Trump gives his ‘blessing’ to proposed deal involving TikTok
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Saturday he’s given his “blessing” to a proposed deal between Oracle and Walmart for the U.S. operations of TikTok, the Chinese-owned app he’s targeted for national security and data privacy concerns.
Trump said the proposed deal will result in a new company likely to be based in Texas and under the control of U.S.-based Oracle and Walmart.
“I have given the deal my blessing,” he said. “If they get it done, that’s great. If they don’t, that’s OK too.”
Trump has been targeting TikTok, a video app popular with younger people, as well as WeChat, another Chinese-owned app.
Trump’s comments came even as TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance are making a fresh legal attempt to stop the impending end of the popular app in the United States.
In a lawsuit filed on Friday night against Trump and the Department of Commerce, they are demanding, among other things, an injunction.
A separate suit, to stop a ban on the Chinese app WeChat, was to be heard in a California court on Saturday.
According to decisions from Washington, U.S. smartphone users will no longer be able to download TikTok starting Monday, and the app will stop working completely on Nov. 12. TikTok has around 100 million users in the U.S.
Trump has dubbed TikTok a security risk on the grounds that Chinese authorities could get data from U.S. users. TikTok and ByteDance deny the allegations.
Trump had issued an executive order in August that would ban TikTok in the United States from the middle of this month unless it was sold to a U.S. company.
The U.S. government is immediately pulling the plug on the Chinese messaging app WeChat because of similar criticisms: It will both disappear from app stores and lose most of its functions on Monday.
WeChat also wants to prevent that in a court in California.
TikTok and ByteDance argue in their lawsuit that the Trump administration’s ban violates their rights and the U.S. Constitution. They had already sued over Trump’s previous order with similar justification.
Toilet humor: A Michigan resident’s apparent joke showing disdain for voting by mail is no laughing matter for one election official.
The resident put a toilet on their lawn with a sign that says, “Place mail in ballots here.”
Barb Byrum, the Democratic clerk of Ingham County, filed a complaint with police over the display, saying it could mislead people who aren’t familiar with the voting system.
“It is a felony to take illegal possession of an absentee ballot,” Byrum said Friday.
“Elections in this country are to be taken seriously and there are many people who are voting by mail for the first time this election,” she said.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly warned that voting by mail could lead to fraud and spoil the election, making distorted claims that elections officials fear could cause anxiety and confusion among voters.
Thais protest:
It’s the “safest way to vote during the pandemic,” Byrum said.
She didn’t identify the person who lives at the address. The lawn also has a sign that calls for the recall of Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
Iran vows revenge: The chief of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard threatened Saturday to go after everyone who had a role in a top general’s January killing during a U.S. drone strike in Iraq.
The guard’s website quoted Gen. Hossein Salami as saying, “Mr. Trump! Our revenge for martyrdom of our great general is obvious, serious and real.”
President Donald Trump warned last week that Washington would harshly respond to any Iranian attempts to take revenge for the death of Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
The president’s warning came in response to a report that Iran was plotting to assassinate the U.S. ambassador to South Africa in retaliation for Soleimani’s killing at Baghdad’s airport at the beginning of the year.
Salami rejected the report of an Iranian plot to assassinate Ambassador Lana Marks, but made clear that Iran intends to avenge the general’s death.
“Do you think we hit a female ambassador in return to our martyred brother?’ the general said. “We will hit those who had direct and indirect roles.”
Maine’s blueberry blues: A late spring frost, a devastating drought and labor troubles wrought by the coronavirus pandemic conspired to make 2020 a difficult year for the wild blueberry producers who harvest the fruit in the nation’s northeastern corner.
America’s producers of wild blueberries are largely located in Maine, where the blueberry industry has battled fungal plant diseases and erratic market conditions in recent years. The harvest takes place every summer, and this year’s crop was likely far off last year’s total of about 87 million pounds, industry experts said.
One of the biggest problems was the drought, which afflicted much of northern New England throughout the summer. The rural Maine counties that contain most of the country’s wild blueberry fields are even now facing moderate drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
The pandemic also made it more difficult to hire seasonal workers and created a need for additional safety measures that complicated the harvest. Add a surprise frost in early June, and it added up to “most definitely a challenging season,” said Lily Calderwood. a wild blueberry specialist at University of Maine Cooperative Extension.
QAnon candidate: Walmart, Amazon and other corporate giants donated money to the reelection campaign of a Tennessee state lawmaker who had used social media to amplify and promote the QAnon conspiracy theory, according to an Associated Press review of campaign finance records and the candidate’s posts.
Dozens of QAnon-promoting candidates have run for federal or state offices during this election cycle. Unlike state Rep. Susan Lynn, who chairs the Tennessee House finance committee, few are incumbents who can attract corporate PAC money.
Though she repeatedly posted a QAnon slogan on her Twitter and Facebook accounts, Lynn told the AP that she does not support the conspiracy theory.
Walmart did not respond to repeated requests for comment. An Amazon spokeswoman declined to comment.