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Science & Environment

TikTok’s Chinese owner built search tool for users’ views…


TikTok’s China-based owner ByteDance had access to a search tool that allowed its employees to collect information on U.S. users’ views on divisive issues such as gun control, abortion and religion, the Department of Justice alleged in the latest chapter of the legal battle over the video app’s future in the United States.

New documents filed with the federal appeals court in Washington late Friday said an internal ByteDance workplace and communications program called Lark connected employees in China and the United States and was used to send data on U.S. users, including personally identifiable information.

The search tool inside Lark would have allowed ByteDance and TikTok employees “to collect bulk user information based on the user’s content or expressions, including views on gun control, abortion, and religion,” a DOJ official said. The filing did not indicate how or if the data was used.

In April, President Biden signed a law forcing ByteDance to sell TikTok to a non-Chinese company or face a ban in the United States, where it has 170 million users. The documents filed Friday were the government’s first major response to a legal challenge brought by TikTok and ByteDance.

TikTok spokesman Alex Haurek said early Saturday that the company remained “confident we will prevail in court.”

In a statement published on X, TikTok added that a ban on the app would violate its users’ First Amendment rights. “Nothing in this brief changes the fact that the Constitution is on our side. The TikTok ban would silence 170 million Americans’ voices, violating the First Amendment.”

Social media companies, like Meta’s Facebook, also ask users to share their religion and other personal information. However the DOJ alleges that TikTok’s access to sensitive information could cause geopolitical risks, by allowing the Chinese government to demand ByteDance share U.S. users’ data.

The department stated that TikTok’s algorithm, which determines the videos users see, “can be manually manipulated, and its location in China would permit the Chinese government to covertly control the algorithm — and thus secretly shape the content that American users receive — for its own malign purposes.”

“The serious national-security threat posed by TikTok is real, as evidenced by the public record and confirmed by classified information supplied by the intelligence community,” the government argued in another filing.

“TikTok provides the Chinese government the means to undermine U.S. national security in two principal ways: data collection and covert content manipulation,” it added.

The documents filed late Friday were heavily redacted, and Justice Department officials have said they intend to give the court an unredacted version of their legal brief featuring classified information. Judges could review that brief, but not the companies or the general public.

China has said it will block the sale of TikTok’s algorithm, and TikTok and ByteDance’s lawsuit claims the challenge of replacing such a central part of the app’s structure “is not remotely feasible” before the January deadline.

In May, eight TikTok creators sued the U.S. government over the law, which they said violated their First Amendment rights. TikTok, which is funding their action, has consolidated the two cases into one lawsuit.

The department responded to this by saying that users would still be able to post and view the same content on other social media platforms if TikTok were taken down.

“Any preference these petitioners may have for using TikTok over those other platforms does not create a constitutional right to TikTok,” it said, “nor could their preference overcome the national-security interests supporting the Act.”

Responding to TikTok’s argument that the U.S. had offered no proof for its claims of Chinese government influence, the Justice Department said in its brief that the U.S. “is not required to wait until its foreign adversary takes specific detrimental actions before responding to such a threat.”

“Congress can act even if all of the threatened harms have not yet broadly materialized or been detected,” officials wrote.

DOJ officials also argued against TikTok’s First Amendment defense, saying any damage from the law to users’ speech freedoms would be “incidental.”

“Any adverse effects on expression by U.S. persons are indirect and amply justified,” officials said. TikTok creators, they added later, “have no First Amendment right to TikTok.”

Science & Environment

Treasury gains help ICICI Bank post 10% rise in…



MUMBAI: Treasury gains helped ICICI Bank post a nearly 10 per cent increase in the consolidated net profit for the April-June quarter at Rs 11,696 crore on Saturday. Growth in the core income slowed for the country’s second largest private sector lender, but the treasury operations helped it report a 14.62 per cent rise in its post-tax profit at Rs 11,059 crore on a standalone basis.
The core net interest income (NII) growth came at a multi quarter low of 7.3 per cent to Rs 19,553 crore for the reporting quarter. The NII growth was restricted majorly by the over 0.40 per cent narrowing in the net interest margin at 4.36 per cent as against the year-ago period, and a nearly 16 per cent domestic loan growth.
The non-interest income grew 23 per cent to Rs 6,389 crore excluding the performance of the treasury operations, while the treasury gains alone more than doubled to Rs 613 crore from the year-ago period’s Rs 252 crore.
The bank’s executive director Sandeep Batra told reporters that the process of a decline in NIMs – which has been falling in the last five quarters – has stopped, and the crucial metric influencing profit will be “rangebound” from here on.
Declining to give any number on the outlook on NIMs, he, however, said that the new norms on liquidity coverage ratio (LCR) and RBI’s rate cuts will also have an influence on the number.
To a question on the draft LCR norms, under which RBI is proposing to make banks set aside larger sums of deposits to take care of any exigencies, Batra conceded that the move may have a bearing on the cost of deposits and liquidity but added that it is early to comment on it as the final norms will only be announced after public feedback.
Amid concerns on the unsecured lending being expressed by the RBI, Batra said the bank has reduced its personal loan growth to 24 per cent, while the credit card portfolio grew over 30 per cent.
There are no specific concerns about the quality of the unsecured book, the bank management said.
The fresh slippages increased to Rs 5,916 crore for the reporting quarter and were driven majorly by the retail, rural and business banking segments which collectively contributed Rs 5,732 crore of the dud loans.
The bank management attributed the uptick to a seasonal impact coming from on the Kisan Credit Card (KCC), where it experienced fresh slippages of Rs 721 crore.
Batra said the system had been in a benign credit cycle for long and things are normalising now, and was quick to add that the bank had guided towards the same earlier.
The credit costs are contained, the bank said, pointing out that the overall provisions excluding taxes grew marginally to Rs 1,332.18 crore, as against Rs 1,292.44 crore for the year-ago period, and Rs 718.49 crore in the March quarter.
The gross non-performing assets ratio was stable at 2.36 per cent as of June 30, 2024.
The capital adequacy ratio for the bank stood at 16.63 per cent, including core tier-I capital at 15.92 per cent.
With the technology areas coming under greater scrutiny from the RBI lately, Batra said its overall tech spends have risen to 9.5 per cent of the operational expenses, and added that they have grown significantly over the last 3-4 years.
The bank added 64 branches during the quarter to take its total network size to 6,587 branches. When asked about employee additions during the quarter, the bank management did not share the exact number.
Among its subsidiaries, its life insurance arm’s net increased to Rs 225 crore from Rs 207 crore in the year-ago period. The general insurance arm posted a 49 per cent jump in net at Rs 580 crore and the asset management company saw its net profit increase to Rs 633 crore from Rs 474 crore in the year-ago period.
The bank management also informed that during the quarter, it infused Rs 500 crore into the dedicated home loan finance arm.



Science & Environment

Joe Root surpasses legends to achieve major Test cricket…



England batter Joe Root became only the seventh player in Test history to score 12,000 runs, reaching this landmark during the third Test against the West Indies at Edgbaston on Saturday.

Root achieved the milestone when he reached 62 runs with a four off Alzarri Joseph on the first ball after Lunch on Day 2.

The former skipper teamed up with current captain Ben Stokes to rebuild England’s innings with a hundred-plus partnership for the sixth wicket. The hosts had been reduced to 54 for five within 12 overs in pursuit of the West Indies’ first-innings total of 282.

Root recorded his 95th Test fifty-plus score during the innings, the sixth highest among all betters

Interestingly, Root is the second youngest batter behind compatriot Alastair Cook to reach 12,000 Test runs, completing the feat aged 33 years and 210 days. Former India captain Rahul Dravid was the oldest batter to cross the mark at 37 years 339 days. Root also eclipsed West Indies batting legend Brian Lara’s tally of 11,953 runs during his knock.

Youngest players to 12,000 Test runs

33y 13d – Alastair Cook

33y 210d – Joe Root

35y 176d – Sachin Tendulkar

35y 214d – Ricky Ponting

36y 32d – Jacques Kallis

37y 68d – Kumar Sangakkara

37y 339d – Rahul Dravid

However, Root is not the quickest to the landmark; instead, he finds himself towards the bottom of the list with only Cook behind him in the club. While Cook took 275 innings to reach the milestone, Root achieved it in his 261st innings. Sri Lanka’s Kumar Sangakkara was the quickest (in terms of innings) to reach 12,000 runs, doing so in 224 innings. Sachin Tendulkar and Ricky Ponting are second, both securing their 12,000th run in their 247th innings.

Fastest players in terms of innings to reach 12,000 Test runs

224 – Kumar Sangakkara

247 – Ricky Ponting

247 – Sachin Tendulkar

249 – Jacques Kallis

255 – Rahul Dravid

261 – Joe Root

275 – Alastair Cook

Science & Environment

Israel airstrike hits Gaza shelter, leaving 30 dead


Israeli airstrikes hit a school being used by displaced people in central Gaza on Saturday, killing dozens of people, as the country’s negotiators prepared to meet international mediators to discuss a proposed cease-fire.

At least 30 people sheltering at a girls’ school in Deir Al-Balah were taken to Al Aqsa Hospital and pronounced dead after a strike that Israel’s military said targeted a Hamas command and control center used to store weapons and plan attacks.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said at least 11 people had been killed in other strikes on Saturday.

HOUSE REPUBLICANS REPLACE AMERICAN FLAGS AT UNION STATION AFTER ANTI-ISRAEL PROTESTS

destroyed buildings in Gaza

Buildings in the Gaza Strip are seen destroyed from southern Israel on July 24, 2024. (Tsafrir Abayov)

Near the hospital, Associated Press journalists saw an ambulance rushing through a dusty road as a few people ran in the opposite direction. An injured man lay on a stretcher on the ground. A body covered with a blanket and a dead toddler lay inside the ambulance.

Inside the school, classrooms were in ruins. People were seen searching for victims under the rubble and some were gathering remains of those who were killed.

Earlier, Israel’s military ordered the evacuation of a part of a designated humanitarian zone in Gaza ahead of a planned strike on Khan Younis on Saturday.

The evacuation order was in response to rocket fire that Israel said originated from the area. The military said it planned an operation against Hamas militants in the city, including parts of Muwasi, the crowded tent camp in an area where Israel has told thousands of Palestinians to seek refuge throughout the war.

SEE IT: THE MOST DRAMATIC PHOTOS FROM WEDNESDAY’S PRO-HAMAS WASHINGTON, D.C. PROTESTS

family members care for wounded child receiving treatment

Amal Abdel-Hadi, left, and Nour Abdel-Hadi, right, react over their 2-year-old wounded niece, Siwar, on July 24, 2024, following an Israeli airstrike on the child’s home (Abdel Kareem Hana)

The planned strike comes a day before officials from the U.S., Egypt, Qatar and Israel are scheduled to meet in Italy to discuss the ongoing hostage and cease-fire negotiations. CIA Director Bill Burns is expected to meet Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed Bin Abdul Rahman al-Thani, Mossad director David Barnea and Egyptian spy chief Abbas Kamel on Sunday, according to officials from the U.S. and Egypt who spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to discuss the plans.

It’s the second evacuation order issued in a week that has included striking part of the humanitarian zone, a 60-square-kilometer (roughly 20-square-mile) blanketed with tent camps that lack sanitation and medical facilities and have limited access to aid, United Nations and humanitarian groups say. Israel expanded the zone in May to take in people fleeing Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s population at the time had crowded.

KAMALA HARRIS REACTS TO ANTI-ISRAEL RIOTS AT DC’S UNION STATION

makeshift camp for displaced Palestinians

Displaced Palestinians reside at a makeshift tent camp in the Muwasi area of southern Gaza on Jan. 1, 2024. (Fatima Shbair, File)

According to Israeli estimates, about 1.8 million Palestinians are currently sheltering there after being uprooted multiple times in search of safety during Israel’s punishing air and ground campaign. In November, the military said the area could still be struck and that it was “not a safe zone, but it is a safer place than any other” in Gaza.

The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, said it was increasingly difficult to know how many people would be affected by the evacuation order because those sheltering under there were constantly being displaced.

“Referring to the orders as evacuation orders don’t do any justice to what this means,” said Juliette Touma, the agency’s director of communications. “These are forced displacement orders. What happens is when people have these orders, they have very little time to move.”

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Further north, Palestinians mourned the deaths of seven killed by Israeli airstrikes overnight on Zawaida, in central Gaza. Members of two families — parents and their two children as well as a mother and her two children — were wrapped in traditional Islamic white burial shrouds as community members gathered to perform funeral rights. As men lined up to pray in front of the bodies, weeping friends and neighbors approached individually to pay their final respects.

Deir al-Balah’s Al Aqsa hospital confirmed the count and Associated Press journalists saw the bodies.

The war in Gaza has killed more than 39,100 Palestinians, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count. The U.N. estimated in February that some 17,000 children in the territory are now unaccompanied, and the number is likely to have grown since.

The war began with an assault by Hamas militants on southern Israel on Oct. 7 that killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took about 250 hostages. About 115 are still in Gaza, about a third of them believed to be dead, according to Israeli authorities.

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