The TikTok logo on a smartphone. Bloomberg
The TikTok logo on a smartphone. Bloomberg
The TikTok logo on a smartphone. Bloomberg
The TikTok logo on a smartphone. Bloomberg

TikTok ban deadline: ‘In no way should it go dark on Sunday,’ says Democratic senator


Cody Combs
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Senator Edward Markey on Thursday said that Democrats in the chamber are continuing to push to extend the deadline that could lead to TikTok being banned in the US by the weekend.

“TikTok must not go dark on Sunday,” he said, adding that he, along with senators Cory Booker and Chris Van Hollen, had sent a letter to President Joe Biden urging him to use an article in the TikTok bill’s provision that could extend the deadline of January 19 by 90 days.

"This isn't just cat videos," Mr Markey said, laughing. "It's community, it's small businesses, it's creators, it's democracy, it's people talking to each other, and again, it's 65 per cent of all adults in the country."

Mr Markey, who opposed the bill that sought to force parent company ByteDance to divest from TikTok back in April, said the legislation had been forced into a humanitarian bill, which limited honest discussion on it at the time.

"That's why we need a time-out,” he said. "We need hearings. We need experts. We need to know what we're talking about."

Mr Markey also said that he recently became aware of a letter from senior intelligence officials that went against the notion that TikTok had manipulated data and the platform’s algorithm for political reasons, an argument that made its way to recent hearings on the issue at the US Supreme Court.

“It’s very telling that many of my colleagues aren’t aware of this,” he said.

Mr Booker, who has more than 472,000 followers on TikTok, said that forcing the platform to go dark on Sunday is not the appropriate solution.

“We need to make sure we're creating space for us to come together and save this platform in a way that comports with legitimate concerns … and preserve a platform that, as Senator Markey has said, is so profoundly important in the lives of so many Americans,” he said, referring to content creators and small businesses that have bolstered their economic bottom line because of TikTok.

Before the news conference, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer echoed those sentiments.

“We’re not against TikTok, we’re against a Chinese company in cahoots with the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] owning TikTok,” Mr Schumer posted on X. “Senate Democrats tried to pass a bill to extend the deadline, Republicans blocked it.”

In a bipartisan vote in April, Congress passed and Mr Biden later signed a bill that set a deadline for ByteDance to sell TikTok to a US entity by January 19 or risk being banned in the country.

Last week, the Supreme Court heard a legal argument from TikTok claiming that its First Amendment rights are being violated. It is unclear what the justices will decide but several seemed sceptical about the company's argument.

Mr Markey and Mr Booker said that if Mr Biden does not exercise his authority to extend the TikTok deadline, they hope that president-elect Donald Trump will after being sworn in on Monday.

Media reports have reported that TikTok’s chief executive Shou Zi Chew plans to attend Mr Trump’s inauguration in some capacity, along with the heads of other technology companies.

"I think it's probably helpful that the … chief executive of TikTok is going to be in town because he personifies, he puts the human face on what the impact is going to be on 170 million Americans,” said Mr Markey.

He said that “what they’re doing is no different from what Facebook is doing", referring to criticism about data collection.

At the Leap technology conference in Riyadh, TikTok chief executive Shou Zi Chew spoke of the platform's growing popularity amid increased scrutiny from regulators. Cody Combs / The National
At the Leap technology conference in Riyadh, TikTok chief executive Shou Zi Chew spoke of the platform's growing popularity amid increased scrutiny from regulators. Cody Combs / The National

At the heart of the deadline is an argument that goes back to 2020, when Mr Trump, who was president at the time, issued an executive order emphasising user data concerns related to TikTok because its parent company was based in China.

TikTok and ByteDance have repeatedly dismissed those concerns and denied that any US user data was in danger of being compromised.

The company moved much of its user data to US-based servers run by Oracle, but ultimately critics and elected officials have pointed out that because ByteDance is subject to the laws of China, there is still a national security risk.

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Conflict, drought, famine

Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.

Band Aid

Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.

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In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe

Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010

Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille

Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm

Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year

Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”

Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners

TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013 

Iran's dirty tricks to dodge sanctions

There’s increased scrutiny on the tricks being used to keep commodities flowing to and from blacklisted countries. Here’s a description of how some work.

1 Going Dark

A common method to transport Iranian oil with stealth is to turn off the Automatic Identification System, an electronic device that pinpoints a ship’s location. Known as going dark, a vessel flicks the switch before berthing and typically reappears days later, masking the location of its load or discharge port.

2. Ship-to-Ship Transfers

A first vessel will take its clandestine cargo away from the country in question before transferring it to a waiting ship, all of this happening out of sight. The vessels will then sail in different directions. For about a third of Iranian exports, more than one tanker typically handles a load before it’s delivered to its final destination, analysts say.

3. Fake Destinations

Signaling the wrong destination to load or unload is another technique. Ships that intend to take cargo from Iran may indicate their loading ports in sanction-free places like Iraq. Ships can keep changing their destinations and end up not berthing at any of them.

4. Rebranded Barrels

Iranian barrels can also be rebranded as oil from a nation free from sanctions such as Iraq. The countries share fields along their border and the crude has similar characteristics. Oil from these deposits can be trucked out to another port and documents forged to hide Iran as the origin.

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Quick pearls of wisdom

Focus on gratitude: And do so deeply, he says. “Think of one to three things a day that you’re grateful for. It needs to be specific, too, don’t just say ‘air.’ Really think about it. If you’re grateful for, say, what your parents have done for you, that will motivate you to do more for the world.”

Know how to fight: Shetty married his wife, Radhi, three years ago (he met her in a meditation class before he went off and became a monk). He says they’ve had to learn to respect each other’s “fighting styles” – he’s a talk it-out-immediately person, while she needs space to think. “When you’re having an argument, remember, it’s not you against each other. It’s both of you against the problem. When you win, they lose. If you’re on a team you have to win together.” 

The smuggler

Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple. 
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.

Khouli conviction

Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.

For sale

A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.

- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico

- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000

- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950

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Updated: January 17, 2025, 5:46 PM`