Trump extends deadline for US TikTok sale to September

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday extended to September 17 a deadline for China-based ByteDance to divest the U.S. assets of short-video app TikTok despite a law that mandated a sale or shutdown without significant progress.
Trump signed an executive order pushing back Thursday's deadline for 90 more days, a step that he had previously signaled.

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

Yomiuri Shimbun

35 minutes ago

• Yomiuri Shimbun

Foreign Hotel Chains Transforming Japanese Market; Luxury Brands Open in Diverse, Non-Tokyo Locations

The Japanese hotel market is entering a new era. As the tourism industry shifts its focus from quantity to quality, foreign hotel chains are increasingly targeting Japan as one of the few growth areas in a mature market, drawn by its appeal and investment opportunities. New concepts such as wellness and integration with local culture are emerging as competitive advantages, and a fresh breeze of 'Japanese luxury' is beginning to blow. The Japanese luxury hotel market has historically been dominated by prominent Japanese brands, notably the 'Big Three' of the Imperial Hotel Group, Okura Nikko Hotels, and New Otani Hotels. However, there has been a notable surge in the presence of foreign brands outside the Tokyo metropolitan area in recent years, leading to increased competition and the introduction of new value propositions. The Singapore-based hotel chain Capella Hotel Group has selected Osaka as the site for its inaugural establishment in Japan. The group, which developed Capella Singapore — the venue for the first U.S.-North Korea summit in 2018 — opened Patina Osaka in May of this year just across the moat from Osaka Castle, a popular destination for visitors to Japan. Patina presents itself as a lifestyle brand tailored to a new generation of travelers. John Blanco, the 'cluster general manager' for Capella Kyoto and Patina Osaka, stated in an interview, 'We aim to provide customers with not just a place to stay, but a unique, locally rooted experience.' He revealed plans to collaborate with famous graphic artists from Osaka for events, offer programs that utilize the region's cultural heritage and natural environment and develop region-specific menus. The group also plans to introduce hidden local attractions and establishments not featured in guidebooks. Umeda, the area around Osaka Station, is attractive for its excellent access to tourist attractions in Kyoto, Nara and Kobe, all within an hour's reach, and has been called 'Osaka's last prime location' for development. In April, the Waldorf Astoria Osaka, representing the premium brand of Hilton Hotels, opened in this area, marking the brand's debut in Japan ahead of its planned opening of a hotel in Tokyo. The Waldorf Astoria, established in New York in 1893, is a renowned brand with a distinguished history of offering exclusive menus and services. Prominent architect Andre Fu designed the hotel in Osaka, blending art deco elements popular in the brand's early days with Japanese-inspired touches. This design reflects the abundance of art deco architecture in Osaka and aims for 'harmony with the local community.' Besides the brand's reputation and glamour, this reflects a growing trend toward sustainability and support for local culture. Joseph Khairallah, Hilton's area vice president and head of Japan, Korea and Micronesia, said, 'We can provide guests with a unique experience.' In Shikoku, four regional banks invested in a company to attract hotels, hoping to promote the use of local activities and foods as luxury brands seek regional cooperation and the central government aims to disperse foreign tourists across Japan in light of their current overconcentration in certain areas. The company plans to open a hotel in Kagawa Prefecture in the summer of 2027 in collaboration with Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, based in Hong Kong. In addition to the fact that there are few foreign-affiliated hotels in rural areas, creating a gap between supply and demand, the company aims to expand consumption in the region by attracting visitors to Japan and creating job opportunities. Changes are also underway in the midrange hotel sector, which has historically been dominated by domestic chains such as the APA Hotel and Resorts Group and Toyoko Inn. In 2025, IHG Hotels & Resorts opened its first midrange brand, Garner, in Osaka. While Marriott International is expanding its luxury brands, such as Ritz-Carlton and St. Regis, and lifestyle brands, including Moxy and Aloft, in major cities, it is developing midrange brands in Kyushu and Hiroshima, where it is making new investments. The objective is to position these brands as 'a gateway to lifelong use of Marriott' and to develop the market for the younger generation. Prolonged deflation and zero wage growth have led to low wage levels in Japan's service industry, resulting in a severe labor shortage. Blanco of Capella highlighted that the most significant challenge in establishing the hotel was recruiting personnel, emphasizing that they offered the highest salary levels in the industry and had created a workplace environment where employees could take pride in every aspect, from their uniforms to the cafeteria. He added: 'There are some aspects of hospitality that somebody cannot teach through training. We proactively engage with motivated students enrolled in vocational and hotel schools at an early stage.' In the future, the hotel industry's focus will be on investing in human resources effectively. This will include the development of new evaluation criteria for employees and the creation of training programs tailored to their needs. Political Pulse appears every Saturday. Shingo SugimeShingo Sugime is a deputy editor in the Economic News Department of The Yomiuri Shimbun Osaka.

Asahi Shimbun

an hour ago

• Asahi Shimbun

Fast fashion clothes from Zara, Shein rot in Chilean desert

An illegal dump site full of denim bleached by the harsh sun in the Atacama Desert on the outskirts of Alto Hospicio in northern Chile in May (Yuko Kawasaki) ALTO HOSPICIO, Chile—An eerie site awaits those driving past this northern city toward a sprawl of the Atacama Desert. There, a 'graveyard' of discarded clothing, shoes, bags and other unwanted items sit layered on a barren expanse of red-orange dunes. A closer look at this manmade ecosystem reveals tags from well-known fast fashion and drop-shipping brands—Spain's Zara and China's exclusively online Shein. Some garments have been torched, the wind kicking up dark ash. An odor similar to scorched plastic rises from the burn site. 'We have many places like this in the desert,' said Jean Karla Zambrana, a co-founder of the desert dressed in clothes, a private Alto Hospicio-based group that promotes recycling clothing. 'It is estimated that 40,000 tons had been dumped in the desert by 2022. It came from all around the world.' A DUTY-FREE PORT A 30-minute drive from the site is the duty-free Iquique Port, acting as the Pacific gateway to one of the world's largest dumping grounds for the global fashion industry's castoffs. The Chilean government designated the port in the city of Iquique and the surrounding area as a free trade zone in the 1970s to stimulate the lackluster economy. While other countries ban imports on used garments out of concerns for hygiene and environmental impact, Chilean importers embrace them, making the used apparel trade a roaring business. Shipments of unsold and older clothing continue to arrive at Iquique Port from the United States, Europe and many other parts of the world, with the cargo weighing in at 40,000-60,000 tons annually. A large chunk of what arrives is worn out, unwearable trash, however. Zambrana, 31, said illegally dumping huge amounts of discarded clothing items in the Atacama Desert has become routine for importers and retailers to skip the cost of contracting with a dealer for proper disposal. She added that the geography adds to the temptation as a nearby road puts the sands within easy access of Iquique and Alto Hospicio. Some importers and retailers set fire to the clothes after unloading them, afraid of being caught. 'Toxic gases from burn sites reach the neighborhood, contaminating the air,' Zambrana said of the chemicals used to make and dye fabrics. 'Locals are suffering.' Satellite images from Google Earth confirm that parts of the Atacama, which stretches more than 1,000 kilometers from north to south along the Andes, have transformed into impromptu waste sites. Images from 2007, meanwhile, show no discernable mounds of offloaded clothing in the desert. Dark spots believed to be where used garments were burned begin appearing in images from the 2010s. The size of these dark spots and dump spots has only expanded based on images from this year. SOLD BY THE KILO Chile's thriving secondhand clothing trade is on full display at a huge open-air market near Alto Hospicio. The market is lined with a seemingly endless number of stalls selling all sorts of garments from about 70 yen (50 cents), with labels ranging from Lacoste and Ivanka Trump to Forever 21 and Gap. Jery Managuel, a Bolivian vendor, said he has seen Japanese brands being sold. Managuel, 38, purchases clothes to sell at his stall from importers near Iquique Port, paying $150 (about 20,000 yen) for 45 kilograms of garments. The purchases are separated into three categories: new clothing with tags, used clothes in good condition and garbage. 'I take items that did not sell to the desert each month to incinerate them,' Managuel said. Illegal offloading is an ongoing headache for Alto Hospicio authorities. Edgar Ortega, who heads the environmental department, said the city, which has a population of about 200,000, has installed 220 surveillance cameras near the dump sites to prevent would-be perpetrators. It exposed more than 400 violations in 2024, slapping a fine on transgressors. Alto Hospicio officials are preparing to add 200 more cameras and assign an additional 20 individuals to patrols as part of its crackdown. But Ortega, 36, admitted that what the municipality can do is limited because the city lacks ample financial resources. While he credits the duty-free port for reinvigorating the regional economy and creating jobs, Ortega also pointed out that the arrival of staggering amounts of textile waste from around the world has spiraled into a problem the city is not equipped to handle. 'Twenty to 30 percent of the garments shipped to Iquique wind up in the desert as waste,' he said. 'I suspect that the clothing was exported to Chile for the purpose of disposing it in this country. We have been forced to get rid of worthless clothing.' QUANTITY SANS QUALITY One clothing store near the port sells Zara pieces from last season, but these items being new and with tags do not excuse the company in Paulin Silva's eyes. A lawyer specializing in environmental issues, Silva blames fast fashion entities such as Zara for exponentially increasing textile waste by relying on a business model that dramatically cuts the lead time of a product advancing from the design phase to store shelves. 'Mass production of inexpensive apparel has been accelerated globally to quickly catch up with the latest trends, ending up with huge amounts of inventory and used clothes,' she said. 'Unwanted clothing from other countries arrives here to sort out sellable items. The rest goes to the dump sites.' Silva, 37, said there was a true balance in supply and demand regarding the clothing market when she was a child. 'I remember that good-quality attire was sold in reasonable quantities and things sold out just past noon,' she said. 'But today, garments of shoddy quality arrive in this country in volumes 10 to 30 times greater than before.' A TRUCK EVERY SECOND A World Economic Forum report and other data noted that global clothing production doubled between 2000 and 2014, resulting in more than 100 billion pieces of apparel annually. In contrast, consumers wear new purchases for half as long as they previously did. A fiscal 2022 report by Japan's Environment Ministry found that Japanese buy 18 items and discard 15 per capita each year. An average Japanese owns 35 articles of clothing that they do not wear, according to the report. Throwing away clothes has a considerable impact on the environment due to the presence of various chemicals used in clothing production. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres declared 'Earth is a fashion victim' when he called for urgent action to reduce textile waste on the International Day of Zero Waste observed on March 30. A U.N. estimate showed 'every second, the equivalent of a garbage truck full of clothing is incinerated or sent to a landfill.' Chile is not alone in its plight. Ghana and India are also grappling with their own mountains of trashed clothes from foreign shores. 'The world has been flooded with an amount of clothing that exceeds individual needs because of the rise of fast fashion, which is prospering under capitalism,' Silva said.

Japan Today

3 hours ago

• Japan Today

Judge asks if troops in Los Angeles are violating Posse Comitatus Act

California National Guard stand guard along a street near protesters and Trump supporters in Santa Ana, Calif. on Tuesday, June 10, 2025. (AP Photo Jae C. Hong) By OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ California's challenge of the Trump administration's military deployment in Los Angeles returned to a federal courtroom in San Francisco on Friday for a brief hearing after an appeals court handed President Donald Trump a key procedural win. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer put off issuing any additional rulings and instead asked for briefings from both sides by noon Monday on whether the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits troops from conducting civilian law enforcement on U.S. soil, is being violated in Los Angeles. Newsom said in his complaint that 'violation of the Posse Comitatus Act is imminent, if not already underway' but Breyer last week postponed considering that allegation. The hearing comes a day after the 9th Circuit appellate panel allowed the president to keep control of National Guard troops he deployed in response to protests over immigration raids. The appellate decision halted a temporary restraining order from Breyer, who found Trump acted illegally when he activated the soldiers over opposition from California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Breyer also asked the lawyers on Friday to address whether he or the appellate court retains primary jurisdiction to grant an injunction under the Posse Comitatus Act. California has sought a preliminary injunction returning control to Newsom of the troops in Los Angeles, where protests have calmed down in recent days. Trump, a Republican, argued that the troops have been necessary to restore order. Newsom, a Democrat, said their presence on the streets of a U.S. city inflamed tensions, usurped local authority and wasted resources. The demonstrations have appeared to be winding down, although dozens of protesters showed up Thursday at Dodger Stadium, where a group of federal agents with their faces covered, traveling in SUVs and cargo vans, had gathered at a parking lot. The Los Angeles Dodgers organization asked them to leave, and they did. On Tuesday, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass lifted a curfew in downtown Los Angeles that was first imposed in response to vandalism and clashes with police after crowds gathered in opposition to agents taking migrants into detention. Trump federalized members of the California National Guard under an authority known as Title 10. Title 10 allows the president to call the National Guard into federal service when the country 'is invaded,' when 'there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government,' or when the president is otherwise unable 'to execute the laws of the United States.' Breyer found that Trump had overstepped his legal authority, which he said allows presidents to control state National Guard troops only during times of 'rebellion or danger of a rebellion.' 'The protests in Los Angeles fall far short of 'rebellion,'' wrote Breyer, a Watergate prosecutor who was appointed by President Bill Clinton and is the brother of retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. The Trump administration argued that courts can't second-guess the president's decisions. The appellate panel ruled otherwise, saying presidents don't have unfettered power to seize control of a state's guard, but said that by citing violent acts by protesters in this case, the Trump administration had presented enough evidence to show it had a defensible rationale for federalizing the troops. For now, the California National Guard will stay in federal hands as the lawsuit proceeds. It's the first deployment by a president of a state National Guard without the governor's permission since troops were sent to protect Civil Rights Movement marchers in 1965. Trump celebrated the appellate ruling in a social media post, calling it a 'BIG WIN' and hinting at more potential deployments. 'All over the United States, if our Cities, and our people, need protection, we are the ones to give it to them should State and Local Police be unable, for whatever reason, to get the job done,' Trump wrote. Newsom, for his part, has also warned that California won't be the last state to see troops in the streets if Trump gets his way. 'The President is not a king and is not above the law. We will press forward with our challenge to President Trump's authoritarian use of U.S. military soldiers against citizens,' Newsom said. Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance was traveling to Los Angeles on Friday to meet with U.S. Marines who also have been deployed to protect federal buildings, his office announced. © Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.