Donald Trump has given TikTok 75 days to convince US officials it doesn’t threaten national security – most likely by finding a new, US owner for its American operation.
He signed the executive order within hours of entering the White House and told reporters: “I tell you what. Every rich person has called me about TikTok.”
The wildly popular social media platform briefly went offline in the US on Sunday ahead of a ban, but hours later, it came back online with a message thanking the president.
“We will work with President Trump on a long-term solution that keeps TikTok in the United States,” it said in a statement.
TikTok is owned by Chinese company Bytedance, and US politicians are worried sensitive data about Americans could be given to the Chinese government, which TikTok has repeatedly denied.
So who could buy the all-singing, all-dancing short video platform, which is valued at around $100bn (£82bn) if it is sold with its algorithm?
Image: Jimmy Donaldson, more popularly known as MrBeast. Pic: AP
MrBeast
Youtuber MrBeast, real name Jimmy Donaldson, posted on 14 January: “Okay fine, I’ll buy TikTok so it doesn’t get banned.”
People took him seriously; he soon posted again saying several billionaires had contacted him to try and make the bid a reality.
He posted more updates from meeting rooms where he said he had been discussing the bid with “a bunch of billionaires”.
After Donald Trump’s inauguration, the Youtuber posted a video to TikTok saying he was on a private jet “about to put in my official offer for this platform”.
“I might become you guys’ new CEO, I’m super excited,” he said.
Image: Elon Musk. Pic: Reuters
Elon Musk
The tech billionaire Elon Musk hasn’t directly commented on rumours he could buy TikTok.
However, Bloomberg News reported that officials in Beijing were considering whether to allow a possible sale to the X owner.
Although TikTok denied the rumours, saying “We can’t be expected to comment on pure fiction”, Mr Musk has a lot of business dealings with China and may be a favourable owner if ByteDance is forced to sell.
With Musk running President Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency, he would be well placed to help Chinese relations with the new Trump administration.
Owning the US TikTok operation could also give him plenty of new data on which to train xAI.
Image: Kevin O’Leary. File pic: AP
Shark Tank investor
Kevin O’Leary, a celebrity investor on Shark Tank (America’s version of Dragon’s Den) put in a bid to buy the platform as part of a group calling themselves The People’s Bid for TikTok.
The group, also backed by World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners Lee, offered to buy the platform without its algorithm.
They then planned to rebuild the back end of the app using American-owned technology,
Many said it would be tricky to maintain the app that way, given the Chinese-made algorithm is what makes it so popular.
Image: Perplexity co-founder and chief executive Aravind Srinivas. File pic: AP
Perplexity AI
A US search engine startup, Perplexity AI, reportedly offered to merge with TikTok US on Saturday.
Under that bid, most of ByteDance’s investors would retain their equity stakes and the partnership would give more video to Perplexity to use in their model.
Image: Donald Trump on inauguration day. Pic: Reuters
The US government?
When TikTok came back online on Sunday, President Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform: “I would like the United States to have a 50% ownership position in a joint venture.”
It’s unclear how this would work and Mr Trump hasn’t offered any more details since taking office.
When the ban was being discussed in Congress back in March 2024, there were other businesspeople keen to make an offer too.
Those included the former chief executive of games company Activision Blizzard Bobby Kotick and former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
A Mexican navy ship has hit the Brooklyn Bridge during a promotional tour in New York City.
The New York Fire Department said authorities were responding to injuries but had no details about how many people might have been hurt or whether they were on the vessel or on the bridge.
Sky’s US partner network NBC News reports that at least three people were seriously injured in the incident.
The Mexican navy said in a post on X that the Cuauhtemoc, an academy training vessel, was damaged in the accident, which has prevented it from continuing its voyage.
Eyewitness video of the collision posted online showed the mast of the ship, which was flying a large Mexican flag, scraping the underneath of the bridge.
Image: Pic: AP
The vessel then drifted toward the edge of the river as onlookers scrambled away from shore.
The Mexican navy said the status of personnel and material was under review by naval and local authorities, which were providing assistance.
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The Cuauhtemoc is about 297ft long and 40ft wide, according to the Mexican navy. It sailed for the first time in 1982.
Image: Pic: AP
Each year, it sets out at the end of classes at the naval military school to finish cadets’ training.
It left the Mexican port of Acapulco, on the Pacific coast, on 6 April with 277 people onboard, the navy said at the time.
This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly.
One person has died in a bomb explosion near a reproductive health clinic in California, authorities have said.
The incident took place in Palm Springs, a city two hours east of Los Angeles, and is being investigated as a possible car explosion.
The city’s mayor Ron DeHarte said one person died in the blast, adding that the bomb was “either in or near” a vehicle. The deceased’s identity is not known, Palm Springs police said.
Dr Maher Abdallah, who runs the American Reproductive Centers clinic, told the Associated Press his facility was damaged but all staff were safe and accounted for.
The explosion damaged the office space where the practice conducts patient consultations, but the IVF lab and stored embryos were unharmed, he added.
“I really have no clue what happened,” he said. “Thank God today happened to be a day that we have no patients.”
Image: Debris covers the ground after the explosion. Pic: ABC7 Los Angeles/AP
In a statement posted on Facebook the clinic said it was “heartbroken” to learn someone died in the explosion and added: “Our deepest condolences go out to the individuals and families affected.”
It continued: “Our mission has always been to help build families, and in times like these, we are reminded of just how fragile and precious life is.
“In the face of this tragedy, we remain committed to creating hope – because we believe that healing begins with community, compassion, and care.
The clinic will be fully operational on Monday, it added.
“This moment has shaken us – but it has not stopped us. We will continue to serve with strength, love, and the hope that brings new life into the world,” the statement concluded.
Image: Pic: ABC7 Los Angeles/AP
The Palm Springs city government said in a post on Facebook that the explosion happened on North Indian Canyon Drive, near East Tachevah Drive, before 11am local time (6pm GMT).
A burned-out car can be seen in a parking lot behind the building in aerial footage.
The blast caved in the clinic’s roof and blew debris across four lanes of the road.
Another person said he was inside a cannabis dispensary nearby when he felt a massive explosion.
Nima Tabrizi said: “The building just shook, and we go outside and there’s massive cloud smoke.”
Investigators from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are travelling to the scene to help assess what happened.
California governor Gavin Newsom has been briefed on the explosion, his press office said.
A former FBI director has been interviewed by the US Secret Service over a social media post that Republicans say was a call for violence against President Donald Trump.
James Comey, who led the FBI from 2013 until he was fired in 2017 by Mr Trump during his first term in office, shared a photo of seashells appearing to form the numbers “86 47”.
Image: James Comey later removed the Instagram post. File pic: AP
He captioned the Instagram post: “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.”
Some have interpreted the post as a threat, alleging that 86 47 means to violently remove Mr Trump from office, including by assassination.
What does ’86 47′ mean?
The number 86 can be used as a verb in the US. It commonly means “to throw somebody out of a bar for being drunk or disorderly”.
One recent meaning of the term is “to kill”, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, which said it had not adopted this meaning of 86 “due to its relative recency and sparseness of use”.
The number has previously been used in a political context by Matt Gaetz, who was President Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general but withdrew from consideration following a series of sexual misconduct allegations.
Mr Gaetz wrote: “We’ve now 86’d…” and listed political opponents he had sparred with who ended up stepping down.
Meanwhile, 47 is supposedly representing Mr Trump, who is the 47th US president.
Mr Comey later removed the post, saying he thought the numbers “were a political message” and that he was not aware that the numeric arrangement could be associated with violence.
“I didn’t realise some folks associate those numbers with violence. It never occurred to me, but I oppose violence of any kind, so I took the post down,” Mr Comey said.
Mr Trump rejected the former FBI director’s explanation, telling Fox News: “He knew exactly what that meant. A child knows what that meant… that meant assassination.”
Donald Trump Jr accused Mr Comey of “casually calling for my dad to be murdered”.
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US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem confirmed in a post on X that Mr Comey had been interviewed as part of “an ongoing investigation” but gave no indication of whether he might face further action.
The Secret Service is part of the Department of Homeland Security.
White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich said Mr Comey had put out “what can clearly be interpreted as a hit on the sitting president of the United States”.
“This is deeply concerning to all of us and is being taken seriously,” Mr Budowich wrote on X.
Another White House official James Blair said the post was a “Clarion Call (…) to terrorists & hostile regimes to kill the President of the United States as he travels in the Middle East”.
Mr Trump fired Mr Comey in May 2017 for botching an investigation into 2016 democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, the White House said at the time.
While Mr Comey was the director of the FBI, the agency opened an investigation into possible collusion between the Trump 2016 presidential campaign and Russia to help get Mr Trump elected.