There were rumblings about this for a while, but it looks like the Trump TikTok deal is done, and it’s somehow the worst of all possible outcomes, amazingly making all of the biggest criticisms about TikTok significantly worse. Quite an accomplishment.
The Chinese government has signed off on the deal, which involves offloading a large chunk of TikTok to billionaire right wing Trump ally Larry Ellison (fresh off his acquisition of CBS), the private equity firm Silver Lake (which has broad global investments in Chinese and Israeli hyper-surveillance), and MGX (Abu Dhabi’s state investment firm), while still somehow having large investment involvement by the Chinese:
“The new U.S. operations of TikTok will have three “managing investors” that will collectively own 45 percent of the company: Oracle Corporation, Silver Lake, and MGX. Another 5 percent will be owned by other new investors, 30.1 percent will be “held by affiliates of certain existing investors of ByteDance; and 19.9 percent will be retained by ByteDance.”
There’s also a smattering 5% of investors that may or may not include folks like right wing media mogul Rupert Murdoch. It’s worth noting that none of this was really legal; the law technically stated that TikTok shouldn’t have been allowed to exist for much of this year. Everyone just looked the other way while Trump and his cronies repeatedly ignored deadlines and hammered away at the transfer.
FORD IS ONCE again shifting its electric vehicle manufacturing plans, a response to a year that’s been tough for the powertrain technology that’s still making waves overseas but has seen domestic government support cut and customer enthusiasm weaken.
Australia on Wednesday became the first country to ban social media for children under 16, blocking access in a move welcomed by many parents and child advocates but criticised by major technology companies and free-speech advocates.
David Ellison-run Paramount Skydance is launching a hostile bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery.
Paramount will go straight to WBD shareholders with an all-cash, $30 per share offer.
Netflix won a bidding war for the Warner Bros. film studio and HBO Max streaming service, but it doesn’t plan to buy WBD’s TV networks.
Paramount has repeatedly contended keeping Warner Bros. Discovery whole was in the best interest of its shareholders.
For years, the U.S. government has published an annual National Security Strategy that lays out how Washington sees the world and its approach to dealing with looming threats, from China to Russia to drug-traffickers in Latin America.
This week, the Trump administration’s version seemed to reserve its harshest tone for a new target: America’s closest allies in Europe.
Thailand launched airstrikes against Cambodia on Monday as a new wave of fighting erupted between the southeast Asian neighbors, marking the potential collapse of a peace plan presided over by US President Donald Trump just two months ago.
Both sides accused the other of launching strikes along their disputed border Monday morning, after weeks of simmering tension and the earlier suspension of progress on the ceasefire agreement by Thailand.
The government of Benin says it has foiled an attempted coup by members of the West African nation's armed forces.
"The Beninese armed forces and their leadership, true to their oath, remained committed to the republic," Interior Minister Alassane Seidou said in a televised address.
Earlier on Sunday, a group of soldiers made a broadcast in which they said they had ousted President Patrice Talon. Eyewitnesses told the BBC that they had heard gunshots, and some journalists working for the state broadcaster had been held hostage.
SpaceX is kicking off a secondary share sale that would value the rocket maker at $800 billion, people familiar with the matter said, surpassing OpenAI to make it the most valuable U.S. private company.
Today, Netflix, Inc. (the Company) and Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. (WBD) announced they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Netflix will acquire Warner Bros., including its film and television studios, HBO Max and HBO.
On Wednesday, Micron Technology announced it will exit the consumer RAM business in 2026, ending 29 years of selling RAM and SSDs to PC builders and enthusiasts under the Crucial brand. The company cited heavy demand from AI data centers as the reason for abandoning its consumer brand, a move that will remove one of the most recognizable names in the do-it-yourself PC upgrade market.
Two oil depots in Russia’s Tambov and Voronezh regions were hit in overnight Ukrainian drone strikes early on Wednesday, Dec. 3, according to regional authorities.
Tambov governor Yevgeny Pervyshov reported on Telegram:
“A fire broke out at an oil depot in the Tambov region after debris from a Kyiv regime terrorist drone fell.”
“Fire crews and law enforcement officials quickly arrived at the scene. All necessary forces and resources have been deployed,” he added.
European governments have taken another step toward reviving the EU’s controversial Chat Control agenda, approving a new negotiating mandate for the Child Sexual Abuse Regulation in a closed session of the Council of the European Union on November 26.
The measure, presented as a tool for child protection, is once again drawing heavy criticism for its surveillance implications and the way it reshapes private digital communication in Europe.
Unlike earlier drafts, this version drops the explicit obligation for companies to scan all private messages but quietly introduces what opponents describe as an indirect system of pressure.
It rewards or penalizes online services depending on whether they agree to carry out “voluntary” scanning, effectively making intrusive monitoring a business expectation rather than a legal requirement.
Instagram chief Adam Mosseri is ordering most US staff in his organization back to the office five days a week starting February 2, according to an internal memo obtained by Business Insider.
The memo, titled "Building a Winning Culture in 2026," says the change applies to employees in US offices with assigned desks and is part of a broader push to make Instagram "more nimble and creative" as competition intensifies.
The change was first spotted by users on Reddit and confirmed in an updated Netflix support page (via Android Authority), which now states that the streaming service no longer supports casting from mobile devices to most TVs and TV-streaming devices. Users are instead directed to use the remote that came with their TV hardware and use its native Netflix app.
Vladimir Putin signed Presidential Decree No. 858 on 25 November 2025, establishing Russia's "State National Policy Strategy" through 2036—a document that explicitly incorporates four occupied Ukrainian oblasts into Moscow's long-term ethnic assimilation framework and sets target metrics for erasing Ukrainian identity.
OpenAI is now internally testing 'ads' inside ChatGPT that could redefine the web economy.
Up until now, the ChatGPT experience has been completely free.
While there are premium plans and models, you don't see GPT sell you products or show ads. On the other hand, Google Search has ads that influence your buying behaviour.
An experimental reactor developed in the Gobi Desert by the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics has achieved thorium-to-uranium fuel conversion, paving the way for an almost endless supply of nuclear energy.
The achievement makes the 2 megawatt liquid-fuelled thorium-based molten salt reactor (TMSR) the only operating example of the technology in the world to have successfully loaded and used thorium fuel.
According to the academy, the experiment has provided initial proof of the technical feasibility of using thorium resources in molten salt reactor systems and represents a major leap forward for the technology.
We pointed an ultrasound probe at the scent-processing region of the brain to obtain different sensations. Different focal spots corresponded to different smells, which we’ve replicated first-try on two people and validated with a blind trial. The sensations we obtained are:
The sensation of fresh air, with a lot of oxygen
The smell of garbage, like few-day-old fruit peels
An ozone-like sensation, like you're next to an air ionizer
A campfire smell of burning wood
One of the nation’s poorest states has launched one of its most ambitious social policies: universal child care.
New Mexico this month became the first state to guarantee free care, regardless of income, starting at six weeks of age. The state says the plan—covered largely by a fund set up with oil-and-gas revenues—should save families roughly $16,000 a year on average on full-time daycare bills.
Providers of operating systems such as Microsoft, Apple, or Google will in the future have to ensure that they have a "youth protection device".
This is intended to ensure that porn filters are installed at the fundamental level of PCs, laptops, smart TVs, game consoles, and smartphones, and that age ratings for websites and apps are introduced. This is stipulated by the latest reform of the Interstate Treaty on the Protection of Minors in the Media (Jugendmedienschutz-Staatsvertrag, JMStV), which the state parliaments passed on Wednesday after Brandenburg relented with the 6th Interstate Media Amendment Treaty.
Mustafa Suleyman says people that are unimpressed with AI's capabilities are mind blowing to him, after recent backlash around Copilot and Windows as an agentic OS.
US President Donald Trump says he has approved a bill that orders the release of government files on the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein - a significant turning point in a months-long fight over the documents.
The justice department now has 30 days to publicly share all information from federal investigations into Epstein. However, it can withhold files that relate to active criminal investigations or are deemed to invade personal privacy.
The near-unanimous vote came after President Donald Trump -- Epstein's one-time close friend -- walked back months of opposition to the release, endorsing legislation that now moves to the Senate for approval.
Called Project Prometheus, the company is focusing on artificial intelligence for the engineering and manufacturing of computers, automobiles and spacecraft.
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has landed the booster of its New Glenn mega-rocket on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean on just its second attempt — making it the second company to perform such a feat, following Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
It’s an accomplishment that will help the new rocket system become an option to send larger payloads to space, the moon, and beyond.
Thursday’s launch wasn’t just about the landing attempt, though. Roughly 34 minutes after takeoff, the upper stage of New Glenn successfully deployed the rocket’s first commercial payload: twin spacecraft for NASA that will travel to Mars to study the red planet’s atmosphere.
On Sunday, Senate leadership inserted a hemp-recriminalization clause into the must-pass funding bill that would end the longest shutdown in American history, reported Marijuana Moment. On Monday, Cannabis Business Times confirmed that intoxicating hemp is being targeted as part of the three-bill spending package tied to reopening the government.
Not a standalone bill. Not a debate on cannabis reform. A shutdown ransom note.
Sixteen years ago, engineers working on the Google self-driving project conducted their first autonomous vehicle tests on the freeway that connects Silicon Valley to San Francisco.
The company would eventually become Waymo, autonomous vehicle testing would expand — fanning out to other cities. Eventually, the company launched commercial robotaxi services in Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Other cities soon followed.
But freeways, despite some of that early testing, would remain out of reach. Until today.
Blue Origin stands ready to help NASA achieve its goals with regard to landing humans on the Moon as soon as possible, the company’s chief executive said Saturday in an interview with Ars.
“We just want to help the US get to the Moon,” said Dave Limp, CEO of the space company founded by Jeff Bezos. “If NASA wants to go quicker, we would move heaven and Earth, pun intended, to try to get to the Moon sooner. And I think we have some good ideas.”
The world’s largest cargo sailboat, Neoliner Origin, completed its first transatlantic voyage on 30 October despite damage to one of its sails during the journey.
The 136-metre-long vessel had to rely partly on its auxiliary motor and its remaining sail after the aft sail was damaged in a storm shortly after departure.
The French-built roll-on/roll-off (RoRo) cargo ship, which has two semi-rigid sails, first stopped at Saint Pierre and Miquelon, a French overseas territory near Canada, before continuing its journey to Baltimore in the United States.
IKEA is launching 21 new smart home products focusing on lighting, sensors, and control — all built to work with Matter, the universal smart home standard. The launch marks a significant step in making smart home technology easier to use, more affordable, and better adapted to real-life needs in the home.
Apple on Tuesday released the first beta of iOS 26.2 to developers, and it appears that the software will allow users in Japan to install alternative app marketplaces on their devices when it is released to the public in December.
Democrat Zohran Mamdani has won New York’s mayoral race, NBC News projects, after the 34-year-old democratic socialist energized progressives in the city and across the country while generating intense backlash from President Donald Trump and Republicans, as well as some Democratic moderates.
In his victory speech after vanquishing former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Mamdani claimed a broad mandate and set himself up in direct opposition to Trump, who made a late endorsement against him. "In this moment of political darkness, New York will be the light," Mamdani said.
The hot sand around the Sudanese city of El Fasher is stained red with the blood of more than 2,000 massacred civilians.
The pools of blood are so thick, the piles of bodies so exposed, that the ethnic purge allegedly committed by Sudanese paramilitary rebels is visible from space.
The United States military is upgrading a long-abandoned former Cold War naval base in the Caribbean, a Reuters visual investigation has found, suggesting preparations for sustained operations that could help support possible actions inside Venezuela.
The construction activity at the former Roosevelt Roads naval base in Puerto Rico — shuttered by the Navy more than 20 years ago — was underway on September 17 when crews began clearing and repaving taxiways leading to the runway, according to photos taken by Reuters.
Until the Navy withdrew from the facility in 2004, Roosevelt Roads was one of the biggest U.S. naval stations in the world. The base occupies a strategic location and offers a large amount of space for gathering equipment, one U.S. official said.
To the south of the Monte Cristo mountain range and west of Paymaster Canyon, a vast stretch of the Nevada desert has attracted modern-day prospectors chasing one of 21st-century America’s greatest investment booms.
Solar power developers want to cover an area larger than Washington, DC, with silicon panels and batteries, converting sunlight into electricity that will power air conditioners in sweltering Las Vegas along with millions of other homes and businesses.
“You don’t got no ID?” a Border Patrol agent in a baseball cap, sunglasses, and neck gaiter asks a kid on a bike. The officer and three others had just stopped the two young men on their bikes during the day in what a video documenting the incident says is Chicago. One of the boys is filming the encounter on his phone. He says in the video he was born here, meaning he would be an American citizen.
After kicking off an unpopular pilot test last month, Samsung made the practice of having its expensive smart fridges display ads official this week.
The ads will be shown on Samsung’s 2024 Family Hub smart fridges. As of this writing, Samsung’s Family Hub fridges have MSRPs ranging from $1,899 to $3,499. The ads will arrive through a software update that Samsung will start issuing this month and display on the fridge’s integrated 21.5- or 32-inch (depending on the model) screen. The ads will show when the fridges are idle and display what Samsung calls Cover Screens.
Apple Maps could feature integrated ads as soon as next year, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports.
In his latest "Power On" newsletter, Gurman said that Apple's plan to bring more ads to iOS is moving "gaining traction," with the Maps app being next in line. The project will apparently give restaurants and other businesses the option to pay to have their details featured more prominently in search.
President Trump has pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the convicted founder of the crypto exchange Binance, following months of efforts by Zhao to boost the Trump family’s own crypto company.
In the midst of a federal government shutdown, the U.S. government’s gross national debt surpassed $38 trillion Wednesday, a record number that highlights the accelerating accumulation of debt on America’s balance sheet.
It’s also the fastest accumulation of a trillion dollars in debt outside of the COVID-19 pandemic — the U.S. hit $37 trillion in gross national debt in August this year.
The $38 trillion update is found in the latest Treasury Department report, which logs the nation’s daily finances.
Nicolas Sarkozy has become the first French ex-president to go to jail, as he starts a five-year sentence for conspiring to fund his election campaign with money from late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
Not since World War Two Nazi collaborationist leader Philippe Pétain was jailed for treason in 1945 has any French ex-leader gone behind bars.
NASA may sideline SpaceX and choose a different company to land its astronauts on the moon later this decade, acting space agency chief Sean Duffy suggested during TV appearances Monday.
Duffy emphasized that he believes SpaceX, which has a $2.9 billion contract to provide the lunar lander astronauts would ride to the moon’s surface, is lagging behind schedule, potentially thwarting NASA’s efforts to return humans to the moon before China amid a new space race.
AI-generated images of extreme poverty, children and sexual violence survivors are flooding stock photo sites and increasingly being used by leading health NGOs, according to global health professionals who have voiced concern over a new era of “poverty porn”.
“All over the place, people are using it,” said Noah Arnold, who works at Fairpicture, a Swiss-based organisation focused on promoting ethical imagery in global development. “Some are actively using AI imagery, and others, we know that they’re experimenting at least.”
A Polish judge has refused to extradite a Ukrainian citizen – suspected by Germany of sabotaging the Nord Stream gas pipelines in September 2022 – arguing that if Ukraine was responsible for the attack, then it was a "just" act.
Volodymyr Zhuravlyov, who was brought to Warsaw District Court in handcuffs, was detained in Poland last month on a European arrest warrant.
Judge Dariusz Lubowski ordered his release, after a ruling that was met with a ripple of surprise from the crowd in court and a smile from the man in the dock.
China announced it has begun mass producing the world’s first ultra-low noise, single-photon detector featuring four channels, suggesting that powerful applications loom in everything from daily communications to national defence.
Dubbed the “photon catcher”, the device can detect a single photon – the smallest unit of energy – making it a core component in cutting-edge technologies such as quantum communication and quantum radar for stealth aircraft detection and tracking.
Scientists have repaired a natural gateway into the brains of mice, allowing the clumps and tangles associated with Alzheimer's disease to be swept away.
After just three drug injections, mice with certain genes that mimic Alzheimer's showed a reversal of several key pathological features.
Within hours of the first injection, the animal brains showed a nearly 45 percent reduction in clumps of amyloid-beta plaques, a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease.
Dozens of reporters turned in access badges and exited the Pentagon on Wednesday rather than agree to government-imposed restrictions on their work, pushing journalists who cover the American military further from the seat of its power. The nation’s leadership called the new rules “common sense” to help regulate a “very disruptive” press.
News outlets were nearly unanimous in rejecting new rules imposed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that would leave journalists vulnerable to expulsion if they sought to report on information — classified or otherwise — that had not been approved by Hegseth for release.
Today’s test flight marked the end of a short but stunning redemption arc for this version of Starship — dubbed Version 2 or V2.
“Every major objective of the flight test was achieved, providing valuable data as we prepare the next generation of Starship and Super Heavy,” a recap of Monday’s mission on SpaceX’s website reads.
After thrice exploding mid-flight earlier this year, Starship soared through its key goals today — including deploying mock satellites and relighting its engine while in space, repeating feats first achieved during V2’s first fully successful test run in August.
Several leading news organizations with access to Pentagon briefings have formally said they will not agree to a new defense department policy that requires them to pledge they will not obtain unauthorized material and restricts access to certain areas unless accompanied by an official.
The policy, presented last month by the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has been widely criticized by media organizations asked to sign the pledge by Tuesday at 5pm or have 24 hours to turn in their press credentials.
Ofcom, the UK's Online Safety Act regulator, has fined online message board 4chan £20,000 ($26,680) for failing to protect children from harmful content.
The fine could rise by a further £6,000 – £100 per day for a maximum 60 days – if it continues to ignore its duties to comply with the regulator's request for information regarding two separate matters.