-awaited milestone.
“We hit our key, critical, number-one objective, we got to orbit safely,” Cornell said on a company live stream. “And y’all we did it on our first go.”
The rocket’s reusable first stage booster was due to land on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean after separating from its second stage, but failed to make that landing, Cornell confirmed. Telemetry from the booster blacked out minutes after liftoff.
“We did in fact lose the booster,” Cornell said.
The culmination of a decade-long, multi-billion-dollar development journey, the mission marks Blue Origin’s first trek to Earth’s orbit in the 25 years since Bezos founded the company.
Bezos told Reuters on Sunday, before Blue Origin’s first launch attempt, that he was most nervous about landing the booster.
But he added that sticking the landing would be the “icing on the cake” if they could achieve the milestone of getting the payload to its intended orbit.
Secured inside New Glenn’s payload bay for the mission is the first prototype of Blue Origin’s Blue Ring vehicle, a maneuverable spacecraft the company plans to sell to the Pentagon and commercial customers for national security and satellite servicing missions.
The rocket’s first attempt to launch on Monday was scrubbed around 3 a.m. ET because ice had accumulated on a propellant line. On Thursday, the company cited no issues ahead of launch.
Bezos monitored the launch from a few miles away in Blue Origin’s mission control room, wearing a large headset and flanked by dozens of launch staff. The company’s CEO, Dave Limp, was next to him.
New Glenn is expected to press ahead with a backlog of dozens of missions worth hundreds of millions of dollars, including up to 27 launches for Amazon’s Kuiper satellite internet network that will rival SpaceX’s Starlink service.
New Glenn is the latest U.S. rocket to debut in recent years as governments and private companies beef up their space programs and race to challenge Elon Musk’s SpaceX and its workhorse Falcon 9.
NASA’s giant Space Launch System rocket had a successful debut in 2022, as did the Vulcan rocket last year from United Launch Alliance, Boeing and Lockheed Martin’s joint launch venture.
New Glenn is roughly twice as powerful as Falcon 9, the world’s most active rocket, with a payload bay diameter two times larger to fit bigger batches of satellites. Blue Origin has not disclosed the rocket’s launch pricing. Falcon 9 starts at around $62 million.
The development of New Glenn has spanned three Blue Origin CEOs and faced numerous delays as SpaceX grew into an industry juggernaut.
SpaceX’s giant, next-generation Starship rocket in development, which New Glenn will also compete with, is expected to further rattle the industry with cheap rides to space and full reusability.
Bezos in late 2023 moved to speed things up at Blue Origin, prioritizing the development of New Glenn and its BE-4 engines. He named Limp, an Amazon veteran, as CEO, who employees say introduced a sense of urgency to compete with SpaceX.
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BENGALURU — India became the world’s fourth nation on Thursday to achieve the feat of space docking, a technological milestone that underscores its ambitions to expand its share of a rapidly growing $400-billion global space market.
Target and Chaser, two satellites of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) that are each roughly the size of a large refrigerator, successfully latched onto each other Thursday morning, an agency spokesperson said.
The indigenous technology, crucial for satellite servicing, space station operations, and interplanetary missions, positions India for a key role in commercial and exploratory space efforts.
“India has ambitious missions planned and to achieve those, this is an important technology,” astrophysicist Jayant Murthy said.
“Various missions, like building a space station, need assembly in space, which is not possible without space docking.”
ISRO said the two satellites participating in its Space Docking Experiment (SpaDeX), will now be controlled as a single object, with power transfer checks made in the next few days.
The mission had been postponed twice, first because the docking process needed further validation through ground simulations, and then to resolve an issue stemming from excess drift between the satellites.
SpaDeX, launched on Dec. 30 from India’s main spaceport, deployed the satellites in orbit with an Indian-made rocket.
Among 24 payloads and experiments were eight cowpea seeds, sent to space to study plant growth in microgravity conditions, which germinated within four days of the mission’s launch.
Scientists say this is a critical step demonstrating that food can eventually be grown in space during long missions.
The mission also will demonstrate the transfer of electric power between docked spacecraft, key to applications such as in-space robotics, composite spacecraft control and payload operations after undocking.
Such techniques are essential for missions requiring multiple rocket launches.
Space exploration and commercialization is a key part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s efforts to position India as a global superpower.
The successful SpaDeX mission “is a significant stepping stone for India’s ambitious space missions in the years to come,” Modi said on X.
On Thursday, India approved the setting-up of a third launch pad in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, to be completed in four years at a cost of $461 million, giving a further boost to its space plans.
ISRO is focused on deep-space exploration and enabling private companies to commercialize the sector, with projects ranging from solar studies to orbital astronaut missions and planetary defense, in collaboration with NASA.
With the global commercial space market expected to reach $1 trillion by 2030, India aims to grow its share to $44 billion by 2040, up from $8 billion, or a slice of just 2%, now.
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On Wednesday the U.S. Department of Commerce announced it would implement new export controls on certain biotechnology equipment, citing national security concerns relating to artificial intelligence and data science.
The Commerce Department warned that China could use the biotech equipment’s technology to bolster its military capabilities and help design new weapons using artificial intelligence.
The department said the technology has many applications, including its ability to be used for “human performance enhancement, brain-machine interfaces, biologically inspired synthetic materials and possibly biological weapons.”
The sanctions effectively restrict shipments of the technology to countries without a U.S. license, such as China.
The controls apply to parameter flow cytometers and certain mass spectrometry equipment, which according to the Commerce Department, can “generate high-quality, high-content biological data, including that which is suitable for use to facilitate the development of AI and biological design tools.”
Last week, the Chinese Embassy in Washington said Beijing “firmly opposes any country’s development, possession or use of biological weapons.”
This latest move by the United States follows recent policy decisions that reflect Washington’s broad aim to limit Beijing’s access to U.S. technology and data.
Washington announced on Monday that it would tighten Beijing’s access to AI chip and technology exports by implementing new regulations that cap the number of chips that can be exported to certain countries, including China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.
This month, the ban on popular Chinese-owned social media TikTok is planned to go into effect due to U.S. concerns over its potential to share sensitive data with China’s government.
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TAIPEI, TAIWAN — As TikTok’s Sunday deadline to divest or face a U.S. ban approaches, hundreds of thousands of American users of the popular social media video app say they are migrating to another Chinese social media app, Xiaohongshu, or RedNote.
Dubbing themselves “TikTok Refugees,” some say they are making the move in search of a new home; others say their exodus is a form of protest against the ban.
With just days to go before the deadline, users are facing growing uncertainty as they wait for a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court on whether the ban will be upheld. Reports are now suggesting that TikTok may just shut down its operations in the United States if the ban goes through.
“Our government is out of their mind if they think we are going to stand for this TikTok ban,” said American user Heather Roberts in one video on Xiaohongshu. “We are just going to a new Chinese app and here we are.”
Sky Bynum, an 18-year-old makeup content creator in the eastern state of New Jersey, told VOA that she is joining Xiaohongshu because she wants to find another social media site with a sense of community.
“The best thing about TikTok is the community on there,” Bynum told VOA in a video interview via Zoom. “When I posted my first few makeup videos, TikTok pushed them to the makeup people and I instantly found my community. I think [the potential ban on TikTok] is awful because I’m not going to have the same thing that I had on TikTok.
“Xiaohongshu is really cool because a lot of TikTok users were trying to find new communities on Xiaohongshu,” Bynum added.
Founded in 2013, Xiaohongshu is similar to Instagram and Pinterest. It currently has around 300 million users, most of them in China, and is widely used to share travel tips, makeup tutorials, and fashion trends.
The name literally means “little red book” but the company says it’s not a reference to former Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong’s collection of sayings.
Downloads surge
With many promoting and talking about their exodus to Xiaohongshu on “TikTok Refugees,” Xiaohongshu became the most downloaded app on Apple’s U.S. App Store this week.
More than 700,000 new users have joined Xiaohongshu this week, according to Reuters. Downloads of the app rose more than 200% year-over-year this week, according to app data research firm Sensor Tower.
With more American users expected to join Xiaohongshu, some Chinese users recorded English tutorials or welcome videos for American users.
“I guess [there has] never been a lifetime or history time [that] a platform has Chinese and Americans come together and have direct views. So welcome and we respect you,” Zhou Shu-Fu, a Chinese Xiaohongshu user from the southwestern province of Sichuan, said in a video released on Jan. 15.
Compared to Chinese social media users’ enthusiasm, the Chinese government offered a more cautious comment on the influx of American TikTok users to Xiaohongshu, describing the phenomenon as a “personal choice.”
“China has always supported and encouraged strengthening cultural exchanges and promoting mutual understanding among the peoples of all countries,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said during the regular press conference on Wednesday.
The influx of American users has also prompted Xiaohongshu to build Chinese-English translation tools and hire English content moderators, according to the Reuters news agency and Chinese media outlets. Most of the posts on the app are in Chinese and RedNote does not have an auto-translate function.
Some American users tell VOA that their interactions with Chinese users are helping to increase their curiosity about China.
“My experience on RedNote makes me realize how toxic American social media has gotten and I’m excited to learn some basic Chinese and learn about what it’s really like in China,” Kia Epley, a 44-year-old engineer from Las Vegas, told VOA in a video interview.
TikTok content creators say they are looking for more than just a safe and welcoming community. One key concern for them is how they can keep making a living on social media.
“Most of my income is made on TikTok so if the ban comes into effect, a big chunk of my income will get taken away,” said Essence Whitaker, a 28-year-old makeup content producer in Michigan.
“A lot of content creators in the U.S. will be unemployed,” she told VOA in a video interview.
VOA reached out to TikTok for comment on the exodus but has yet to receive a response.
Tech media The Information reported on Tuesday that TikTok plans to shut the app for American users when the federal ban comes into effect on Sunday, citing anonymous sources with knowledge of the matter.
Trend or temporary protest?
While the migration of American users to Xiaohongshu continues, some users say it remains unclear whether the exodus is a temporary phenomenon or a long-term trend. TikTok has more than 170 million users and so far, less than a million have moved over to Xiaohongshu.
“I don’t think the move to Xiaohongshu is going to be long-term because the biggest thing that creators worry about is monetization. Xiaohongshu doesn’t have that feature so I think other creators are still looking for an alternative to TikTok,” Bynum in New Jersey told VOA.
But others say similarities between TikTok and Xiaohongshu may help convince some American users to stay on the Chinese app.
“I like how real TikTok is because you get to see people’s natural reactions,” said Whitaker in Michigan, adding that Xiaohongshu has that same vibe.
“While I can’t tell whether people are going to stay on the app or not, I think the authenticity of the content will keep some users on there,” she told VOA in a video interview.
While many American users are excited about the prospect of Xiaohongshu being an alternative to TikTok, some analysts describe the mass migration as “going from the frying pan into the fire.”
“TikTok is owned by a Chinese company but it has international operations, which means there are theoretically several layers between TikTok and the Chinese Party-State,” said Bethany Allen, the head of China Investigations and Analysis at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
But “there are no layers of insulation between Xiaohongshu and Beijing,” she told VOA by phone, adding that issues such as political censorship or lack of data privacy protection could be “far worse” on Xiaohongshu than TikTok.
American users “are going to have absolutely no power to pressure Xiaohongshu as a company to do anything,” Allen added.
VOA has reached out to Xiaohongshu for comment but has yet to receive a response.
And despite the friendly interactions between Chinese and American users on Xiaohongshu over the last few days, experts said the “honeymoon period” may not last long.
“I think the Chinese government is probably going to get spooked [by the interaction between American users and Chinese users],” Sarah Cook, an independent China analyst, told VOA by phone.
She added that Beijing could impose a temporary shutdown on Xiaohongshu to implement some moderation or initiate “a mass cleanout” of accounts or content deemed inappropriate or sensitive on the app.
VOA’s Katherine Michaelson contributed to this report.
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ARUSHA, Tanzania — The World Health Organization said Wednesday an outbreak of suspected Marburg disease has killed eight people in a remote part of northern Tanzania.
“We are aware of 9 cases so far, including 8 people who have died,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement. “We would expect further cases in coming days as disease surveillance improves.”
Like Ebola, the Marburg virus originates in fruit bats and spreads between people through close contact with the bodily fluids of infected individuals or with surfaces, such as contaminated bed sheets.
Without treatment, Marburg can be fatal in up to 88% of people who fall ill with the disease. Symptoms include fever, muscle pains, diarrhea, vomiting and in some cases death from extreme blood loss. There is no authorized vaccine or treatment for Marburg.
WHO said its risk assessment for the suspected outbreak in Tanzania is high at national and regional levels but low globally. There was no immediate comment from Tanzanian health authorities.
An outbreak of Marburg in Rwanda, first reported on Sept. 27, was declared over on Dec. 20. Rwandan officials reported a total of 15 deaths and 66 cases, with the majority of those affected healthcare workers who handled the first patients.
An outbreak in 2023 of Marburg in Kagera, which shares a border with Rwanda, killed at least five people.
Two moon landers built by private U.S. and Japanese companies are on their way to the moon after lifting off early Wednesday on a shared ride aboard a SpaceX rocket.
The launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida is the latest in a public-private program that put a spacecraft from Intuitive Machines on the moon last year.
Wednesday’s launch included a lander from Japanese space exploration company ispace that is carrying a rover with the capability of collecting lunar dirt and testing potential food and water sources on the moon.
The spacecraft is also carrying a small red “Moonhouse” built by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg.
The ispace mission is expected to reach its destination on the moon’s far north in four to five months.
The company is making its second attempt at a lunar landing, after a 2023 mission failed in the final stages.
Also aboard the rocket heading toward the moon is a lander from U.S. company Firefly Aerospace that is set to carry out 10 experiments for NASA.
The planned experiments include gathering dirt and measuring subsurface temperatures.
The spacecraft is expected to arrive in about 45 days.
Some information for this story was provided by The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters
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WASHINGTON — U.S. President Joe Biden signed on Tuesday an executive order to boost development of artificial intelligence infrastructure in America. A day earlier, his administration announced sweeping measures to block access to the most advanced semiconductors by China and other adversaries.
But the U.S. left India, its strategic partner in the Indo-Pacific, off a list of 18 countries that are allowed unrestricted access to advanced AI chips. Analysts say while a growing technological relationship between the two countries would likely make India eligible in the future to access advanced U.S. AI chips, New Delhi’s existing ties with Moscow and the perception of a less robust technology regulatory framework led to its exclusion from the top list.
Exclusion not a surprise
The Commerce Department’s policy framework divides the world into three categories. The first tier includes the U.S. and 18 countries with unrestricted access, followed by a list of more than 100 countries that will be subjected to new caps on advanced semiconductors with individual exemptions. The third tier includes adversaries such as China and Russia that face maximum restrictions.
India falls in the second category, along with U.S. allies like Israel and close friends such as Singapore.
Bhaskar Chakravorti, the dean of global business at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Massachusetts, said that India’s relationship with Russia “puts it outside a super safe category.”
India has had close ties with Russia since the Soviet Union supported its desire for independence from Britain. It maintained those ties during the Cold War, when the U.S. sided with India’s rival Pakistan.
Scott Jones, a non-resident fellow at Washington’s Stimson Center think tank, highlighted recent reports that accused a few Indian companies of aiding Russia’s war on Ukraine, but stressed that while being excluded is a disappointment, it’s “not a setback for India.”
He also pointed to the perception that “India’s ability to control and manage technology is perhaps not as robust as evidenced in some of the 18 countries.”
While India may be off the unrestricted list for now, analysts say its growing technological cooperation with the U.S. may shield it from some curbs.
Richard Rossow, senior adviser and chair on India and Emerging Asia Economies at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the presence of caveats in the new framework would ensure India’s later participation.
“The fact that they have announced that there will be a pathway for some countries to get exemptions that are above what they’re going to consider the standard cap, India, I imagine, would be on the short list of countries,” he told VOA.
In early January, national security adviser Jake Sullivan traveled to India and met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other senior officials. During the trip, both sides reiterated their commitment to forge a “strategic technology partnership” and strengthen cooperation under the U.S.-India initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET), a bilateral mechanism focused on technology partnership.
On semiconductors, the U.S. is facilitating investments in India’s semiconductor manufacturing and intensifying R&D collaboration.
During his trip, Sullivan highlighted the investment of $2.7 billion in India by U.S. chipmaker Micron to create semiconductor packaging facilities, which he hoped would contribute to establishing “India as a new hub in the global chip ecosystem.”
The Indian government too is investing billions of dollars through its dedicated program called the India Semiconductor Mission and Production Linked Incentive scheme.
Rossow argued that the Indian government would not have been “terribly surprised” that “they were not included” in the list.
Jones of the Stimson Center agreed.
“Jake Sullivan was in New Delhi last week, and I would be very surprised if he did not inform his Indian counterparts of what was going to happen,” he said.
Ensuring America’s leadership in AI
The Biden administration has focused on the centrality of artificial intelligence to America’s security and economic strength. According to a White House factsheet, the latest steps are part of its effort to prevent offshoring this critical technology and ensure that “the world’s AI runs on American rails.”
Since October 2022, the U.S. government has enacted a series of export controls, blocking access of advanced semiconductors to China to prevent its use for military applications. While initially the measures adversely affected the Chinese semiconductor industry, Beijing has continued to advance its capabilities and is attempting to narrow the technology gap.
According to Chakravorti of the Fletcher School, there are numerous implementation challenges of this expansive global strategy.
“From lobbying from the U.S. chipmakers that will start as soon as Trump takes office to potential leaks in the carefully calibrated list of countries. Will there be a secondary market? How does this affect where future data centers are built?” he asked.
Jones of the Stimson Center argued that the policy is more a “symbolic gesture than a practical consideration” but has a stern message for the rest of the world.
“The U.S. is clearly saying, if you want to participate in the U.S.-sponsored AI ecosystem, you have to pick now. You pick China or you pick us. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t play one off against the other. You have to choose,” he concluded.
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Elon Musk was sued on Tuesday by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which accused the world’s richest person of waiting too long to disclose in 2022 he had amassed a large stake in Twitter, the social media company he later bought.
In a complaint filed in Washington, the SEC said Musk violated federal securities law by waiting 11 days too long to disclose his initial purchase of 5% of Twitter’s common shares.
An SEC rule requires investors to disclose within 10 calendar days, or by March 24, 2022, in Musk’s case, when they cross a 5% ownership threshold.
The SEC said that at the expense of unsuspecting investors, Musk bought more than $500 million of Twitter shares at artificially low prices before finally revealing his purchases on April 4, 2022, by which time he owned a 9.2% stake.
Twitter’s share price rose more than 27% following that disclosure, the SEC said.
Tuesday’s lawsuit seeks to force Musk to pay a civil fine and disgorge profits he didn’t deserve.
Musk eventually purchased Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022, and renamed it X.
Alex Spiro, a lawyer for Musk, in an email called the SEC lawsuit the culmination of the regulator’s “multi-year campaign of harassment” against his client.
“Today’s action is an admission by the SEC that they cannot bring an actual case,” he said. “Mr. Musk has done nothing wrong and everyone sees this sham for what it is.”
Spiro added that the lawsuit addresses a mere “alleged administrative failure to file a single form — an offense that, even if proven, carries a nominal penalty.”
Musk, an adviser to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, is worth $417 billion according to Forbes magazine, through businesses such as the electric car maker Tesla and rocket company.
He is worth nearly twice as much as Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, the world’s second-richest person at $232 billion, Forbes said.
The SEC sued Musk six days before Trump’s January 20 presidential inauguration.
SEC Chairman Gary Gensler is stepping down that day, and Paul Atkins, who Trump nominated to succeed him, is expected to review many of Gensler’s rules and enforcement actions.
Musk has also been sued in Manhattan federal court by former Twitter shareholders over the late disclosure.
In that case, Musk has said it was implausible to believe he wanted to defraud other shareholders, and that “all indications” were that his delay was a mistake.
Musk has long feuded with the SEC, including after it sued him in 2018 over his Twitter posts about possibly taking Tesla private and having secured funding to do so.
He settled that lawsuit by paying a $20 million civil fine, agreeing to have Tesla lawyers review some Twitter posts in advance, and giving up his role as Tesla’s chairman.
The SEC also sought sanctions from Musk after he missed court-ordered testimony last September for the Twitter probe so he could attend the launch of SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission at Florida’s Cape Canaveral.
A federal judge in San Francisco rejected that request, because Musk later testified and agreed to pay the SEC’s travel costs.
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The White House says it has finalized rules that crack down on Chinese and Russian automobile technology effectively banning all personal smart cars from the two countries from entering the U.S. market.
In a White House fact sheet detailing the decision, the Biden administration Tuesday said that while connected vehicles offer advantages, the involvement of foreign adversaries such as China and Russia in their supply chains presents serious risks granting “malign actors unfettered access to these connected systems and the data they collect.”
“The Department of Commerce has issued a final rule that will prohibit the sale and import of connected vehicle hardware and software systems, as well as completed connected vehicles, from the PRC and Russia,” the fact sheet said.
PRC is the acronym for China’s official name, the People’s Republic of China.
Connected vehicles are smart cars that are designed to be convenient for consumers and provide safety for drivers, passengers, and pedestrians through the use of many connected parts such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cellular, and satellite connectivity.
“Cars today aren’t just steel on wheels; they’re computers,” said Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo when speaking on the rule.
“This is a targeted approach to ensure we keep PRC- and Russian-manufactured technologies off American roads,” said Raimondo.
The new rule is the “culmination of a year-long examination” of potential risks posed by connected vehicles and will “help the United States defend against the PRC’s cyber espionage and intrusion operations, which continue to pose a significant threat to U.S. critical infrastructure and public safety.”
The crackdown on cars follows Washington’s announcement earlier this month that the U.S. consider new rules aimed at addressing risks posed by drones that utilize technology from China and Russia.
The U.S. has repeatedly emphasized the need to balance technological progress with the protection of national security interests.
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China says HMPV infections in the northern part of the country are declining. News of increased respiratory illnesses in China kindled international concerns about another potential pandemic. But, as VOA’s Dora Mekouar reports, medical experts say HMPV is nothing like COVID-19. VOA Mandarin contributed to this report.
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— U.S. President Joe Biden issued an executive order Tuesday directing the development of artificial intelligence data centers on six federal land sites, with a special focus on powering them with clean energy and upholding high labor standards.
Biden said in a statement that the United States is the world leader in AI, but cannot take that lead for granted.
“We will not let America be out-built when it comes to the technology that will define the future, nor should we sacrifice critical environmental standards and our shared efforts to protect clean air and clean water,” Biden said.
The order calls for the Department of Defense and Department of Energy to each identify three suitable sites where private companies will lease the land, pay for the construction and operation of the data centers and ensure the supply of enough clean energy to fully power the sites.
The developers will also have to buy “an appropriate share” of semiconductors produced in the United States to help ensure there is a “robust domestic semiconductor supply chain,” the White House said.
In addition to identifying the sites, the federal government will also commit under the order to expedite the permitting process for the data center construction.
Senior administration officials, in a phone call with journalists previewing the order, highlighted the national security need for the United States to have its own powerful AI infrastructure, both to protect it for its own use but also to prevent adversaries such as China from possessing those capabilities.
“From the national security standpoint, it’s really critical to find a pathway for building the data centers and power infrastructure to support frontier AI operations here in the United States to ensure that the most powerful AI models continue to be trained and stored securely here in the United States,” an official said.
A senior administration official cited the priority of making sure the AI industry had an anchor in the United States to avoid repeating the history of other technologies that moved offshore to areas with lower labor and environmental standards as well.
AI chip restrictions
Tuesday’s order comes a day after the Biden administration announced new restrictions on the export of the most advanced artificial intelligence chips and proprietary parameters used to govern the interactions of users with AI systems.
The rule, which will undergo a 120-day period for public comments, comes in response to what administration officials described as a need to protect national security while also clarifying the rules under which companies in trusted partner countries could access the emerging technology in order to promote innovation.
“Over the coming years, AI will become really ubiquitous in every business application in every industry around the world, with enormous potential for enhanced productivity and societal, health care and economic benefits,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told reporters. “That being said, as AI becomes more powerful, the risks to our national security become even more intense.”
A senior administration official said the new rule will not include any restrictions on chip sales to Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, the United Kingdom or the United States.
The rules build on 2023 curbs limiting the export of certain AI chips to China, a strategic competitor in the production of advanced semiconductors. Beijing attacked the new U.S. AI edict as a “flagrant violation” of international trade rules.
China’s Ministry of Commerce said the Biden administration announcement “is another example of the generalization of the concept of national security and the abuse of export control, and a flagrant violation of international multilateral economic and trade rules.”
Beijing said it would “take necessary measures to firmly safeguard its legitimate rights and interests.”
Countries that are under U.S. arms embargoes are already subject to export restrictions on advanced AI chips, but a senior administration official said they will now be under restrictions for the transfer of the most powerful closed weight AI models.
The weights in an AI model determine how it processes the inputs from a user and determines what to provide the user as a response, according to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. In a closed weight system, those parameters are secret, unlike with an open weight system in which users could see the settings the model is using to make its decisions.
Most countries — those not included in the closed partner or arms embargo lists — will not face licensing requirements for obtaining the equivalent of 1,700 of the most advanced AI chips currently available, nor for any less advanced chips.
Companies in the United States and allied countries will not face restrictions in using the most powerful closed weight AI systems, provided they are stored under adequate security, a senior administration official said.
LONDON — Britain’s antitrust regulator said on Tuesday it would investigate Google’s search services using its new powers to see how they impact consumers and businesses, including advertisers, news publishers and rival search engines.
The Competition and Markets Authority, which has gained new powers to examine big tech, said search was vital for economic growth and it was critical that competition was working well.
“Millions of people and businesses relied on Google’s search and advertising services – with 90% of searches happening on their platform and more than 200,000 UK businesses advertising there,” CMA boss Sarah Cardell said in a statement.
“It’s our job to ensure people get the full benefit of choice and innovation in search services and get a fair deal.”
The CMA’s move comes after U.S. prosecutors in November argued to a judge that Google must sell its Chrome browser, share data, and search results with rivals, and take a range of other measures to end its monopoly on online search.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for a comment.
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Blue Origin will try again to launch its massive new rocket as early as Tuesday after calling off the debut launch because of ice buildup in critical plumbing.
The 98-meter New Glenn rocket was supposed to blast off before dawn Monday with a prototype satellite. But ice formed in a purge line for a unit powering some of the rocket’s hydraulic systems and launch controllers ran out of time to clear it, according to the company.
Founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin said Tuesday’s poor weather forecast could cause more delay. Thick clouds and stiff wind were expected at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
The test flight already had been delayed by rough seas that posed a risk to the company’s plan to land the first-stage booster on a floating platform in the Atlantic.
New Glenn is named after the first American to orbit Earth, John Glenn. It is five times taller than Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket that carries paying customers to the edge of space from Texas.
Bezos founded the company 25 years ago. He took part in Monday’s countdown from Mission Control, located at the rocket factory just outside the gates of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
No matter what happens, Bezos said this weekend, “We’re going to pick ourselves up and keep going.”
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