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Major oil-producing countries led by Saudi Arabia said they're cutting supplies of crude — again. This time, the decision was a surprise and is underlining worries about where the global economy might be headed. Russia is joining in by extending its own cuts for the rest of the year. In theory, less oil flowing to refineries should mean higher gasoline prices for drivers and could boost the inflation hitting the U.S. and Europe. And that may also help Russia weather Western sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine at the expense of the U.S. The decision by oil producers, many of them in the OPEC oil cartel, to cut production by more than 1 million barrels a day comes after prices for international benchmark crude slumped amid a slowing global economy that needs less fuel for travel and industry. It adds to a cut of 2 million barrels per day announced in October. Between the two cuts, that's about 3% of the world's oil supply. Here are key things to know about the cutbacks: WHY ARE OIL PRODUCERS CUTTING BACK? Saudi Arabia, OPEC's dominant member, said Sunday that the move is “precautionary” to avoid a deeper slide in oil prices. Also Read: Asian shares mixed as surging oil prices fan inflation fears Saudi Energy Minister Abdulaziz bin Salman has consistently taken a cautious approach to future demand and favored being proactive in adjusting supply ahead of a possible downturn in oil needs. That stance seemed to be borne out as oil prices fell from highs of over $120 per barrel last summer to $73 last month. Prices jumped after Sunday's announcement, with international benchmark Brent crude trading at about $85 on Monday, up 6%. With fears of a U.S. recession exacerbated by bank collapses, a lack of European economic growth and China’s rebound from COVID-19 taking longer than many expected, oil producers are wary of a sudden collapse in prices like during the pandemic and the global financial crisis in 2008-2009. Capital markets analyst Mohammed Ali Yasin said most people had been waiting for the June 4 meeting of the OPEC+ alliance of OPEC members and allied producers, most prominently Russia. The decision underlined the urgency felt by producers. “It was a surprise to all, I think, watchers and the market followers,” he said. “The swiftness of the move, the timing of the move and the size of the move were all significant.” The aim now is to ward off "a continous slide of the oil price” to levels below $70 per barrel, which would be “very negative” for producer economies, Yasin said. Also Read: Saudis, other oil giants announce surprise production cuts; prices could go up Part of the October cut of 2 millions barrels per day was on paper only as some OPEC+ countries aren’t able to produce their share. The new cut of 1.15 million barrels per day is distributed among countries that are hitting their quotas — so it amounts to roughly the same size cut as in October. Governments announced the decision outside the usual OPEC+ framework. The Saudis are taking the lead with 500,000 barrels per day, with the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Iraq, Oman, Algeria and Kazakhstan contributing smaller cuts. WILL THE PRODUCTION CUT MAKE INFLATION WORSE? It certainly could. Analysts say supply and demand are relatively well balanced, which means production cuts could push prices higher in coming months. The refineries that turn crude into gasoline, diesel and jet fuel are getting ready for their summer production surge to meet the annual increase in travel demand. In the U.S., gasoline prices are highly dependent on crude, which makes up about half of the price per gallon. Lower oil prices have meant U.S. drivers have seen the average price fall from records of over $5 per gallon in mid-2022 to $3.50 per gallon this week, according to motor club AAA. The cuts, if fully implemented, “would further tighten an already fundamentally tight oil market,” Jorge Leon, senior vice president at Rystad Energy, said in a research note. The cut could boost oil prices by around $10 per barrel and push international Brent to around $110 per barrel by this summer. Those higher prices could fuel global inflation in a cycle that forces central banks to keep hiking interest rates, which crimp economic growth, he said. Given the fears about the overall economy, “the market may interpret the cuts as a vote of no confidence in the recovery of oil demand and could even carry a downside price risk — but that will only be for the very short term,” Leon said. WHAT WILL THIS MEAN FOR RUSSIA? Moscow says it will extend a cut of 500,000 barrels per day through the rest of the year. It needs oil revenue to support its economy and state budget hit by wide-ranging sanctions from the U.S., European Union and other allies of Ukraine. Analysts think, however, that Russia's cut may simply be putting the best face on reduced demand for its oil. The West shunned Russian barrels even before sanctions were imposed, with Moscow managing to reroute much of its oil to India, China and Turkey. But the Group of Seven major democracies imposed a price cap of $60 per barrel on Russian shipments, enforced by bans on Western companies that dominate shipping or insurance. Russia is selling oil at a discount, with revenue sagging at the start of this year. WHAT DOES THE WHITE HOUSE SAY? President Joe Biden addressed the OPEC+ cut on Monday before returning to the White House from a trip to Minnesota, predicting, “It’s not going to be as bad as you think.” Earlier, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby expressed U.S. opposition to the move, saying, “We don’t think that production cuts are advisable at this moment given market uncertainty, and we made that clear.” But he insisted that the oil market is in a different place from last year when prices surged following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “We’re focused on prices, we’re not focused on barrels,” he told reporters Monday, adding that the U.S. was given a heads-up before the announcement. The White House response was milder than in October, when cuts came on the eve of U.S. midterm elections in which soaring gas prices were a major issue. Biden vowed at the time that there would be “consequences,” and Democratic lawmakers called for freezing cooperation with the Saudis. Caroline Bain, chief commodities economist at Capital Economics, said the cutback shows "the group's support for Russia and flies in the face of the Biden administration’s efforts to lower oil prices.”

Furious at U.S. efforts that cut off access to technology to make advanced computer chips, China’s leaders appear to be struggling to figure out how to retaliate without hurting their own ambitions in telecoms, artificial intelligence and other industries. President Xi Jinping’s government sees the chips that are used in everything from phones to kitchen appliances to fighter jets as crucial assets in its strategic rivalry with Washington and efforts to gain wealth and global influence. Chips are the center of a “technology war,” a Chinese scientist wrote in an official journal in February. China has its own chip foundries, but they supply only low-end processors used in autos and appliances. The U.S. government, starting under then-President Donald Trump, is cutting off access to a growing array of tools to make chips for computer servers, AI and other advanced applications. Japan and the Netherlands have joined in limiting access to technology they say might be used to make weapons. Xi, in unusually pointed language, accused Washington in March of trying to block China’s development with a campaign of “containment and suppression.” He called on the public to “dare to fight.” Also Read: TikTok attorney: China can’t get U.S. data under plan Despite that, Beijing has been slow to retaliate against U.S. companies, possibly to avoid disrupting Chinese industries that assemble most of the world's smartphones, tablet computers and other consumer electronics. They import more than $300 billion worth of foreign chips every year. The ruling Communist Party is throwing billions of dollars at trying to accelerate chip development and reduce the need for foreign technology. China’s loudest complaint: It is blocked from buying a machine available only from a Dutch company, ASML, that uses ultraviolet light to etch circuits into silicon chips on a scale measured in nanometers, or billionths of a meter. Without that, Chinese efforts to make transistors faster and more efficient by packing them more closely together on fingernail-size slivers of silicon are stalled. Making processor chips requires some 1,500 steps and technologies owned by U.S., European, Japanese and other suppliers. Also REad: Chill pervades China's tech firms even as crackdown eases “China won’t swallow everything. If damage occurs, we must take action to protect ourselves,” the Chinese ambassador to the Netherlands, Tan Jian, told the Dutch newspaper Financieele Dagblad. “I’m not going to speculate on what that might be,” Tan said. “It won’t just be harsh words.” The conflict has prompted warnings the world might decouple, or split into separate spheres with incompatible technology standards that mean computers, smartphones and other products from one region wouldn’t work in others. That would raise costs and might slow innovation. “The bifurcation in technological and economic systems is deepening,” Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore said at an economic forum in China last month. “This will impose a huge economic cost.” U.S.-Chinese relations are at their lowest level in decades due to disputes over security, Beijing’s treatment of Hong Kong and Muslim ethnic minorities, territorial disputes and China’s multibillion-dollar trade surpluses. Chinese industries will “hit a wall” in 2025 or 2026 if they can’t get next generation chips or the tools to make their own, said Handel Jones, a tech industry consultant. China “will start falling behind significantly,” said Jones, CEO of International Business Strategies. Beijing might have leverage, though, as the biggest source of batteries for electric vehicles, Jones said. Chinese battery giant CATL supplies U.S. and Europe automakers. Ford Motor Co. plans to use CATL technology in a $3.5 billion battery factory in Michigan. “China will strike back,” Jones said. “What the public might see is China not giving the U.S. batteries for EVs.” On Friday, Japan increased pressure on Beijing by joining Washington in imposing controls on exports of chipmaking equipment. The announcement didn’t mention China, but the trade minister said Tokyo doesn’t want its technology used for military purposes. A Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman, Mao Ning, warned Japan that “weaponizing sci-tech and trade issues” would “hurt others as well as oneself.” Hours later, the Chinese government announced an investigation of the biggest U.S. memory chip maker, Micron Technology Inc., a key supplier to Chinese factories. The Cyberspace Administration of China said it would look for national security threats in Micron’s technology and manufacturing but gave no details. The Chinese military also needs semiconductors for its development of stealth fighter jets, cruise missiles and other weapons. Chinese alarm grew after President Joe Biden in October expanded controls imposed by Trump on chip manufacturing technology. Biden also barred Americans from helping Chinese manufacturers with some processes. To nurture Chinese suppliers, Xi’s government is stepping up support that industry experts say already amounts to as much as $30 billion a year in research grants and other subsidies. China’s biggest maker of memory chips, Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp., or YMTC, received a 49 billion yuan ($7 billion) infusion this year from two official funds, according to Tianyancha, a financial information provider. One was the government’s main investment vehicle, the China National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, known as the Big Fund. It was founded in 2014 with 139 billion yuan ($21 billion) and has invested in hundreds of companies. The Big Fund launched a second entity, known as the Big Fund II, in 2019 with 200 billion yuan ($30 billion). In January, chip manufacturer Hua Hong Semiconductor said Big Fund II would contribute 1.2 billion yuan ($175 million) for a planned 6.7 billion yuan ($975 million) wafer fabrication facility in eastern China's Wuxi. In March, the Cabinet promised tax breaks and other support for the industry. It gave no price tag. The government also has set up “integrated circuit talent training bases” at 23 universities and six at other schools. “Semiconductors are the ‘main battlefield’ of the current China-U.S. technology war,” Junwei Luo, a scientist at the official Institute of Semiconductors, wrote in the February issue of the journal of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Luo called for “self-reliance and self-improvement in semiconductors.” The scale of spending required is huge. The global industry leader, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., or TSMC, is in the third year of a three-year, $100 billion plan to expand research and production. Developers including Huawei Technologies Ltd. and VeriSilicon Holdings Co. can design logic chips for smartphones as powerful as those from Intel Corp., Apple Inc., South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. or Britain’s Arm Ltd., according to industry researchers. But they cannot be manufactured without the precision technology of TSMC and other foreign foundries. Trump in 2019 crippled Huawei’s smartphone brand by blocking it from buying U.S. chips or other technology. American officials say Huawei, China’s first global tech brand, might facilitate Chinese spying, an accusation the company denies. In 2020, the White House tightened controls, blocking TSMC and others from using U.S. technology to produce chips for Huawei. Washington threw up new hurdles for Chinese chip designers in August by imposing restrictions on software known as EDA, or electronic design automation, along with European, Asian and other governments to limit the spread of “dual use” technologies that might be used to make weapons. In December, Biden added YMTC, the memory chip maker, and some other Chinese companies to a blacklist that limits access to chips made anywhere using U.S. tools or processes. China’s foundries can etch circuits as small as 28 nanometers apart. By contrast, TSMC and other global competitors can etch circuits just three nanometers apart, ten times the Chinese industry’s precision. They are moving toward two nanometers. To make the latest chips, “you need EUV (extreme ultraviolet lithography) tools, a very complicated process recipe and not just a couple of billion dollars but tens and tens of billions of dollars,” said Peter Hanbury, who follows the industry for Bain & Co. “They’re not going to be able to produce competitive server, PC and smartphone chips,” Hanbury said. “You have to go to TSMC to do that.” China's ruling party is trying to develop its own tool vendors, but researchers say it is far behind a global network spread across dozens of countries. Huawei said in a video on its website in December it was working on EUV technology. But creating a machine comparable to ASML’s might cost $5 billion and require a decade of research, according to industry experts. Huawei didn’t respond to a request for comment. The day when China can supply its own EUV machine is “very far away,” said Hanbury.

NASA on Monday named the four astronauts who will fly around the moon late next year, including the first woman and the first African American assigned to a lunar mission. The first moon crew in 50 years — three Americans and one Canadian — was introduced during a ceremony in Houston, home to the nation’s astronauts as well as Mission Control. “This is humanity’s crew,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. The four astronauts will be the first to fly NASA’s Orion capsule, launching atop a Space Launch System rocket from Kennedy Space Center no earlier than late 2024. They will not land or even go into lunar orbit, but rather fly around the moon and head straight back to Earth, a prelude to a lunar landing by two others a year later. The mission’s commander, Reid Wiseman, will be joined by Victor Glover, an African American naval aviator; Christina Koch, who holds the world record for the longest spaceflight by a woman; and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen, a former fighter pilot and the crew’s lone space rookie. Wiseman, Glover and Koch have all lived on the International Space Station. All four are in their 40s. “This is a big day. We have a lot to celebrate and it’s so much more than the four names that have been announced,” Glover said. This is the first moon crew to include someone from outside the U.S. — and the first crew in NASA’s new moon program named Artemis after the twin sister of mythology’s Apollo. Late last year, an empty Orion capsule flew to the moon and back in a long-awaited dress rehearsal. “Am I excited? Absolutely,” Koch said to cheers from the crowd of schoolchildren, politicians and others. “But my real question is: ‘Are you excited?’ ” she said to more cheers. The Canadian Space Agency snagged a seat because of its contributions of big robotic arms on NASA’s space shuttles and the space station. One is also planned for the moon project. Hansen said he’s grateful that Canada is included in the flight. “We are going to the moon together. Let’s go!” he said. During Apollo, NASA sent 24 astronauts to the moon from 1968 through 1972. Twelve of them landed. All were military-trained male test pilots except for Apollo 17′s Harrison Schmitt, a geologist who closed out that moonlanding era alongside the late Gene Cernan. Provided this next 10-day moonshot goes well, NASA aims to land two astronauts on the moon by 2025 or so. NASA picked from 41 active astronauts for its first Artemis crew. Canada had four candidates. Almost all of them took part in Monday’s ceremony at Johnson Space Center’s Ellington Field, a pep rally of sorts that ended with Wiseman leading the crowd in a chant. Congratulations streamed in from retired astronauts, including Apollo 11’s Buzz Aldrin and Scott Kelly, the first American to spend close to a year in space. “Huge risks, huge commitment, eternal benefits for all. What a crew!” tweeted Chris Hadfield, the first Canadian commander of the space station a decade ago who performed David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” from orbit. President Joe Biden spoke with the four astronauts and their families on Sunday. In a tweet Monday, Biden said the mission “will inspire the next generation of explorers, and show every child — in America, in Canada, and across the world — that if they can dream it, they can be it.”  

An extraordinary moment in U.S. history is scheduled to unfold in a Manhattan courthouse today: Former President Donald Trump, who faces multiple election-related investigations, will surrender to face criminal charges stemming from 2016 hush money payments. The booking and arraignment are likely to be relatively brief — though hardly routine — as Trump is fingerprinted, learns the exact charges against him and pleads, as expected, not guilty. Trump, who was impeached twice by the U.S. House but was never convicted in the U.S. Senate, will become the first former president to face criminal charges. The nation's 45th commander in chief will be escorted from Trump Tower to the courthouse by the Secret Service and may have his mug shot taken. New York police are braced for protests by Trump supporters, who share the former president’s belief that the New York grand jury indictment — and three additional pending investigations — are politically motivated and intended to weaken his bid to retake the White House in 2024. Trump, a former reality-TV star, has been hyping that narrative to his political advantage, raising millions of dollars since the indictment on claims of a “witch hunt.” He has personally assailed the Manhattan district attorney, egged on supporters to protest, and claimed without evidence that the judge presiding over the case “hates me” — something Trump’s own lawyer has said is not true. Also read: New York, city of Trump’s dreams, delivers his comeuppance Trump is scheduled to return to his Florida home, Mar-a-Lago, Tuesday evening to hold a rally, punctuating his new reality: submitting to the dour demands of the American criminal justice system while projecting an aura of defiance and victimhood at celebratory campaign events. A conviction would not prevent Trump from running for or winning the presidency in 2024. Inside the Manhattan courtroom, prosecutors led by New York’s district attorney, Alvin Bragg, are expected to unseal the indictment issued last week by a grand jury. This is when Trump and his defense lawyers will get their first glimpse of the precise allegations against him. The indictment includes multiple charges of falsifying business records, including at least one felony offense, two people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press last week. After the arraignment, Trump is expected to be released by authorities because the charges against him don’t require that bail be set. The investigation is scrutinizing six-figure payments made to porn actor Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal. Both say they had sexual encounters with the married Trump years before he got into politics. Trump denies having sexual liaisons with either woman and has denied any wrongdoing involving payments. The arraignment will unfold against the backdrop of heavy security in New York, coming more than two years after Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in a failed bid to halt the congressional certification of President Joe Biden’s win. Though police said they had no intelligence suggesting any violence was likely, they were on high alert for any potential disruptions. “While there may be some rabble rousers thinking of coming to our city tomorrow, our message is clear and simple: Control yourselves,” Mayor Eric Adams said at a news conference Monday. Trump pollster John McLaughlin said the former president would approach the day with “dignity." “He will be a gentleman,” McLaughlin said. “He'll show strength and he'll show dignity and ... we'll get through this and win the election.” The public fascination with the case was evident Monday as national television carried live images of Trump’s motorcade from his Mar-a-Lago club to his red, white and blue Boeing 757. From there, he was flown to New York, where he was expected to spend the night at Trump Tower before turning himself in the following day. The former president and his aides are embracing the media circus. After initially being caught off guard when news of the indictment broke Thursday evening, Trump and his team are hoping to use the case to his advantage. Still, they asked the judge in a Monday filing to ban photo and video coverage of the arraignment. Though prosecutors routinely insist that no person is above the law, bringing criminal charges against a former president carries instant logistical complications. New York’s ability to carry out safe and drama-free courthouse proceedings in a case involving a polarizing ex-president could be an important test case as prosecutors in Atlanta and Washington conduct their own investigations of Trump that could also result in charges. Those investigations concern efforts to undo the 2020 election results as well as the possible mishandling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Top Republicans, including some of Trump’s potential rivals in next year’s GOP presidential primary, have decried the case against him. President Joe Biden, who has yet to formally announce that he’s seeking reelection next year, and other leading Democrats have largely had little to say about it. Trump’s former U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley, was campaigning on Monday near the U.S.-Mexico border as part of her presidential bid and suggested that coverage of the former president’s indictment was distracting from other key issues, like immigration. But even she added, “You’ve got a liberal prosecutor that’s doing political revenge against a former president.” Prosecutors say their case against Trump has nothing to do with politics.    

Twitter has removed the verification check mark on the main account of The New York Times, one of CEO Elon Musk's most despised news organizations. The removal comes as many of Twitter’s high-profile users are bracing for the loss of the blue check marks that helped verify their identity and distinguish them from impostors on the social media platform. Musk, who owns Twitter, set a deadline of Saturday for verified users to buy a premium Twitter subscription or lose the checks on their profiles. The Times said in a story Thursday that it would not pay Twitter for verification of its institutional accounts. Early Sunday, Musk tweeted that the Times' check mark would be removed. Later he posted disparaging remarks about the newspaper, which has aggressively reported on Twitter and on flaws with partially automated driving systems at Tesla, the electric car company, which he also runs. Also Read: Twitter now valued at less than $20bn: Elon Musk suggests Other Times accounts such as its business news and opinion pages still had either blue or gold check marks on Sunday, as did multiple reporters for the news organization. “We aren’t planning to pay the monthly fee for check mark status for our institutional Twitter accounts," the Times said in a statement Sunday. "We also will not reimburse reporters for Twitter Blue for personal accounts, except in rare instances where this status would be essential for reporting purposes," the newspaper said in a statement Sunday. The Associated Press, which has said it also will not pay for the check marks, still had them on its accounts at midday Sunday. Twitter did not answer emailed questions Sunday about the removal of The New York Times check mark. The costs of keeping the check marks ranges from $8 a month for individual web users to a starting price of $1,000 monthly to verify an organization, plus $50 monthly for each affiliate or employee account. Twitter does not verify the individual accounts to ensure they are who they say they are, as was the case with the previous blue check doled out to public figures and others during the platform’s pre-Musk administration. While the cost of Twitter Blue subscriptions might seem like nothing for Twitter’s most famous commentators, celebrity users from basketball star LeBron James to Star Trek’s William Shatner have balked at joining. Seinfeld actor Jason Alexander pledged to leave the platform if Musk takes his blue check away. The White House is also passing on enrolling in premium accounts, according to a memo sent to staff. While Twitter has granted a free gray mark for President Joe Biden and members of his Cabinet, lower-level staff won’t get Twitter Blue benefits unless they pay for it themselves. “If you see impersonations that you believe violate Twitter’s stated impersonation policies, alert Twitter using Twitter’s public impersonation portal,” said the staff memo from White House official Rob Flaherty. Alexander, the actor, said there are bigger issues in the world but without the blue mark, “anyone can allege to be me” so if he loses it, he’s gone. “Anyone appearing with it=an imposter. I tell you this while I’m still official,” he tweeted. After buying Twitter for $44 billion in October, Musk has been trying to boost the struggling platform’s revenue by pushing more people to pay for a premium subscription. But his move also reflects his assertion that the blue verification marks have become an undeserved or “corrupt” status symbol for elite personalities, news reporters and others granted verification for free by Twitter’s previous leadership. Along with shielding celebrities from impersonators, one of Twitter’s main reasons to mark profiles with a blue check mark starting about 14 years ago was to verify politicians, activists and people who suddenly find themselves in the news, as well as little-known journalists at small publications around the globe, as an extra tool to curb misinformation coming from accounts that are impersonating people. Most “legacy blue checks” are not household names and weren’t meant to be. One of Musk’s first product moves after taking over Twitter was to launch a service granting blue checks to anyone willing to pay $8 a month. But it was quickly inundated by impostor accounts, including those impersonating Nintendo, pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and Musk’s businesses Tesla and SpaceX, so Twitter had to temporarily suspend the service days after its launch. The relaunched service costs $8 a month for web users and $11 a month for users of its iPhone or Android apps. Subscribers are supposed to see fewer ads, be able to post longer videos and have their tweets featured more prominently.

Under intense scrutiny from Washington that could lead to a potential ban, the top attorney for TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance defended the social media platform’s plan to safeguard U.S. user data from China. “The basic approach that we’re following is to make it physically impossible for any government, including the Chinese government, to get access to U.S. user data," said general counsel Erich Andersen during a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press at a cybersecurity conference in Sausalito, California, on Friday sponsored by the Hewlett Foundation and Aspen Digital and featuring top government officials, tech executives and journalists. ByteDance will continue to develop its new app called Lemon8, Andersen said. “We’re obviously going to do our best with the Lemon8 app to comply with U.S. law and to make sure we do the right thing here," Andersen said, referring to the new social app developed by ByteDance that resembles Instagram and Pinterest. “But I think we got a long way to go with that application — it's pretty much a startup phase.” ByteDance’s most known app, TikTok, is under intense scrutiny over concerns it could hand over user data to the Chinese government or push pro-Beijing propaganda and misinformation on its behalf. Lemon8 was introduced across app stores in Japan in April 2020 and has been rolled out in more countries since then. It's available for download in the U.S. and could face similar scrutiny to TikTok. Leaders at the FBI, CIA and officials at other government agencies have warned that ByteDance could be forced to give user data — such as browsing history, IP addresses and biometric identifiers — to Beijing under a 2017 law that compels companies to cooperate with the government for matters involving China’s national security. Another Chinese law, implemented in 2014, has similar mandates. To assuage concerns from U.S. officials, TikTok has been emphasizing a $1.5 billion proposal, called Project Texas, to store all U.S. user data on servers owned and maintained by the software giant Oracle. Under the plan, access to U.S. data would be managed by U.S. employees through a separate entity called TikTok U.S. Data Security, which is run independently of ByteDance and monitored by outside observers. Some lawmakers have said that’s not enough. But despite skepticism about the project, TikTok says it is moving forward anyway. “We’re investing in a system where people don’t have to believe the Chinese government and they don’t have to believe us,” Andersen said. He also wondered if the skepticism was being driven by something else. “Where are we falling short here?” he said. “At some point you get beyond the cybersecurity risk assessment, etcetera, and you get to ‘We don’t like your nationality.’” TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew has said the company started deleting all historic U.S. user data from non-Oracle servers this month and expects that process to be completed this year. During a congressional hearing held last week, Chew said migrating the data to Oracle will keep it out of China’s hands, but also acknowledged China-based employees may still have access to it before the process wraps up. TikTok maintains it has never been requested to turn over any kind of data and won’t do so if asked. But whether those promises, or Project Texas, will allow it to stay operating in the U.S. remains to be seen. The U.S., as well as Britain, the European Union and others, have banned TikTok on government devices. And the Biden administration is reportedly threatening a U.S. ban on the app unless its Chinese owners divest their stakes in the company. On Friday, Andersen said a ban would be "basically giving up". “Banning a platform like TikTok is a defeat, it’s a statement that we aren’t creative enough to find another way,” he said. China has said it would oppose a possible sale, a declaration that makes it more difficult for TikTok to position itself and ByteDance as a global enterprise instead of a Chinese company. In 2020, the country had also come out in fierce opposition to executive orders by then President Donald Trump that sought to ban TikTok and the messaging app WeChat. "They were clear about their point of view back in 2020 timeframe when we faced an existential challenge from executive orders under the Trump administration,” Andersen said. Courts blocked Trump’s efforts, and President Joe Biden rescinded Trump’s orders after taking office. The company has since been in talks about privacy concerns with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a multi-agency panel that sits under the Treasury department. Meanwhile, lawmakers on Capitol Hill have been pushing bills that would effectively ban TikTok or give the administration more authority to do so. One bill by U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley was blocked this week by Sen. Rand Paul, the only Republican who has come out in opposition to a TikTok ban. A small number of progressive lawmakers have also said they would oppose a ban, and argued the U.S. should implement a national privacy law to curtail the problem. Andersen said Friday TikTok would support broad-based privacy legislation. "Our view is that we would really welcome broad-based legislation that applies broadly and evenly,” he said. “What we don’t like, frankly, is legislation that is sort of targeted at one company.” TikTok could also be banned through another bill, called the RESTRICT Act, that has garnered broad bipartisan support in the Senate and backing from the White House. The legislation does not call out TikTok but would give the Commerce Department power to review and potentially restrict foreign threats to technology platforms.

Europe’s biggest armed conflict since World War II is poised to enter a new phase in the coming weeks. With no suggestion of a negotiated end to the 13 months of fighting between Russia and Ukraine, the Ukrainian defense minister said last week that a spring counteroffensive could begin as soon as April. Kyiv faces a key tactical question: How can the Ukrainian military dislodge Kremlin forces from land they are occupying? Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is working hard to keep his troops, and the general public, motivated for a long fight. Here’s a look at how the fighting has evolved and how the spring campaign might unfold: HOW DID THE WAR GET HERE? Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 2022, but its attacks fell short of some main targets and lost momentum by July. Ukrainian counteroffensives took back large areas from August through November. Then the fighting got bogged down in attritional warfare during the bitter winter and into the muddy, early spring thaw. Now, Kyiv can take advantage of improved weather to seize the battlefield initiative with new batches of Western weapons, including scores of tanks, and fresh troops trained in the West. But Russian forces are dug in deep, lying in wait behind minefields and along kilometers (miles) of trenches. HOW HAS RUSSIA FARED SO FAR? The war has exposed embarrassing shortcomings in the Kremlin's military prowess. The battlefield setbacks include Russia's failure to reach Kyiv in the early days of the invasion, its inability to hold some areas and its failure to take the devastated eastern city of Bakhmut despite seven months of fighting. Attempts to break the Ukrainian will to fight, such as relentlessly striking the country's power grid, have failed too. Moscow’s intelligence services badly misjudged Ukraine’s resolve and the West’s response. The invasion also depleted Russian military resources, triggering difficulties with ammunition supplies, morale and troop numbers. Russian President Vladimir Putin, apparently concerned that the war could erode public support for his government, has avoided an all-out push for victory through a mandatory mass mobilization. “The Russians have no end of problems,” said James Nixey, director of the Russia and Eurasia program at Chatham House, a think tank in London. Realizing he cannot win the war any time soon, Putin aims to hunker down and drag out the fighting in the hope that Western support for Kyiv eventually frays, Nixey said. Russia’s strategy is designed around "getting the West to crumble,” he said. WHAT'S NEXT FOR THE UKRAINIANS? The Ukrainian military starts the season with an influx of powerful weapons. Germany said this week that it had delivered the 18 Leopard 2 tanks it promised to Ukraine. Poland, Canada and Norway have also handed over their pledged Leopard tanks. British Challenger tanks have arrived too. Ukraine’s defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, has said he’s hopeful Western partners will supply at least two battalions of the German-made Leopard 2s by April. He also expects six or seven battalions of Leopard 1 tanks, with ammunition, from a coalition of countries. Also pledged are U.S. Abrams tanks and French light tanks, along with Ukraine soldiers recently trained in their use. The Western help has been vital in strengthening Ukraine’s dogged resistance and shaping the course of the war. Zelenskyy recognizes that without U.S. help, his country has no chance to prevail. The new supplies, including howitzers, anti-tank weapons and 1 million rounds of artillery ammunition, will add more muscle to the Ukraine military and give it a bigger punch. “Sheer numbers of tanks can drive a deeper wedge into Russian holding positions,” Nixey said. In their counteroffensive, Ukrainian forces will look to break through the land corridor between Russia and the annexed Crimean peninsula, moving from Zaporizhzhia toward Melitopol and the Azov Sea, according to Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov. If successful, the Ukrainians "will split the Russian troops into two halves and cut off supply lines to the units that are located further to the west, in the direction of Crimea,” Zhdanov said. WHAT MIGHT THE END GAME BE? The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, reckons that Ukraine will need to launch a series of counteroffensives, not just one, to get the upper hand. The operations would have “the twin aims of persuading Putin to accept a negotiated compromise or of creating military realities sufficiently favorable to Ukraine that Kyiv and its Western allies can then effectively freeze the conflict on their own regardless of Putin’s decisions,” the institute said in an assessment published this week. Nixey has no doubt that each side will keep “tearing chunks out of each other” over the coming months in the hope of gaining an advantage at the negotiating table. A make-or-break period may lie ahead: If Kyiv fails to make progress on the battlefield with its Western-supplied weapons, allies may become reluctant to send it more of the expensive hardware. The stakes are high: Defeat for Ukraine would “have global ramifications, and there will be no such thing as European security as we (currently) understand it,” Nixey said.

Vice President Kamala Harris is pushing for $7 billion in private-sector investments to help Africa prepare for the effects of climate change. The announcement comes as she wraps up her weeklong trip to the continent on Saturday. Harris plans to visit a farm outside Lusaka, Zambia's capital, where workers are using new techniques and technology to grow more produce, part of her effort to demonstrate ways to secure food supplies despite global warming. “The United States is committed to these types of innovative solutions to support climate adaptation, mitigation and resilience,” she said Friday during a news conference with President Hakainde Hichilema. Harris' trip, which included stops in Ghana and Tanzania, is intended to advance U.S. efforts to make inroads in Africa, where China's influence runs deep. The $7 billion announcement is the biggest-ticket item that Harris has announced, but more work will be needed to follow through. For example, African Parks, a nonprofit group, has committed to raise $1.25 billion over the next seven years in order to expand its conservation program. Another organization, One Acre Fund, plans to raise $100 million to plant 1 billion trees by the end of the decade. The politics of climate change are complicated in Africa, which has contributed far less to overall greenhouse gas emissions than richer corners of the world such as the United States. According to the International Energy Agency, 43% of Africans didn't have access to electricity in 2021, and recent outages have sparked frustration. In Ghana, Harris was questioned at a news conference about how the West can demand that Africa go green and forgo using its natural resources. She also was pressed on whether wealthy nations would supply $100 billion annually to help poor countries cope with climate change, a commitment made under the Paris climate accord. Harris said it is “critically important that, as global leaders, we all speak truth about the disparities that exist in terms of cause and effect and that we address those disparities.” She said there were opportunities in the “clean energy economy” that could help generate growth in Africa. As for the money, President Joe Biden has requested $11 billion in his proposed budget to meet its international commitments. “We are waiting for Congress to do its work,” Harris said.

An American Jewish organization celebrated the “first shipment” of food supplies from Pakistan that arrived in Israel. The trade last week included Pakistani-Jewish businessman Fishel BenKhald and three Israeli businesses, according to a statement issued by the American Jewish Congress from its New York offices, reports Voice of America. BenKhald resides in Karachi, where he manages a Jewish kosher certification business for food makers selling to international markets. Last Tuesday, he announced the unusual trade on Twitter, the VOA report said. The trader shared a video of his products, which included dates, dried fruit, and spices, on display in a Jerusalem market. The video has subsequently received over 640,000 views. Read More: India-Bangladesh trade using rupee instead of US dollar could start soon "I was not expecting it to be taken that big of a deal," BenKhald said in written comments to VOA, adding that this was not the first export of Pakistani products to Israel. "The Israeli government and buyers have no problem accepting the direct shipment from Pakistan,” he said, adding that Israel does not have a problem sending payments to Pakistani banks, said the report. BenKhald's attempt was largely lauded by Pakistani Twitter users, who included journalists, politicians, and businesses, some of whom sought his assistance on how to market their products to Israel. He tried to respond to every communication, it added. Pakistani officials did not immediately comment on the unusual exchange. Read More: Trade and investment opportunities opening up between Bangladesh, Brazil Islamabad has no diplomatic relations with Israel and refuses to recognize it as a sovereign state until the state of Palestine is created, a position shared by many Muslim-majority nations. Nevertheless, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain established ties with Israel in 2020 as part of the Abraham Accords, which were brokered by the United States. Sudan and Morocco followed suit. "Trade exhibits hosted by the UAE helped Pakistani and Israeli businessmen conclude a deal that enabled this week's Pakistani shipment to Israel," the American Jewish Congress noted. "We welcome this small step that can have wider implications for Israeli and Pakistani economies and for the region at large." Pakistan is a recognized nuclear power, while Israel is commonly believed to possess nuclear weapons. Since their foreign ministers met publicly in 2005, the two nations have had secret discussions on security matters. Pakistani Islamist organizations and right-wing parties are adamantly opposed to establishing formal relations with Israel over the Palestinian issue, the report also said. Read More: Traders fined in Faridpur for selling meat in violation of price list Pakistani people are barred from visiting Israel since their passport plainly states that they are valid for all nations except Israel.

The UN General Assembly has adopted a consensus resolution requesting the International Court of Justice to provide advisory opinion on the obligations of States in respect of climate change. The resolution, tabled by a core group of countries including Bangladesh, is a landmark achievement for countries advocating for climate justice and equity. Introduced by the Prime Minister of Vanuatu, the resolution requests the ICJ to provide its opinion based on existing international law including international human rights law and the recognized principles, the legal obligations of the States to ensure the protection of climate system and the rights of the present and future generations to be protected from the effects of climate change. The ICJ is also requested to advise on the legal consequences of the acts or omissions that have caused significant harm to the climate system with respect to the States that are, due to their geographical circumstances and level of development, are injured or specially affected by or are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change. Foreign Secretary Ambassador Masud Bin Momen represented the Bangladesh delegation to the session. In his statement Foreign Secretary Momen stated that, “despite clear warnings on the devastating and irreversible threats of climate change, global response to climate change is nowhere close to what is needed for the survival of humanity. This resolution and the subsequent advisory opinion will provide better understanding of the legal obligations of States in respect of climate change and rights of affected States and the people to be protected from climate change.” Noting that the Court’s advisory opinions have tremendous importance, the Secretary General in his remarks stated that such an opinion, if and when given, would assist the General Assembly, the UN and Member States, to take the bolder and stronger climate action that our world so desperately needs. The resolution has received overwhelming support from the member States as well as international civil society organizations, including climate activists and the youth. The core group, founded by Vanuatu, led an intense campaign throughout the process which included multiple negotiations with the broader UN membership in an open and transparent manner. Bangladesh, as a member of the core group, remained actively engaged in the drafting and negotiations process as well as in the outreach efforts. “This is a defining moment for climate justice. We are thankful to the member States for their interest and engagement throughout the process, which testifies their deep commitment towards addressing the climate crisis”, said the Permanent Representative of Bangladesh Ambassador Muhith, who played an instrumental role in securing support from a number of key member States. Later in the evening the Foreign Secretary participated in a reception organized by Vanuatu to celebrate the adoption of the resolution.