Trump says Microsoft is in talks to acquire TikTok

A 3D-printed miniature model of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and TikTok logo are seen in this illustration taken January 19, 2025. (REUTERS//File)
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Updated 29 January 2025
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Trump says Microsoft is in talks to acquire TikTok

  • Trump has previously said he was in discussions with several parties to buy TikTok 
  • Trump says he expects to make a decision on app’s future within the next 30 days

US President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday that Microsoft is in talks to acquire TikTok and that he would like to see a bidding war over the app.
Microsoft and TikTok did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for a comment outside regular business hours.
Trump has previously said that he was in discussions with several parties about purchasing TikTok and expects to make a decision on the app’s future within the next 30 days.
The app, which has about 170 million American users, was briefly taken offline just before a law requiring ByteDance to either sell it on national security grounds or face a ban took effect on Jan. 19.
Trump, after taking office on Jan. 20, signed an executive order seeking to delay by 75 days the enforcement of the law that was put in place after US officials warned that there was a risk of Americans’ data being misused under ByteDance.


Sweden does not rule out sending peacekeepers to Ukraine, public broadcaster reports

Updated 3 sec ago
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Sweden does not rule out sending peacekeepers to Ukraine, public broadcaster reports

STOCKHOLM: Sweden does not rule out sending troops to Ukraine as part of any postwar peacekeeping force, public broadcaster Swedish Radio reported on Monday, citing comments by the country’s foreign minister. The minister’s comments came after British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was ready to send British troops to Ukraine for peacekeeping duties as he tried to show the US that European nations should have a role in talks on ending the war.
“We must now first negotiate a just and sustainable peace that respects international law, that respects Ukraine and that first and foremost ensures Russia can’t just pull back, build new strength and attack Ukraine or another country in just a few years’ time,” Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard said in an interview.
“Once we have such a peace established we need to ensure it can be maintained and then our government doesn’t exclude anything,” she added.
On Monday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in Saudi Arabia ahead of expected talks with Russian officials aimed at ending Moscow’s nearly three-year war in Ukraine.

South African NGOs worry Trump’s aid freeze will cause HIV patients to default on treatment

Updated 10 min 58 sec ago
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South African NGOs worry Trump’s aid freeze will cause HIV patients to default on treatment

  • There are 5.5 million South Africans receiving antiretroviral treatment

UMZIMKHULU: At a rural village in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province, unemployed 19-year-old Nozuko Majola is trying to figure out if she has enough money for the one-hour ride to collect her much-needed HIV medication, usually delivered to her home that can’t be easily reached due to rough, untarred roads.
Majola is one of millions of patients in South Africa affected by US President Donald Trump’s global foreign aid freeze, raising worries about HIV patients defaulting on treatment, infection rates going up and eventually a rise in deaths.
In 2024, think tank Human Sciences Research Council released figures showing that Majola’s province recorded the second-highest HIV prevalence in the country, at 16 percent, with at least 1,300 young people estimated to contract the disease every week.
KwaZulu-Natal also had the highest number of people living with HIV in South Africa in 2022, about 1.9 million. The country counts more than 7.5 million people infected with the virus that causes AIDS — more than any other nation.
There are 5.5 million South Africans receiving antiretroviral treatment, whose funding is now in question after Trump suspended the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR. It contributes more than $400 million a year to South Africa’s HIV programs and nongovernmental organizations, about 17 percent of the total funding, according to the Health Ministry.
Globally, PEPFAR is credited with saving at least 26 million lives since its inception in 2003, according to the UN AIDS agency.
Last week, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to temporarily lift the funding freeze, while the US Embassy in South Africa said PEPFAR projects would resume under a limited waiver. However, aid groups dealing with HIV have already shuttered with closure notices hanging at the entrances and PEPFAR-branded vehicles standing idle, with patients diverted to struggling health facilities.
Most of the PEPFAR funding is channeled through non-governmental organizations, which run programs that compliment health care services provided by the government.
For Majola and other HIV patients in the Umzimkhulu region, where unemployment is rife and most people rely on subsistence farming and government welfare grants, the aid freeze has disrupted their lives.
“Things will be tough around here, and a lot of people will default on their treatment because we really struggle with transport,” she said. “The mobile clinics hardly come here.”
The freeze has hurt various groups that can no longer provide treatment, causing an influx of patients to already overstretched public facilities. Along with the medication, these programs also allowed health personnel to test HIV patients in far-flung villages, which has been a lifeline for many, especially those afraid to visit public facilities due to the social stigma attached to HIV.
In addition, nearly 15,000 health workers whose salaries are funded through PEPFAR are left wondering if they have lost their livelihoods.
About an hour away in the district of Umgungundlovu, which the think tank says has the highest number of HIV cases in South Africa, HIV counselors gathered in a small office discussing how best to assist patients like Majola. A manager at a nearby health clinic wondered how to handle the administrative work that is piling up after PEPFAR-funded workers withdrew.
“People who were doing administration and data capturing, whose salaries were funded by PEPFAR, have left. We are a small facility and we cannot handle such a workload,” said the manager, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.
Nozuko Ngcaweni has been on HIV treatment for about 30 years. One of her children was also infected and died at age 17. She said the aid suspension already impacted her community and many missed their treatment.
“Not long ago, we said by 2030, we want to see an HIV-free generation. But if things remain as is, we will not achieve that. We will have to deal with deaths,” she said.
Mzamo Zondi, a provincial manager of the Treatment Action Campaign, which advocates for access to HIV treatment for the poor, has been monitoring the impact of the aid freeze in Umgungudlovu.
“Our response (to HIV) is likely to falter as we struggle to stop newly infected cases,” he said. “This is a matter of life and death.”


Goa man receives life sentence for rape and murder of Irish backpacker

Updated 50 min 17 sec ago
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Goa man receives life sentence for rape and murder of Irish backpacker

  • The body of Danielle McLaughlin was found by a farmer on a beach in Goa in March 2017
  • Crime highlighted persistent violence against women in India despite tougher laws against sexual assault

NEW DELHI: A court in India’s western Goa state on Monday sentenced a 31-year-old man to life in prison for raping and murdering an Irish woman at a popular tourist resort nearly eight years ago.
The body of 28-year-old Danielle McLaughlin was found by a farmer on a beach popular with holidaymakers in Goa in March 2017. An autopsy showed that cerebral damage and constriction of the neck caused her death.
Vikat Bhagat was found guilty of the crime on Friday. McLaughlin’s family in a statement had said they and her friends were “thankful to the public prosecutor and the investigating officer for justice.”
Usually, rape victims cannot be named under Indian law. In this case, the victim’s family spoke to the media to raise awareness of her case.
The crime highlighted persistent violence against women in India despite tougher laws against sexual assault imposed after the 2012 death of a young woman who was gang-raped on a bus in New Delhi.
Goa is a popular backpacking destination in India. Millions of tourists visit its numerous beach resorts every year.


Rwanda-backed M23 rebels occupy a 2nd major city in Congo’s mineral-rich east

Updated 56 min 38 sec ago
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Rwanda-backed M23 rebels occupy a 2nd major city in Congo’s mineral-rich east

  • The fighting has displaced more than 6 million people in the region, creating the world’s largest humanitarian crisis

BUKAVU: Rwanda-backed rebels have occupied a second major city in mineral-rich eastern Congo, the government said Sunday, as M23 rebels confirmed they were in the city to restore order after it was abandoned by Congolese forces.
The Congo River Alliance, a coalition of rebel groups that includes the M23, said in a statement that its fighters “decided to assist the population of Bukavu” in addressing its security challenges under the “old regime” in the city of 1.3 million people.
“Our forces have been working to restore the security for the people and their property, much to the satisfaction of the entire population,” alliance spokesperson Lawrence Kanyuka said in a statement.
The rebels saw little resistance from government forces against the unprecedented expansion of their reach after years of fighting. Congo’s government vowed to restore order in Bukavu but there was no sign of soldiers. Many were seen fleeing on Saturday alongside thousands of civilians.
The M23 are the most prominent of more than 100 armed groups vying for control of eastern Congo’s trillions of dollars in mineral wealth that’s critical for much of the world’s technology. The rebels are supported by about 4,000 troops from neighboring Rwanda, according to the United Nations experts.
The fighting has displaced more than 6 million people in the region, creating the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.
Rebels vow to ‘clean up’ disorder
Bernard Maheshe Byamungu, one of the M23 leaders who has been sanctioned by the UN Security Council for rights abuses, stood in front of the South Kivu governor’s office in Bukavu and told residents they have been living in a “jungle.”
“We are going to clean up the disorder left over from the old regime,” Byamungu said, as some in the small crowd of young men cheered the rebels on to “go all the way to Kinshasa,” Congo’s capital, nearly 1,000 miles away.
Congo’s communications ministry in a statement on social media acknowledged for the first time that Bukavu had been “occupied” and said the national government was “doing everything possible to restore order and territorial integrity” in the region.
One Bukavu resident, Blaise Byamungu, said the rebels marched into the city that had been “abandoned by all the authorities and without any loyalist force.”
“Is the government waiting for them to take over other towns to take action? It’s cowardice,” Byamungu added.
Fears of regional escalation
Unlike in 2012, when the M23 briefly seized Goma and withdrew after international pressure, analysts have said the rebels this time are eyeing political power.
The fighting in Congo has connections with a decadeslong ethnic conflict. The M23 says it is defending ethnic Tutsis in Congo. Rwanda has claimed the Tutsis are being persecuted by Hutus and former militias responsible for the 1994 genocide of 800,000 Tutsis and others in Rwanda. Many Hutus fled to Congo after the genocide and founded the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda militia group.
Rwanda says the militia group is “fully integrated” into the Congolese military, which denies it.
But the new face of the M23 in the region — Corneille Nangaa — is not Tutsi, giving the group “a new, more diverse, Congolese face, as M23 has always been seen as a Rwanda-backed armed group defending Tutsi minorities,” according to Christian Moleka, a political scientist at the Congolese think tank Dypol.
Congo’s President Felix Tshisekedi, whose government on Saturday asserted that Bukavu remained under its control, has warned of the risk of a regional expansion of the conflict.
Congo’s forces were being supported in Goma by troops from South Africa and in Bukavu by troops from Burundi. But Burundi’s president, Evariste Ndayishimiye, appeared to suggest on social media his country would not retaliate in the fighting.
The conflict was high on the African Union summit’s agenda in Ethiopia over the weekend, with UN Secretary-General António Guterres warning it risked spiraling into a regional conflagration.
Still, African leaders and the international community have been reluctant to take decisive action against M23 or Rwanda, which has one of Africa’s most powerful militaries. Most continue to call for a ceasefire and a dialogue between Congo and the rebels.


Taliban delegation visits Japan in rare trip outside region

Updated 17 February 2025
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Taliban delegation visits Japan in rare trip outside region

  • The Taliban government makes regular visits to neighboring and regional countries

KABUL: A Taliban government delegation was visiting Japan for the first time on Monday, in a rare diplomatic visit outside of the region.
The Afghan delegation left Kabul on Saturday, in a visit that local media said would last one week and included officials from the higher education, foreign affairs, and economy ministries.
“We seek dignified interaction with the world for a strong, united, advanced, prosperous, developed Afghanistan and to be an active member of the international community,” Latif Nazari, a deputy minister at the ministry of economy who is part of the delegation, tweeted on Saturday.
The Taliban government makes regular visits to neighboring and regional countries, including in Central Asia, Russia and China.
However, it has only officially visited Europe for diplomacy summits in Norway in 2022 and 2023.
Japan’s embassy in Kabul temporarily relocated to Qatar after the fall of the previous foreign-backed government and the takeover by the Taliban in 2021.
However, it has since reopened and resumed diplomatic and humanitarian activities in the country.