Trump orders Chinese owner of TikTok to sell US assets
Washington: President Donald Trump on Friday gave the Chinese company ByteDance 90 days to divest itself of any assets used to support the popular TikTok app in the United States.
Trump's executive order said there is credible evidence that leads me to believe that ByteDance might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States.
Trump last week ordered sweeping but vague bans on dealings with the Chinese owners of TikTok and the messaging app WeChat, saying they are a threat to US national security, foreign policy and the economy.
It remains unclear what the TikTok orders mean for the app's 100 million US users, many of them teenagers or young adults who use it to post and watch short-form videos.
Trump on Friday also ordered ByteDance to divest itself of "any data obtained or derived" from TikTok users in the U.S. Microsoft is in talks to buy parts of TikTok.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany defended Trump's earlier TikTok and WeChat orders Thursday, telling reporters he was exercising his emergency authority under a 1977 law enabling the president to regulate international commerce to address unusual threats.
The administration is committed to protecting the American people from all cyber threats and these apps collect significant amounts of private data on users, said McEnany, adding that the Chinese government can access and use such data.
TikTok said it spent nearly a year trying to engage in good faith with the US government to address these concerns.
What we encountered instead was that the Administration paid no attention to facts, dictated terms of an agreement without going through standard legal processes, and tried to insert itself into negotiations between private businesses, the company's statement said.
Let the Truth be known. If you read VB and like VB, please be a VB Supporter and Help us deliver the Truth to one and all.
3 US troops killed, 5 seriously wounded during Iran attacks, military says
Washington (AP): Three American service members have been killed and five others seriously wounded during the US attacks on Iran, the military said Sunday, marking the first American casualties in a major offensive that has sparked retaliation from the Islamic Republic.
US Central Command, which oversees the Middle East, announced the deaths in a post on X but did not say when and where they occurred. The statement said “several others sustained minor shrapnel injuries and concussions” and were going to return to duty.
Central Command described the situation “as fluid” and said it would withhold the identities of the service members who were killed for 24 hours after their families were notified.
The US military also denied Iranian claims that the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier was struck with ballistic missiles, saying on X that the “missiles launched didn't even come close.”
President Donald Trump had warned that American troops could be killed or injured in the operation.
“The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties,” the Republican president said in a video address released early Saturday. “That often happens in war. But we're doing this not for now. We're doing this for the future.”
Following the US-Israeli strikes that killed Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and other leaders, Iran's counterattacks have struck US bases in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.
Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard has threatened to launch its “most intense offensive operation” ever targeting Israeli and American military installations.
Before the strikes, Trump had built up the largest US military presence in the Middle East in decades. The arrival of the Lincoln and three accompanying guided-missile destroyers at the end of January bolstered the number of warships in the region.
The world's largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, and four accompanying destroyers later were dispatched from the Caribbean Sea to head to the Middle East.
The Ford was part of the US raid in Venezuela that captured leader Nicolás Maduro, who was brought to New York to face drug trafficking charges. The operation in January claimed no American lives but left seven US troops with gunshot wounds and shrapnel-related injuries.
One of those injured received the Medal of Honor during Trump's State of the Union address last week. Trump said Army Chief Warrant Officer 5 Eric Slover piloted the lead CH-47 Chinook helicopter that descended on the “heavily protected military fortress” where Maduro was staying.
Trump has launched several military operations during his second term, including strikes on members of the Islamic State group in Syria in retaliation for an ambush attack that killed two US troops and an American civilian interpreter in December.
The US military has also struck IS forces in Nigeria, after Trump accused the West African country's government of failing to rein in the targeting of Christians.
