TikTok has begun restoring service to the app in the US after Donald Trump said he would sign an executive order pausing its ban.
A law signed by President Joe Biden last April required ByteDance, TikTok‘sChina-based parent company, to sell the app to a non-Chinese owner by Sunday or face a ban.
Some users reported that they lost access on Saturday night, and Americans opening the app on Sunday have been greeted with a message saying they “can’t use” TikTok “for now”.
But in a post on Truth Social ahead of his inauguration, Mr Trump said he would issue an executive order handing the app an extension to find a new owner.
Image: TikTok users in the US were unable to use the app on Sunday. Pic: Kirsty Hickey
“I’m asking companies not to let TikTok stay dark,” the president-elect wrote, adding the order will allow time “so that we can make a deal to protect our national security”.
He then confirmed that “there will be no liability for any company that helped keep TikTok from going dark before my order” and said: “Americans deserve to see our exciting Inauguration on Monday, as well as other events and conversations.”
TikTok later said it had started restoring service on Sunday, thanking the president for clarifying to service providers “that they will face no penalties providing TikTok”.
It added: “It’s a strong stand for the First Amendment and against arbitrary censorship. We will work with President Trump on a long-term solution that keeps TikTok in the United States.”
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Ahead of the ban coming into effect, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called TikTok’s plans to shut down the app a “stunt” and said actions enforcing the ban would “fall to the next administration”.
Mr Trump also indicated on Truth Social what a possible deal could look like, saying he would prefer the US “to have a 50% ownership position in a joint venture” with ByteDance or a new owner.
“Without US approval, there is no TikTok,” he said. “With our approval, it is worth hundreds of billions of dollars – maybe trillions.”
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1:56
Why was TikTok getting banned in the US?
On Saturday, the president-elect told NBC News‘ Meet The Press moderator Kristen Welker that TikTok would “most likely” be given a 90-day pause from the ban to find a new owner.
Under the bipartisan law on TikTok – signed by Mr Biden – the president can grant a one-time extension of 90 days under three conditions:
• There is a path to divestiture of the app
• There is “significant progress” toward executing a sale
• There are in place “the relevant binding legal agreements to enable execution of such qualified divestiture during the period of such extension”
No legal agreements on the sale of TikTok to a non-Chinese owner have been made public, and Mr Trump did not say on Saturday if he was aware of any recent progress toward a sale.
CNBC later reported Perplexity AI made a bid for the app’s parent company on Saturday to allow it to merge with TikTok US and create a new entity, which would also include New Capital Partners.
During his first term in the White House, Mr Trump attempted to ban TikTok as well as the Chinese-owned messaging app WeChat but was blocked by the courts. It was later revoked by Mr Biden.
Last year, he briefly met with the app’s chief executive Shou Zi Chew, who will attend the inauguration on Monday.
He’s expected to sit with fellow tech executives Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, a Trump transition official told NBC.
Nicholas Rossi, an American man who faked his death and fled to Scotland to escape rape charges, has been jailed for at least five years.
The sentence handed down to the 38-year-old is the first of two he faces after being convicted separately in August and September of raping two women in 2008.
Utah has “indeterminate sentencing” – meaning jail terms handed down are in a range of years rather than a fixed number, with release dates set by the state’s parole board.
Image: Nicholas Rossi appearing in court in August. Pic: AP
During August’s three-day trial, Rossi’s accuser and her parents took the stand – with the victim telling the court that he left a “trail of fear, pain, and destruction” behind him.
“This is not a plea for vengeance. This is a plea for safety and accountability, for recognition of the damage that will never fully heal,” she said.
Brandon Simmons, a prosecutor in the case, alleged Rossi “uses rape to control women” and posed a risk to community safety.
Rossi – whose legal name is Nicholas Alahverdian – maintained his innocence during the sentencing hearing. In a soft, raspy voice, he said: “I am not guilty of this. These women are lying.”
He was first identified in 2018 after a decade-old DNA rape kit was examined.
How Rossi was caught
But in February 2020 – months after he was charged in one of the cases – an online obituary claimed he had died of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Rossi was arrested in Scotland the following year while being treated for COVID, after hospital staff recognised his distinctive tattoos – including the crest of a university he never attended.
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1:37
Jan 2024: Extradited man denies identity to US court
One of his victims had been recovering from a traumatic brain injury when she responded to a personal advert that Rossi had posted on Craigslist.
They began dating and were engaged within a couple of weeks – and according to her testimony, Rossi had asked her to pay for dates and car repairs, lend him money, and take on debt for their rings.
She told the court that Rossi raped her in his bedroom one night after she drove him home – and went to police years later after discovering that another woman in Utah had come forward with accusations.
Rossi is due to be sentenced for the second conviction in November.
Donald Trump has said he doesn’t think Ukraine can win the war against Russia – as reports emerge of a less-than-harmonious meeting between the US president and Volodymyr Zelenskyy .
Asked about the conflict by a journalist during a visit to the White House by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, the Mr Trump responded bluntly: “I don’t think they will,” before adding: “They could still win it, I never said they would win it… War is a very strange thing, a lot of bad things happen.”
It is a marked change from his comments a few weeks ago at a UN gathering in New York where he said Ukraine could retake “all of its territory”.
And it comes after the Financial Times claimed the behind-the-scenes of Mr Trump and President Zelenskyy’s meeting in Washington on Friday had descended into a “shouting match”.
According to the paper, the US president repeatedly told his Ukrainian counterpart to accept Vladimir Putin‘s terms for ending the war – warning him that the Russian leader would “destroy” Ukraine if it did not agree.
Mr Zelenskyy later attempted to pour water over the suggestions, saying their meeting was “positive” and that Ukraine was preparing a contract to buy 25 Patriot air defence systems as a result of their talks.
However, Mr Zelenskyy said he did not secure the Tomahawk missiles he had wanted for Ukraine. The long-range missiles would have been a major boost for Kyiv.
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“In my opinion, he does not want an escalation with the Russians until he meets with them,” Mr Zelenskyy said.
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3:42
Why Tomahawks are off the table
Meanwhile, Hungary’s foreign minister Peter Szijarto has announced he will visit Washington on Tuesday. It follows claims from Mr Trump that he would meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Budapest soon.
Image: Will the pair meet again soon? File pic: Reuters
And on Monday, US secretary of state Marco Rubio had a phone call with Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.
According to the state department, Mr Rubio and Mr Lavrov spoke about possible concrete steps to implement understandings reached during the call between Mr Trump and Mr Putin last week.
Mr Rubio had, a statement said, also “emphasised the importance of upcoming engagements as an opportunity for Moscow and Washington to collaborate on advancing a durable resolution of the Russia-Ukraine war, in line with President Trump’s vision”.
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Also on Monday, French president Emmanuel Macron announced there will be a meeting of the coalition of the willing in London on Friday which Mr Zelenskyy will attend.
The coalition – co-chaired by Sir Keir Starmer, Mr Macron and Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz – has the aim of bringing countries together to protect a peace deal in Ukraine.
Dozens of websites, banks and apps are being affected by a major internet outage.
The problem, which started on Monday morning, appears to be related to an issue at Amazon Web Services (AWS).
As of 9.20am, there were more than 2,000 reports of the Amazon Web Services outage in the US alone, according to Downdetector, which monitors issues and outages in real-time.
On its service status page, the company said it was seeing “increased error rates” and delays with “multiple AWS services”.
Here’s what we know so far.
Image: Pic: PA
Image: Pic: PA
Image: Pic: PA
What has been affected?
Multiple banks, the HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) website, mobile phone networks and video-chatting platform Zoom are among the websites having technical issues.
All Amazon products – including Prime Video and Amazon Music – have also been affected, as well as the main Amazon website.
Here’s a full list of what has been affected by the internet outage, according to Downdetector:
• Snapchat • Ring • Roblox • Amazon Web Services • Life360 • My Fitness Pal • Amazon • Xero • Signal • Canva • Fortnite • Blink Security • Zoom • HMRC • Clash Royale • Clash Of Clans • Asana • Wordle • Slack • Smartsheet • Epic Games Store • Duolingo • Amazon Alexa • Jira • Vodafone • Tidal • Coinbase • Atlassian • IMDB • Amazon Prime Video • Pokemon Go • BT • Peloton • EE • Ancestry • Square • Playstation Network • Eventbrite • Amazon Music • Sky • Flickr • Hay Day • Rocket League • Perplexity AI • Dead By Daylight • Bank Of Scotland • Lloyds Bank • Halifax
What has AWS said?
AWS confirmed it was suffering from “increased error rates and latencies” for multiple services.
Amazon Web Services was named as the cause of the problem by the chief executive of AI company Perplexity.
Aravind Srinivas posted on X saying: “Perplexity is down right now. The root cause is an AWS issue. We’re working on resolving it.”
AWS describes itself as “the world’s most comprehensive” cloud service.
It offers companies a virtual backbone, giving them access to servers, databases and storage without having to build their own infrastructure.
Millions of businesses are thought to use AWS, so when something goes wrong, it can have a huge impact. AWS hasn’t put out any information on the outage. Sky News has contacted the company for comment.
In a statement on its website, the company said: “We are actively engaged and working to both mitigate the issue and understand root cause,” an update on its website says.
“We will provide an update in 45 minutes, or sooner if we have additional information to share.”
The company is posting regular updates on the situation and said its engineers were “immediately engaged” as soon as they spotted the issue.
Concentrated in the US
ThousandEyes, a website that tracks the performance of local and wide area networks, servers and applications, shows many of the outages appear to be concentrated in the US.
A large portion is focused in Virginia, which is widely considered as the global capital for data centres.