AFP USA

Elon Musk, the world’s richest person and a top advisor to US President Donald Trump, said he has no interest in acquiring social media platform TikTok’s operations in the United States, in comments released Saturday.”I’ve not put in a bid for TikTok and I don’t have any plans for what I would do if I had TikTok,” said Musk in comments made via videolink at a German forum in late January that were released on the weekend.TikTok is facing down a US law that ordered the company broken off from its Chinese owner ByteDance or otherwise be banned in the United States over national security concerns regarding the data it gathers on users.In one of his first acts in office, Trump ordered a pause on enforcing the law that should have seen TikTok effectively made illegal in the country a day before he took office for a second term.Soon after, Trump said he would be open to Musk — the owner of social media platform X, Tesla and a slew of other companies — buying the platform.Musk, however, said he did not wish to acquire the company.”I don’t use TikTok personally, so, you know, I’m not that familiar with it,” he said. “I’m not chomping at the bit to acquire TikTok.”Musk bought social media giant Twitter, which he renamed X, for $44 billion in 2022, insisting he was doing so in order to safeguard “free speech.”Since his takeover, rights campaigners warn there has been a spike in hate speech and disinformation on the platform.Musk was one of Trump’s main financial backers in his presidential campaign, and is heading the US president’s budget-slashing initiatives.His so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) has targeted a range of federal government agencies and regulators, with the apparent intent of shutting them down and firing staff, especially those not in line with Trump’s political agenda.On Saturday, a US judge issued an emergency order blocking Musk’s government reform team from accessing personal and financial data for millions of Americans stored at the Treasury Department, court documents showed.In the comments at the forum in Germany, Musk also took aim at Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, which are meant to support historically oppressed and disenfranchised communities.”DEI is simply racism rebranded,” he said. “I’m against racism and sexism no matter who it’s directed against.”US officials have been racing to enact Trump’s war on DEI across the federal bureaucracy — dismantling training initiatives, scrapping grants and sidelining hundreds of workers.In Germany, Musk has voiced firm support for the far-right anti-immigration AfD party — a political taboo in a country whose Nazi past remains a sensitive subject.

From the United States to Thailand, users of the popular Sony PlayStation consoles might encounter “difficulties,” the Japanese group said Saturday, as game players around the world expressed their frustration.”You might have difficulty launching games, apps or network features,” Sony said on its status page. “We’re working to resolve the issue as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.”PlayStation’s online services allow users of Sony consoles like the PS4 or the PS5 to play hugely popular multiplayer games like “Fortnite” and “Call of Duty.” The specialized site DownDetector.com reports that users’ difficulties peaked sharply around 7:00 pm Friday (00H00 GMT Saturday), before falling steadily but not quite returning to normal levels. Users took to social media to express their anger and frustration. One user said on X that it was “criminal” to have a PlayStation outage on a Friday evening, but another quipped more equably that it was time for him to reintroduce himself to the woman he married five years ago. 

Demi Moore won best actress at the Critics Choice Awards on Friday, confirming her status as favorite for the Oscars in a week that saw scandal envelop her “Emilia Perez” rival Karla Sofia Gascon.Nineties megastar Moore’s horror film “The Substance” also won best original screenplay at a glitzy Los Angeles gala held by North America’s largest critics’ group, which crowned “Anora” as the year’s best picture.Moore’s win follows her victory at the Golden Globes in January, and puts her on track to cap a remarkable career renaissance at next month’s Oscars.”This has been such a wild ride,” said Moore, 62, who made a string of hit films in the 1990s, but came to be known as much for her love life as her acting in subsequent decades.That has changed with “The Substance,” a body-horror flick about an aging celebrity who injects a serum to temporarily live again in her younger body.Nodding to the film’s frequently bloody and horrifying depictions of warped bodies, Moore thanked critics for rewarding “this genre of horror films, that are overlooked and not seen for the profundity that they can hold.”Moore’s win came at the expense of Gascon, the Spanish transgender star of narco-musical “Emilia Perez” whose Oscar campaign collapsed in spectacular fashion over the past week.Social media messages posted years ago by Gascon resurfaced in which she made derogatory and racist remarks about Muslims, China and even the Oscars themselves.The film’s distributor Netflix has since dropped Gascon from its Oscars campaign, and director Jacques Audiard disavowed his lead actor for her “absolutely hateful” and “inexcusable” comments.Gascon was notably absent at the Critics Choice Awards, and when her name was read out among the nominees, the usually celebratory Hollywood audience fell conspicuously silent.Moore did namecheck Gascon while thanking her fellow nominees during her acceptance speech.But neither Audiard nor Zoe Saldana, who won best supporting actress for “Emilia Perez,” mentioned Gascon in their remarks from the stage.A Netflix representative told AFP they hoped “the actions of one person” would not “affect the whole film,” which is still in the running to win best picture at the Oscars.That race, for the most coveted Academy Award, is unusually wide-open this year.Friday’s ceremony provided a major boost for “Anora,” the Cannes festival Palme d’Or winner, about a young New York stripper who marries the young son of a Russian billionaire in an ill-fated whirlwind romance.Several other contenders also picked up key wins Friday.”The Brutalist” star Adrien Brody won best actor, “Conclave” won best adapted screenplay and best acting ensemble, and Broadway adaptation “Wicked” earned best director for Jon M. Chu. 

President Donald Trump on Friday revoked his predecessor Joe Biden’s security clearance in a blizzard of new orders, while escalating his campaign to dismantle the US humanitarian agency charged with helping the world’s poorest and extending American influence around the globe. In a new series of rapid-fire power plays, the 78-year-old billionaire also froze aid to South Africa, where his top donor Elon Musk was born, and named himself head of one of Washington’s premier cultural venues, the Kennedy Center. “There is no need for Joe Biden to continue receiving access to classified information,” Trump said on his Truth Social network, adding that he was “immediately” revoking the Democrat’s security clearances and ending his daily intelligence briefings. “JOE, YOU’RE FIRED,” he added in all caps. US presidents are traditionally given the right to receive intelligence briefings even after they step down. Trump also stepped up his assault on the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which distributes humanitarian aid globally.”THE CORRUPTION IS AT LEVELS RARELY SEEN BEFORE. CLOSE IT DOWN!” he wrote on his Truth Social app about USAID, without offering evidence.USAID has received the most concentrated fire since Trump launched a crusade led by Musk — the world’s richest person — to downsize or dismantle swaths of the US government. On Friday, Musk — who along with Trump has spread blatantly false information about USAID’s finances — reposted photos of the agency’s signage being removed from its Washington headquarters.The Trump administration has frozen foreign aid, ordered thousands of internationally-based staff to return to the United States, and begun slashing the USAID headcount of 10,000 employees to around only 300.Labor unions are challenging the legality of the onslaught. A federal judge on Friday ordered a pause to the administration’s plan to put 2,200 USAID workers on paid leave by the weekend.Democrats say it would be unconstitutional for Trump to shut down government agencies without the legislature’s green light.- Soft power -The United States’ current budget allocates about $70 billion for international assistance, a tiny fraction of overall spending.But it gets a big bang for its buck. USAID alone runs health and emergency programs in around 120 countries, including in the world’s poorest regions, boosting Washington’s battle for influence against rivals such as China.”We are witnessing one of the worst and most costly foreign policy blunders in US history,” Samantha Power, the USAID chief under former president Joe Biden, wrote in a scathing New York Times opinion piece.Hard-right Republicans and libertarians have long questioned the need for USAID and criticized what they say is wasteful spending abroad.Also Friday, Trump named himself as chairman of the Kennedy Center, suggesting that the stately white marble entertainment complex overlooking the Potomac River did not reflect his own values.”Just last year, the Kennedy Center featured Drag Shows specifically targeting our youth — THIS WILL STOP,” he wrote on Truth Social, without explaining what show he was referring to. Trump has repeatedly attacked gender-nonconforming people.He also followed up Friday on a promise to freeze US aid to South Africa, citing a law in the country that he alleges allows farmland to be seized from white farmers, despite Johannesburg’s denials.Musk has frequently criticized the South African government.- Racist social posts -Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, have rampaged through agencies that most Americans have for decades taken for granted.While Democrats have struggled to find footing to halt the budget-slashing moves, court challenges are slowly taking shape.An attempt by Trump to overturn the constitutional guarantee to birthright citizenship has been blocked by a judge, and on Thursday another judge paused an attempt to offer mass buyouts to federal workers, pending arguments on Monday.Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, ran into controversy last week with reports he and his team were accessing sensitive Treasury Department data and systems.An internal assessment from the Treasury called the DOGE team’s access to federal payment systems “the single biggest insider threat the Bureau of the Fiscal Service has ever faced,” US media reported.Adding to the drama, one member of the DOGE team resigned after it emerged that he had advocated racism and eugenics on social media.On Friday, following backing for the sacked 25-year-old from Trump, Musk said he would reinstate the staffer.Vice President JD Vance weighed in Friday saying he did not think “stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life.”

Armed with multimillion-dollar lawsuits and regulatory threats, Donald Trump is taking his long-standing battle with the US media to a new level –- targeting the finances of organizations already struggling in an increasingly tough commercial climate.The president has long had an antagonistic relationship with mainstream news outlets, deriding them as the “enemy of the people.” A notable exception is the powerful conservative broadcaster Fox News, some of whose hosts have taken on major roles in his administration and where his daughter in law Lara Trump is set to start as a primetime host.Trump now appears to be doubling down on his anti-media rhetoric in his first month in office, focusing on cutting government agencies’ news subscriptions in what observers call a case of manufactured outrage.News outlet Politico was at the center of a social media storm, with Trump supporters including Elon Musk posting screenshots that falsely purported to show more than $8 million was funneled from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to the site.The humanitarian agency has been the target of a sweeping cost-cutting campaign by billionaire Musk, a key Trump advisor, with the president calling for its closure.Records on USAspending.gov, an online tracker of government payments, showed that federal agencies paid about $8 million to Politico for subscriptions, including to its Politico Pro service.Payments from USAID were a small fraction of that total, the records showed.But the facts did not stop Trump from falsely claiming that billions of dollars from USAID and other agencies had improperly gone to the “fake news media as a ‘payoff’ for creating good stories about the Democrats.””We have never received any government funding — no subsidies, no grants, no handouts,” Goli Sheikholeslami, Politico’s chief executive, and John Harris, its editor-in-chief, wrote in a note to readers.”Government agencies that subscribe do so through standard public procurement processes — just like any other tool they buy to work smarter and be more efficient. This is not funding. It is a transaction.”- ‘Punish the media’ -The White House has said it will cancel its Politico subscriptions.Other media outlets also risk losing millions of dollars if the government drops more subscriptions, a lever for the Trump administration to undermine a press that is already facing financial strain, observers say.”The upshot of all of this nonsense is that the (Make America Great Again) base has new lore they can use to explain away any unfavorable coverage for Trump,” said Matt Gertz, from the left-leaning think tank Media Matters, referring to the president’s key “MAGA” political slogan.In another kind of pressure, Brendan Carr, Trump’s new head of the Federal Communications Commission, has ordered an investigation into NPR and PBS, a move that some worry is aimed at unraveling federal funding for public broadcasters.”The new administration seems to be ramping up a multifaceted effort to punish the media,” Roy Gutterman, a Syracuse University professor, told AFP.”We are moving beyond mere threats.”- $10 billion lawsuit -In an unprecedented move, Trump’s administration announced that eight media organizations including The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, NBC and NPR must vacate their dedicated office spaces in the Pentagon.It cited the need to create room for other outlets including the conservative New York Post and Breitbart.And in December, ABC News agreed to pay $15 million to settle a lawsuit brought by Trump which contended the network’s star anchor George Stephanopoulos had defamed him.The settlement was seen as a major concession by a large media organization to Trump, whose previous efforts to sue news outlets have often ended in defeat.”The spectacle of powerful media organizations debasing themselves before Trump has become so familiar that it is beginning to feel like scheduled programming,” Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, wrote in a New York Times column.CBS News, a broadcaster at the center of another FCC probe and a $10 billion lawsuit from Trump, recently complied with an FCC request to hand over the raw footage from an interview last year with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, with the president accusing it of deceitful editing.Paramount, CBS’s parent company, is now considering settling the lawsuit, media reports say, at a time when it needs Trump’s support for its proposed merger with Skydance.

The wreckage of a plane that went missing in Alaska has been found, US officials said Friday, with all 10 people aboard thought to have died.The US Coast Guard said it had discovered the remnants of the Bering Air Caravan around 34 miles (55 kilometers) from Nome.”Three individuals were found inside and reported to be deceased,” the Coast Guard posted on social media.”The remaining seven people are believed to be inside the aircraft but are currently inaccessible due to the condition of the plane.”Nome’s volunteer fire department, which had scrambled in the search for the plane, said on Facebook it was helping with recovery.”The Nome Search and Rescue Team is spooling up with assistance from the Alaska Air National Guard with recovery efforts,” a post said.”From reports we have received, the crash was not survivable. Our thoughts are with the families at this time.”The privately operated plane, with nine passengers and one pilot on board, was reported overdue Thursday on a flight from Unalakleet to Nome, Alaska state police said.The two cities are located roughly 150 miles apart across the Norton Sound, on the state’s west coast.According to publicly available information the plane’s last known position was over the water around 40 minutes after takeoff.The crash is the latest incident in a string of aviation disasters in the United States.On January 30, a passenger jet collided midair with a US Army helicopter in Washington, killing all 67 people aboard both aircraft. The disaster was followed closely by the crash of a medical plane into a busy Philadelphia neighborhood, killing seven and injuring 19. 

Donald Trump’s order to change the name of the highest mountain in the United States faced pushback Friday from members of his own party.Alaska’s Republican-dominated senate voted overwhelmingly against his plan to ditch the Indigenous name Denali for the huge peak, which Trump has rechristened Mount McKinley.The president has unleashed a flood of executive orders in his first few days in the White House as he attempts to remake the US government.Orders have included mass pardons for pro-Trump rioters, a federal hiring freeze and an attempt to overturn the constitutionally mandated practice of granting birthright citizenship.But his order to rename the 20,300-foot (6,200-meter) Denali drew the ire of Alaska’s state legislators.A resolution passed unanimously by the Alaska state senate on Friday urged Trump to rethink his plan.”The name Denali is deeply ingrained in the state’s culture and identity,” the motion said.”Residents of the state believe that the names of the geographic features in the state should be determined by state residents and representatives.”The motion, which earlier cleared the lower chamber by a sizable majority, notes that state lawmakers called for the mountain to be known by its Indigenous name as far back as 1975.Four decades later, then-president Barack Obama officially recognized that push and dropped the moniker Mount McKinley, which had been the peak’s official name since 1917.It was coined in honor of Republican president William McKinley who served in the Oval Office from 1897 until his assassination in 1901.The resolution by the state legislature appeared unlikely to change Trump’s mind, but was notable as a rare display of disobedience from members of his largely quiescent Republican Party.

US President Donald Trump announced Friday he will name himself to be chairman of the Kennedy Center, putting his aggressive rightwing stamp on Washington’s premier cultural venue.Trump broke the news in a post on his social media platform as he engages in a blizzard of policy changes upending the city and the country, attacking people, causes and policies he says are dangerously left wing.In a way, this appointment is another form of retribution, which Trump is seeking in his second term as he goes after perceived enemies: in his first term, from 2017 to 2021, the Republican regularly skipped the center’s yearly gala event because people in line to receive awards criticized him and said they would not show up if he did.In his post, Trump suggested that the Kennedy Center, the stately white marble entertainment complex overlooking the Potomac River and named for the late president John F Kennedy, offered entertainment that did not reflect his own values.Several members of the board will be replaced, including the current chairman, the billionaire philanthropist David Rubenstein, Trump wrote.”I have decided to immediately terminate multiple individuals from the Board of Trustees, including the Chairman, who do not share our Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture. We will soon announce a new Board, with an amazing Chairman, DONALD J. TRUMP!” the president said  on Truth Social.”Just last year, the Kennedy Center featured Drag Shows specifically targeting our youth — THIS WILL STOP. The Kennedy Center is an American Jewel, and must reflect the brightest STARS on its stage from all across our Nation. For the Kennedy Center, THE BEST IS YET TO COME!” Trump said.Trump did not say what show he was referring to.In December, the center hosted concerts by a band called Bertha that featured some of its musicians dressed in drag.The Kennedy Center is the home of the National Symphony Orchestra and also offers theatre, opera, comedy and other productions.Rubenstein served as an advisor to the late president Jimmy Carter and also has ties to former president Joe Biden, who regularly attended the venue’s top gala, the Kennedy Center Honors, every year.

US President Donald Trump said Friday he was revoking Joe Biden’s security clearance, ending his predecessor’s right to receive intelligence briefings after leaving office.”There is no need for Joe Biden to continue receiving access to classified information,” Trump said on his Truth Social network.”Therefore, we are immediately revoking Joe Biden’s Security Clearances, and stopping his daily Intelligence Briefings.”In a reference to the catchphrase of his former reality TV show “The Apprentice,”  Trump added in capitals: “JOE, YOU’RE FIRED.”US presidents are traditionally given the right to receive intelligence briefings even after they step down. Trump said he was making the move because Democrat Biden had removed his own security clearance after winning the 2020 election.Biden at the time cited Trump’s “erratic behavior” both before and after the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by protesters trying to overturn Trump’s election loss. In his post on Friday, Trump claimed that Biden “could not be trusted” with intelligence briefings because a special counsel’s report into classified documents found at the Democrat’s home found that Biden, 82, suffered from “poor memory.”Trump was also prosecuted for mishandling classified documents but the Justice Department ended the case after the Republican won the 2024 election.

US President Donald Trump said Friday that Japan’s Nippon Steel will make a major investment in US Steel, but will no longer attempt to take over the troubled company.Trump, referring to the Japanese car company Nissan but apparently meaning Nippon Steel, said “they’ll be looking at an investment rather than a purchase.”Spokespeople for Nippon Steel and US Steel did not respond to a request for comment. US Steel’s shares closed down 5.8 percent on the news.The announcement marks a shift in tone from Trump, who heavily criticized Nippon’s $14.9 billion takeover offer during the 2024 presidential election campaign. Former US president Joe Biden blocked the deal shortly before he left office last month on national security grounds, sparking a joint lawsuit from the two firms — and condemnation from Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba.In the suit filed on January 6, Nippon Steel and US Steel said Biden had improperly used his influence and blocked the deal “for purely political reasons” to gain favor with workers’ unions.In response, the US authorities announced they had extended the deadline for the Japanese firm to abandon its acquisition of US Steel until June 18, extending an initial 30-day deadline.Trump’s remarks suggest his administration is open to Nippon Steel’s investment in the US steel giant so long as it does not assume overall control — a step that could in theory ensure it remains in American hands. “Our concerns regarding Nippon’s continued interest in US Steel remain unchanged,” United Steelworkers international president David McCall said in a statement. “Nippon has proven itself to be a serial trade cheater with a history of dumping its products into our markets,” he said, adding that the US steelworkers’ union had not been in contact with either company or the Trump administration about Nippon’s proposed investment.  “While we await the details of the proposed investment, we encourage President Trump to continue safeguarding the long-term future of the domestic steel industry by instead seeking American alternatives,” he added.