TikTok faces ban in US by Sunday after Supreme Court rejects appeal
Summary
A TikTok ban in the US is set to go ahead on Sunday after the Supreme Court rejected an appeal
What a ban looks like and how it would be enforced remains uncertain. The White House says it will leave enforcement to the Trump administration
Justices ruled that the law passed by Congress asking the app's Chinese owner to sell its stake or face a US ban did not violate free speech rights
The legal drama stems from the US government's national security concerns and TikTok's ties to China
Last year, ByteDance was ordered to sell the app to a US buyer or it would be banned by 19 January - that sale has not yet happened
TikTok is one of the most popular short-form video apps in the world, and is a major part of a multi-billion dollar influencer economy
TikTok could pull the plug, or politics could change the outcome
Lily Jamali
North America Technology Correspondent
What exactly will Friday’s Supreme Court decision mean for TikTok’s 170 million American users?
There had been speculation that without a reprieve, the app might fade into oblivion over time, with updates no longer being delivered to US users which would leave the app increasingly glitchy and unusable.
But TikTok seems poised to take much more decisive action. The app’s lawyers told Supreme Court justices last week that absent their intervention, the app would “go dark” in the US.
TikTok could simply pull the plug, meaning in an instant, the app would cease to work for current users in the United States.
‘In Gaza, a press vest makes you a target’: the journalists who have paid a price for reporting on the war
Under the Geneva conventions, media workers are not legitimate military targets, yet at least 166 have been killed in the conflict with Israel. As a ceasefire deal takes shape, we tell the stories of three of those killed or injured in the last year
After 15 months of relentless bombardment, the war in Gaza has been the deadliest on record for journalists – with at least 166 Palestinian media workers killed according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
As the world waits for the Israeli cabinet to approve the first phase of a ceasefire due to start on Sunday, press freedom organisations are now demanding unfettered access into Gaza for foreign journalists – who have so far been barred by Israel – and calling for accountability for Israel’s alleged war crimes, urging justice to replace a culture of impunity.
“For 15 months, journalists in Gaza have been displaced, starved, defamed, threatened, injured and killed by the Israeli army,” said Thibaut Bruttin, RSF’s director general.
Neo-Nazi with Hitler tattoo tried to ‘exterminate’ asylum seeker in terror attack
White supremacist who said he wanted to hurt ‘one of the Channel migrants’ jailed for minimum of 22 years
A Nazi-obsessed white supremacist who stabbed an asylum seeker in a terror attack has been jailed for attempted murder.
Callum Ulysses Parslow, 32, attacked the man in April last year at the Pear Tree Inn near Worcester in what he claimed was a “protest” against small boat crossings.
Parslow, who has Hitler’s signature tattooed on his arm, said he stabbed the asylum seeker in the chest and hand because he wanted to hurt “one of the Channel migrants”.
Russia: 3 Navalny lawyers sentenced to prison
A Russian court has sentenced three lawyers of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny to between 3.5 and 5.5 years in prison. They were found guilty of belonging to an extremist group, media reported.
Three defense lawyers for Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny, who died in custody in 2024, were sentenced in Russia on Friday to between 3.5 and 5.5 years in prison.
Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin, and Alexei Liptser were arrested in October 2023 and added to an official list of "terrorists and extremists" the following month.
Kobzev was sentenced to five and a half years in a penal colony. Liptser received five years and Sergunin three and a half.
The lawyers are accused of belonging to an extremist organization. Navalny's networks were deemed extremist following a 2021 ruling that outlawed his organizations as extremist groups.
‘Sheep for hire’: Trump, Musk and Zuckerberg’s dangerous plan for Europe
The European Union has long been one of the safest digital spaces for internet users. But that was before Donald Trump’s imminent return to the White House and before two of today's tech titans – Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg – were essentially handed carte blanche to declare war on the EU’s digital defences. Some say the trio has even more sinister plans in the making.
Barely two weeks ahead of Trump’s inauguration, Mark Zuckerberg, the head of Facebook parent company Meta, threw down the gauntlet.
“We’re seeing an ever-increasing number of laws institutionalising censorship,” he railed in a five-minute video posted across social media on January 7. “And we're going to work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world that are going after American businesses."
His statement was a veiled threat directed at the EU, where increasingly stringent digital laws have already cost his interests more than a billion dollars in fines over the past few years.
‘Symbol of resistance’: Lumumba, the Congolese hero killed before his prime
Sixty four years after his murder, the aborted legacy of Congo’s first prime minister Patrice Lumumba, still haunts many.
Shortly before noon on a Thursday in June 1960, 34-year-old Patrice Lumumba stepped up to the podium at the Palace of the Nation in Leopoldville (current-day Kinshasa) with a dream to unite his newly liberated country.
Standing before dignitaries and politicians, including King Baudouin of Belgium from which the then-Republic of the Congo had just won its independence, the first-ever prime minister gave a rousing, somewhat unexpected speech that ruffled feathers among the Europeans.
