Trump gives Tiktok's ByteDance 45 days to agree to Microsoft sale: Report

One idea under consideration is to give Microsoft and ByteDance a transition period to develop technology for TikTok that will be completely separate from ByteDance

President Donald Trump has agreed to give China’s ByteDance 45 days to negotiate a sale of popular short-video app TikTok to Microsoft Corp, two people familiar with the matter said on Sunday. U.S. officials have said TikTok under its Chinese parent poses a national risk because of the personal data it handles. Trump said on Friday he was planning to ban TikTok in the United States after dismissing the idea of a sale to Microsoft.

But following a discussion between Trump and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, the Redwood, Washington-based company said in a statement on Sunday that it would continue negotiations to acquire TikTok from ByteDance, and that it aimed to reach a deal by Sept. 15.

It was not immediately clear what changed Trump’s mind. Banning TikTok would alienate many of its young users ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November, and would likely trigger a wave of legal challenges. Several prominent Republican lawmakers put out statements in the last two days urging Trump to back a sale of TikTok to Microsoft.

As SC starts CAA hearings, Congress looks to broad base protests to economy

It would get difficult for Congress to champion the cause of anti-CAA protesters if the apex court were to find the controversial law constitutional

As protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) rage across the country, Congress is increasingly feeling the need to broad-base them to encompass issues of economic slowdown, joblessness, inflation and farm distress.

On January 28, days ahead of the Union Budget, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi will address a public meeting in Jaipur. The focus of his speech would be unemployment and inflation. This will be the first of several such meetings he will address across the country, party sources said. The former Congress president is also likely to address a rally in Madhya Pradesh, where he will focus on issues confronting the farmers, tribals and rural workers. Further, he is likely to address a meeting of small and medium industrialists, traders and professionals at Mumbai. Interestingly, the party is yet to schedule any meeting in Delhi, which will vote to elect its new Assembly on February 8.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court will start hearing over a hundred petitions challenging Citizenship Amendment Act as unconstitutional from Wednesday. Congress strategists, and those of other opposition parties, understand it would get difficult for them to champion the cause of anti-CAA protesters if the apex court were to find the controversial law constitutional. They are uneasy that such a situation might trigger further protests, and with mainstream political parties unable to stand with the protesters, radical elements could take over the protests.

The issue of the National Population Register (NPR) is similarly vexed. The Congress-led state governments, and those of other opposition parties, cannot afford to flout the Centre’s notification to conduct the NPR. If they do, these state governments could run the risk of getting sacked.

Back immigration or risk missing out on tech boom: Microsoft CEO Nadella

“…people will only come when people know you’re an immigrant friendly country.”, Nadella said.

Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella said he worries that mistrust between the US and China will increase technology costs and hurt economic growth at a critical time. Using the $470 billion semiconductor industry as an example of a sector that is already globally interconnected, Nadella said the two countries will have to find ways to work together, rather than creating different supply chains for each country.

“All you are doing is increasing transaction costs for everybody if you completely separate,” Satya Nadella said in an interview with Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait at Bloomberg’s The Year Ahead conference in Davos. That’s a concern as the executive said the world is on the cusp of a revolution around technology and artificial intelligence. “If we take steps back in trust or increase transaction costs around technology, all we are doing is sacrificing global economic growth,” he said.

The Trump administration is considering steps to further limit the ability of US companies to supply Huawei Technologies, China’s flagship tech company, in addition to pressuring countries around the world to avoid using its equipment for 5G mobile networks.The agreement signed last week between the US and China was “not sufficient,” said Nadella. Yet, he represented “progress” on the issue of intellectual property protections for US technology companies working with China…