How TikTok grew from a fun app for teens into a potential national security threat

SAN FRANCISCO — If it feels like TikTok has been around forever, that’s probably because it has, at least if you’re measuring via internet time. What’s now in question is whether it will be around much longer and, if so, in what form?

Starting in 2017, when the Chinese social video app merged with its competitor Musical.ly, TikTok has grown from a niche teen app into a global trendsetter. While, of course, also emerging as a potential national security threat, according to U.S. officials.

On April 24, President Joe Biden signed legislation requiring TikTok parent ByteDance to sell to a U.S. owner within a year or to shut down. TikTok and its China-based parent company, ByteDance, filed a lawsuit against the U.S., claiming the security concerns were overblown and the law should be struck down because it violates the First Amendment.

The Supreme Court on Friday unanimously upheld the federal law banning TikTok, and the popular short form video service went dark in the U.S. — just hours before the ban was set to begin.

Here’s how TikTok came to this juncture:

March 2012

ByteDance is founded in China by entrepreneur Zhang Yimin. Its first hit product is Toutiao, a personalized news aggregator for Chinese users.

July 2014

Startup Musical.ly, later known for an eponymous app used to post short lipsyncing music videos, is founded in China by entrepreneur Alex Zhu.

July 2015

Musical.ly hits #1 in the Apple App Store, following a design change that made the company’s logo visible when users shared their videos.

2016

ByteDance launches Douyin, a video sharing app for Chinese users. Its popularity inspires the company to spin off a version for foreign audiences called TikTok.

November 2017

ByteDance acquires Musical.ly for $1 billion. Nine months later, ByteDance merges it with TikTok.

Powered by an algorithm that encourages binge-watching, users begin to share a wide variety of video on the app, including dance moves, kitchen food preparation and various “challenges” to perform, record and post acts that range from serious to satirical.

February 2019

Rapper Lil Nas X releases the country-trap song “Old Town Road” on TikTok, where it goes viral and pushes the song to a record 17 weeks in the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The phenomenon kicks off a wave of TikTok videos from musical artists who suddenly see TikTok as a critical way to reach fans.

TikTok settles federal charges of violating U.S. child-privacy laws and agrees to pay a $5.7 million fine.

September 2019

The Washington Post reports that while images of Hong Kong democracy protests and police crackdowns are common on most social media sites, they are strangely absent on TikTok. The same story notes that TikTok posts with the #trump2020 tag received more than 70 million views.

The company insists that TikTok content moderation, conducted in the U.S., is not responsible and says the app is a place for entertainment, not politics.

The Guardian reports on internal documents that reportedly detail how TikTok instructs its moderators to delete or limit the reach of videos touching on topics sensitive to China such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and subsequent massacre, Tibetan independence or the sanctioned religious group Falun Gong.

October 2019

U.S. politicians begin to raise alarms about TikTok’s influence, calling for a federal investigations of its Musical.ly acquisition and a national security probe into TikTok and other Chinese-owned apps. That investigation begins in November, according to news reports.

December 2019

The Pentagon recommends that all U.S. military personnel delete TikTok from all phones, personal and government-issued. Some services ban the app on military-owned phones. In January, the Pentagon bans the app from all military phones.

TikTok becomes the second-most downloaded app in the world, according to data from analytics firm SensorTower.

May 2020

Privacy groups file a complaint alleging TikTok is still violating U.S. child-protection laws and flouting a 2019 settlement agreement. The company “takes the issue of safely seriously” and continues to improve safeguards, it says.

TikTok hires former Disney executive Kevin Mayer as its chief executive officer in an apparent attempt to improve its U.S. relations. Mayer resigns three months later.

July 2020

India bans TikTok and dozens of other Chinese apps in response to a border clash with China.

President Donald Trump says he is considering banning TikTok as retaliation for China’s alleged mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

August 2020

Trump issues a sweeping but vague executive order banning American companies from any “transaction” with ByteDance and its subsidiaries, including TikTok. Several days later, he issues a second order demanding that ByteDance divest itself of TikTok’s U.S. operations within 90 days.

Microsoft confirms it is exploring acquisition of TikTok. The deal never materializes; neither does a similar overture from Oracle and Walmart. TikTok, meanwhile, sues the Trump administration for alleged violation of due process in its executive orders.

November 2020

Joe Biden is elected president. He doesn’t offer new policy on TikTok and won’t take office until January, but Trump’s plans to force a sale of TikTok start to unravel anyway. The Trump administration extends the deadlines it had imposed on ByteDance and TikTok and eventually lets them slide altogether.

February 2021

Newly sworn-in President Joe Biden postpones the legal cases involving Trump’s plan to ban TikTok, effectively bringing them to a halt.

September 2021

TikTok announces it has more than a billion monthly active users.

December 2021

A Wall Street Journal report finds TikTok algorithms can flood teens with a torrent of harmful material such as videos recommending extreme dieting, a form of eating disorder.

February 2022

TikTok announces new rules to deter the spread of harmful material such as viral hoaxes and promotion of eating disorders.

April 2022

“The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical,” a project created by two fans of the Netflix show as a TikTok project, wins the Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album.

TikTok becomes the most downloaded app in the world, beating out Instagram, according to SensorTower data.

June 2022

BuzzFeed reports that China-based ByteDance employees have repeatedly accessed the nonpublic information of TikTok users, based on leaked recordings from more than 80 internal TikTok meetings. TikTok responds with a vague comment touting its commitment to security that doesn’t directly address the BuzzFeed report.

TikTok also announces it has migrated its user data to U.S. servers managed by the U.S. tech firm Oracle. But that doesn’t prevent fresh alarm among U.S. officials about the risk of Chinese authorities accessing U.S. user data.

December 2022

FBI Director Christopher Wray raises national security concerns about TikTok, warning that Chinese officials could manipulate the app’s recommendation algorithm for influence operations.

ByteDance also said it fired four employees who accessed data on journalists from Buzzfeed News and The Financial Times while attempting to track down leaks of confidential materials about the company.

February 2023

The White House gives federal agencies 30 days to ensure TikTok is deleted from all government-issued mobile devices. Both the FBI and the Federal Communications Commission warn that ByteDance could share TikTok user data with China’s authoritarian government.

March 2023

Legislators grill TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew at a six-hour congressional hearing where Chew, a native of Singapore, attempts to push back on assertions that TikTok and ByteDance are tools of the Chinese government.

January 2024

TikTok said it was restricting a tool some researchers use to analyze popular videos on the platform.

March 2024

A bill to ban TikTok or force its sale to a U.S. company gathers steam in Congress. TikTok brings dozens of its creators to Washington to tell lawmakers to back off, while emphasizing changes the company has made to protect user data. TikTok also annoys legislators by sending notifications to users urging them to “speak up now” or risk seeing TikTok banned; users then flood congressional offices with calls.

The House of Representatives passes the TikTok ban-or-sell bill.

April 2024

The Senate follows suit, sending the bill to President Biden, who signs it.

May 2024

TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance sue the U.S. federal government to challenge a law that would force the sale of ByteDance’s stake or face a ban, saying that the law is unconstitutional.

June 2024

Former President Donald Trump joins TikTok and begins posting campaign-related content.

July 2024

Vice President Kamala Harris joins TikTok and also begins posting campaign-related material.

Dec. 6, 2024

A federal appeals court panel unanimously upheld a law that could lead to a ban on TikTok, handing a resounding defeat to the popular social media platform as it fights for its survival in the U.S. The panel of judges rebuffed the company’s challenge of the statute, which it argued had ran afoul of the First Amendment.

Dec. 27, 2024

President-elect Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court to pause the potential TikTok ban from going into effect until his administration can pursue a “political resolution” to the issue.

Jan. 17, 2025

The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the federal law banning TikTok beginning unless it’s sold by its China-based parent company, holding that the risk to national security posed by its ties to China overcomes concerns about limiting speech by the app. A ban is set to into effect on Jan. 19, 2025.

Jan. 18, 2025

TikTok users in the United States were prevented from watching videos on the popular social media platform just hours before a federal ban was set to take effect.

“A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S.,” a message in the app said. “Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok for now.”

The company’s app was also removed from prominent app stores, including the ones operated by Apple and Google, while its website told users that the short-form video platform was no longer available.

Jan. 19, 2025

Shortly after the app went dark for U.S. users, Trump said he would issue an executive order upon taking office to grant TikTok an extension so that it could remain online.

A few hours later, TikTok restored service to users in the United States, saying that Trump had provided “the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties providing TikTok to over 170 million Americans.”

California marine sanctuary protects waters from oil drilling

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.

Keke Palmer’s ‘One of Them Days,’ ‘Mufasa’ race for No. 1 

WASHINGTON — The Keke Palmer buddy comedy “One of Them Days” opened in first place on the North American box office charts on a particularly slow Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend. 

The R-rated Sony release earned $11.6 million from 2,675 theaters, according to studio estimates Sunday, beating Disney’s “Mufasa: The Lion King” by a hair. By the end of Monday’s holiday, “Mufasa” will have the edge, however. 

“One of Them Days” cost only $14 million to produce, which it is expected to earn by Monday. The very well-reviewed buddy comedy stars Palmer and SZA as friends and roommates scrambling to get money for rent before their landlord evicts them. Notably it’s the first Black female-led theatrical comedy since “Girls Trip” came out in 2017 and it currently carries a stellar 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. 

But the marketplace was also quite weak overall. The total box office for Friday, Saturday and Sunday will add up to less than $80 million, according to data from Comscore, making it one of the worst Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekends since 1997. 

“For an individual film like ‘One of Them Days’ this was a great weekend,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore. “You can still find success stories within what is overall a low grossing weekend for movie theaters.” 

The Walt Disney Co.’s “Mufasa” was close by in second place with $11.5 million from the weekend, its fifth playing in theaters. Globally, the Barry Jenkins-directed prequel has made $588 million. It even beat a brand-new offering, the Blumhouse horror “Wolf Man,” which debuted in third place with $10.6 million from 3,354 North American theaters. 

Writer-director Leigh Whannell’s monster tale starring Christopher Abbott and Julia Garner did not enter theaters with great reviews. It currently carries a 53% on Rotten Tomatoes. Reviews don’t generally affect the success of horror movies in their first weekend, but audiences also gave it a lackluster C- CinemaScore in exit polls. The Blumhouse production and Universal Pictures release cost a reported $25 million to make and is expected to reach $12 million by the close of Monday’s holiday. 

“Sonic the Hedgehog 3″ was in fourth place with $8.6 million and “Den of Thieves 2” rounded out the top five with $6.6 million. 

In specialty releases, Brady Corbert’s 215-minute post-war epic “The Brutalist” expanded to 388 screens where it made nearly $2 million over the weekend. A24 reported that it sold out various 70mm and IMAX showings. The studio also re-released its Colman Domingo drama “Sing Sing” in theaters and prisons, where over 1 million incarcerated people in 46 states were able to view the film. 

The Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend has seen major successes in the past. Dergarabedian noted “Bad Boys for Life,” which had a three-day opening of $62.5 million in 2020, and “American Sniper,” which earned $89.3 in its first weekend in wide release in 2016. 

“This is a year that’s going to get a big boost starting with ‘Captain America: Brave New World’ and ‘Paddington in Peru’ in February,” Dergarabedian said. 

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday. 

  1. “One of Them Days,” $11.6 million. 

  2. “Mufasa: The Lion King,” $11.5 million. 

  3. “Wolf Man,” $10.6 million. 

  4. “Sonic the Hedgehog 3,” $8.6 million. 

  5. “Den of Thieves 2: Pantera,” $6.6 million. 

  6. “Moana 2,” $6.1 million. 

  7. “Nosferatu,” $4.3 million. 

  8. “A Complete Unknown,” $3.8 million. 

  9. “Wicked,” $3.6 million. 

  10. “Babygirl,” $2 million. 

TikTok: it’s restoring service to US users based on Trump’s promised executive order 

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.

New documentary questions who took famous napalm attack photo

It is one of the 20th century’s most memorable images: a naked girl, screaming, running from a napalm bombing during the Vietnam War. More than a half-century later, a new documentary is calling into question who took it — and the retired Associated Press photographer long credited for the photo insists it was his, while his longtime employer says it has no evidence of anyone else being behind the camera. 

The film about the Pulitzer Prize-winning picture, “The Stringer,” is scheduled to debut next week at the Sundance Film Festival. Both photographer Nick Ut and his longtime employer are contesting it vigorously, and Ut’s lawyer is seeking to block the premiere, threatening a defamation lawsuit. The AP, which conducted its own investigation over six months, concluded it has “no reason to believe anyone other than Ut took the photo.” 

The picture of Kim Phuc running down a road in the village of Trang Bang, crying and naked because she had taken off clothes burning from napalm, instantly became symbolic of the horrors of the Vietnam War. 

Taken on June 8, 1972, the photo is credited to Ut, then a 21-year-old staffer in AP’s Saigon bureau. He was awarded the Pulitzer a year later. Now 73, he moved to California after the war and worked for the AP for 40 years until retiring in 2017. 

The film’s allegations open an unexpected new chapter for an image that, within hours of it being taken, was beamed around the planet and became one of the most indelible photographs of both the Vietnam War and the turbulent century that produced it. Whatever the truth, the film’s investigations apparently relate only to the identity of the photographer and not the image’s overall authenticity. 

The dispute puts the filmmakers, who call the episode “a scandal behind the making of one of the most-recognized photographs of the 20th century,” at odds with Ut, whose work that day defined his career. It also puts them at cross purposes with the AP, a global news organization for whom accuracy is a foundational part of the business model. 

How did the questioning of the photo begin? 

It’s difficult, so many years later, to overestimate the wallop that this particular image packed. Ron Burnett, an expert on images and former president of the Emily Carr University of Art and Design, called it “earth-shattering.” 

“It changed the way photos have always been thought about and broke the rules for how much violence you can show to the public,” Burnett said. 

The photo sat unchallenged for much of its 53-year existence. All these years later, a counter-narrative has emerged that it was instead taken by another person, someone who worked for NBC News at the time and also lives now in California. The person allegedly had delivered his film to the AP’s office as a “stringer,” a non-staff member who provides material to a news organization. 

The husband-and-wife team of Gary Knight, founder of the VII Foundation, and producer Fiona Turner are behind the film. On his website, Knight described “The Stringer” as “a story that many in our profession did not want told, and some of them continue to go to great lengths to make sure isn’t told.” 

“The film grapples with questions of authorship, racial injustice and journalistic ethics while shining a light on the fundamental yet often unrecognized contributions of local freelancers who provide the information we need to understand how events worldwide impact us all,” Knight wrote. 

Knight did not return a message seeking comment from the AP on Thursday. A representative from Sundance also did not return a message about a cease-and-desist letter from Ut’s lawyer, James Hornstein, trying to stop the film’s airing. Hornstein would not make Ut available for an interview, saying he anticipated future litigation. 

Knight and Turner met with AP in London last June about the allegations. According to the AP, filmmakers requested the news organization sign a non-disclosure agreement before they provided their evidence. AP declined. 

That hampered the AP’s own investigation, along with the passage of time. Horst Faas, chief of photos for AP in Saigon in 1972, and Yuichi “Jackson” Ishizaki, who developed Ut’s film, are both dead. Many of the Saigon bureau’s records were lost when communists took over the city, including any dealings with “the stringer.” Negatives of photos used back then are preserved in AP’s corporate archives in New York, but they provided no insight for the investigation. 

Still, the AP decided to release its own findings before seeing “The Stringer” and the details of the claim that it is making. “AP stands prepared to review any evidence and take whatever remedial action might be needed if their thesis is proved true,” the news organization said. 

Some who were there are sure about what happened 

The AP said it spoke to seven surviving people who were in Trang Bang or AP’s Saigon bureau that day, and all maintain they have no reason to doubt their own conclusions that Ut had taken the photo. 

One was Fox Butterfield, a renowned longtime New York Times reporter, who also said that he was contacted by Turner for the documentary. “I told them what my memory was and they didn’t like it, but they just went ahead anyway,” Butterfield told AP. 

Another was photographer David Burnett, who said he witnessed Ut and Alexander Shimkin, a freelance photographer working primarily for Newsweek, taking photos as Kim Phuc and other children emerged from smoke following an attack. Shimkin was killed in Vietnam a month later, according to the investigation. 

A key source for the story in “The Stringer” is Carl Robinson, then a photo editor for the AP in Saigon, who was initially overruled in his judgment not to use the picture. AP reached out to Robinson as part of its probe, but he said he had signed an NDA with Knight and the VII Foundation. Knight followed up, saying Robinson would only speak off the record, which the AP concluded would have prevented the news organization from setting the record straight. 

Robinson did not immediately reply to an email seeking comment on Thursday. 

On duty that day in Saigon, Robinson had concluded that Ut’s picture could not be used because it would have violated standards prohibiting nudity. But Faas overruled him, and senior AP editors in New York decided to run the picture for what it conveyed about war. 

The AP questioned Robinson’s long silence in contradicting Ut’s photo credit, and showed a photo from its archives of Robinson with champagne toasting Ut’s Pulitzer Prize. In a 2005 interview with corporate archives, Robinson said he thought AP “created a monster” when it distributed the photo because much of the world’s sympathies were focused on one victim, instead of war victims more broadly. 

Former AP correspondent Peter Arnett, who believes Ut made the image, said Robinson wrote to him after Faas’ death in 2012 to make the allegation that Ut had not taken it; he said he did not want to do it while Faas was still alive. According to the AP investigation, Arnett said Robinson told him that Ut had “gone all Hollywood” and he didn’t like it. 

Hornstein characterized Robinson, who was dismissed by AP in 1978, as “a guy with a 50-year vendetta against the AP.” He also questioned the long silence by the man supposedly identified in the documentary as the person who really took the photo. 

The lawyer also produced a statement from Kim Phuc, who said that while she has no memory of that day, her uncle has repeatedly told her that Ut took the picture and that she had no reason to doubt him. Ut also took her to the nearest hospital after the photo was taken, she wrote. 

Chili paste heats up dishes and warms hearts at northeastern Tunisia’s harissa festival

NABEUL, Tunisia — For years, Tunisians have been picking bright red peppers, combining them with garlic, vinegar and spices and turning them into a saucy spread called harissa. The condiment is a national staple, found in homes, restaurants and food stalls throughout the coastal North African nation.

Brick-red, spicy and tangy, it can be scooped up on bread drizzled with olive oil or dabbed onto plates of eggs, fish, stews or sandwiches. Harissa can be sprinkled atop merguez sausages, smeared on savory pastries called brik or sandwiches called fricassées.

In Nabeul, the largest city in Tunisia’s harissa-producing Cap Bon region, local chef and harissa specialist Chahida Boufayed called it “essential to Tunisian cuisine.”

“Harissa is a love story,” she said at a festival held in honor of the chili paste sauce in the northeastern Tunisian city of Nabeul earlier this month. “I don’t make it for the money.”

Aficionados from across Tunisia and the world converged on the 43-year-old mother’s stand to try her recipe. Surrounded by strings of drying baklouti red peppers, she described how she grows her vegetables and blends them with spices to make harissa.

The region’s annual harissa festival has grown in the two-plus years since the United Nations cultural organization, UNESCO, recognized the sauce on a list of items of intangible cultural heritage, said Zouheir Belamin, the president of the association behind the event. He said its growing prominence worldwide was attracting new tourists to Tunisia, specifically to Nabeul.

UNESCO in 2022 called harissa “an integral part of domestic provisions and the daily culinary and food traditions of Tunisian society, adding it to a list of traditions and practices that mark intangible cultural heritage including Ukrainian borscht and Cuban rum.

Already popular across North Africa as well as in France, the condiment is gaining popularity throughout the world from the United States to China.

Seen as sriracha’s North African cousin, harissa is typically prepared by women who sun-dry harvested red peppers and then deseed, wash and ground them. Its name comes from “haras” – the Arabic verb for “to crush” – because of the next stage in the process.

The finished peppers are combined with a mixture of garlic cloves, vinegar, salt, olive oil and spices in a mortar and pestle to make a fragrant blend. Variants on display at Nabeul’s Jan. 3-5 festival used cumin, coriander and different spice blends or types of peppers, including smoked ones, to create pastes ranging in color from burgundy to crimson.

“Making harissa is an art. If you master it, you can create wonders,” Boufayed said.

TikTok goes dark for US users; company pins hope on Trump

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.

Proposed rules would require nutrition info, allergen warnings on US alcohol labels 

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.

Thai resort island Phuket grapples with growing garbage crisis

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.” 

SpaceX says fire could have caused Starship to break, spew debris near Caribbean

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.

Malawi takes steps to end cholera outbreaks by 2030

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.

SpaceX catches Starship booster again, but upper stage explodes

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.

Trump team might step in to save TikTok from pending US ban

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.

US CDC recommends faster testing for bird flu in hospitalized patients

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.  

David Lynch, filmmaker behind ‘Twin Peaks’ and ‘Mulholland Drive,’ dies at 78

LOS ANGELES — David Lynch, the filmmaker celebrated for his uniquely dark vision in such movies as “Blue Velvet” and “Mulholland Drive” and the TV series “Twin Peaks,” has died just days before his 79th birthday. 

His family announced the death in a Facebook post on Thursday. The cause of death and location was not immediately available, but Lynch had been public about his emphysema. 

“We would appreciate some privacy at this time. There’s a big hole in the world now that he’s no longer with us. But, as he would say, ‘Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole,'” the post read. “It’s a beautiful day with golden sunshine and blue skies all the way.” 

Lynch was a onetime artist who broke through in the 1970s with the surreal “Eraserhead” and rarely failed to startle and inspire audiences and peers in the following decades. His notable releases ranged from the neo-noir “Mulholland Drive” to the skewed Gothic of “Blue Velvet” to the eclectic and eccentric “Twin Peaks.” 

His other credits included the crime story “Wild at Heart,” winner of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival; the biographical drama “The Elephant Man” and the G-rated, straightforward “The Straight Story.”

WHO appeals for $1.5 billion to tackle ‘unprecedented’ global health crisis

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.”

Bezos’ Blue Origin reaches orbit in first New Glenn launch, misses booster landing

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.

Bollywood star Saif Ali Khan out of danger after stabbing at Mumbai home

MUMBAI — Bollywood actor Saif Ali Khan was stabbed repeatedly by an intruder at his home in Mumbai on Thursday, but doctors treating him said he was out of danger after surgery.

Khan, 54, was “on the path to complete recovery” after receiving stab wounds on his spine, neck and hand, the doctors told reporters.

“He sustained a major injury to the thoracic spinal chord due to a lodged knife in the spine. Surgery was performed to remove the knife and also repair the leaking spinal fluid,” said Nitin Dange, one of the doctors operating on Khan.

Khan was attacked just after midnight when he tried to stop the intruder, believed to be a burglar, from entering his apartment in the upscale neighborhood of Bandra, police and local media said.

A female employee at the apartment was also attacked and was being treated, police said.

Among the country’s most bankable stars, Khan, 54, is the son of India’s former cricket captain Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi and actress Sharmila Tagore. He is married to actor Kareena Kapoor, and his daughter from a previous marriage, Sara, is also a Bollywood actor.

Police had identified the perpetrator and had launched a search for him, senior police official Dikshit Gedam told reporters. “The accused attempted to enter through a fire escape. It appears to be a robbery attempt,” he said.

Khan, who has featured in more than 70 films and television series, is a regular on the red carpet. He and Kapoor have two young sons and are one of Bollywood’s most well-known couples.

Khan has acted in several notable films and series, including Sacred Games, Netflix’s first Indian production, which released in 2018.

Film stars and opposition leaders called for police to beef up security measures in the city.

“If such high-profile people with … security can be attacked in their homes, what could happen to common citizens?” Clyde Crasto, spokesperson of the Nationalist Congress Party, asked on X.

India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies won November elections in the western state of Maharashtra, the capital of which is Mumbai.

Actor and filmmaker Pooja Bhatt also called for a greater police presence in the suburb home to many in the film industry.

“The city, and especially the queen of the suburbs, have never felt so unsafe before,” she said on X, using a popular description for the trendy Bandra area.

Indian space agency achieves satellite docking milestone

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. 

US imposes export controls on biotech equipment over AI security concerns

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.

US ‘TikTok Refugees’ migrate to another Chinese app as ban looms

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.

WHO says suspected outbreak of Marburg disease kills 8 in remote part of Tanzania 

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. 

 

US, Japanese companies send landers on moon missions

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