A deal for the Chinese parent company of popular video-sharing app TikTok to sell its US operations would see the creation of a board dominated by Americans, the White House said Saturday.”There will be seven seats on the board that controls the app in the United States, and six of those seats will be Americans,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News.She said a deal could be signed “in the coming days.”The United States has forcefully sought to take TikTok’s US operations out of the hands of Chinese parent company ByteDance for national security reasons.Under President Donald Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden, the US Congress passed a law to force ByteDance to sell its US operations or face a ban of the app.US policymakers, including in Trump’s first term, have warned that China could use TikTok to mine data from Americans or exert influence on what they see on social media.But Trump turned to the platform, which is hugely popular with young Americans, to garner support during his ultimately successful 2024 presidential campaign.The Republican president has repeatedly pushed off implementation of the ban while a deal has been sought.Investors reportedly being eyed to take over the app include Oracle, the tech firm owned by Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people — and a major Trump supporter.Leavitt seemed to confirm Oracle’s participation.”The data and privacy will be led by one of America’s greatest tech companies, Oracle, and the algorithm will also be controlled by America as well,” she told Fox News.”So all of those details have already been agreed upon. Now we just need this deal to be signed.”Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping discussed the matter in a phone call on Friday.Trump said that Xi “approved” the deal during the phone call but then said, “We have to get it signed.” China did not confirm any agreement.”We’re going to have a very, very tight control,” Trump said. “There’s tremendous value with TikTok, and I’m a little prejudiced because I frankly did so well on it.”The Wall Street Journal, quoting sources familiar with the talks, reported that the US government could receive a multi-billion-dollar fee from investors as part of the deal.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday he would meet US counterpart Donald Trump on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly next week as Russia intensified deadly strikes across his country.Russia carried out one of its largest aerial attacks, firing 40 missiles and some 580 drones at Ukraine in a nightime barrage that killed at least three people and wounded dozens, Zelensky said.A Ukrainian strike killed four people in Russia’s southwestern Samara region, the local governor said, in one of the deadliest Ukrainian strikes since Russia launched its invasion in 2022.Zelensky said he would discuss security guarantees for Ukraine and sanctions on Russia during the talks with Trump in New York.Ukraine has insisted on Western-backed security guarantees to prevent future Russian attacks. Russian President Vladimir Putin has however warned that any Western troops in Ukraine would be unacceptable and legitimate targets.A US-led push for a quick end to the war has stalled and Russia effectively ruled out a  Putin-Zelensky meeting — something that Kyiv says is the only way towards peace.”We expect sanctions if there is no meeting between the leaders or, for example, no ceasefire,” Zelensky said in comments released by the Ukrainian presidency.”We are ready for a meeting with Putin. I have spoken about this. Both bilateral and trilateral. He is not ready,” Zelensky added.In Russia’s latest aerial assault, “a missile with cluster munitions directly struck an apartment building” in the central city of Dnipro, Zelensky said on social media.He posted pictures of cars and a building on fire and rescuers carrying a person to safety amid rubble scattered nearby.In the Dnipropetrovsk region, the strikes killed one person and wounded at least 30 people, with one man in a serious condition, regional governor Sergiy Lysak said.- ‘Intense’ fighting -The strikes come a day after three Russian fighter jets violated the airspace of Estonia — a NATO member on the alliance’s eastern flank — an allegation Moscow denied.But it triggered fears in the West of a dangerous new provocation from Moscow after Poland last week complained that around 20 Russian drones overflew its territory.Zelensky repeated the call for “joint solutions” to shoot down drones over Ukraine “together with other countries”.Russia, which has been chipping away at Ukrainian territory for months, announced on Saturday its troops had captured the village of Berezove in the Dnipropetrovsk region.In the northeastern Kharkiv region, there were “intense actions” in the key area of Kupiansk, Zelensky said, referring to a rail hub Ukraine recaptured in a 2022 offensive.In Russia, four people were killed “in an enemy drone attack last night,” Samara governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev said on social media.He earlier said “fuel and energy facilities” were targeted, without specifying the damage.Ukrainian General Staff said “strategic objects of the Russian aggressor were struck”, adding its forces “inflicted damage” on the Saratov Oil Refinery and struck the Novokuybyshevsk Oil Refinery in the Samara region.A source in Ukraine’s SBU security agency said Ukrainian drone strikes “have stopped the operation of a number of oil pumping stations in Russia”.”It is this infrastructure that brings oil-dollar superprofits to the Russian budget, which fuel the war against Ukraine. Work to block these cash flows will continue,” the source said.The Russian defence ministry said its air defence alert systems “intercepted and destroyed” 149 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 27 over the Saratov region and 15 over the Samara region.Three rounds of direct talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul this year only produced prisoner exchanges. Russia has maintained hardline demands, including that Ukraine fully cedes the eastern Donbas region — parts of which it still controls.Kyiv has rejected territorial concessions and wants European troops to be deployed to Ukraine as a peacekeeping force, something Moscow considers unacceptable.

The Pentagon has unveiled new restrictions on media covering the US military, requiring them to pledge not to disclose anything not formally authorized for publication and limiting their movements within the Department of War.The new guidelines, laid out in a lengthy memo distributed to reporters on Friday, require them to sign an affidavit promising to comply — or risk losing their media credentials.The move is the latest by the administration of President Donald Trump to control media coverage of his policies, and after he suggested that negative stories could be “illegal.”The Pentagon “remains committed to transparency to promote accountability and public trust,” the memo says.But it adds: “Information must be approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released, even if it is unclassified” — effectively barring material sourced to unnamed officials.This new restriction would apply to both classified and “controlled unclassified information.”The memo also details sweeping new restrictions on where Pentagon reporters can actually go without official escorts within the military’s vast headquarters just outside Washington.”The ‘press’ does not run the Pentagon — the people do,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote on X.”The press is no longer allowed to roam the halls of a secure facility. Wear a badge and follow the rules — or go home.”The new rules come months after Hegseth faced stark criticism for revealing timings of US air strikes on Yemen’s Huthi rebels in a Signal group chat that inadvertently included a reporter.Hegseth — a former Fox News co-host and Army National Guard veteran — was also reported to have shared those details in a separate Signal group chain that included his wife.A spokesperson for The New York Times — a frequent target of Trump’s ire — called the new rules “yet another step in a concerning pattern of reducing access to what the US military is undertaking at taxpayer expense.”National Press Club President Mike Balsamo hit out at the new rules, and called on the Pentagon to quickly rescind them.”If the news about our military must first be approved by the government, then the public is no longer getting independent reporting,” Balsamo said in a statement. “It is getting only what officials want them to see. That should alarm every American.”