Foreign News
Former Trump official Steve Mnuchin puts forward plan to buy TikTok app
Former United States Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has announced plans to rally investors in the hopes of buying the popular video-sharing app TikTok.
The announcement comes after the House of Representatives passed a Bill on Wednesday that seeks to ban the app unless its China-based parent company ByteDance divests from its US operations amid national security concerns. The Senate, however, has yet to schedule a vote on the bill.
Mnuchin, an investment banker who served under former US President Donald Trump from 2017 to 2021, shared his plans for TikTok on the CNBC business programme Squawk Box on Thursday. As of yet, however, ByteDance has not indicated any intention of selling the app.
“It’s a great business, and I’m going to put together a group to buy TikTok,” Mnuchin explained. “This should be owned by US businesses. There’s no way that the Chinese would ever let a US company own something like this in China.”
Mnuchin did not provide further details about his efforts, including which investors might be involved in his bid to acquire the app.
But his plans would not be the first attempt to transfer control of TikTok to US hands. In 2020, then-President Trump threw his support behind a proposed deal that would see the app acquired by the tech company Oracle and the retailer Walmart, to form a US-based enterprise.
Legislators in the US have long argued that the widespread use of TikTok constitutes a security threat, given that the app boasts 170 million American users. They fear users’ data could be passed to the Chinese government as intelligence.
Efforts to curtail TikTok’s expansion in the US got a boost on Wednesday, with the House’s vote on a possible TikTok ban. The bill passed by a lopsided margin, with 352 votes in favour and 65 against. US President Joe Biden, a Democrat, has said he plans to sign the bill into law if it reaches his desk. Its prospects in the Senate, however, are unclear.
ByteDance, however, has repeatedly dismissed US national security concerns, arguing there is no basis for the allegations that it would send user data to the Chinese government. Company spokesperson Alex Haurek denounced the bill’s passage in the House on Wednesday, calling it the product of unfounded concerns.
“This process was secret, and the bill was jammed through for one reason: It’s a ban,” Haurek said.
Civil liberties groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have also raised concerns that banning TikTok would violate freedom of expression.
“The House of Representatives just passed a bill that would effectively ban TikTok in the United States, violating the free speech rights of millions of Americans who use the platform daily to communicate and stay informed,” the ACLU said in a social media post on Wednesday.
(Aljazeera)
The Philippine House of Representatives has voted to impeach Vice-President Sara Duterte for a second time, threatening her plan to run for president in 2028.
Monday’s vote moves the impeachment process to the Senate for trial, where if convicted, the daughter of former President Rodrigo Duterte will be disqualified from holding public office.
The 47-year-old is leading early surveys to replace her ally-turned-bitter foe, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
The case against the vice-president stemmed from her alleged misuse of public funds and public threats against Marcos, his wife and his cousin, the former House speaker.
Duterte was impeached on the same grounds in 2025, but the Supreme Court blocked it on a technicality before the
senate trial could start.
The case was revived this year. Last week, a House committee that looked into the evidence against the vice-president ruled that there was sufficient grounds to impeach her.
Duterte described the case as “nothing more than a scrap of paper” in a formal written response. She refused to appear in the committee hearings which she said had been politically motivated.
After the impeachment vote on Monday, Duterte’s defence counsel said in a statement that “the burden now rests on the accusers to substantiate their claims” according to the law.
Monday night’s impeachment vote served as a barometer of Marcos’ support in the House. 257 of the 290 lawmakers in attendance voted to impeach Duterte, more than the one-thirds required to advance the case to trial.
But unlike in the House, a conviction in the Senate is uncertain, if a trial does start and runs its course.
In Philippine politics that is dominated by patronage and dynastic alliances, House members, who are elected per legislative district are friendlier to the incumbent president, compared to senators.
The country’s 24 senators are elected on the national level and the Senate is a traditional springboard for those hoping to run for president or vice-president in the future.
In the 2025 mid-term vote, where half of the Senate was elected, candidates allied with Duterte fared better than those who ran under Marcos’ coalition.
But the outcome of an impeachment vote will be difficult to predict under the country’s multi-party system with shifting alliances.
Duterte announced her intention to run for president in February, much earlier than expected. Marcos is limited by the constitution to a single six-year term.
She holds a 17-point lead over her nearest rival based on a survey in March by Manila pollster WR Numero.
In the 2022 elections, Duterte was the survey frontrunner to succeed her father, but she formed an alliance with Marcos and ran for vice-president instead to consolidate their support bases and fend off a reformist wave. The pair won by a landslide.
But the alliance soon unravelled as they pursued divergent political agendas.
Marcos’ allies in the House, led by cousin, then speaker Martin Romualdez, investigated allegations of fund misuse in Duterte’s office.
At the height of public scrutiny, Duterte hosted a late night online press conference, where she said she told one person that “if I get killed, go kill BBM [President Marcos], [First Lady] Liza Araneta, and [House Speaker] Martin Romualdez”.
Then in March last year, Marcos allowed theInternational Criminal Court to arrest Rodrigo Duterte and detain him at The Hague, where he now awaits trial for crimes against humanity over the hundreds who died in his so-called war on drugs.
[BBC]
A car bombing at a police post, followed by an intense firefight, has killed at least 21 officers in northwestern Pakistan, according to police and security sources.
An alliance of armed groups known as the Ittehad-ul-Mujahideen Pakistan has claimed responsibility for the attack in Bannu, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan, late on Saturday.
[Aljazeera]
A person has died after jumping an airport perimeter fence in the US state of Colorado and being struck by a Frontier Airlines plane, according to authorities.
Denver International Airport said the unusual incident occurred late Friday, after the unidentified individual gained access to the tarmac.
It said the “pedestrian jumped the perimeter fence and was hit just two minutes later while crossing the runway”.
A brief engine fire followed the collision, which was put out by emergency responders, according to the airport.
It said that 12 of the 231 people on board suffered minor injuries, with five hospitalised.
The airport said investigators had examined the fence line where the individual entered and “found it to be intact”.
It added that the struck individual “is not believed to be an employee of the airport”.
“We are extremely saddened by this incident and express our sympathies to those involved,” the airport said.
Both local authorities and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) were investigating the incident.
Airport safety in the US came under renewed scrutiny earlier this year amid a prolonged shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which temporarily left both Transportation Security Agents (TSA) and air traffic controllers working without pay.
While instances of people being killed on airport tarmacs are rare, Friday’s incident came a day after a Delta employee was killed after an airport vehicle struck an airbridge at Orlando International Airport.
In March, two pilots were killed after an Air Canada Express plane crashed into a fire-rescue vehicle at LaGuardia Airport in New York.
About 225,000 people travel through Denver International Airport a day.
[Aljazeera]
Landslide Early Warnings issued to the Districts of Badulla, Kalutara, Kandy, Kegalle, Kurunegala, Matale and Monaragala
Philippine VP Sara Duterte impeached for a second time
US and French nationals test positive for hantavirus after leaving ship
Thailand’s divisive ex-PM is out of jail, but is the Thaksin era over?
Andy Flower fined for ‘use of an audible obscenity’ during Mumbai Indians clash
Royal Challengers Bengaluru eliminate Mumbai Indians and go top after tense finish
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