The Trump administration granted ByteDance a 15-day extension of a divestiture order that had directed the Chinese company to sell its TikTok short video-sharing app by Thursday.TikTok first disclosed the extension earlier in a court filing, saying it now has until Nov. 27 to reach an agreement. Under pressure from the U.S. government, ByteDance has been in talks for a deal with Walmart Inc and Oracle Corp to shift TikTok’s U.S. assets into a new entity.The Treasury Department said on Friday the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) granted the 15-day extension to “provide the parties and the committee additional time to resolve this case in a manner that complies with the order.”ByteDance filed a petition Tuesday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia challenging the Trump administration divestiture order.ByteDance said Tuesday that CFIUS seeks “to compel the wholesale divestment of TikTok, a multibillion-dollar business built on technology developed by” ByteDance and based on the government’s review of the Chinese company’s 2017 acquisition of Musical.ly.President Donald Trump in an Aug. 14 order had directed ByteDance to divest the app within 90 days.The Trump administration contends TikTok poses national security concerns, saying the personal data of U.S. users could be obtained by China’s government. TikTok, which has more than 100 million U.S. users, denies the allegations.Trump has said the Walmart-Oracle deal had his “blessing.”One big issue that has persisted is over the ownership structure of the new company, TikTok Global, which would own TikTok’s U.S. assets.In Tuesday’s court filing, ByteDance said it submitted a fourth proposal last Friday that contemplated addressing U.S. concerns “by creating a new entity, wholly owned by Oracle, Walmart and existing U.S. investors in ByteDance, that would be responsible for handling TikTok’s U.S. user data and content moderation.”Separate restrictions on TikTok from the U.S. Commerce Department have been blocked by federal courts, including transaction curbs scheduled to take effect on Thursday that TikTok warned could effectively ban the app’s use in the United States.A Commerce Department ban on Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google offering TikTok for download for new U.S. users that had been set to take effect on Sept. 27 has also been blocked.
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Day: November 13, 2020
The Miami Marlins hired Kim Ng as Major League Baseball’s first female general manager on Friday.”I entered Major League Baseball as an intern and, after decades of determination, it is the honor of my career to lead the Miami Marlins as their next general manager,” Ng said in a statement.Ng, 51, has more than 30 years of experience in the majors, working in the front offices of the Chicago White Sox (1990-96), New York Yankees (1998-2001) and Los Angeles Dodgers (2002-11), and in the MLB Commissioner’s Office (2011-20).Most recently she was the MLB senior vice president of baseball and softball development. She is the first woman hired to the general manager position by any of the professional men’s sports teams in the North American major leagues.”All of us at Major League Baseball are thrilled for Kim and the opportunity she has earned with the Marlins,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement. “Kim’s appointment makes history in all of professional sports and sets a significant example for the millions of women and girls who love baseball and softball. The hard work, leadership and record of achievement throughout her long career in the national pastime led to this outcome, and we wish Kim all the best as she begins her career with the Marlins.”Born in Indianapolis to parents of Chinese descent, Ng also becomes the first Asian American GM in the majors.Ng developed a working relationship with Marlins CEO Derek Jeter during her time with the Yankees.The Marlins, under National League Manager of the Year Don Mattingly, finished second in the N.L. East with a 31-29 record during the abbreviated 2020 season.They were swept by the Atlanta Braves in the division series.”This challenge is one I don’t take lightly,” Ng said. “When I got into this business it seemed unlikely a woman would lead a major league team, but I am dogged in the pursuit of my goals.”My goal is to bring championship baseball to Miami. I am both humbled and eager to continue building the winning culture our fans expect and deserve.”
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With Twitter and Facebook blocking and labeling more social media posts, some American conservatives are flocking to alternatives like Parler, which says it won’t censor speech. Matt Dibble reports.
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More than 130 U.S. Secret Service officers have tested positive for the coronavirus or have been in close contact with infected colleagues, according to The Washington Post newspaper.The report, published Friday, was attributed to three people “familiar with agency staffing.”The Secret Service officers, who, among other duties, are tasked with protecting President Donald Trump when he travels and at the White House, were ordered recently to isolate, the report said.FILE – U.S. Secret Service agents gather for coronavirus tests prior to President Donald Trump’s departure for the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, May 27, 2020.The sources, who the Post says spoke anonymously in order to speak more freely, said the infections are believed to be related to campaign rallies Trump held before the Nov. 3 presidential election. The report also cites the sources as saying that about 10% of the agency’s primary security team has been “sidelined.”Trump, members of his immediate family, and an increasing number of White House and campaign officials have tested positive recently for the coronavirus in the wake of campaign events, where many administration officials and other attendees did not wear masks.The White House and the Secret Service did not immediately comment on the report, but White House spokesman Judd Deere told the Post the administration takes “every case seriously” and directed the Post to the Secret Service for answers to questions about the outbreak. An agency spokesperson declined to comment to the Post.The reported outbreak among the officers occurred as the coronavirus crisis in the U.S. continues to worsen. More than 153,000 new infections in the U.S. were reported Thursday, according to Johns Hopkins University, the first time new single-day totals exceeded 150,000.Nearly 10.6 million people in the U.S. have contracted the coronavirus, while the country’s death toll approaches 243,000, according to Johns Hopkins University.
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Scientists at the U.S. space agency NASA say the remnants of a 1960s unmanned lunar mission may have returned to orbit the Earth 54 years later.
Scientists first discovered the object in September, using a special survey telescope on the Hawaiian island of Maui. They originally believed it to be a small asteroid, and named it 2020 SO. When they discovered the object’s path would bring it close to Earth, it came to the attention of the Center for Near Earth Objects (CNEOS) at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
But the scientists there quickly noticed the object’s orbit was different than a normal asteroid. While the typical asteroid has an elongated orbit and is tilted relative to Earth, the orbit of this object was on nearly the exact orbital plane as Earth.
CNEOS Director Paul Chodas says further study and measurements of the object made it clear it was likely man-made, based on its size and density, and likely a piece of a rocket. Chodas suspected it was a remnant of a lunar mission, and to prove it, he ran 2020 SO’s orbit backwards, tracing its closest path to Earth to September 1966.
That matched the launch date for NASA’s Surveyor 2 lunar lander, an unmanned probe designed to land on the surface of the Moon and survey possible landing sites ahead of the Apollo missions, which would put men on the lunar surface for the first time in 1969.
The probe was launched on an Atlas-Centaur rocket and separated from its Centaur upper stage booster shortly after liftoff. The spacecraft malfunctioned a day later when one of its boosters failed to ignite, and the probe crashed into the Moon. The spent Centaur upper-stage rocket, meanwhile, sailed past the Moon and disappeared into an unknown orbit around the Sun.
Now, it appears to be back, if only for a relatively brief visit. NASA scientists believe Earth’s gravity pulled 2020 SO into an outer orbit on November 8, circling about 1.5 million kilometers above our planet. They expect it will remain there for about four months before escaping into a new orbit around the Sun in March.
NASA says 2020 SO will make two large loops around Earth with its closest approach December 1. That is when astronomers will get a closer look and study its composition using spectroscopy to confirm if it is indeed an artifact from the early Space Age.
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The Ivy League became the first Division I conference this year to cancel all winter sports, including men’s and women’s basketball.
The decision Thursday came 13 days before the scheduled start of the college basketball season. The league had decided this past summer, when it canceled fall sports, not to allow any of its sports to start play before early December.
“Regrettably, the current trends regarding transmission of the COVID-19 virus and subsequent protocols that must be put in place are impeding our strong desire to return to intercollegiate athletics competition in a safe manner,” the Ivy League presidents said in a joint statement.
“Student-athletes, their families and coaches are again being asked to make enormous sacrifices for the good of public health — and we do not make this decision lightly.
“While these decisions come with great disappointment and frustration, our commitment to the safety and lasting health of our student-athletes and wider communities must remain our highest priority.”
Coaches and athletes were informed of the news on video conference calls Thursday evening.
The news comes as the coronavirus cases are soaring across the U.S. Newly confirmed cases per day in the U.S. have rocketed more than 70% over the past two weeks, reaching an average of about 127,000 — the highest on record. And the number of people hospitalized with the virus hit an all-time high of more than 65,000.
Deaths per day in the U.S. have soared more than 40% over the past two weeks, from an average of about 790 to more than 1,100 as of Wednesday, the highest level in three months. That’s still well below the peak of about 2,200 deaths per day in late April.
The Ivy League has tried to be in front of the virus. The league was the first conference to scrap its postseason basketball tournament last March. That preceded a cascade of cancellations. All major college and professional sports were halted within days.
The Ivy League announcement affects not just basketball, but wrestling, indoor track and field, swimming, fencing and other sports. The league also said that spring sports are postponed through at least the end of February 2021.
Also Thursday, Pittsburgh’s game at Georgia Tech was postponed after the Panthers were forced to pause team activities due to COVID-19 protocols.
The Atlantic Coast Conference said both teams were having COVID-19 issues and the game slated for Saturday will instead be played Dec. 12.
Also, Conference USA announced Rice at Louisiana Tech scheduled for Saturday had been postponed because of COVID-19 issues with La Tech. No make-up date has been set.
There have been 57 games between schools in the Football Bowl Subdivision to be canceled or postponed because of the pandemic since late August — and 10 this week.
The Southeastern Conference, the Big Ten and the Pac-12 have all been forced to scramble at times this season. The Atlantic Coast Conference has not been immune, though most of the issues were in early September. This is the fifth conference game in the ACC to be postponed. One has already been made-up and Louisville at Virginia is scheduled to be played Saturday after it was postponed last week.
The conference has enjoyed relatively smooth sailing in recent weeks, though several high-profile players have been dealing with COVID-19, including Clemson star quarterback Trevor Lawrence.
Pitt is still scheduled to host Virginia Tech in its home finale on Nov. 21 and travel to Clemson on Nov. 28.
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The United States set another single-day record for the number of COVID-19 infections and hospitalization Thursday.COVID Tracking Project figures show that more than 150,000 new cases were reported across the U.S., surpassing the more than 144,000 new cases recorded the day before.The figures also indicate that more than 67,000 people were hospitalized with COVID-19, an increase of more than 1,700 from the previous day. Another 1,104 people died.The new figures add to the United States’ world-leading casualty figures of more than 10.5 million total COVID-19 cases since the pandemic reached its shores earlier this year, including more than 242,400 deaths, according to data from the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center.The nation’s most populous state, California, is nearing the 1 million mark of COVID-19 cases, following Texas, which is closing in on that threshold.Worldwide, Italy is the 10th country to surpass the 1 million mark of infections. India and Brazil follow the U.S., with more than 8.7 million and 5.7 million cases respectively. France is nearing 2 million infection cases, followed by Russia with 1.87 million. Over the 1 million mark are Spain, Britain, Argentina, and Colombia.In Brazil, the country with highest coronavirus tally in Latin America, the late-stage trials of a potential COVID-19 vaccine have resumed after the country’s health regulator called a halt due to an “adverse, serious event” involving a participant in the study.The vaccine, dubbed CoronaVac, is being developed by Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinovac. The vaccine had been denounced by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a frequent critic of China.In Japan, organizers for the 2021 Tokyo Olympics said Thursday that participating athletes will not have to enter a mandatory 14-day quarantine period when they arrive for the games next year. Games chief executive Toshiro Muto told reporters a decision on allowing foreign spectators to observe the events would be finalized next year, but said it is a possibility the two-week quarantine could be waived for them as well.The Tokyo Summer Games were initially scheduled to be held in July and August, but organizers in March decided to postpone them for a year due to the pandemic.
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A new project is celebrating the linguistic culture of Australia’s Aboriginal communities by working to introduce Australians to everyday words and phrases from hundreds of Indigenous languages.The 50 Words Project is an interactive online language map. Words and phrases from across the continent are brought to life with recordings from Indigenous speakers. It is run by the University of Melbourne’s Research Unit for Indigenous Language and aims to maintain linguistic and cultural heritage. Jill Vaughan from the academic unit says she hopes it will help more Australians understand rich linguistic traditions. “It is, unfortunately, quite a common misconception that there is only one Indigenous Australian language, when, in fact, there are hundreds of languages, each with thousands and thousands of words,” she said. “It is also the case that for some Australians, they assume that Indigenous languages are just a relic of the past, and this isn’t the case at all.” Researchers say the sounds used in Australia’s Indigenous languages are very similar across the country. Neighboring communities, however, can have very different words for the same things. Some Indigenous languages in Australia have faded away since European colonization, while others are spoken by just a handful of people and are considered critically endangered. Until the 1970s, government policies banned and discouraged Aboriginal people from speaking their mother tongues. Indigenous communities consider languages to be living things that connect people to their land, culture and the spirits of their ancestors. Aboriginal history in Australia dates back up to 65,000 years. Indigenous people make up about 3% of the national population of 25 million.
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When Twitter started blocking President Donald Trump’s postings claiming widespread voter fraud, some cheered. Others started looking for the social media exits.
They found a new option at Parler.
Fed up with what they see as an anti-conservative bias by managers of the major social media platforms, Trump supporters are telling their followers on Twitter and Facebook to “Follow me on Parler.”
From the French word “to speak” or “to talk” but pronounced “PAR-lor,” the social media app is a lot like Twitter, with users posting messages and following topics searchable as hashtags.
Launched in 2018 in Nevada, Parler welcomed newcomers to “a non-biased, free speech social media focused on protecting user’s rights.”
Over the past year, conservative celebrities have flocked to Parler, a trend that has accelerated since the 2020 U.S. election. As Twitter and Facebook tried to tamp down misinformation about the election, more than 4 million accounts were launched on the app within days, the company says.
Among Parler users are Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, and Fox News host Sean Hannity.
Posts on Parler are called “parlays.” One on Thursday, under the hashtag #StoptheSteal, said “Shocker Pro Marxist Pope Francis congratulates Crooked Joe!”
“To parlay is to have a discussion bridging the differences,” said Amy Peikoff, Parler’s chief policy officer. “Coming to an understanding between two different viewpoints, and this is the sort of discussion that we want to foster on Parler.”
Previous alternatives to Facebook and Twitter have popped up in the U.S. claiming to be true bastions of free speech. Gab, which became a haven for neo-Nazis, was booted from the app stores of Apple and Google because it didn’t take down hate speech.
But the popularity of Parler – and other right-wing sites such as MeWe and Rumble, a video site – comes amid growing pressure on social media firms to do more to monitor their sites, particularly addressing misinformation about voting and the election results.
Twitter, Facebook and to a lesser extent Google, the owner of YouTube, have put labels on tweets, posts and videos that claim election fraud. In some cases, they stopped the content from being shared and spreading.
Much of the conversation on Parler echoes Trump’s unsupported claim that the November 3 election was stolen by Democrats through massive voter fraud. #StoptheSteal is a top hashtag for those who claim without proof that former Vice President Joe Biden, the projected winner of the 2020 presidential race, stole the election.
Last week, Facebook took down a Stop the Steal group that had gained more than 300,000 users in 24 hours. Facebook said it stopped the group because it was trying to incite violence.
“The group was organized around the delegitimization of the election process, and we saw worrying calls for violence from some members of the group,” a Facebook spokesman told The New York Times.
Parler users have also crossed that line at times: An Arkansas police chief used the site to urge violence against Democrats he claimed were preventing Trump’s reelection. When the posts appeared in news stories, his public account was removed and he was forced to resign.
While the Parler algorithm does not promote posts to keep users engaged, the company says it is serious about its commitment to free speech and does not block extremist content.
“The fact that we don’t block out the content from various extremists does not mean that our goal is to further all of those views,” said Parler’s Peikoff. “What we are planning to do is give the widest freedom possible so that people can have a full discussion.”
For years, the leading social media companies have been criticized for their finely tuned algorithms designed to boost users’ time spent on the sites. That has led to some users receiving a stream of increasingly extremist content on their feeds, according to Michael Karanicolas, the Wikimedia fellow at the Yale School of Law.
The rise of Parler, he said, “potentially suggests that if platforms do try and steer people away from these echo chambers and steer people away from what they want, the people will just migrate elsewhere.”
There is one potential customer that Parler has not yet managed to attract: Trump, himself.
While @TeamTrump, Trump’s reelection campaign, is on the site with 2 million followers, the president isn’t on Parler, yet.
With nearly 89 million followers on Twitter, Trump is still tweeting, even as Twitter has been putting warning labels on more of his tweets.
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Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg told an all-staff meeting Thursday that former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon had not violated enough of the company’s policies to justify his suspension, according to a recording heard by Reuters.
“We have specific rules around how many times you need to violate certain policies before we will deactivate your account completely,” Zuckerberg said. “While the offenses here, I think, came close to crossing that line, they clearly did not cross the line.”
Bannon suggested in a video last week that FBI Director Christopher Wray and government infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci should be beheaded, saying they had been disloyal to U.S. President Donald Trump, who last week lost his re-election bid.
Facebook removed the video but left up Bannon’s page. The company had not previously answered questions about those actions and did not immediately respond to a Reuters request about Zuckerberg’s comments.
Twitter banned Bannon last week over the same content.
Zuckerberg spoke on the issue at a weekly forum with Facebook employees where he is sometimes asked to defend content and policy decisions, like the question on Thursday from a staff member asking why Bannon had not been banned.
Arrested in August, Bannon has pleaded not guilty to charges of defrauding hundreds of thousands of donors to the $25 million “We Build the Wall” campaign. Bannon has dismissed the charges as politically motivated.
As Trump’s chief White House strategist, Bannon helped articulate Trump’s “America First” policy. Trump fired him in August 2017, ending Bannon’s turbulent tenure.
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The first cruise ship to resume sailing in the Caribbean since the coronavirus outbreak expanded in March, is idled again after five passengers tested positive for the coronavirus.SeaDream, a Norway-based luxury cruise liner, issued a statement Thursday that all crew members had tested negative for the coronavirus and that the ship’s medical staff was in the process of re-testing passengers.SeaDream says it began strict safety protocols following a Norwegian cruise this summer, although passengers were not immediately required to wear masks when boarding the SeaDream.The 53 passengers and 66 crew members are reportedly self-quarantining aboard the ship docked at the Port of Bridgetown in Barbados.The cruise ship industry has been hard hit by the pandemic, with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issuing an order banning sailing in March, citing cruise ship travel would worsen the global spread of COVID-19.
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Peru is set to host Phase 3 clinical trials of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Cos. COVID-19 vaccine by U.S.-based pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson.Dr. Jorge Gallardo, principal director of the Ensemble trial, told America Noticias TV show that Peru was chosen because of the makeup of its population and the impact of the coronavirus in the country.Peru is seeking 3,500 participants in the multinational study that will include participants from eight countries, including the United States.The trials will include participants with preexisting conditions, such as diabetes, and those over 60 years of age to ensure the overall efficacy of the vaccine.Peru has one of the highest coronavirus totals in Latin America, with more than 925,000 coronavirus cases and 34,992 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center.
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