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New York City bans TikTok for officials
The popular Chinese social media app will be prohibited on government devices in the Big Apple
New York City has banned TikTok from government-owned devices, becoming the latest American jurisdiction to clamp down on the Chinese-owned platform over cybersecurity concerns. The city’s ban will affect several of its own TikTok accounts.
The move was announced on Wednesday, with the city’s agencies and employees given 30 days to delete the app from municipal smartphones and devices. City-owned networks and computers will no longer be able to access the platform from that point onwards.
A spokesman for Mayor Eric Adams said that the ban was imposed as TikTok "posed a security threat to the city's technical networks.”
New York State has already banned TikTok on state-issued mobile devices, while more than 20 US states and a host of cities have issued similar orders in recent months. In February, the White House ordered all federal agencies to wipe the app from government-owned devices, with the decree extended to cover government contractors earlier this summer.
Both the FBI and the Federal Communications Commissions have claimed that TikTok could pass user data to the Chinese government. TikTok insists that it "has not shared, and would not share, US user data with the Chinese government, and has taken substantial measures to protect the privacy and security of TikTok users."
The Chinese Foreign Ministry has accused the US of “abusing state power to suppress foreign companies,” and vigorously denies using the app to conduct espionage.
As of Wednesday, TikTok accounts belonging to Adams and the city’s Departments of Sanitation and Parks and Recreation all bore the message “This account was operated by NYC until August 2023. It’s no longer monitored,” according to the New York Times.
Adams’ administration made liberal use of TikTok to reach out to residents of the Big Apple. Prior to the ban, the Department of Sanitation’s account amassed nearly 50,000 followers and earned praise from local media for its “oddly excellent” blend of information and entertainment.
More than a billion people worldwide use TikTok every month, and the video-sharing platform is currently the most-downloaded social media app in the US, according to analysis from SimilarWeb, and there are more than 150 million TikTok users in the country. Authorities in Montana are also preparing to go ahead with a state-wide ban, due to come into effect in January.
https://www.rt.com/news/581424-new-york-tiktok-ban/
China’s Economic Disaster: Property Giant Evergrande Files For Bankruptcy in U.S.
Titanic Chinese property developer Evergrande filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States on Thursday, the culmination of two years of distress as China’s troubled property market slides further into crisis.
Evergrande was once China’s largest property developer and its rise was a symbol of how important the indebted real estate sector had become to China’s economy. Some estimates say the sector accounts for 30 percent of China’s gross domestic product.
Real estate investment and home ownership became an important focus for precautionary savings in China, a place to stash excess income in a country seen by its own populace as having few safe outlets for investment. Owning real estate also plays an important role in China’s cultural as a status symbol, making the collapse of Evergrande even more important.
Evergrande filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy in Manhattan. Chapter 15 makes bankruptcy protection under U.S. law available to foreign companies. Much of Evergrande’s corporate debt was held by U.S. and European institutional investors.
Evergrande has been under intense pressure since 2021, when it first defaulted on its bonds.
Breitbart News’ John Hayward described the meltdown at the company in October 2021:
Evergrande is a property development conglomerate based in the city of Shenzhen, founded in 1996 by Hui Ka Yan, who went on to become the richest man in China for a time. The company accumulated thousands of properties across China, amassing billions of dollars in assets — and, more importantly, over $300 billion in debt it cannot repay, about $20 billion of it owed to foreign creditors.
In short, Evergrande expanded too much, diversified too much, and borrowed far too much money from lenders who were happy to give the huge and ambitious firm an unlimited line of credit. Most of its big acquisitions were in residential real estate, and when the bottom suddenly fell out of China’s residential market, the rug was pulled from beneath the feet of its real-estate titan.
The supply of urban residential real estate far outstripped demand, and when demand stumbled, Evergrande’s creditors discovered the company could not make its loan payments – and its customers found themselves staring at half-finished buildings they might never be able to live in, despite making sizable deposits on attractive pre-construction deals.
Evergrande’s epitaph is written on empty apartment buildings, abandoned theme parks, and veritable ghost cities. The company’s business model assumed an endless stream of rural Chinese would move to the big cities and hunt for apartments. Vast sums were borrowed to build housing units in advance, but the customers stopped coming – and to China’s growing concern, the next generation of workers and home buyers isn’t getting born.
https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2023/08/18/evergrande-bankruptcy/
English Channel: Four ‘People Smugglers’ Held Over Deadly Migrant Boat Disaster
Four men are being held by French authorities on suspicion of involvement in the fatal attempted smuggler boat crossing to England on Saturday that killed six Afghan migrants.
Two Iraqi and two Sudanese-origin males aged 17, 29, and two aged 43 have been arrested in France on suspicion of aggravated manslaughter and aiding irregular entry of a foreigner as part of an organised gang, reports French-language newspaper Le Monde. According to their information, the Iraqis are people traffickers who helped organised the ill-fated attempt to smuggle migrants into the United Kingdom, and the Sudanese were migrants trying to make the journey who got a reduced rate on their own crossing fees in return for helping the smugglers run the boat.
The unnamed four are being held in pre-trial detention and face up to ten years in prison.
In the event, after a chaotic morning in northern France on Saturday which according to the eyewitness account of survivors started with a gun battle at the migrant camp where they had stayed overnight, the overloaded rubber boat was launched towards Britain’s southern shore in bad weather. It foundered while only a short distance from the French coast, but it was a British vessel which came to the aid of the small vessel carrying 60 souls in the first instance, reports claimed.
Six people, all Afghan migrants, are reported to have died of drowning and one more is thought to be missing. The rubber boat is reported to have “ripped” open after the boat’s engine failed and only a handful on board had life jackets.
The four now held were reported to have been arrested on the day of the attempted voyage, but it is only now that details about them and the charges laid against them have been revealed.
London’s The Times reports it is common practice for smuggler gangs to hire some of their own customers — migrants trying to force the borders of European nations against the laws and customs of those countries — to pilot the boats, despite them very rarely, if ever, being competent mariners with knowledge of marine engineering or navigation. This practice presumably reduces the risk of arrest for people smugglers themselves, as they need not necessarily be present on the boat, and doubtless, they are well aware of how very dangerous crossing crowded waterways in bad weather aboard overloaded rubber boats is.
Migrant crossings continue despite the now-considerable payments made by the British government to the French to do a better job patrolling their coasts and intercepting boats before they leave. There is also no end in sight: despite many fine promises made, the UK’s ‘Conservative’ government has made no real progress on getting in control of the migrant boats, and leaked internal memos speak of securing migrant accommodation for arrivals for at least the next five years.
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/08/18/english-channel-four-people-smugglers-held-over-deadly-migrant-boat-disaster/
Trans chess players banned from women’s events
The International Chess Federation has issued new transgender regulations
The International Chess Federation (FIDE) has announced that transgender women, i.e. males who have transitioned into females, will no longer be allowed to compete in women’s events until further notice.
In a recent update to the FIDE handbook, the organization explained that it has been receiving more and more recognition requests from individual members who identify as trans. In response, FIDE said it has chosen to only recognize in its directory an individual’s gender identity that is “consistent with the identity they maintain in their non chess life AND that has been confirmed by national authorities based on a due legal and formal process of change.”
FIDE noted that the term ‘trans’ only applies to those who have officially transitioned under “the national legal rules” and not to intersex, androgyne, or polygender people, as well as crossdressers and transvestites.
According to the new regulations, players who wish to have their new gender recognized by FIDE must provide proof that they have indeed transitioned and their claims must be reviewed by a national rating officer. After their new gender is confirmed and entered into the FIDE database, the player will face a number of restrictions.
Those who transition from male to female will be barred from participating in official FIDE events designated for women until further notice, the organization said, adding that more “analysis” is required on the issue, and that the FIDE council will make a final decision “at the earliest possible time, but no longer than within a two year period.”
The guidelines state, however, that “there are no restrictions to play in the open section for a person who has changed their gender.”
Additionally, the new rules state that transgender men (female-to-male) who earned women’s titles before transitioning will have those titles transferred to a general title of the same or lower level.
Titles obtained by male-to-female players will remain valid; however, these individuals will not be able to use their pre-transition peak ratings or results to qualify for women’s titles.
FIDE also stated that it reserves the right to “inform the organizers and other relevant parties” about a player’s gender change in order to prevent players from “possible illegitimate enrollments in tournaments.”
Earlier this month, British Rowing also banned transgender athletes from representing Great Britain or England in women’s international races. In July, the Union Cycliste Internationale, the world arbiter for cycling, also announced that male-born trans athletes would be kept out of women’s events to “ensure equal opportunities.”
https://www.rt.com/news/581401-trans-chess-player-regulation/
Debanking: Farage Delivers ‘Don’t Kill Cash’ Petition to Downing Street
A petition against the cashless society organised by Brexit leader Nigel Farage and UK broadcaster GB News has reached 300,000 signatures, and was hand-delivered to Downing Street by Mr Farage on Thursday afternoon.
Nigel Farage, political leader-turned broadcaster and now key campaigner on the debanking scandal carried the Don’t Kill Cash petition to No. 11 Downing Street on Thursday. Flanked by his fellow petitioners and co-hosts from the GB News Network Mr Farage handed the list of names over at the door of the official residence and personal office of Jeremy Hunt, the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer (finance minister).
The petition, which has over 300,000 pledges says on behalf of its signatories:
I call on the Government to introduce legislation to protect the status of cash as legal tender and as a widely accepted means of payment in the UK until at least 2050.
In the petition’s preamble, it states that “Britain is fast becoming a cashless society” and the situation has worsened considerably with the covid pandemic, when the government strongly discouraged the public from coming into contact with one another.
It warns that: “there are strong vested interests pushing for [cash] to be permanently replaced by debit and credit cards and other electronic payments. These cost you more in the long-run and enable 3rd parties to track you and your spending.”
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/08/17/debanking-farage-delivers-dont-kill-cash-petition-to-downing-street/
Law to block Russians from voting divides EU state government
The senior coalition partner in Estonia wants to disenfranchise part of the electorate for “security” reasons
Estonian Justice Minister Kaale Laanet will soon present amendments to the country's election law that would bar Russian citizens from voting in municipal elections, state broadcaster ERR reported on Wednesday. The proposal has been met with criticism from somewithin the country's coalition government, however, who view the move as potentially “unconstitutional.”
According to a draft Laanet showed to ERR, the “temporary restrictive” measure would bar any citizens of a foreign country that the EU or the Estonian legislature have designated an “aggressor state” from voting, and would specifically apply to nationals of Russia and Belarus.
Laanet told the broadcaster that the Russian constitution considers it a duty of every citizen to defend the motherland, meaning that Russians living in Estonia could be mobilized for the conflict in Ukraine, thus presenting a security risk.
Ethnic Russians constitute about a fifth of the Baltic state’s 1.3 million residents, of which an estimated 67,000 are Russian citizens who can currently vote in local elections, the next round of which is scheduled for October 2025.
The proposal was authored by the Reform Party of PM Kaja Kallas, and not by the Justice Ministry, according to Interior Minister Lauri Laanemets who leads the Social-Democrats, a junior partner in the governing cabinet.
“Of course, it would be nice if the bills came from the ministry, and not from the party,” Laanemets told the outlet Vikerraadio on Wednesday. He also claimed that the proposed measure would require changing Estonia’s constitution at a referendum in order to be enacted.
“Thing is, if a large number of people cannot vote for their local government, how can they express their opinion? If elections are not the place where one can express one’s opinion about society, then is there another way to do this?” Laanemets said.
Laanet has admitted that “a number of contentious issues” with the proposal may have to be resolved by Estonia’s supreme court, as the amendments may be contrary to both the country’s constitution and the rules of the EU, which Estonia joined in 2004. However, the justice minister cited a state court ruling suggesting that basic civil rights “may be limited in exceptional ways to protect another fundamental right or constitutional values.”
Kallas has been an outspoken supporter of Ukraine in the current conflict and has leveraged it to crack down on the Baltic state’s Russian residents. In May, the authorities in Tallinn threatened to arrest and fine anyone displaying “aggressor” symbols or listening to Soviet or Russian patriotic music, all but outlawing the celebration of Victory Day over Nazi Germany.
In April, Estonia banned websites used to watch Russian media, which have been outlawed by the EU state since March 2022. Last fall, Tallinn also banned Russian nationals from entering the country unless they had valid EU residence permits or family members in Estonia. When ethnic Russian real estate owners complained this violated their property rights, Estonian officials told them to complain to Moscow with “cobblestones in their hands.”
https://www.rt.com/news/581370-estonia-russians-voting-rights/
China’s Psychological Warfare: American Teens Have Developed ‘TikTok Brain’
There are many concerns about the China-owned app TikTok, such as its effects on mental health and it being a national security risk, but researchers are also interested in how it impacts kids’ brains after they binge-watch the app’s nonstop stream of addicting videos. They have nicknamed the result “TikTok Brain,” and it is impacting the lives of young Americans.
Early studies suggest that TikTok is actually changing youth’s attention spans, a phenomena known as “TikTok Brain.”
Young people who binge-watch short-form content like TikTok or Instagram Reels find it harder “to participate in activities that don’t offer instant gratification,” the Wall Street Journal reported.
The reward system in a person’s brain seeks reaction via continuous scrolling through TikTok and Instagram reels.
The TikTok platform, owned by a hostile foreign country, is a “dopamine machine,” John Hutton, director of the Reading & Literacy Discovery Center at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, said.
“A flood of dopamine reinforces cravings for something enjoyable, whether it’s a tasty meal, a drug or a funny TikTok video,” the Wall Street Journal reported.
Neuropsychologist Sanam Hafeez told Bustle that “When you scroll and hit upon something that makes you laugh, your brain receives a hit of dopamine,” and “when you see something you don’t like, you can quickly pivot to something that produces more dopamine.”
Continuing this behavior could eventually train a person’s brain to crave the rewards they get from taking in short content. A recent study published by Guizhou University of Finance and Economics in China and Western Michigan University suggests that TikTok videos and similar YouTube Shorts engage users via “short bursts of thrills,” which can even develop addictive behavior.
Moreover, a 2019 study published in Nature Communication reportedly suggested that our “collective attention span” appears to be narrowing due to how quickly people consume content on social media.
On the contrary, when a young person engages in behavior that demands focusing for a prolonged period of time, such as reading a book, they use something known as “directed attention,” which involves the prefrontal cortex, “the part of the brain responsible for decision making and impulse control,” the Journal noted.
Young people experience “a cultural indoctrination” that encourages them to “grow used to and even prefer these kinds of highly stimulating fast scene shifts,” Gloria Mark, author of Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness, and Productivity, told Wired.
Due to this, it is getting increasingly more difficult for young people to pay attention to things that don’t give them instant gratification.
“There are so many forces banding together that are just reinforcing people, especially young people, to have short attention spans,” Mark said.
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2023/08/17/chinas-psychological-warfare-american-teens-have-developed-tiktok-brain/
‘No Deals with Communists’: Argentina Presidential Frontrunner Javier Milei Would Limit Ties to China
The frontrunner in the upcoming presidential election in Argentina, Javier Milei, told Bloomberg News in an interview published Thursday that he would “not promote relations with communists,” including one of Argentina’s largest trade partners, China.
Milei became the frontrunner in the election, scheduled for October 22, on Sunday, winning the national primary by 30 percent, or nearly ten percent more than his nearest contender. Argentina uses a system known as “Simultaneous and Mandatory Open Primaries” (PASO) in which all prospective candidates are placed on a primary ballot and each must receive at least 1.5 percent of the votes to appear on the official presidential election ballot.
Milei became prominent as an economic commentator on Argentine news and is running for president as part of a political coalition known as La Libertad Avanza (“Liberty Advances”), an anti-establishment far-right coalition. Milei himself identifies as anti-communist, anarcho-capitalist, and is often referred to as libertarian, although he proposes several policies that run afoul of establishment American libertarianism, such as government protections for the life of unborn children. His decisive victory in the PASO does not affect the presidential election, as all three top contenders will appear on the ballot once again.
Milei will face off against establishment center-right candidate Patricia Bullrich, who came in second place, and socialist current Economy Minister Sergio Massa, a former failed presidential candidate. Current hardline socialist President Alberto Fernández chose not to run for reelection.
Fernández has dramatically reconfigured Argentina’s foreign policy, tethering the nation’s economic future to China. Fernández joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a global debt trap scheme, in February 2022 and has begun trading with China in the yuan, substituting for the U.S. dollar. Last year, Fernández visited Beijing and honored communist mass murderer Mao Zedong, leaving an offering at his tomb.
Milei told Bloomberg News this week that he would likely undo much of Fernández’s China policy and ensure that Argentina’s closest international allies were America and Israel.
“Our fundamental bases are free trade, peace, freedom, and aligning ourselves with the West, where the top references in this for us are the U.S. and Israel,” Milei explained. Asked about his position on trade with China, he responded, “Well, they will be commercial partners in the private sector. We don’t make deals with communists.”
“I would not promote relations with communists – not with Cuba, not with Venezuela, not with North Korea, not with Nicaragua, not with China,” he insisted.
https://www.breitbart.com/latin-america/2023/08/18/no-deals-with-communists-argentina-presidential-frontrunner-javier-milei-would-limit-ties-to-china/
Elon Musk says users on X, formerly Twitter, will lose ability to block unwanted followers, eliminating key safety feature
Users of X, formerly known as Twitter, will no longer be able to block comments from unwanted followers, according to a post by X owner Elon Musk on Friday, eliminating what's long been viewed as a key safety feature. Blocking will only be available for direct messages, he said.
"Block is going to be deleted as a 'feature', except for DMs," Musk wrote Friday. He was responding to a post from the account of Tesla
Owners Silicon Valley, asking, "Is there ever a reason to block vs mute someone?" The group behind that account promotes the electric car company, where Musk is CEO.
Since acquiring Twitter last year for $44 billion, Musk has overhauled the company, laying off many employees, reinstating previously banned accounts and recently rebranding the company and platform as X. He didn't provide a reason or a time frame for eliminating the block function, only saying in a follow-up response that "it makes no sense" and that the mute function will still be available.
Users have been able to use the block function to make sure that hateful content and harassment doesn't show up in their feed in response to their posts. The mute feature just keeps the individual user from seeing the undesired responses, but doesn't eliminate them from others' feeds.
Twitter users have also long employed the block feature in boycotts and to avoid seeing ads from specific brands or promoters on the platform.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, an investor in the new Twitter alongside Musk, said in a post that the company should focus its attention elsewhere.
"X should really solve the bots & spam problems before removing blocks," wrote Zhao, whose company owns one of the world's largest crypto exchanges. "Just my 0.02."
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/18/elon-musk-says-x-users-will-be-losing-the-ability-to-block-content-.html
Chinese Dictator Xi Jinping Demands ‘Patience’ as Economy Crumbles
Chinese state media responded to the latest gloomy economic news by spotlighting dictator Xi Jinping’s demand for “patience” in a previously unpublished February address to top Chinese Communist Party officials.
Xi insisted China’s faltering economic growth and crushing youth unemployment were obstacles that could be overcome through “steady, step-by-step progress.”
The South China Morning Post (SCMP) on Wednesday noted that speeches given at Chinese Communist Party meetings are usually kept secret from the public for months until the authoritarian government sees some benefit from releasing them.
In this case, no state media organ will dwell on the detail that Xi promised things would get better six months ago – and everything about the Chinese economy has gotten worse since then.
A Communist Party journal called Quishi published Xi’s February speech just hours after dismal economic data showed consumer confidence slipping and factory output plunging again in February, while youth unemployment has grown so high that Xi’s regime simply stopped reporting the numbers. The jobless rate among China’s urban youth topped out at 21.3 percent before the Communist Party decided to start hiding the data.
https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2023/08/17/chinese-dictator-xi-jinping-demands-patience-as-economy-crumbles/
Human Rights Watch: Heavily Censored Chinese Internet Teeming with Anti-Black Racism
The international organization Human Rights Watch denounced the government of China on Wednesday for rapidly censoring any perceived anti-communist content online while “pervasive hate speech against black people” faces no such restrictions.
Human Rights Watch found a flood of content on Communist Party-controlled social media websites such as Weibo, Douyin (Tiktok), and Bilibili insulting or mocking black people. Many social media users targeted black people in China, demanding the government ban black people from living in the country; others insulted Han Chinese people who engaged in interracial relationships or sent them death threats. A charity organization that aided African immigrants in southern Guangzhou, an immigrant hub, experienced regular accusations of being “Han traitors” as well as threats for helping foreigners.
The organization urged the Communist Party to use its censorship apparatus to “remove racist content” and use “nonpunitive” measures to educate the Han population against prolifically generating racist content.
The Chinese Communist Party is one of the world’s most bigoted government entities, currently engaging in the largest-scale genocide on earth against Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz people, and other majority-Muslim Turkic minorities in the occupied region of East Turkistan. Other non-Han ethnic groups, such as Mongolians and Tibetans, also face extreme discrimination, including government efforts to eradicate their language, religion, and culture.
Racism against black people by regime-approved Chinese is not limited to the Internet. Black people in China – most of them African immigrants – faced a wave of violent racism in Guangzhou in 2020 in which Han Chinese wrongfully evicted them and banned them from restaurants and other businesses, blaming them for the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus. In reality, the Wuhan coronavirus originated in the central city of Wuhan, China; the population of Hubei, the province where Wuhan serves as a regional capital, is about 96 percent Han Chinese.
https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2023/08/17/human-rights-watch-heavily-censored-chinese-internet-teeming-anti-black-racism/
Trump issues warning on dollar
The Republican frontrunner lamented decline of the US currency, arguing no country would have dropped the greenback on his watch
Former US President Donald Trump warned that the dollar is poised to lose its status as world reserve currency – and with it the country's position atop the geopolitical totem pole – in an interview with Fox Business on Thursday.
“Our country is going to hell and we’re not going to be the big boy,” Trump claimed, arguing that “We have power, but it’s waning. In fact, it’s waning in terms of our currency.”
Should the dollar cease to be the world’s reserve currency, “it’s bigger than losing any war,” the Republican frontrunner continued. While this would have been “unthinkable” under a Trump presidency, he said, “now people are thinking about it” – particularly China – putting the US in danger of being dethroned as global hegemon.
This is even more alarming given the current state of the US as a country, Trump said. “We are already reverting to third world status in many ways. You look at our airport, you look at our terminals, you look at our filthy roads and broken roads and everything else, we’re like a third-world country.”
He blamed the Biden administration for the nation’s decline, suggesting his successor had triggered the current inflationary spiral with his moratorium on new drilling for oil. The US was just 18 months away from out-producing Russia and Saudi Arabia combined before Biden took over, Trump claimed, insisting, “We would have made so much money. We would have been paying off debt, we would have been doing things that nobody’s ever seen this country do.”
No president has ever attempted to pay down the US’ national debt, which currently stands at $32.6 trillion by the Treasury’s own calculations – though some estimates suggest it may be several times that.
Trump himself added $6.7 trillion to that figure, putting him behind both Bushes and Barack Obama in terms of debt but ahead of Biden. However, the incumbent still has a year and a half to catch up, with theoretically bottomless spending programs like student loan forgiveness and the conflict in Ukraine.
The apparent instability of the US economy – Washington’s credit rating was recently downgraded by Fitch Ratings from AAA to AA+ for only the second time in history – and the growing number of countries that find themselves on the wrong end of US sanctions have contributed to an unprecedented level of interest in ditching the dollar as reserve currency.
These sanctions have inspired the BRICS nations to formulate an alternative to the US’ SWIFT international bank transfer system – a necessary foundation for any move away from the dollar.
https://www.rt.com/news/581435-trump-dollar-reserve-decline-debt/
EXCLUSIVE: 50K Migrants Apprehended in Texas Based Border Sector in 15 Days
Border Patrol agents in the five Texas-based sectors apprehended nearly 50,000 migrants during the first 15 days of August. This is despite the blistering temperatures endangering the lives of migrants attempting to enter the United States between ports of entry illegally.
Border Patrol agents assigned to the Rio Grande Valley, Laredo, Del Rio, Big Bend, and El Paso Sectors apprehended approximately 49,500 migrants who crossed the border between ports of entry between August 1 and August 15, according to unofficial Border Patrol reports obtained from a law enforcement source.
During the 15-day period, the Rio Grande Valley Sector agents apprehended more migrants than any other Border Patrol sector. Agents took nearly 23,700 migrants into custody so far this month. The Tucson Sector fell to second with the apprehension of nearly 22,250 migrants.
This was followed by more than 13,000 in the Del Rio Sector and nearly 12,000 in the El Paso Sector. The Laredo and Big Bend Sectors rounded out the Texas-based sectors with approximately 1,400 and 280, respectively.
Agents in the nine southwest Border Patrol sectors apprehended more than 83,000 migrants during this period. The official report from U.S. Customs and Border Protections is expected to be released any day. Unofficial numbers indicate a major spike following the sharp drop in June apprehensions.
https://www.breitbart.com/border/2023/08/17/exclusive-50k-migrants-apprehended-in-texas-based-border-sector-in-15-days/
Poll: Nearly Half of American Adults Support a TikTok Ban
Nearly half of American adults support a ban of the Chinese-owned app TikTok, a social media platform wildly popular among young people, which has shown itself to be a national security threat and a danger to children and teens.
Some 47 percent of respondents to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll said they at least somewhat supported “banning the social media application, TikTok, from use in the United States,” while 36 percent opposed a ban, and 17 percent said they didn’t know.
As far as political alignment, 58 percent of Republicans favored a ban, while 47 percent of Democrats said they supported it, the poll showed.
The survey also revealed that there are grave concerns among Americans over the global influence of China, a hostile foreign country.
The poll was conducted nationwide, surveying 1,005 American adults, including 443 Democrats and 346 Republicans, and had a credibility interval of roughly four percentage points in either direction.
“We’ve taken unprecedented actions to safeguard protected U.S. user data, and we will continue working to build a safe, secure, and inclusive platform to ensure the positive experience of our users in every corner of the country,” a TikTok spokesperson insisted.
Still, TikTok is viewed by many as simply Chinese surveillance and psyops thinly veiled as a social media platform. It has shown itself to be a danger to kids and teens, a national security threat, and having meddled in U.S. elections.
Additionally, TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has already been caught snooping on U.S. and UK journalists in multiple instances.
As Breitbart News previously reported, ByteDance employees have obtained the private user data of U.S. journalists. The Chinese company was also recently discovered having tracked a UK journalist via her cat’s TikTok account, which didn’t even have her real name on it.
In 2020, then-President Donald Trumpsought to ban new downloads of the Chinese app, but a series of court decisions blocked the rule from going into effect.
While the U.S. government mulls over what to do about TikTok when it comes to its citizens, it has been more proactive about protecting itself, barring military and TSA employees from having the Chinese app on their devices.
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2023/08/18/poll-nearly-half-of-american-adults-support-a-tiktok-ban/