The U.S. Senate late on Wednesday passed by voice vote a bill to bar federal employees from using Chinese-owned short video-sharing app TikTok on government-owned devices.

The bill must still be approved by the U.S. House of Representatives before going to President Joe Biden for approval. The House of Representatives would need to pass the Senate bill before the current congressional session ends, which is expected next week.

The vote is the latest action on the part of U.S. lawmakers to crackdown on Chinese companies amid national security fears that Beijing could use them to spy on Americans.

The Senate action comes after North Dakota and Iowa this week joined a growing number of U.S. states in banning TikTok, owned by ByteDance, from state-owned devices amid concerns that data could be passed on to the Chinese government.

During the last Congress, the Senate in August 2020 unanimously approved legislation to bar TikTok from government devices. The bill’s sponsor, Republican Senator Josh Hawley, reintroduced in legislation in 2021.

Many federal agencies including the Defense, Homeland Security and State departments already ban TikTok from government-owned devices. “TikTok is a major security risk to the United States, and it has no place on government devices,” Hawley said previously.

North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum and Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds issued directives prohibiting executive branch agencies from downloading the app on any government-issued equipment. Around a dozen U.S. states have taken similar actions, including Alabama and Utah this week.

TikTok has said the concerns are largely fueled by misinformation and are happy to meet with policymakers to discuss the company’s practices.

“We’re disappointed that so many states are jumping on the political bandwagon to enact policies based on unfounded falsehoods about TikTok that will do nothing to advance the national security of the United States,” the company said Wednesday.

Other states taking similar actions include Texas, Maryland and South Dakota.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio on Tuesday unveiled bipartisan legislation to ban TikTok altogether in the United States, ratcheting up pressure on ByteDance due to U.S. fears the app could be used to spy on Americans and censure content. Rubio also is a sponsor of Hawley’s TikTok government device ban bill.

The legislation would block all transactions from any social media company in or under the influence of China and Russia, Rubio’s office said.

At a hearing last month, FBI Director Chris Wray said TikTok’s U.S. operations raise national security concerns.

In 2020, then-President Donald Trump attempted to block new users from downloading TikTok and ban other transactions that would have effectively blocked the apps’ use in the United States but lost a series of court battles over the measure.

The U.S. government’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a powerful national security body, in 2020 ordered ByteDance to divest TikTok because of the fears that U.S. user data could be passed to the Chinese government, though ByteDance has not done so.

CFIUS and TikTok have been in talks for months to reach a national security agreement to protect the data of TikTok’s more than 100 million users but it does not appear any deal will be reached before the end of the year.

Lawyers for the bankrupt crypto exchange FTX on Wednesday opposed a demand for internal records from an insolvent affiliate based in the Bahamas, saying they “do not trust” the Bahamian government with data that could be used to siphon off assets from the bankrupt company.

Liquidators of FTX’s Bahamian business, FTX Digital Markets, had asked U.S. Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey to give them access to the U.S. unit’s Slack, Google and Amazon Web Services accounts and data.

At a court hearing in Delaware, lawyers for FTX asked Dorsey to deny the request. They argued that Bahamian regulators had worked with FTX’s founder, the recently arrested Sam Bankman-Fried, to undermine the U.S. bankruptcy case and withdraw assets to the detriment of some creditors.

FTX attorney James Bromley told Dorsey that the Bahamian government has previously obtained information from FTX Digital Market’s liquidators and used it to siphon digital assets away from FTX.

“This is dangerous information,” Bromley said. “We do not trust the Bahamian government.”

The Securities Commission of the Bahamas (SCB) has previously disputed FTX’s “misstatements” about the Bahamian government’s response to FTX’s collapse.

Asked for comment on Wednesday, the SCB said it “is not providing responses to general inquiries at this point.”

Bahamas Prime Minister Philip Davis on Wednesday defended the country’s regulation of the digital asset industry in an interview with local broadcaster Eyewitness News.

“It’s mind-boggling that you could say it’s not a properly regulated industry,” he said, when asked for his response to criticism of the country’s handling of the FTX collapse.

Chris Shore, an attorney for the Bahamas-based liquidators, told Dorsey that the liquidators were not working at the direction of the Bahamian government. The liquidators are court-appointed officials working to protect FTX Digital’s creditors, and need some access to data in to do that work, Shore said.

Dorsey began the hearing by asking whether FTX and the Bahamas liquidators could reach a compromise on data sharing before Bromley shot that suggestion down.

Bromley said Bankman-Fried’s recent arrest might help negotiations between FTX and authorities in the Bahamas, but that he remains wary.

Dorsey suggested that the two sides either find a mediator or prepare to present evidence at a court hearing in January.

FTX, its hedge fund Alameda Research and dozens of affiliates filed for U.S. bankruptcy last month after the trading platform suffered a rush of withdrawals and a rescue deal failed.

The same week, authorities in the Bahamas, where the company had its headquarters, appointed liquidators to wind down FTX’s international trading business.

John Ray, who was appointed chief executive of the bankrupt FTX, told a Congressional committee on Tuesday that the Bahamian government colluded with Bankman-Fried to help account holders in the country pull $100 million from the crypto exchange just as it was going bankrupt.

Ray called the Bahamian government’s actions “alarming”.

“Unlike the Chapter 11 process, there is no transparency in the process in the Bahamas,” Ray said. “We have repeatedly asked them for clarity on what they’ve been doing, and we’ve been shot down on that.”

The SCB said in court filings on Tuesday that Ray has created “a false impression” that Bahamian citizens were being protected at the expense of FTX’s other customers. It called on him “to not obstruct” its investigation into FTX’s collapse.

Bankman-Fried was arrested Monday in the Bahamas and is being detained while awaiting extradition to the United States to face criminal and civil fraud charges.

The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday approved a stopgap one-week funding bill, a move intended to give lawmakers more time to pass a bill to fully fund the federal government through its fiscal year on Sept. 30, 2023.

The stopgap measure, known as a “continuing resolution,” is needed to avert a partial shutdown of federal agencies that would otherwise begin on Saturday.

It passed 224 votes to 201, largely along party lines, with nine Republicans voting for the measure.

Top congressional negotiators announced on Tuesday agreement on a framework for the full-year “omnibus” bill. They did not reveal the amount of money they had agreed on, though it is expected to exceed last year’s $1.5 trillion. Richard Shelby, the top Senate Republican negotiator, said the package should be finished by Dec. 23.

In addition to funding the U.S. government, the package is expected to include aid for Ukraine in its fight against the Russian military and a bill reforming the way the United States certifies presidential elections.

Twitter Inc suspended an account tracking its owner Elon Musk’s private jet in real-time, with the billionaire threatening legal action against the account’s operator after saying his son had been mistakenly followed by a “crazy stalker”.

The suspension comes just a month after Musk, who bought Twitter for $44 billion in October, said his commitment to free speech extended to not banning the account.

ElonJet, operated by 20-year-old university student Jack Sweeney, had tracked the movements of Musk’s private jet using data available in the public domain before the suspension.

Sweeney’s other accounts were also suspended at the time of reporting.

Twitter and Sweeney did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comments.

Twitter briefly reinstated the “bot”, or automated, account before again suspending it, after saying sharing “live location information” was a violation of its policy.

Musk had said in a tweet in November that his commitment to free speech “extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk”.

On Wednesday, Musk said: “Any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation.”

“Doxxing” is the public release of sensitive information identifying an individual or organization, such as a home address or phone number.

“Posting locations someone traveled to on a slightly delayed basis isn’t a safety problem, so is ok,” Musk said.

The billionaire also tweeted that one of his sons, lil X, had been harassed, and linked it to the tracking accounts.

“Last night, car carrying lil X in LA was followed by crazy stalker (thinking it was me), who later blocked car from moving & climbed onto hood,” he said.

“Legal action is being taken against Sweeney & organizations who supported harm to my family.”

Sweeney, a student at the University of Central Florida, who also operates similar bot accounts tracking Musk’s jet on Facebook, Instagram and Telegram, told BuzzFeed the suspension is “a surprise to many people after he publicly said he wouldn’t do it.”

“It just shows that they can play the rules however they want to, really, for whoever they want,” he said.

Sweeney tweeted on Saturday that Ella Irwin, Twitter’s vice president of trust and safety, requested the account be filtered and less visible to users.

In previous media interviews, Sweeney said he turned down a $5,000 offer from Musk in 2021 to shut down the account.

Separately, Twitter accounts tracking the jets of billionaire tech entrepreneurs Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates were also suspended.

A decision on whether the Afghan Taliban administration and the Myanmar junta can send a United Nations ambassador to New York has been postponed for a second time, but could be reconsidered in the next nine months, according to a U.N. credentials committee report.

The 193-member U.N. General Assembly is on Friday due to approve the report, which also deferred a decision on rival claims to Libya’s U.N. seat. The nine-member U.N. credentials committee includes Russia, China and the United States.

The deferment of the decisions leaves the current envoys in the seats for their countries, diplomats said.

Competing claims were again made for the seats of Myanmar and Afghanistan with the Taliban administration and Myanmar’s junta pitted against envoys of the governments they ousted last year. U.N. acceptance of the Taliban administration or Myanmar’s junta would be a step toward the international recognition sought by both.

The U.N. General Assembly last year backed postponing a decision on the credentials of Myanmar and Afghanistan.

A rival claim was also made this year for Libya’s U.N. seat – currently held by the Government of National Unity in Tripoli – by a “Government of National Stability” led by Fathi Bashagha and backed by a parliament in the country’s east.

The U.N. credentials committee met on Dec. 12 and agreed, without a vote, to “postpone its consideration of the credentials” for Myanmar, Afghanistan and Libya “and to revert to consideration of these credentials at a future time in the seventy-seventh session,” which ends mid-September next year.

The Taliban seized power in mid-August last year from the internationally recognized government. When the Taliban last ruled Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001, the ambassador of the government they toppled remained the U.N. envoy after the credentials committee deferred its decision on the seat.

Myanmar’s junta seized power from Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government in February last year.

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It’s shaping up to look like a rough week for Iowa Republicans. First, GQP Senator Joni Ernst and GQP US Rep. Miller-Meeks are now facing some heat from local Iowa Republican parties for voting in favor of the Respect for Marriage Act.

This should come as little surprise as most of the GQP establishment in Iowa actively seeks to deny as many rights as possible for others who don’t look like them, act like them, believe like them, have the disrespect for bodily autonomy they have, or love others like they do. Ernst defended her vote by saying that the Act expanded religious liberty protections not just in Iowa but throughout the country, but local GQP members don’t realize that.

Then, on Monday the Iowa District Court in Polk County said it would not lift its injunction against the anti-abortion legislation CovidKim and her buddies in the GQP legislature had enacted in 2018. The court had previously blocked the law in 2019, but after the events of last summer CovidKim tried to get the courts to reconsider their decision. This was a law that would have pretty much banned abortion in Iowa after six weeks. When it was first challenged the court said the law was unconstitutional and upheld that finding this week by continuing to block the law

It remains to be seen how CovidKim and her GQP buddies will deal with this. No doubt there’ll be plenty of grumbling about “activist” judges while the GQP conveniently ignores conservative judges who wipe themselves with the Constitution and our laws. I don’t know if CovidKim will try to challenge the law to a higher court. It wouldn’t surprise if she did, but for now at least the law banning most abortions can’t be enforced in Iowa.

The post Bad week for Iowa Republicans appeared first on Palmer Report.

NEW YORK (WPIX) — Decades-old evidence stored inside a New York City Police Department warehouse has now been completely destroyed by a fire Tuesday in Brooklyn.

NYPD officials said it will take some time to figure out exactly what was lost and the impact it will have on cold case and cases up for appeal.

The fire at the Erie Basin Auto Pound, a low warehouse situated atop a long, curving breakwater on the Brooklyn waterfront, broke out at around 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, FDNY Chief of Department John Hodgens said. Police Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey, who joined Hodgens at a briefing at the fire scene, said the facility is used to store DNA evidence from crime scenes as well as e-bikes, motorbikes and cars.

“It’s mainly evidence, but we store other things there as well,” he said.

Dr. Darrin Porcher, a retired NYPD lieutenant, said the loss of evidence will tremendously impact cases where defendants are looking to appeal as well as cold cases. Cold cases are very difficult to solve and any and all evidence can be important, he explained.

“We expect the NYPD and district attorneys to provide us a full accounting of the evidence that was damaged and to immediately inform defense counsel about individual cases that may have been impacted,” a spokesperson for the Legal Aid Society said.

It may take days before investigators are able to get inside as the FDNY is still working on putting out hot spots.

“We don’t know the severity of the damage inside,” Maddrey said.

On Wednesday, the cause of the blaze was still under investigation.

Stuart Kaplan, a retired FBI special agent who is familiar with the facility, said precinct police stations typically house evidence in active cases, while warehouses like this one typically store evidence in cold cases.

“If the fire has destroyed potential evidence that had been DNA evidence and they were just waiting for that break — and that break could be 10, 20 years down the road — unfortunately it may be not be possible to hold ultimately somebody responsible for that crime for which that DNA would be relevant,” Kaplan said.

(NewsNation) — Border communities are expecting a deluge of migrants coming across the U.S. border ahead of the end of Title 42 restrictions.

Title 42 is a pandemic-era policy that allows agents working on the U.S border to expel migrants from certain countries back to their home countries without allowing them to seek asylum.

In El Paso, thousands of people crossed the border, with U.S. Border Patrol already reporting an average of 2,400 encounters a day over the weekend in the sector. According to one city dashboard, more than 1,200 migrants were released into the community Tuesday alone.

Residents told NewsNation they were seeing migrants on their properties in increased numbers, making some feel unsafe.

“These helicopters are just flying over our neighborhood and it almost feels like we’re at war,” Carmen Wilburn, an El Paso resident, said. “I don’t even want my granddaughter to stay here — it’s scary.”

Just down the street, Josie Martinez said she has gotten approached by undocumented men and women roaming her neighborhood.

“I was getting in my car and they asked me if I could please give them a ride to a motel or somewhere and I told them, I’m sorry, I can’t,” Martinez said.

It also doesn’t help that shelters are over capacity, and workers are desperate for extra space to open up.

“We have 175 men and that’s for a shelter that is comfortably handling 100-120,” John Martin, deputy director of the Opportunity Center for the Homeless, said.

Many of these migrants are not evading Border Patrol, but are people who self-surrendered in an effort to seek asylum. A court ruling already loosened some Title 42 restrictions and family groups may qualify to come seek asylum even when single migrants with the same background would be expelled.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas visited the border on Tuesday in light of the influx of crossings, but the visit was met with mixed reviews.

Border Patrol officials and lawmakers in states near the border have criticized Mayorkas and the Biden administration, saying they are losing control of the situation and failing to take the border situation seriously,

But it’s not just Republicans calling for change: El Paso’s Democratic U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar has called on the feds to send more resources for the unprecedented strain.

“Absolutely unsustainable and frankly an unacceptable situation,” Escobar said.

Efforts to pursue immigration reform in Congress include a bipartisan proposal that would increase funding for border security while also creating a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants already in the U.S.

In the meantime, officials say the flood of crossings has overwhelmed Border Patrol, and shelters in areas like El Paso, where winter weather has made it hazardous for those released by border security to continue their journey.

(NewsNation) — Ukrainian defenses successfully shot down a wave of Russian drone attacks Wednesday in and around Kyiv.

As the U.S. plans to potentially provide a highly advanced Patriot missile defense system to Ukraine, it could soon be a lot easier for Ukraine to protect civilians from Russian bombardments. The plan still needs formal approval from the Biden administration.

In the video above, Bryan Clark, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, breaks down what this could mean for Ukraine.

KEITHVILLE, La. (AP) — A volatile storm ripping across the U.S. spawned tornadoes blamed for killing at least three people in Louisiana, and the line of punishing weather threatened neighboring Southern states into the nighttime hours Wednesday.

To the north, the huge storm system delivered blizzard-like conditions to the Great Plains and was expected to push more snow and ice into Appalachia and New England. The wintery blast dumped more than 2 feet (60 centimeters) of snow in parts of South Dakota.

Authorities in St. Charles Parish west of New Orleans said eight people were taken to hospitals with injuries Wednesday afternoon and one woman was found dead outdoors after a suspected tornado struck the community of Killona along the Mississippi River, damaging homes and flinging debris.

“She was outside the residence, so we don’t know exactly what happened,” St. Charles Parish Sheriff Greg Champagne said of the woman killed. He added. “There was debris everywhere. She could have been struck. We don’t know for sure. But this was a horrific and a very violent tornado.”

About 280 miles (450 kilometers) away in northern Louisiana, it took hours for authorities to find the bodies of a mother and child reported missing after a tornado swept away their mobile home Tuesday in Keithville, a rural community near Shreveport.

“You go to search a house and the house isn’t even there, so where do you search?” Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards told reporters, noting the challenge faced by emergency responders as he toured a mile-long (1.6-kilometer) path of destruction in Keithville.

The Caddo Parish Coroner’s Office said the body of 8-year-old Nikolus Little was found around 11 p.m. Tuesday in a wooded area. His mother, Yoshiko A. Smith, 30, was found dead under storm debris around 2:30 a.m. Wednesday.

Smith’s body was discovered one street over from where their home had been. Her son was found dead as far as a half-mile away, said Caddo Parish Sheriff’s Sgt. Casey Jones. He said the boy’s father had left to buy groceries before the storm hit.

“He just went to go shopping for his family, came home and the house was gone,” said Jones. When deputies arrived, they found nothing but a concrete slab.

Wednesday’s forecast called for more severe storms with additional tornadoes expected across an area of the Gulf Coast region populated by nearly 3 million people from New Orleans to Mobile, Alabama. More damaging weather also was possible in the Florida panhandle.

A steady stream of tornado warnings was issued Wednesday across portions of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. In Union Parish, in northern Louisiana near the Arkansas line, Farmerville Mayor John Crow said a tornado Tuesday night badly damaged an apartment complex where 50 families lived, wiping out a neighboring trailer park with about 10 homes.

“It happened quick,” Crow said Wednesday, adding that about 30 homes were damaged along nearby Lake D’Arbonne.

Shannon Futch, Union Parish’s emergency director, said there were reports of numerous people treated for cuts and bruises and at least two people hospitalized after a twister cut a swath of damage about 5 miles (8 kilometers) long, toppling trees onto about a dozen houses.

“Some people even stayed the night in their houses that had big pine trees on them,” Futch said. “They didn’t have anywhere to go.”

A suspected tornado reported in New Iberia in southwest Louisiana damaged several buildings on the campus of New Iberia Medical Center, hospital officials said, with five people reporting minor injuries.

In neighboring Mississippi, a suspected tornado destroyed four large chicken houses — one containing 5,000 roosters — in Rankin County, Mississippi, Sheriff Bryan Bailey said. Mobile homes at a park in Sharkey County, Mississppi, were reduced to piles of shredded debris.

Resident Leslie Jackson told WLBT-TV her home was one of only a few left standing.

A line of thunderstorms sweeping through Texas spawned tornadoes Tuesday that damaged dozens of homes and businesses. At least five people were injured In the Dallas suburb of Grapevine, police spokesperson Amanda McNew said.

A possible tornado blew the roof off the city’s municipal service center, leaving debris dangling from powerlines.

Icy weather from the huge storm was expected to affect the U.S. from coast to coast. It began by dumping heavy snow in the Sierra Nevada and was predicted to bring ice and snow to the eastern U.S. in coming days.

“This system is notable for the fact that it’s going impact areas all the way from California to eventually the Northeast,” said Frank Pereira, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in College Park, Maryland.

Forecasters expect the storm system to hobble the upper Midwest with ice, rain and snow for days, as well as move into the central Appalachians and Northeast. The National Weather Service issued a winter storm watch from Wednesday night through Friday afternoon, depending on the timing of the storm. Residents from West Virginia to Vermont were told to watch for a possible significant mix of snow, ice and sleet.

In the Black Hills of western South Dakota, snow piled up to nearly 2 feet (60 centimeters) in some mountainous communities.

“They shovel for hours on end,” said Vicki Weekly, who manages a historic hotel in the tourist and gambling city of Deadwood. A few visitors were still venturing out to hit the casinos.

A roughly 320-mile (520-kilometer) span of Interstate 90 in South Dakota was closed Wednesday, and state officials warned drivers to stay off most highways. The state also planned to close Interstate 29 in the northeast corner of the state on Wednesday night.

Wet, heavy snow left tree limbs sagging and made driving treacherous Wednesday in northern Minnesota. Weather Service meteorologist Ketzel Levens in Duluth said snow had reached 6 to 8 inches (15-20 centimeters) in some areas.

McGill reported from New Orleans. Associated Press writers Stephen Groves in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Jamie Stengle in Dallas; Ken Miller in Oklahoma City; Jill Bleed in Little Rock, Arkansas; Julie Walker in New York; Sam Metz in Salt Lake City; Trisha Ahmed in Minneapolis; Jesse Bedayn in Denver; Margery Beck in Omaha, Nebraska; and Robert Jablon in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

This story has been corrected to fix the spelling of Keithville.