What does the U.S. Republican party stand for and when did it originate? VOA explains the GOP’s long history.
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South Africa’s president has delivered a withering description of the corruption that plagues the ruling African National Congress.  Cyril Ramaphosa, in a letter dated August 23, 2020 that was sent to all ANC members, began his castigation with the controversy surrounding the awarding of contracts to help the country deal with the COVID-19 contagion.  “What has caused the greatest outrage is that there are private sector companies and individuals (including civil servants) who have exploited a grave medical, social and economic crisis to wrongfully enrich themselves,” the letter said.  “This is an unforgivable betrayal for the millions of South Africans who are being negatively affected by the impact of COVID-19, experiencing hunger daily, hopelessness and joblessness.”A boy’s temperature is checked as he enters a school amid the coronavirus pandemic, in Johannesburg, South Africa, July 7, 2020.Ramaphosa also wrote in the letter that it has been uncovered that “Billions of rands that should have gone to improved public transport, to better infrastructure for the poor, to reliable and affordable electricity, to emerging black farmers and to the broader development of our county have been stolen to line the pockets of a criminal few.”  President Ramaphosa said people should not think of the ANC as a path to power, wealth and influence.  “In the end,’ the president said, “we will not stop corruption within our ranks unless we deepen the ethical consciousness of our members, and particularly, our leaders.”  South Africa ranked 70th out of 198 countries on the 2019 Transparency International Corruption Index, improving from its 73rd place ranking on the 2018 index.  
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Protesters gathered late Sunday in the U.S. city of Kenosha, Wisconsin after police there shot a Black man. A video posted on social media shows the man walking in front of a vehicle while three officers follow him with their guns drawn. As the man opens the door of the vehicle and leans inside, one of the officers grabs him by the back of his shirt and fires his gun.   In the video, seven gunshots can be heard.  It is not clear from the video how many officers fired their weapons, nor what led up to the shooting. A statement from the Kenosha Police Department gives no details about the events before the shooting, saying only that the man was taken to the hospital in serious condition and that the state’s department of justice would be investigating the shooting. Authorities instituted an overnight curfew in response to the protests, which involved crowds marching to the Kenosha County Public Safety Building. Police used plastic shields and batons to push people back from the station. The shooting is the latest in a long string of police shootings of Black Americans that have drawn protests across the nation calling for law enforcement reforms and steps to address racial inequality in the United States. Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers issued a statement in support of the man and his family, and pledging in the coming days to demand action from state elected officials “who have failed to recognize the racism in our state and our country for far too long.” “While we do not have all of the details yet, what we know for certain is that he is not the first Black man or person to have been shot or injured or mercilessly killed at the hands of individuals in law enforcement in our state or our country,” Evers said.  “We stand with all those who have and continue to demand justice, equity, and accountability for Black lives in our country—lives like those of George Floyd, of Breonna Taylor, Tony Robinson, Dontre Hamilton, Ernest Lacy, and Sylville Smith.  And we stand against excessive use of force and immediate escalation when engaging with Black Wisconsinites.” 
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A federal judge on Sunday ordered a stay in President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign’s lawsuit seeking to ban drop boxes and other changes to Pennsylvania’s mail-balloting procedures.The Nov. 3 election promises to be the nation’s largest test of voting by mail and the two major parties are locked in numerous lawsuits that will shape how millions of Americans vote this autumn.The Republican president has repeatedly and without evidence said that an increase in mail-in ballots would lead to a surge in fraud, although Americans have long voted by mail.Drop boxes have taken on new urgency after cost-cutting measures at the U.S. Postal Service slowed mail delivery nationwide.In Connecticut, Secretary of State Denise Merrill is recommending that voters return their ballots via drop box rather than through the mail for the November election, after receiving reports that some ballots mailed a week before the state’s Aug. 11 nominating contests arrived too late to be counted.Three-quarters of ballots in that August primary were cast absentee, she said, up from roughly 4% in prior years. Merrill, a Democrat, said the state’s 200 newly installed drop boxes had proven a safe and popular option.”I do not understand why people think they’re such a problem,” Merrill said. “They’re more secure than mailboxes.”Democratic Governor Tom Wolf has defended Pennsylvania’s use of drop boxes, arguing they are legal and essential, particularly in the age of the coronavirus.Wolf’s state, which Trump won by less than 1 percentage point in 2016, is considered essential to his reelection effort.J. Nicholas Ranjan, U.S district judge for western Pennsylvania appointed by Trump, said the federal case brought by the Trump campaign would not move forward until similar lawsuits in state courts are completed or unless they are delayed.Justin Clark, Trump’s deputy campaign manager, said the judge’s decision recognized that the issue touched on both state and constitutional issues.”The federal court is simply going to reserve its judgment on this in the hopes that the state court will resolve these serious issues and guarantee that every Pennsylvanian has their vote counted—once,” Clark said.The Trump campaign is seeking to ban ballot drop boxes, which were deployed in the state’s most recent primary and that allow voters to submit absentee ballots and bypass the U.S. Postal Service.The campaign argues the drop boxes were not explicitly authorized in a bipartisan bill passed by the state legislature last year that expanded the state’s mail-balloting procedures.The suit also wants the residency requirement for poll watchers lifted, so that any Pennsylvania voter could serve in that function at any polling location in the state.“The Court will apply the brakes to this lawsuit and allow the Pennsylvania state courts to weigh in and interpret the state statutes that undergird Plaintiffs’ federal-constitutional claims,” Ranjan said.The Trump campaign says the ballot drop box invites fraud. The federal judge asked the campaign to provide evidence of actual fraud, but the campaign declined, arguing it did not have to do so in order to win the case.
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Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden says he isn’t blaming President Donald Trump for the coronavirus outbreak, but he does blame him for “walking away” from the crisis.  “The idea of saying that this is going to go away, that some miracle is going to happen is unrealistic,” Biden said, adding that Trump has repeatedly promoted “crazy” treatments and “hasn’t listened to the scientists.”  Biden and his vice presidential running mate, California Senator Kamala Harris, spoke to ABC News television in an interview broadcast Sunday night. It was their first joint interview since teaming up for the Democratic ticket.  The interview was conducted last Friday, the day after the conclusion of the Democratic National Convention.  On Sunday evening, Trump announced he had helped to end a regulatory logjam and prompted the federal Food and Drug Administration to grant emergency authorization of so-called convalescent plasma to treat COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Trump called it a “powerful therapy” with “an incredible rate of success, although government scientists said the treatment needs further study.Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar speaks during a media briefing in the James Brady Briefing Room of the White House, Aug. 23, 2020, in Washington.On Monday, Republicans begin their national convention to nominate Trump and Vice President Mike Pence for a second term. Trump and his supporters are certain to cite the FDA emergency authorization of the treatment, which uses antibodies from the blood of patients who have recovered from COVID-19 to treat the disease in others, as a prime example of Trump’s leadership in fighting the pandemic.  Biden said that if elected president, he would follow the advice of public health experts, including shutting down the nation’s economy again if that is what it takes to stem the coronavirus pandemic. “I would be prepared to do whatever it takes to save lives. We cannot get the country moving until we control the virus,” Biden said. He also called on governors to require the wearing of face masks. To those who refuse to wear masks, Biden said, “give me a break.” He called the wearing of masks a patriotic responsibility for Americans to protect their neighbors by not passing along the virus. Biden said the president hasn’t listened to public health experts and scientists, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and instead has suggested people do “crazy things” like consuming disinfectant to kill the coronavirus. Biden said he has been pleading with the president to devise a national plan, saying Trump has no notion how to reach Americans.Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden and his wife Jill Biden watch fireworks during the fourth day of the Democratic National Convention, Aug. 20, 2020, at the Chase Center in Wilmington, Del.Harris dismissed as a “distraction” any talk about the sharp words she had with Biden during one of the Democratic presidential debates over the matter of school busing. She said Biden understands that Black families own only one-tenth of the wealth that whites do, and that Blacks and Hispanics are twice as likely to die from COVID-19 as whites.  Harris and Biden also downplayed differences they had on issues such as health care. Harris supported a Medicare-for-all type insurance system while Biden, who as his vice president helped President Barack Obama enact the Affordable Care Act, wants to add a public option to the existing private insurance markets. “We both believe that health care is a right, not a privilege,” Biden said. Harris said she would be honored to serve as Biden’s vice president and says the call to be his running mate was a “surreal” moment. Biden said he did not feel pressure to choose a Black woman to run with him but added that women make up 51% of the country’s population and that “the government should look like the people, look like the country.” When questioned about whether a 78-year-old man is mentally prepared to become president of the United States – and possibly serve until he is 86 years old — Biden said, “watch me.” 
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Calling it “a truly historic announcement,” U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday hailed a federal government emergency authorization for use of convalescent blood plasma that he declared would “save countless lives” of coronavirus patients.  Trump and his health secretary, Alex Azar, at a briefing for reporters, noted a 35% decrease in mortality among those younger than 80 who were not on a respirator, a month after receiving the treatment early in the course of their disease.“We dream in drug development of something like a 35% mortality reduction,” Azar, the secretary of Health and Human Services, said alongside the president. “This is a major advance in the treatment of patients.”White House: ‘Breakthrough’ Coming for Coronavirus Treatment Trump to make announcement Sunday night after prodding researchers to act faster on vaccine testing Convalescent blood plasma comes from patients who have recovered from the coronavirus and is rich in antibodies. It has been used to treat tens of thousands of COVID-19 patients in the U.S.Just before the president’s comment, the Food and Drug Administration announced it has authorized –- but technically not fully approved — the use of blood plasma containing antibodies from patients who have recovered from COVID-19.That announcement came a day after Trump, on Twitter, declared that “The deep state, or whoever, over at the FDA is making it very difficult for drug companies to get people in order to test the vaccines and therapeutics.”  In his tweet he said: “Obviously, they are hoping to delay the answer until after November 3rd. Must focus on speed, and saving lives!”Trump was referring to the date of the presidential election in which he faces former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic Party nominee.  The commissioner of the FDA, Dr. Stephen Hahn, told reporters that the agency had determined that the blood plasma treatment was worth granting the emergency authorization following an analysis of 20,000 of the 70,000 patients who had received the treatment, as well as based on other studies.  A “35% improvement in survival is a pretty substantial clinical benefit,” he added. “We’ve seen a great deal of demand for this from doctors around the country.”  Plasma treatment has been used safely against other diseases, including Ebola and  diphtheria, but scientists — including some who work for the U.S. government — are more cautious about it as a treatment for the coronavirus, saying the results are mixed and there is no proof yet that it works against COVID-19.  After Trump was asked by a reporter about somewhat contradictory language that he and Hahn had expressed about blood plasma’s efficacy, the president –- who had called the plasma treatment “very effective” — ended the 18-minute news conference after taking only three questions.  A spokesman for the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, said in a statement that Trump shows an unwillingness to listen to medical experts, and that “breakthroughs require the collection of data” to ensure safety and efficacy of treatments.”This process is necessary to ensure our safety and to ensure that a treatment isn’t worse than the disease,” said the spokesman, Ben Corb. “I am deeply concerned by this action and concerned about the timing.”The announcement was made on the eve of the Republican party’s national convention which will formally renominate Trump for president.  Scott Gottlieb, Trump’s first FDA commissioner, on Sunday, appearing on CBS’ “Face the Nation” program, said that plasma is “probably beneficial” for coronavirus patients, while noting the concerns about the lack of evidence.”I think some people wanted to see more rigorous data to ground that decision,” Gottlieb said.Notably absent from Sunday’s news conference held by the president: the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is a member of the White House coronavirus task force.  Fauci was among those who intervened to halt an FDA emergency use authorization, the New York Times reported last week. Fauci and others, according to the newspaper, argued that the emerging data on the treatment was too weak,Trump, mindful of accusations from Biden and other Democrats that he has bungled the handling of the coronavirus in the United States, has often said that treatment for the infectious disease is nearing and has contended that the virus will simply disappear.Numerous U.S. health experts have said that a COVID-19 vaccine will not be available before the end of the year or into early 2021 and then only if tests on the efficacy of the vaccine now starting in several countries, including the United States, prove successful.The coronavirus pandemic has killed nearly 177,000 people in the United States and infected about 5.7 million — more than in any other country.
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A major flood in Turkey’s northern Black Sea region killed four people, including a soldier, while 11 others have gone missing, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said, Sunday, August 23, as authorities carried out cleaning and rescue operations. Footage from the northern province of Giresun showed floods destroying homes, shops, vehicles and blocking several roads. It showed cars, which had been dragged along by the floods, buried in mud. Speaking alongside Soylu, Agriculture and Forestry Minsiter Bekir Pakdemirli said rainfall in Giresun had exceeded averages for the month of August by 1.5 times. In a statement, the Turkish presidency said President Tayyip Erdogan had ordered the use all state resources to ensure that the damage is repaired. (Reuters) 
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Sunday that he has accepted a proposal to extend budget negotiations, preventing the government from collapsing and plunging the country into a new election.In a nationally televised address, Netanyahu said that now was not the time to drag the country into an unwanted election.”Now is the time for unity. Not for elections,” he said.Netanyahu and his rival and coalition partner, Benny Gantz, had faced a Monday night deadline to agree on a budget. Otherwise, the government would have collapsed and automatically triggered a new vote, the fourth parliamentary elections in less than two years.Netanyahu said that following a historic agreement to establish official relations with the United Arab Emirates, and with the country struggling with a coronavirus outbreak, he felt it was wrong to go to elections.  He said he accepted a compromise that would give the sides an additional 100 days to reach a budget deal, and in the meantime direct spending to struggling areas of the economy and society.His announcement came after Israeli lawmakers spent much of the day unsuccessfully trying to agree on a compromise.The current political crisis pitting the prime minister against rival-turned-partner Gantz is ostensibly over the country’s national budget.  But the crisis has deeper roots in the troubled partnership between Netanyahu and Gantz, economic troubles stemming from the country’s coronavirus outbreak and the prime minister’s ongoing corruption trial. Critics accuse Netanyahu of using the budget battle to force a new election in hopes of securing a friendlier parliament that could help solve his legal troubles.After three deadlocked elections, Netanyahu and Gantz reached a power-sharing agreement in April to form a government to address the virus crisis. As part of their coalition deal, Netanyahu’s Likud party and Gantz’s Blue and White agreed to pass a two-year budget.  But Netanyahu has insisted on passing a budget to cover only the remainder of 2020, saying it will provide immediate assistance to the economy. Gantz is adamant that the government honor its agreement and pass one for 2020 and 2021. Their disagreement has again brought the country to the brink of political meltdown.  The Knesset, or parliament, must pass the legislation in two rounds of voting in parliament before Monday night’s deadline.But pushing back the deadline would only kick the budget crisis down the road. The two parties are at loggerheads over several key issues — including judicial appointments and the annexation of West Bank settlements — and the government has been beset by infighting. Gantz also complained that Netanyahu left him and Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi in the dark about the deal announced earlier this month to normalize relations with the United Arab Emirates.  If the budget deadline is not deferred, and new elections are triggered, it would plunge the country into political chaos during a deep economic and public health crisis and while the prime minister is on trial for corruption.Netanyahu is charged with fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in three separate cases. His criminal trial began in June, but he has refused to step down from office and denies any wrongdoing.At the same time, Israel has recorded more than 100,000 confirmed coronavirus cases and more than 800 deaths. Unemployment remains over 20% despite the government’s reopening of the economy in May, following a more than month-long lockdown.Netanyahu has faced intense criticism over his government’s handling of the crisis, and the largest sustained protests against his rule in nearly a decade. On Saturday, an estimated 10,000 people took part in a weekly protest outside the prime minister’s official residence in Jerusalem, calling on Netanyahu to resign.  Nonetheless, recent polls indicate Netanyahu would score a sizable victory if snap elections were held. By dissolving the government, Netanyahu would avoid giving Gantz the premiership in November 2021 as required by the coalition agreement.  Netanyahu appears determined to remain prime minister — and therefore not legally obligated to resign while under indictment — through the duration of his trial, which is expected to last several years.
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A fire at Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility last month was the result of sabotage, the spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation told state TV channel al-Alam on Sunday.”The explosion at Natanz nuclear facility was a result of sabotage operations, security authorities will reveal in due time the reason behind the blast,” said Behrouz Kamalvandi.Iran’s top security body in July said that the cause of the fire had been determined but would be announced later. Iranian officials said that the fire had caused significant damage that could slow the development of advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges.The Natanz uranium-enrichment site, much of which is underground, is one of several Iranian facilities monitored by inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear watchdog. Some Iranian officials have said the fire may have been the result of cybersabotage, and have warned that Tehran would retaliate against any country carrying out such attacks.  An article by Iran’s state news agency IRNA in July addressed what it called the possibility of sabotage by enemies such as Israel and the United States, although it stopped short of accusing either directly.Israeli officials declined to comment on Sunday.The IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said on Saturday he will make his first trip to Tehran in that role on Monday to pressure Iran to grant inspectors access to two suspected former atomic sites.The IAEA suspects activities possibly related to developing nuclear weapons were carried out in the early 2000s at these sites. Iran insists its nuclear program has no military dimensions.”Iran has not opposed access to its nuclear facilities, but the IAEA’s questions and allegations should be based on serious evidence and documents,” Kamalvandi said.Iranian officials said on Sunday that Grossi’s visit was not related to the U.S. push at the U.N. Security Council to reimpose international sanctions on Tehran, Iran’s state TV reported.
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Tropical Storm Marco is swirling over the Gulf of Mexico heading for a possible hit on the Louisiana coast as a hurricane, while Tropical Storm Laura knocked utilities out as it battered Hispaniola early Sunday, following a track forecast to take it to the same part of the U.S. coast, also as a hurricane.It would be the first time two hurricanes appear in the Gulf of Mexico simultaneously, according to records dating to at least 1900, said Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach.A hurricane watch was issued for the New Orleans metro area, which Hurricane Katrina pummeled in August 2005.The projected tracks from the U.S. National Hurricane Center late Saturday pointed to both storms being together in the Gulf on Monday, with Marco hitting Louisiana’s coast around midday and Laura making landfall in the same general area Wednesday. But there was still much uncertainty surrounding the forecasts for the two storms.”It’s entirely possible that the volatile shifts seen in the models could continue,” the hurricane center said.Laura was centered about 95 miles (150 kilometers) east of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Sunday morning, with maximum sustained winds of 45 mph (75kph). It was moving west-northwest at 18 mph (30 kph).Crews armed with megaphones in the Dominican capital of Santo Domingo had urged dozens of residents in flood-prone areas to evacuate before Laura’s heavy rains hit. The storm left more than 100,000 people without water in the Dominican Republic on Saturday night, while earlier it snapped trees and knocked out power to more than 200,000 customers in neighboring Puerto Rico. It was also whipping at Haiti, which shares Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic, and forecast to move over Cuba on Sunday night or Monday.Officials in the Florida Keys, which Laura might pass over on its route into the Gulf, declared a local state of emergency and issued a mandatory evacuation order for anyone living on boats, in mobile homes and in campers. Tourists staying in hotels were warned to be aware of hazardous weather conditions and consider changing their plans starting Sunday.Marco, meanwhile, was centered about 395 miles (635 kilometers) south-southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River and was moving to the north-northwest at 13 mph (20 kph). It had maximum sustained winds of 70 mph (110 kph) and could become a hurricane sometime Sunday.New warnings were added Sunday morning — including a storm surge warning from Morgan City, Louisiana to Ocean Springs, Mississippi, and a hurricane warning from Morgan City to the mouth of the Pearl River. A tropical storm warning included Lake Pontchartrain in Louisiana, and metropolitan New Orleans.Storm surge up to 6 feet (2 meters) was forecast for parts of coastal Louisiana and Mississippi.Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, who declared a state of emergency Friday, asked President Donald Trump for a federal emergency declaration. “The cumulative impact of these storms will likely have much of Louisiana facing tropical storm/hurricane force impacts for a much longer period of time than it would with any one hurricane,” he wrote.People in Louisiana headed to stores to stock up on food, water and other supplies. Raymond Monday of Gretna, though, had only a generator on his cart at Sam’s Club. “We’ve got a freezer full of food” at home, along with large containers of water, he said.Both storms were expected to bring 3 to 6 inches (8 to 15 centimeters) of rain to areas they were passing over or near, threatening flooding.The hurricane center said the storms were not expected to interact as the region faces an unusually active hurricane season.”We are in unprecedented times,” Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said at a news conference Saturday as he declared a state of emergency. “We are dealing with not only two potential storms in the next few hours, we are also dealing with COVID-19.”
 
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Tens of thousands of people gathered in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, for a rally Sunday against the disputed reelection of President Alyaksandr Lukashenko and a postelection crackdown amid a heavy military presence in the city amid a fresh warning from the army.   Crowds filed down streets of the city center for what is being billed as the March of New Belarus as protests entered a 15th  day in the Eastern European country of 9.5 million.FILE – Opposition supporters protest against disputed presidential elections results at Independence Square in Minsk, Belarus, Aug. 18, 2020.Thousands of people have taken to the streets of Belarus since Lukashenko, in power since 1994, was declared the winner of the August 9 poll. More than 7,000 people have been detained and hundreds beaten by police. The EU and the United States have criticized the vote and condemned the postelection crackdown.   Human chains of solidarity with Belarus were planned for later Sunday in 26 countries, including Lithuania, where the human line hopes to stretch to the border with Belarus.   Thirty-one years ago, on August 23, 1989, an estimated 2 million people joined arms across the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in a protest against Soviet rule that became known as the “Baltic Way.”   Belarusian opposition politician Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya addresses the nation in Vilnius, Lithuania, in this still image taken from handout video released Aug. 21, 2020.Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the opposition candidate who fled to Lithuania after the election and claimed to have won from 60 to 70 percent of the vote, said Saturday that Belarusians must “struggle for their rights” and not be distracted by Lukashenko’s claims that the country was under military threat.   “We are people of Belarus and we are a majority and we will not step away. We are not afraid of them anymore,” she told the AFP news agency.    Her comments came as Lukashenko again claimed NATO troops in Poland and Lithuania were “seriously stirring” near Belarus’s borders.   Dressed in military fatigues, Lukashenko told a military unit in Hrodna Saturday that Belarus’s army must “protect the territorial integrity of our country,” adding “military support is evident.”   NATO said the claims were “baseless.”   “As we have already made clear, NATO poses no threat to Belarus or any other country and has no military buildup in the region,” it said in a statement last week.   Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda also denied the accusation Saturday.   “The regime is trying to divert attention from Belarus’s internal problems at any cost with totally baseless statements about imaginary external threats,” Nauseda told AFP.   The Lithuanian Foreign Ministry also announced Saturday that U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun will visit Lithuania and Russia next week for talks on the Belarusian postelection crisis.Tsikhanouskaya’s team said Saturday that Biegun would meet the opposition candidate in Lithuania.   No election in Belarus under Lukashenko has ever been deemed free or fair by the West. 
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Some U.S.-based users of WeChat are suing President Donald Trump in a bid to block an executive order that they say would effectively bar access in the U.S. to the hugely popular Chinese messaging app.The complaint, filed Friday in San Francisco, is being brought by the nonprofit U.S. WeChat Users Alliance and several people who say they rely on the app for work, worship and staying in touch with relatives in China. The plaintiffs said they are not affiliated with WeChat, nor its parent company, Tencent Holdings.In the lawsuit, they asked a federal court judge to stop Trump’s executive order from being enforced, claiming it would violate its U.S. users’ freedom of speech, free exercise of religion and other constitutional rights.“We think there’s a First Amendment interest in providing continued access to that app and its functionality to the Chinese-American community,” Michael Bien, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, said Saturday.Trump on August 6 ordered sweeping but vague bans on transactions with the Chinese owners of WeChat and another popular consumer app, TikTok, saying they are a threat to U.S. national security, foreign policy and the economy.The twin executive orders — one for each app — are expected to take effect September 20, or 45 days from when they were issued. The orders call on Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who is also named as a defendant in the U.S. WeChat Users Alliance lawsuit, to define the banned dealings by that time.It remains unclear what the orders will mean for the apps’ millions of users in the U.S., but experts have said the orders appear intended to bar WeChat and TikTok from the app stores run by Apple and Google. That would make them more difficult to use in the U.S.“The first thing we’re going to seek is a postponement of the implementation of the penalties and sanctions – a reasonable period of time between explaining what the rules are and punishing people for not complying with them,” Bien said.TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, said Saturday saying it plans to mount a legal challenge against the executive order that President Trump issued against the popular video app.WeChat, which has more than 1 billion users, is less well-known than TikTok to Americans without a connection to China.Mobile research firm Sensor Tower estimates about 19 million U.S. downloads of the app. But it is crucial infrastructure for Chinese students and residents in the U.S. to connect with friends and family in China and for anyone who does business with China.Within China, WeChat is censored and expected to adhere to content restrictions set by authorities. The Citizen Lab internet watchdog group in Toronto have said WeChat monitors files and images shared abroad to aid its censorship in China.Even so, the U.S. WeChat Users Alliance complaint argued that losing access to the app would harm millions of people in the U.S. who rely on it, noting it is the only app with an interface designed for Chinese speakers.“Since the executive order, numerous users, including plaintiffs, have scrambled to seek alternatives without success. They are now afraid that by merely communicating with their families, they may violate the law and face sanctions,” according to the complaint. 
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Video app TikTok said Saturday it will challenge in court a Trump administration crackdown on the popular Chinese-owned platform, which Washington accuses of being a national security threat.As tensions soar between the world’s two biggest economies, President Donald Trump signed an executive order on August 6 giving Americans 45 days to stop doing business with TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance — effectively setting a deadline for a potential pressured sale of the app to a U.S. company.”To ensure that the rule of law is not discarded and that our company and users are treated fairly, we have no choice but to challenge the executive order through the judicial system,” TikTok said in a statement.”Even though we strongly disagree with the administration’s concerns, for nearly a year we have sought to engage in good faith to provide a constructive solution,” it said.”What we encountered instead was a lack of due process as the administration paid no attention to facts and tried to insert itself into negotiations between private businesses.”ByteDance said in a separate statement that the suit would be filed on Monday, U.S. time.TikTok’s kaleidoscopic feeds of short clips feature everything from dance routines and hair-dye tutorials to jokes about daily life and politics. It has been downloaded 175 million times in the U.S. and more than a billion times around the world.Trump claims TikTok could be used by China to track the locations of federal employees, build dossiers on people for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.The company has said it has never provided any U.S. user data to the Chinese government, and Beijing has blasted Trump’s crackdown as political.The U.S. measures come ahead of November 3 elections in which Trump, behind his rival Joe Biden in the polls, is campaigning hard on an increasingly strident anti-Beijing message.Trump and ChinaTrump has increasingly taken a confrontational stance on China, challenging it on trade, military and economic fronts.Shortly after Trump announced his moves against TikTok this month, the United States slapped sanctions on Hong Kong’s leader over the Chinese security clampdown after last year’s pro-democracy demonstrations.Microsoft and Oracle are possible suitors for TikTok’s U.S. operations.Reports have said Oracle — whose chairman Larry Ellison has raised millions in campaign funds for Trump — was weighing a bid for TikTok’s operations in the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand.The Trump administration has also given ByteDance a 90-day deadline to divest in TikTok before the app is banned in the United States.The measures move away from the long-promoted American ideal of a global, open internet and could invite other countries to follow suit, analysts told AFP previously.”It’s really an attempt to fragment the internet and the global information society along U.S. and Chinese lines, and shut China out of the information economy,” Milton Mueller, a Georgia Tech professor and founder of the Internet Governance Project said previously. 
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