Author: ALJAZEERA

United States President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming national security adviser has said the new administration will keep TikTok alive in the US if there is a viable deal. “We will put measures in place to keep TikTok from going dark,” US Representative Mike Waltz told Fox News on Thursday. He noted that the law gives authority for a 90-day extension for the app’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to complete a divestiture. This is the case, said Waltz, “as long as a viable deal is on the table. Essentially that buys President Trump time to keep TikTok going.” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer…

Renowned short-seller Nate Anderson says his work has been ‘intense, and at times, all-encompassing’.Hindenburg Research, the muckraking research and investment firm known for betting against companies including India’s Adani Group, will shut down, its founder has announced. Nate Anderson, who founded the New York City-based firm in 2017, said on Wednesday that while there was no single reason for the decision, running the company had been “intense, and at times, all-encompassing”. “I often wake up from my dreams because I’ve thought of a new investigative thread to pull on in my sleep, or an edit that clarifies a point I…

Sydney, Australia – When Racheal Clayton was attending primary school in Sydney, Australia at the height of the 2007-2009 Global Financial Crisis, the Australian economy was the envy of governments around the world. Unlike every other major developed economy, Australia emerged from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression without going into recession. Today, Clayton, 22, is navigating the world of work instead of the classroom, and an economy whose star is shining much less brightly on the international stage. Far from being the envy of the developed world, Australia’s economy is growing at its slowest pace since the…

Exports rose 10.7 percent in 2024, beating economists’ forecasts, customs data shows.China’s exports hit a record high in 2024, state media has reported, a welcome boost for the world’s second-largest economy as United States President-elect Donald Trump’s promised tariffs threaten to dampen growth. Exports rose 10.7 percent year-on-year, customs data showed on Monday, comfortably beating economists’ forecasts. Imports, which were widely expected to decline, rose 1 percent, the strongest performance since July 2024, customs data showed. The stronger-than-expected figures come as Trump is set to return to the White House on January 20 armed with a populist economic agenda that…

Justices at the United States Supreme Court have signalled scepticism towards a challenge brought by the video-sharing platform TikTok, as it seeks to overturn a law that would force the app’s sale or ban it by January 19. Friday’s hearing is the latest in a legal saga that has pitted the US government against ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, in a battle over free speech and national security concerns. The law in question was signed in April, declaring that ByteDance would face a deadline to sell its US shares or face a ban. The bill had strong bipartisan support, with lawmakers…

Conservative groups have denounced the programmes and threatened to sue companies over them.Facebook owner Meta Platforms and Amazon are winding down diversity programmes ahead of Republican Donald Trump’s return to the United States presidency, amid growing conservative opposition to such initiatives. Some of the US’s biggest businesses have been scaling back their diversity initiatives, years after pushing for more inclusive policies in the wake of protests that followed the police killings of George Floyd and other Black Americans in 2020. Meta is ending its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programmes, including those for hiring, training and picking suppliers, it said…

Minutes of the December meeting show a division on decision to cut rates and the 0.25 percent cut was a ‘close call’.United States Federal Reserve officials at their meeting December 17-18 expected to dial back the pace of interest rate cuts this year in the face of persistently elevated inflation and the threat of widespread tariffs and other potential policy changes. Minutes from the meeting, released on Wednesday after the typical three-week lag, also showed clear division among the Fed’s 19 policymakers. Some expressed support for keeping the central bank’s key rate unchanged, the minutes said. And a majority of the…

Taipei, Taiwan – As United States President-elect Donald Trump gears up for a second trade war with China once he takes office on January 20, the rare earth minerals essential to the production of electronics, vehicles and weapons are one resource expected to be caught up in the fray. While rare earths are plentiful across the earth’s surface – despite what their name suggests – China controls about 70 percent of their production and 90 percent of processing, according to estimates by the US Geological Survey and the International Energy Agency. The 17 elements, which include scandium, promethium and yttrium,…

Taipei, Taiwan – Five years ago, Jane Meng travelled from her home in Shanghai to Hong Kong to get herself something special for her birthday. The 31-year-old wealthy owner of an import-export company was not looking for a watch or a designer handbag. Instead, she came for critical illness insurance. “I didn’t have faith in the Chinese healthcare system and insurance market being able to provide the care and insurance that I might need later in life,” Meng, who asked not to be referred to by her real name, told Al Jazeera. “So, I decided to go and open up…

Nippon Steel and US Steel have filed a federal lawsuit in the United States challenging the Biden administration’s decision to block Nippon’s proposed $15bn acquisition of the Pittsburgh company. The companies say the head of the United Steelworkers union and a rival steelmaker worked together to scuttle the buyout. The lawsuit, filed on Monday, alleges US President Joe Biden prejudiced the decision of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS) which scrutinises foreign investments for national security risks, and violated the companies’ right to a fair review. In moving to block the transaction on Friday, Biden said US…