AFP USA

Sony PlayStation’s online services came back online on Saturday, the Japanese group said, after a 24-hour outage frustrated gamers around the world. PlayStation Network “has been restored. You should be able to access online features without any problems now,” said a statement on X around midnight GMT Sunday, 24 hours after a message acknowledged users were experiencing “difficulty launching games, apps or network features.” “Sorry for the inconvenience!” the post added, without providing further details on the reasons for the outage. The network’s failure prevented many owners of Sony consoles including the PS4 and the PS5 from playing multiplayer games such as the hugely popular “Fortnite” and “Call of Duty.”  The specialized site DownDetector.com had reported that users’ difficulties peaked sharply around 7:00 pm US Eastern time on Friday (midnight GMT Saturday), before falling steadily, but not quite returning to normal levels. Players expressed impatience and anger on social media during the outage. One user said on X that it was “criminal” to have a PlayStation outage on a Friday evening, but another quipped more equably that it was time for him to reintroduce himself to the woman he married five years ago. 

A resurgence of avian flu, which first struck the United States in 2022, is hitting chicken farms hard, sending egg prices soaring and rattling consumers accustomed to buying this dietary staple for only a few dollars.In Washington and its suburbs, supermarket egg shelves are now often empty, or sparsely stocked. Some stores limit the number of cartons each client may buy. And everywhere, consumers are shocked by the high prices. “They’re getting expensive,” 26-year-old student Samantha Lopez told AFP as she shopped in a supermarket in the US capital. “It’s kind of difficult… My budget for food is already very tight.”The situation is much the same in the southern state of Florida. “Eggs are important (and) so nutritious,” said Miami resident Blanche De Jesus, “but you can hardly buy them because they are so expensive. It is a shame.”Responding to irate consumers, a Washington supermarket posted this explanation: “You may notice a price increase on eggs at this time due to the recent avian influenza outbreak in the Midwest,” the country’s agricultural heartland.More than 21 million egg-laying hens have been euthanized this year because of the disease, according to data published Friday by the US Agriculture Department. Most of them were in the states of Ohio, North Carolina and Missouri.The department reported the “depopulation” of a further 13.2 million in December.Higher prices were the inevitable result, experts say.”If there’s no birds to lay eggs… then we have a supply shortage, and that leads to higher prices because of supply and demand dynamics,” said Jada Thompson, a poultry specialist at the University of Arkansas.- ‘Near-record highs’ -Some grocers are “holding prices at record or near-record highs to dampen demand,” the Agriculture Department said.The average price of a dozen Grade A eggs was 65 percent higher in December compared to a year before — rising from $2.50 to $4.15, according to official data.  Supermarkets are not the only ones feeling the pain. Waffle House, a popular restaurant chain known for its all-day breakfast menu, made headlines when it moved to charge customers an extra 50 cents per egg.  “The continuing egg shortage caused by HPAI (bird flu) has caused a dramatic increase in egg prices,” Waffle House said in a statement to CNN. “Customers and restaurants are being forced to make difficult decisions.”In the United States, the virus is being found not only in poultry but also in dairy cows.Sixty-seven cases have been detected in humans since the beginning of last year, nearly all of them proving benign and linked to known contacts with infected animals.Americans are among the world’s biggest egg lovers, particularly at breakfast time, consuming on average 277 eggs a year, according to the United Egg Producers, an agricultural cooperative. 

He has no foreign policy experience but sports a reputation as a talented negotiator unafraid to speak his mind. And Donald Trump’s special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff has already made his mark.A close friend to the US president, 67-year-old real estate magnate Witkoff is credited with playing a key role in negotiating the ceasefire in Gaza between Israel and the Hamas armed group. The truce took effect January 19, on the eve of Trump’s inauguration for a second term in the White House. This week, Witkoff found himself in the spotlight, defending the US president’s stunning suggestion that he wanted to “take over” the Gaza Strip and move its two million Palestinian inhabitants elsewhere.”When the president talks about cleaning it out, he talks about making it habitable, and this is a long-range plan,” Witkoff told reporters at the White House just ahead of a joint news conference by Trump and visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”And this guy knows real estate,” National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, appearing alongside the special envoy, said with a smile.  Speaking later that day on Fox News, Witkoff continued laying out the administration’s justification for the notion of a large-scale relocation of Palestinians from Gaza — even as the idea drew fire in the region, with some calling it tantamount to ethnic cleansing.”A better life is not necessarily tied to the physical space that you’re in today,” he said, seeming to gloss over the complexities of the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Trump had nothing but praise for Witkoff at the White House news conference.”Steve, stand up, Steve, please. What a job you’ve done. Quite a good job. You’ve done a fantastic job,” he said.It was Witkoff, a billionaire like his friend and a regular golfing partner of his, who was called on to introduce the new president at a celebratory gathering at a Washington arena following his January 20 inauguration. – ‘Not a real estate deal’ -Though a complete neophyte in the world of diplomacy, Witkoff was named as special envoy to the Middle East only a week after Trump’s election, a reflection of the two men’s close relationship. Eight years earlier, after Trump was elected for his first term, he named another diplomatic novice — his son-in-law Jared Kushner — to the same position.Even before Trump took office, Witkoff joined in the Gaza ceasefire talks, taking part in a final round of negotiations in early January alongside Brett McGurk, the Middle East advisor to then-president Joe Biden. It was a rare collaboration between an outgoing and incoming US administration.After attending the talks in the Qatari capital of Doha, Witkoff flew to Israel on a Saturday — interrupting Netanyahu on the Jewish Sabbath — in an urgent bid to finalize an agreement.  Then on January 29, Witkoff traveled to Gaza, much of which has been reduced to rubble after 15 months of an Israeli offensive launched in response to Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack.He was the first US official to visit the territory since the war began.In an article published Thursday by Foreign Policy journal, Steven Cook, an expert with the Council on Foreign Relations, said that Witkoff’s lack of diplomatic experience could be an advantage, giving him a fresh perspective.Still, he added: “The Israel-Palestine conflict is not a real estate deal.”Born on March 15, 1957, in the New York borough of the Bronx, Witkoff made his fortune in real estate, first as a corporate lawyer and then at the head of big realty firms. In 1997, he founded the Witkoff Group, which describes itself as “one part developer, one part investor (and) one part landscape-changer.” His wife and a son work there.A graduate of Hofstra University near New York, Witkoff has several children, including one who died in 2011, aged 22, from an OxyContin overdose. 

A US judge issued an emergency order early Saturday blocking Elon Musk’s government reform team from accessing personal and financial data for millions of Americans stored at the Treasury Department, court documents showed.US District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer’s order restricts giving access to Treasury Department payment systems and other data to “all political appointees, special government employees, and government employees detailed from an agency outside the Treasury Department.”The temporary restrictive order, which remains in effect until a February 14 hearing, also says any such person who has accessed data from the Treasury Department’s records since President Donald Trump’s January 20 inauguration must “immediately destroy any and all copies of material downloaded.”Musk, the world’s richest person, is leading Trump’s federal cost-cutting efforts under the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).The case was brought against the Republican president, the Department of the Treasury and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent by attorneys general from 19 states on Friday.They alleged the administration violated the law by expanding access to sensitive Treasury Department data to staff from Musk’s DOGE.The Tesla, SpaceX and X chief is neither a federal employee nor a government official, although US media reported this month that he had been registered as a “special government employee.”DOGE does not enjoy full status as a government department, which would require approval by Congress.But Musk, a top Trump donor and ally, and his team have rampaged through federal agencies in the first weeks of the new administration, pausing foreign aid programs, slashing budgets and attempting to lay off scores of government workers.Musk, in posts on X on Saturday, denounced Engelmayer as an “activist” and accused Democrats of “trying to hide possibly the biggest fraud scheme in human history!”  – ‘Unfettered access’ -Judge Engelmayer’s order early Saturday said the states that sued would “face irreparable harm in the absence of injunctive relief.””That is both because of the risk that the new policy presents of the disclosure of sensitive and confidential information and the heightened risk that the systems in question will be more vulnerable than before to hacking,” he wrote.Musk ran into controversy last week with reports he and his team were accessing sensitive data stored at the Treasury Department.An internal assessment from the Treasury called the DOGE team’s access to federal payment systems “the single biggest insider threat the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS) has ever faced,” US media reported.The lawsuit from states including New York and California alleged that the Trump administration granted “virtually unfettered access” to BFS payment systems to “at least one 25-year-old DOGE associate” who had the “authority to view or modify numerous critical files.”That access “poses huge cybersecurity risks, including risks to States and States’ residents that their information will be used and processed, unchecked, in a manner not permitted by federal law,” says the states’ lawsuit filed in the US District Court in Manhattan late on Friday.It also said that reports indicated “that data from other federal agencies is being fed into an open-source Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) system owned and controlled by a private third party.”New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin said on Friday that Trump “has allowed an unelected billionaire to infiltrate key federal agencies and systems that store Social Security numbers, banking information, and other extremely sensitive data for millions of people.”- More challenges -More court challenges have taken shape as Trump has moved rapidly to overhaul the government’s spending and workforce.An attempt to overturn the constitutional guarantee to birthright citizenship has been blocked by a judge. Another judge paused an effort to offer mass buyouts to federal workers on Thursday, pending arguments next week.The US Agency for International Development (USAID), which distributes humanitarian aid globally, has become a major target. The Trump administration has ordered thousands of internationally based staff to return to the United States and begun slashing the USAID headcount of 10,000 employees to around 300.Labor unions are challenging the legality of the onslaught. A federal judge ordered a pause on Friday to a plan to put 2,200 USAID workers on paid leave by the weekend.Democrats say it would be unconstitutional for Trump to shut down government agencies without the legislature’s green light.

Elon Musk, the world’s richest person and a top advisor to US President Donald Trump, said he has no interest in acquiring social media platform TikTok’s operations in the United States, in comments released Saturday.”I’ve not put in a bid for TikTok and I don’t have any plans for what I would do if I had TikTok,” said Musk in comments made via videolink at a German forum in late January that were released on the weekend.TikTok is facing down a US law that ordered the company broken off from its Chinese owner ByteDance or otherwise be banned in the United States over national security concerns regarding the data it gathers on users.In one of his first acts in office, Trump ordered a pause on enforcing the law that should have seen TikTok effectively made illegal in the country a day before he took office for a second term.Soon after, Trump said he would be open to Musk — the owner of social media platform X, Tesla and a slew of other companies — buying the platform.Musk, however, said he did not wish to acquire the company.”I don’t use TikTok personally, so, you know, I’m not that familiar with it,” he said. “I’m not chomping at the bit to acquire TikTok.”Musk bought social media giant Twitter, which he renamed X, for $44 billion in 2022, insisting he was doing so in order to safeguard “free speech.”Since his takeover, rights campaigners warn there has been a spike in hate speech and disinformation on the platform.Musk was one of Trump’s main financial backers in his presidential campaign, and is heading the US president’s budget-slashing initiatives.His so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) has targeted a range of federal government agencies and regulators, with the apparent intent of shutting them down and firing staff, especially those not in line with Trump’s political agenda.On Saturday, a US judge issued an emergency order blocking Musk’s government reform team from accessing personal and financial data for millions of Americans stored at the Treasury Department, court documents showed.In the comments at the forum in Germany, Musk also took aim at Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, which are meant to support historically oppressed and disenfranchised communities.”DEI is simply racism rebranded,” he said. “I’m against racism and sexism no matter who it’s directed against.”US officials have been racing to enact Trump’s war on DEI across the federal bureaucracy — dismantling training initiatives, scrapping grants and sidelining hundreds of workers.In Germany, Musk has voiced firm support for the far-right anti-immigration AfD party — a political taboo in a country whose Nazi past remains a sensitive subject.

From the United States to Thailand, users of the popular Sony PlayStation consoles might encounter “difficulties,” the Japanese group said Saturday, as game players around the world expressed their frustration.”You might have difficulty launching games, apps or network features,” Sony said on its status page. “We’re working to resolve the issue as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.”PlayStation’s online services allow users of Sony consoles like the PS4 or the PS5 to play hugely popular multiplayer games like “Fortnite” and “Call of Duty.” The specialized site DownDetector.com reports that users’ difficulties peaked sharply around 7:00 pm Friday (00H00 GMT Saturday), before falling steadily but not quite returning to normal levels. Users took to social media to express their anger and frustration. One user said on X that it was “criminal” to have a PlayStation outage on a Friday evening, but another quipped more equably that it was time for him to reintroduce himself to the woman he married five years ago. 

Demi Moore won best actress at the Critics Choice Awards on Friday, confirming her status as favorite for the Oscars in a week that saw scandal envelop her “Emilia Perez” rival Karla Sofia Gascon.Nineties megastar Moore’s horror film “The Substance” also won best original screenplay at a glitzy Los Angeles gala held by North America’s largest critics’ group, which crowned “Anora” as the year’s best picture.Moore’s win follows her victory at the Golden Globes in January, and puts her on track to cap a remarkable career renaissance at next month’s Oscars.”This has been such a wild ride,” said Moore, 62, who made a string of hit films in the 1990s, but came to be known as much for her love life as her acting in subsequent decades.That has changed with “The Substance,” a body-horror flick about an aging celebrity who injects a serum to temporarily live again in her younger body.Nodding to the film’s frequently bloody and horrifying depictions of warped bodies, Moore thanked critics for rewarding “this genre of horror films, that are overlooked and not seen for the profundity that they can hold.”Moore’s win came at the expense of Gascon, the Spanish transgender star of narco-musical “Emilia Perez” whose Oscar campaign collapsed in spectacular fashion over the past week.Social media messages posted years ago by Gascon resurfaced in which she made derogatory and racist remarks about Muslims, China and even the Oscars themselves.The film’s distributor Netflix has since dropped Gascon from its Oscars campaign, and director Jacques Audiard disavowed his lead actor for her “absolutely hateful” and “inexcusable” comments.Gascon was notably absent at the Critics Choice Awards, and when her name was read out among the nominees, the usually celebratory Hollywood audience fell conspicuously silent.Moore did namecheck Gascon while thanking her fellow nominees during her acceptance speech.But neither Audiard nor Zoe Saldana, who won best supporting actress for “Emilia Perez,” mentioned Gascon in their remarks from the stage.A Netflix representative told AFP they hoped “the actions of one person” would not “affect the whole film,” which is still in the running to win best picture at the Oscars.That race, for the most coveted Academy Award, is unusually wide-open this year.Friday’s ceremony provided a major boost for “Anora,” the Cannes festival Palme d’Or winner, about a young New York stripper who marries the young son of a Russian billionaire in an ill-fated whirlwind romance.Several other contenders also picked up key wins Friday.”The Brutalist” star Adrien Brody won best actor, “Conclave” won best adapted screenplay and best acting ensemble, and Broadway adaptation “Wicked” earned best director for Jon M. Chu. 

President Donald Trump on Friday revoked his predecessor Joe Biden’s security clearance in a blizzard of new orders, while escalating his campaign to dismantle the US humanitarian agency charged with helping the world’s poorest and extending American influence around the globe. In a new series of rapid-fire power plays, the 78-year-old billionaire also froze aid to South Africa, where his top donor Elon Musk was born, and named himself head of one of Washington’s premier cultural venues, the Kennedy Center. “There is no need for Joe Biden to continue receiving access to classified information,” Trump said on his Truth Social network, adding that he was “immediately” revoking the Democrat’s security clearances and ending his daily intelligence briefings. “JOE, YOU’RE FIRED,” he added in all caps. US presidents are traditionally given the right to receive intelligence briefings even after they step down. Trump also stepped up his assault on the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which distributes humanitarian aid globally.”THE CORRUPTION IS AT LEVELS RARELY SEEN BEFORE. CLOSE IT DOWN!” he wrote on his Truth Social app about USAID, without offering evidence.USAID has received the most concentrated fire since Trump launched a crusade led by Musk — the world’s richest person — to downsize or dismantle swaths of the US government. On Friday, Musk — who along with Trump has spread blatantly false information about USAID’s finances — reposted photos of the agency’s signage being removed from its Washington headquarters.The Trump administration has frozen foreign aid, ordered thousands of internationally-based staff to return to the United States, and begun slashing the USAID headcount of 10,000 employees to around only 300.Labor unions are challenging the legality of the onslaught. A federal judge on Friday ordered a pause to the administration’s plan to put 2,200 USAID workers on paid leave by the weekend.Democrats say it would be unconstitutional for Trump to shut down government agencies without the legislature’s green light.- Soft power -The United States’ current budget allocates about $70 billion for international assistance, a tiny fraction of overall spending.But it gets a big bang for its buck. USAID alone runs health and emergency programs in around 120 countries, including in the world’s poorest regions, boosting Washington’s battle for influence against rivals such as China.”We are witnessing one of the worst and most costly foreign policy blunders in US history,” Samantha Power, the USAID chief under former president Joe Biden, wrote in a scathing New York Times opinion piece.Hard-right Republicans and libertarians have long questioned the need for USAID and criticized what they say is wasteful spending abroad.Also Friday, Trump named himself as chairman of the Kennedy Center, suggesting that the stately white marble entertainment complex overlooking the Potomac River did not reflect his own values.”Just last year, the Kennedy Center featured Drag Shows specifically targeting our youth — THIS WILL STOP,” he wrote on Truth Social, without explaining what show he was referring to. Trump has repeatedly attacked gender-nonconforming people.He also followed up Friday on a promise to freeze US aid to South Africa, citing a law in the country that he alleges allows farmland to be seized from white farmers, despite Johannesburg’s denials.Musk has frequently criticized the South African government.- Racist social posts -Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, have rampaged through agencies that most Americans have for decades taken for granted.While Democrats have struggled to find footing to halt the budget-slashing moves, court challenges are slowly taking shape.An attempt by Trump to overturn the constitutional guarantee to birthright citizenship has been blocked by a judge, and on Thursday another judge paused an attempt to offer mass buyouts to federal workers, pending arguments on Monday.Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, ran into controversy last week with reports he and his team were accessing sensitive Treasury Department data and systems.An internal assessment from the Treasury called the DOGE team’s access to federal payment systems “the single biggest insider threat the Bureau of the Fiscal Service has ever faced,” US media reported.Adding to the drama, one member of the DOGE team resigned after it emerged that he had advocated racism and eugenics on social media.On Friday, following backing for the sacked 25-year-old from Trump, Musk said he would reinstate the staffer.Vice President JD Vance weighed in Friday saying he did not think “stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life.”

Armed with multimillion-dollar lawsuits and regulatory threats, Donald Trump is taking his long-standing battle with the US media to a new level –- targeting the finances of organizations already struggling in an increasingly tough commercial climate.The president has long had an antagonistic relationship with mainstream news outlets, deriding them as the “enemy of the people.” A notable exception is the powerful conservative broadcaster Fox News, some of whose hosts have taken on major roles in his administration and where his daughter in law Lara Trump is set to start as a primetime host.Trump now appears to be doubling down on his anti-media rhetoric in his first month in office, focusing on cutting government agencies’ news subscriptions in what observers call a case of manufactured outrage.News outlet Politico was at the center of a social media storm, with Trump supporters including Elon Musk posting screenshots that falsely purported to show more than $8 million was funneled from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to the site.The humanitarian agency has been the target of a sweeping cost-cutting campaign by billionaire Musk, a key Trump advisor, with the president calling for its closure.Records on USAspending.gov, an online tracker of government payments, showed that federal agencies paid about $8 million to Politico for subscriptions, including to its Politico Pro service.Payments from USAID were a small fraction of that total, the records showed.But the facts did not stop Trump from falsely claiming that billions of dollars from USAID and other agencies had improperly gone to the “fake news media as a ‘payoff’ for creating good stories about the Democrats.””We have never received any government funding — no subsidies, no grants, no handouts,” Goli Sheikholeslami, Politico’s chief executive, and John Harris, its editor-in-chief, wrote in a note to readers.”Government agencies that subscribe do so through standard public procurement processes — just like any other tool they buy to work smarter and be more efficient. This is not funding. It is a transaction.”- ‘Punish the media’ -The White House has said it will cancel its Politico subscriptions.Other media outlets also risk losing millions of dollars if the government drops more subscriptions, a lever for the Trump administration to undermine a press that is already facing financial strain, observers say.”The upshot of all of this nonsense is that the (Make America Great Again) base has new lore they can use to explain away any unfavorable coverage for Trump,” said Matt Gertz, from the left-leaning think tank Media Matters, referring to the president’s key “MAGA” political slogan.In another kind of pressure, Brendan Carr, Trump’s new head of the Federal Communications Commission, has ordered an investigation into NPR and PBS, a move that some worry is aimed at unraveling federal funding for public broadcasters.”The new administration seems to be ramping up a multifaceted effort to punish the media,” Roy Gutterman, a Syracuse University professor, told AFP.”We are moving beyond mere threats.”- $10 billion lawsuit -In an unprecedented move, Trump’s administration announced that eight media organizations including The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, NBC and NPR must vacate their dedicated office spaces in the Pentagon.It cited the need to create room for other outlets including the conservative New York Post and Breitbart.And in December, ABC News agreed to pay $15 million to settle a lawsuit brought by Trump which contended the network’s star anchor George Stephanopoulos had defamed him.The settlement was seen as a major concession by a large media organization to Trump, whose previous efforts to sue news outlets have often ended in defeat.”The spectacle of powerful media organizations debasing themselves before Trump has become so familiar that it is beginning to feel like scheduled programming,” Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, wrote in a New York Times column.CBS News, a broadcaster at the center of another FCC probe and a $10 billion lawsuit from Trump, recently complied with an FCC request to hand over the raw footage from an interview last year with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, with the president accusing it of deceitful editing.Paramount, CBS’s parent company, is now considering settling the lawsuit, media reports say, at a time when it needs Trump’s support for its proposed merger with Skydance.

The wreckage of a plane that went missing in Alaska has been found, US officials said Friday, with all 10 people aboard thought to have died.The US Coast Guard said it had discovered the remnants of the Bering Air Caravan around 34 miles (55 kilometers) from Nome.”Three individuals were found inside and reported to be deceased,” the Coast Guard posted on social media.”The remaining seven people are believed to be inside the aircraft but are currently inaccessible due to the condition of the plane.”Nome’s volunteer fire department, which had scrambled in the search for the plane, said on Facebook it was helping with recovery.”The Nome Search and Rescue Team is spooling up with assistance from the Alaska Air National Guard with recovery efforts,” a post said.”From reports we have received, the crash was not survivable. Our thoughts are with the families at this time.”The privately operated plane, with nine passengers and one pilot on board, was reported overdue Thursday on a flight from Unalakleet to Nome, Alaska state police said.The two cities are located roughly 150 miles apart across the Norton Sound, on the state’s west coast.According to publicly available information the plane’s last known position was over the water around 40 minutes after takeoff.The crash is the latest incident in a string of aviation disasters in the United States.On January 30, a passenger jet collided midair with a US Army helicopter in Washington, killing all 67 people aboard both aircraft. The disaster was followed closely by the crash of a medical plane into a busy Philadelphia neighborhood, killing seven and injuring 19.