White House gives federal agencies 30 days to enforce TikTok ban

WASHINGTON — The White House on Monday gave federal agencies 30 days to purge Chinese-owned video-snippet sharing app TikTok from all government-issued devices, setting a deadline to comply with a ban ordered by the US Congress.

Office of Management and Budget director Shalanda Young in a memorandum called on government agencies within 30 days to "remove and disallow installations" of the application on agency-owned or operated IT devices, and to "prohibit internet traffic" from such devices to the app.

The ban does not apply to businesses in the United States not associated with the federal government, or to the millions of private citizens who use the hugely popular app.

However, a recently introduced bill in Congress would "effectively ban TikTok" in this country, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

"Congress must not censor entire platforms and strip Americans of their constitutional right to freedom of speech and expression," ACLU senior policy counsel Jenna Leventoff said in a release.

"We have a right to use TikTok and other platforms to exchange our thoughts, ideas, and opinions with people around the country and around the world."

Owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance, TikTok has become a political target due to concerns the app can be circumvented for spying or propaganda by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The company did not immediately respond to the White House guidance.

China's foreign ministry slammed the ban.

"We firmly oppose the wrong practice of the United States to generalize the concept of national security, abuse state power, and unreasonably suppress firms from other countries," spokeswoman Mao Ning said Tuesday.

The law signed by US President Joe Biden last month bans the use of TikTok on government-issued devices. It also bans TikTok use in the US House of Representatives and Senate.

National security concerns over alleged Chinese spying have grown over the past month after a Chinese balloon traversed US airspace and was eventually shot down.

CANADA, EU BANS

The Canadian government on Monday banned TikTok from all of its phones and other devices, citing fears about how much access Beijing has to user data.

Effective Tuesday, "the TikTok application will be removed from government-issued mobile devices. Users of these devices will also be blocked from downloading the application in the future," the government said in a statement.

The European Commission banned the app from its equipment too.

TikTok has repeatedly rejected accusations it shares data or cedes control to the Chinese government. 

TikTok's breakneck rise from a niche video-sharing app to global social media behemoth has brought plenty of scrutiny, particularly over its links to China.

The company was forced to admit ByteDance employees in China had accessed Americans' data but it has always denied turning over personal information to the Chinese authorities.

TikTok has moved to soothe US fears, announcing in June 2022 that it would store all data on American users on US-based servers.

Bans have not halted TikTok's growth.

With more than one billion active users, it is the sixth-most used social platform in the world, according to the We Are Social marketing agency.

Although it lags behind the likes of Meta's long-dominant trio of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, its growth among young people far outstrips its competitors.

Agence France-Presse

UEFA: Man City banned from European competition for 2 seasons

MANCHESTER, England - English champions Manchester City have been banned from European competition for the next two seasons and fined 30 million euros by European soccer's governing body UEFA after an investigation into alleged breaches of Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules.

UEFA announced in a statement that City had committed "serious breaches" of the rules while the Premier League club swiftly said on their website that they will appeal the decision to the Lausanne-based Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

The ruling, if upheld, would mean Pep Guardiola's side would not be able to compete in the 2020-21 Champions League should they again qualify for Europe's top club competition. They would also be banned from European competition in the 2021-22 season.

The top four teams in the Premier League qualify for the Champions League and City are currently second -- should the ban stand then the fifth-placed team would take their spot.

An absence from Europe would have a significant impact on the club's revenue and their prestige. Liverpool earned 111 million euros from UEFA for winning last season's competition.

The Premier League said in March that it had opened its own investigation into City and FFP after UEFA began its probe.

UEFA's FFP rules are designed to prevent clubs receiving unlimited amounts of money through inflated sponsorship deals with organisations related to the owners.

The Adjudicatory Chamber of UEFA's Club Financial Control Body (CFCB) said City had broken the rules by "overstating its sponsorship revenue in its accounts and in the break-even information submitted to UEFA between 2012 and 2016" and added that the club "failed to cooperate in the investigation".

But City, who have denied any wrongdoing, said in a strongly worded response that they will fight the decision.

"Simply put, this is a case initiated by UEFA, prosecuted by UEFA and judged by UEFA. With this prejudicial process now over, the Club will pursue an impartial judgment as quickly as possible and will therefore, in the first instance, commence proceedings with the Court of Arbitration for Sport at the earliest opportunity," the club said.

INVESTIGATION PROCESS

Describing themselves as "disappointed but not surprised" by the decision, City took aim at the investigation process.

"In December 2018, the UEFA Chief Investigator publicly previewed the outcome and sanction he intended to be delivered to Manchester City, before any investigation had even begun.

"The subsequent flawed and consistently leaked UEFA process he oversaw has meant that there was little doubt in the result that he would deliver. The Club has formally complained to the UEFA Disciplinary body, a complaint which was validated by a CAS ruling."

City face Real Madrid later this month in the last 16 of this season's Champions League as Guardiola tries to secure a trophy that the club have never won.

Spanish La Liga head Javier Tebas welcomed the punishment.

"UEFA are finally taking decisive measures. Enforcing financial fair play rules and punishing financial doping is essential for the future of football. We've been asking for severe action against Manchester City and Paris Saint Germain for years. Better late than never," tweeted Tebas.

In March 2019, PSG won a legal battle against UEFA after the governing body tried to reopen its investigation into the French club's spending on transfer fees and wages.

UEFA opened an investigation into Manchester City that month after the publication of 'Football Leaks' documents led to allegations that the club’s Abu Dhabi owners had inflated sponsorship agreements to comply with FFP requirements.

Reuters reported extensively on City and FFP issues arising from the Football Leaks documents in The Soccer Files series.

The Abu Dhabi United Group, the investment vehicle owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, is the majority owner of the City Football Group, with a stake of around 77%.

The City Football Group includes the Manchester club and owns or part-owns New York City FC, Melbourne City FC, Yokohama F. Marinos in Japan, Club Atletico Torque in Uruguay, Girona FC in Spain and Sichuan Jiuniu FC in China.

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US unveils partial ban on flavored e-cigarettes

WASHINGTON—The US government on Thursday announced it would soon ban most flavored e-cigarettes as it tries to curb a rising tide of youth vaping, but stopped short of the full ban promised in September by President Donald Trump.

The Food and Drug Administration said cartridge-based e-cigarettes in flavors "other than tobacco or menthol" would be illegal unless they receive specific authorization from the government.

Companies that do not cease making and selling such cartridges within 30 days will face punishment, the FDA said.

"The United States has never seen an epidemic of substance use arise as quickly as our current epidemic of youth use of e-cigarettes," Health Secretary Alex Azar said in a statement.

Azar said prioritizing flavors most widely used by children would ensure e-cigarettes were a potential "off-ramp" for adult smokers but not an "on-ramp" to nicotine addiction for youngsters. 

"We will not stand idly by as this crisis among America's youth grows and evolves, and we will continue monitoring the situation and take further actions as necessary," he added.

The 2019 National Youth Tobacco Survey shows that more than 5 million US middle and high school students are e-cigarette users, with nearly 1 million using daily. 

"Additional data from another federal survey further underscore that youth are particularly attracted to e-cigarette flavors such as fruit and mint, much more so than tobacco or menthol flavored e-cigarettes," the Department of Health and Human Services said.

The flavor ban will exempt large, tank-based vaping devices, however, which are primarily sold in vape shops that cater to adult smokers.

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Indonesia moving to ban sex outside marriage

JAKARTA, Indonesia - Indonesia is set to vote on a plan to outlaw gay and premarital sex while beefing up its blasphemy laws in a shakeup fuelled by religious conservatism and slammed by rights groups Thursday.

The proposed criminal law overhaul could affect millions in the world's biggest Muslim majority country, including heterosexual couples who might face jail for having sex outside wedlock or having an affair.

But there are also fears it could punish the Southeast Asian nation's small LGBT community as gay marriage is not allowed in Indonesia.

"Indonesia's draft criminal code is disastrous not only for women and religious and gender minorities, but for all Indonesians," said Andreas Harsono, senior Indonesia researcher at Human Rights Watch. 

"Lawmakers should remove all the abusive articles before passing the law," he added.

Updating Indonesia's criminal code -- which stretches back to the Dutch colonial era -- has been debated for decades. 

While a push last year fizzled, the mooted changes now appear set to be voted on in parliament before the end of the month -- with strong support from religious groups.

Shift towards fundamentalism

"Even though the criminal code bill that will be ratified still has shortcomings, it's far better than the (one) today," said Robikin Emhas, spokesperson for the Nahdlatul Ulama, a major Islamic organization.

Rights groups say the proposals underscore a growing shift towards fundamentalism in a country long hailed for its religious tolerance.

"This is a setback," said Papang Hidayat, research manager at Amnesty International Indonesia.

"Religious values as a source of lawmaking has now reached the national level -- that's worrying."

People who have premarital or extramarital sex could face between 6 months and 1 year in jail, as well as fines, under the changes.

There are also penalties for anyone "showing or offering" contraception to minors under 18.

Indonesia's Aceh province already imposes Islamic law, and whipping is a common punishment for a range of offenses including gambling, drinking alcohol, and having gay or premarital sex. 

The proposals call for a wider interpretation of Indonesia's blasphemy law, which has seen members of religious minority groups, including Christians and Buddhists, prosecuted in the past.

The new law would also criminalize "insulting" the president or vice president, which critics said would be a blow to free speech.

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India bans e-cigarettes as vaping backlash grows

NEW DELHI, India - India announced on Wednesday a ban on the sale of electronic cigarettes, as a backlash gathers pace worldwide about a technology promoted as less harmful than smoking tobacco.

The announcement by India came a day after New York became the second US state to ban flavored e-cigarettes following a string of vaping-linked deaths.

"The decision was made keeping in mind the impact that e-cigarettes have on the youth of today," Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters in New Delhi.

E-cigarettes heat up a liquid -- tasting of anything from bourbon to bubble gum or just tobacco, and which usually contains nicotine -- into vapor which is inhaled.

The vapor is missing the estimated 7,000 chemicals in tobacco smoke but does contain a number of substances that could potentially be harmful.

They have been pushed by producers, and also by some governments including in Europe as a safer alternative -- and as a way to kick the habit.

However, critics say that apart from being potentially harmful in themselves, the flavors of some liquids have turned millions of children into vapers -- and potential future smokers.

The emergency legislation in New York, the second US state to ban flavored e-cigarettes, followed a mysterious outbreak of severe pulmonary disease that has killed 7 people and sickened hundreds.

President Donald Trump's administration announced last week that it would soon ban flavored e-cigarette products to stem a rising tide of youth users.

Legislation is also being tightened elsewhere, and in Singapore, e-cigarettes are already outlawed. In Japan, vaping and alternatives like "heat not burn" tobacco vaporizers are allowed but e-juices with nicotine are not.

China, home to almost a third of the world's smokers, indicated in July that it wants the "supervision of electronic cigarettes" to be "severely strengthened".

Big E-Tobacco

The Indian ban covers the production, manufacture, import, export, transport, sale, distribution, storage of e-cigarettes, as well as advertisements.

The government said it would "advance tobacco control efforts" and "contribute to a reduction in tobacco usage." Punishments include up to a year in prison.

Although few Indians vape at present, the Indian ban also cuts off a vast potential market of 1.3 billion consumers for makers of e-cigarettes.

"Big Tobacco" has been investing heavily in the technology to compensate for falling demand for cigarettes due to high taxes and smoking bans, particularly in the West.

In 2018 Altria, the US maker of Marlboro and Chesterfield splashed out almost $13 billion on a stake in one of the biggest e-cigarette makers, Juul.

Big killer

According to the World Health Organization, India is the world's second-largest consumer of traditional tobacco products, which are not covered by the new ban, killing nearly 900,000 people every year.

Some 35 percent of adults are users, although chewing tobacco -- which can also have flavors like chocolate and which also causes cancer -- is more prevalent than smoking.

India is also the world's third-largest producer of tobacco, the WHO says, and tobacco farmers are an important vote bank for political parties.

According to the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry, an estimated 45.7 million people depend on the tobacco sector in India for their livelihood.

India also exports around a billion dollars worth of tobacco annually, and the government holds stakes in tobacco firms including ITC, one of India's biggest companies.

"I feel it's absolutely absurd," Aronjoy, 22, a student and occasional vaper, told AFP in a shop selling e-cigarettes.

"The government believes from my perspective that it's alright to smoke cigarettes... which is much more injurious for our health that vaping would be."

The Association of Vapers India said the government's move "indicates it is more concerned about protecting the cigarette industry than improving public health". 

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Huawei says impact of US trade restrictions less than feared

HONG KONG - Chinese smartphone maker Huawei Technologies said on Friday its business has been less affected by US trade restrictions than the company had initially feared and it is "fully prepared" to live and work with US sanctions.

Huawei's $100-billion business has been hit hard since mid-May after Washington put the world's second-largest smartphone maker in a so-called Entity List that threatens to cut off its access to essential US components and technology.

In its first assessment of the impact of the ban, Huawei founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei said in June US trade restrictions would hit revenue by $30 billion this year.

"It seems it's going to be a little less than that. But you have to wait till our results in March," Eric Xu, Huawei's deputy chairman, said at a news conference to introduce new artificial intelligence chips at its headquarters in Shenzhen.

Washington said this week that it would extend by 90 days a reprieve that permits Huawei to buy from US firms in order to supply existing customers, but it also moved to add more than 40 of Huawei's units to its economic blacklist.

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Los Angeles, city of fashion and glamour, moves to ban fur products

LOS ANGELES -- The city of Los Angeles, a leading center of the world's fashion industry, moved on Tuesday toward becoming the largest U.S. metropolis to outlaw the sale and manufacture of most fur products within its limits.

Following the lead of San Francisco and two smaller California municipalities, the Los Angeles City Council voted 12-0 to direct the City Attorney's Office to draft an ordinance banning fur apparel and accessories ranging from mink coats to rabbit's foot charms.

The draft must then gain final approval by the council and be signed by Mayor Eric Garcetti to be enacted.

Supporters said they hoped adoption of a fur ban in the nation's second-largest city, despite its vibrant shopping scene and association with glamour, would lead to similar actions on behalf of animal rights around the globe.

"Los Angeles is one of the fashion capitals of the world, and if we can do it here, we can do it anywhere," Councilman Paul Koretz, a sponsor of the measure, told a news conference before the vote. "We hope that New York City and Chicago and Miami are all watching."

Los Angeles is home to one of the largest fashion districts in the world, a hub of some 4,000 apparel outlets, showrooms and manufacturers covering about 100 blocks of the city's downtown, though only a handful of those merchants sell fur products.

"I can think of one store, maybe two, that sell furs," fashion district spokeswoman Ariana Gomez told Reuters.

While full-length coats of sable and mink may not be as popular as they once were, fur is still found in about 70 percent of the world's latest fall fashion collections, said Keith Kaplan, executive director of the trade group Fur Information Council of America.

"If consumers weren't buying it, fashion houses wouldn't be designing it, and manufacturers wouldn't be making it," he said.

He also disputed as "bogus" claims by animal rights groups that methods employed by the fur industry are inherently cruel and inhumane.

The city's Office of Finance does not track fur sales specifically. But statewide retail sales of "furs and fur garments" totaled $360 million in 2012, according to a California economic census cited by the city's chief legislative analyst.

Under the plan tentatively approved on Tuesday, a fur ban would go into effect in January and be phased in over two years, giving retailers until 2020 to sell off existing inventories. Used fur products would be exempt.

The council also is considering an exemption for products used for religious purposes, such as fur hats worn by Orthodox Jews, as well as for items made from pelts legally taken under the authority of a California fur-trapping license.

The small municipality of West Hollywood, which lies adjacent to Los Angeles, made headlines in November 2011 as the first city in America to ban the sale of fur clothing. The Bay-area jurisdictions of Berkeley and San Francisco followed suit in 2017 and March of this year.

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Saudi breaks cinema ban, screens 'Black Panther'

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Saudi Arabia launched its first commercial movie theater on Wednesday, ending a nearly 40-year ban on cinemas under a push by the crown prince to modernize the deeply conservative Muslim kingdom.

A red carpet invitation-only gala event attracted senior government officials, foreign dignitaries and select industry figures to watch Marvel's superhero movie "Black Panther" on a 45-foot screen at a converted symphony concert hall in Riyadh.


Tickets will go on sale on Thursday for the first public viewings on Friday, according to Adam Aron, chief executive of operator AMC Entertainment Holdings.

"Saudis now are going to be able to go to a beautiful theater and watch movies the way they're supposed to be watched: on a big screen," he told Reuters ahead of the screening.

The smell of buttery popcorn filled the air as confetti rained down through the multi-storey atrium where Aron and Saudi Minister of Culture and Information Awwad al-Awwad announced the launch and proceeded into the 450-seat hall.

The opening marks another milestone for reforms spearheaded by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to open the country culturally and diversify the economy of the world's top oil exporter.

The prince, 32, has already eased restrictions in the last two years, including on public concerts, women driving and gender mixing. The kingdom held its first-ever fashion show last week with a women-only audience.

Many Saudis have rejoiced at the end of the cinema ban, sharing praise and pictures of Prince Mohammed on social media.

Others expressed confusion at what they consider a government flip-flop, with one tweeting on Wednesday: "Remember you will stand in front of God ... and you will bear the sins of all those who watched the movies."

Some religious conservatives view cinema and acting as inconsistent with Islam.

There has been little apparent resistance to the social reforms, which seemed unthinkable just a few years ago, though the space for criticism is also limited. Several prominent clerics were arrested last year in an apparent bid to silence dissent.

BUILDING A FILM INDUSTRY

Among Wednesday's movie-goers was Princess Reema bint Bandar, a second cousin of Prince Mohammed, who brought her 16-year-old son to experience what she called "an historical moment".

The kingdom shuttered cinemas in the early 1980s under pressure from Islamist as Saudi society embraced a severe form of Islam.

Saudis have nonetheless been avid consumers of Western media and culture. Hollywood films and television series are widely watched at home and private film screenings have been largely tolerated for years.

In 2017, the government said it would lift the ban in part to retain money that Saudis currently spend on entertainment during trips to Dubai, Bahrain and elsewhere.

To serve a population of more than 32 million, most of whom are under the age of 30, the authorities plan to set up around 350 cinemas with over 2,500 screens by 2030, which they hope will attract nearly $1 billion in annual ticket sales.

A source told Reuters last month that theaters would not be segregated by gender like most other public places in Saudi Arabia.

Awwad, the culture minister, told Reuters on Wednesday that they would be similar to cinemas around the world. Initial screenings are likely to be for families, with occasional ones for bachelors.

The extent of censorship was not clear but a Saudi official said the same versions of films shown in Dubai or Kuwait will be suitable for Saudi Arabia. Two scenes of kissing appeared to have been cut from the "Black Panther" screening.

Asked about possible conservative backlash to cinemas, Awwad said the government was focused on creating investment opportunities.

"For those that would like to come and enjoy watching the movie at the movie theater, they are more than welcome," he said. "And for those who don't want to watch movies at all, it's also their personal choice."

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