A federal judge in Montana has blocked a bid to ban TikToK in the state. The state-wide ban would have come into effect on 1 January 2024 and would have seen Montana become the first US state to ban TikTok, which is owned by the China-based tech giant ByteDance. Judge Donald Molloy said he blocked the ban because it “oversteps state power” and Montana failed to show how the original SB 419 bill would be “constitutionally permissible,” among other reasons, according to a legal filing released on Thursday. “Despite the State’s attempt to defend SB 419 as a consumer protection bill, the current record leaves little doubt that Montana’s legislature and Attorney General were more interested in targeting China’s ostensible role in TikTok than with protecting Montana consumers,” Judge Molloy wrote in the filing. Judge Molloy’s ruling was a preliminary injunction, so it is possible the ban can still be reinstated. The bill was signed into law by state governor Greg Gianforte in May with the aim of “protecting Montanans from Chinese Communist Party surveillance,” he claimed. Under the law, Montana’s 200,000 TikTok users did not face any repercussions for using the app, however TikTok and other companies faced a $10,000 daily fine for each time someone accessed the app or was “offered the ability” to download it. Opponents of the bill have argued that it violates users’ First Amendment rights. A TikTok spokesperson said in a statement the company is “pleased the judge rejected this unconstitutional law and hundreds of thousands of Montanans can continue to express themselves, earn a living, and find community on TikTok.” ByteDance sued Montana in May to “prevent the state of Montana from unlawfully banning TikTok,” the company said at the time, after state officials alleged the Chinese government “could access data about TikTok users, and that TikTok exposes minors to harmful online content.” TikTok has previously insisted that it does not share data with the Chinese government. Montana attorney general said in a statement that the judge’s decision is merely “a preliminary matter at this point,” adding that the state will continue to defend the ban. In January 2020, the United States Army and Navy banned TikTok on government devices after the Defense Department labeled it a security risk. US lawmakers have expressed concern over the ability of the Chinese Communist Party to access the data of US citizens using the app, and have considered implementing a nationwide ban on TikTok. Read More Apple users told to make urgent update to stay safe Three has gone down Advertisers ‘won’t take risk’ of returning to X after Musk’s expletive-filled rant Apple users told to make urgent update to stay safe Three has gone down Advertisers ‘won’t take risk’ of returning to X after Musk’s expletive-filled rant

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WARSAW, Poland--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 25, 2023--

A legal expert at Europe’s top court has said a lower court committed “errors in law” when it threw out a decision by the European Commission which would force Apple to pay more than 13 billion euro in back taxes to Ireland. The non-binding opinion is seen as a significant setback to Ireland’s defence of its past tax treatment of the US technology giant. In 2016, following an EU investigation which launched in 2014, the commission concluded that Ireland gave undue tax benefits to Apple, which would be illegal under EU state aid rules. Ireland and Apple fought the commission on the matter and in July 2020, the General Court of the European Union annulled the decision. However, the European Commission subsequently appealed against the decision to the European Court of Justice (CJEU) saying the lower court’s ruling was legally incorrect. On Thursday, Giovanni Pitruzzella, an advocate general at the CJEU, agreed that the earlier ruling had contained “a series of errors in law”. He said the judgment should be set aside and referred the case back to the General Court for a new decision. While the opinion of the advocate general is non-binding, it is usually followed by the court and therefore could have significant implications for corporation tax bills. There was no sweetheart deal Finance Minister Michael McGrath The commission’s original position was that that tax rulings issued by Ireland to Apple in 1991 and 2007 substantially and artificially lowered the tax paid by the iPhone manufacturer in the country since the early 90s, in a way which did not correspond to economic reality. As a result, competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said Ireland had granted illegal tax benefits which enabled it to pay substantially less tax than other business over many years. The investigation found that Apple had paid an effective corporate tax rate of 1% on its European profits in 2003, down to 0.005% in 2014, 50 euro for every one million euro of profit. The process involved recording almost all sales profits of two Irish incorporated companies, which the commission said only existed on paper. The companies, fully owned by Apple, held the rights to use the firm’s intellectual property to manufacture and sell its products outside North and South America. The commission said this situation allowed Apple to avoid taxation on almost all profits generated by sales of its products in the entire EU single market. It said this was due to Apple’s decision to record all sales in Ireland rather than in the countries where the products were sold. The findings were disputed by the Irish State, which said all tax owed had been collected, and Apple, which had come under scrutiny in the US for its tax practices years earlier. At the time, Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook, branded the EU findings as “political crap”, maddening and untrue. The Irish Government, which was also used to defending a comparatively low 12.5% corporation tax rate, said Europe had overstepped the mark in attempting to dictate tax laws and enforce retrospective taxes decades later. Ireland and Apple fought the commission on the matter and in July 2020, the General Court of the European Union annulled the decision. The General Court found that the commission had not shown that there was an advantage deriving from the adoption of the tax rulings. However, the commission subsequently appealed the decision to the European Court of Justice with Ms Vestager saying the lower court’s ruling contained errors of law. On Thursday, the advocate general agreed the General Court had erred when it ruled that the Commission had not shown to the requisite legal standard that the intellectual property licences held by the two incorporated companies and related profits, generated by the sales of Apple products outside the US, had to be attributed for tax purposes to the Irish branches. The advocate general was of the view that the General Court also failed to assess correctly the substance and consequences of certain methodological errors that, according to the Commission decision, “vitiated the tax rulings”. It is the non-binding opinion of Mr Pitruzzella that it is necessary for the General Court to carry out a new assessment. The decision of the CJEU on the matter is expected next year and will have significant implications for how member states grant tax breaks to major firms. Apple has argued it has been paying tax on the profits in question in the US, while Ireland has seen it necessary to defend its reputation on taxation issues to protect foreign direct investment. Last weekend, Finance Minister Michael McGrath had said the advocate general’s opinion would be “significant” but added it is not the final step in the process. Mr McGrath said: “We are confident in our position in respect of the Apple case. “We take encouragement from the findings they have made so far, but it is a significant day.” He added: “There was no sweetheart deal. “This was the application of Ireland’s statutory corporation tax code.” In the interim, the 13.1 billion euro has been held in an escrow fund pending the outcome of the case. The money, with interest, is due to be entered into the Irish exchequer if the commission wins the case. However, other member states may make claims that they are owed some of the money. If the commission loses the appeal, the large sum will be returned to Apple. Read More Smartphones ‘may be able to detect how drunk a person is with 98% accuracy’ Ireland and Apple await major development in long-running EU tax dispute Guidance urges parents not to buy smartphones for primary school children William ‘blown away’ by futuristic technology from Singapore start-ups Return of original Fortnite map causes record traffic on Virgin Media O2 network NatWest creates new AI-powered chatbot capable of ‘human-like’ conversations

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Who would win a fight between Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg? It’s the sort of question that might be asked over a drink in the pub. But a clash between the two of the world’s tech tycoons may no longer be hypothetical after Mr Zuckerberg apparently agreed to a cage fight with Mr Musk. When rumours emerged earlier this month that the Facebook boss – a Jiu Jitsu enthusiast – was looking for a rival, the Space X and Tesla founder tweeted that he was “up for a cage match”. Mr Zuckerberg then posted a screenshot of the tweet with the caption “send me location”. Now that a fight appears on the cards, how would the two men match up inside the ring? At more than 6ft tall, Mr Musk would have a clear reach advantage over Mr Zuckerberg, who measures up at 5ft 8in. His height also means he would also have a significant weight advantage over his opponent, but Mr Zuckerberg’s Jiu Jitsu skills - he recently won his first gold and silver medals at a Silicon Valley tournament - would undoubtedly enable him to get out of a few sticky situations on the canvas. Mr Musk joked he had a “great move” to show off, noting that his workout regime consists mostly of spending time with his children. “I have this great move that I call ‘The Walrus’ where I just lie on top of my opponent & do nothing,” he tweeted. He added: “I almost never work out, except for picking up my kids & throwing them in the air.” In 2020, Mr Musk also told Joe Rogan that he “wouldn’t exercise at all if [he] could”. Although Mr Zuckerberg is smaller and lighter than Mr Musk, his technical ability and aerobic capacity could prove too much for the Tesla boss, who earlier this year said that his typical breakfast included a bowl of ice cream, biscuits and a donut. Mr Zuckerberg says he used to “run a lot” and got into surfing and then MMA after the Covid pandemic. “I really like watching UFC for example, that’s because I also like doing the sport [MMA],” he said on the Joe Rogan Experience. “It really is the best sport, five minutes in I was like ‘where has this best my whole life?’ To some degree, MMA is the perfect thing because if you stop paying attention for one second you’re going to end up on bottom.” In addition to his martial arts skills, Mr Zuckerberg also recently participated in the “Murph Challenge,” a gruelling workout named after Lt Michael P Murphy, a Navy Seal who was killed in action in 2005. The challenge, which the 39 year old said he tries to do each year with his daughters, involves 100 pull ups, 200 push ups, 300 squats, and a mile-long run, all while wearing a 20-pound weighted vest. “This year I got it done in 39:58. The girls did a quarter-Murph (unweighted) in 15 mins!” he wrote on Instagram on 29 May. According to Total Shape, a health and fitness platform that provides resources and expertise from fitness experts, Mr Zuckerberg’s ability to “complete extreme fitness challenges and technique with mixed martial arts showcases he has substantial ability and endurance”. When it comes down to who would win in a fight, “it is agility vs strength,” experts at Total Shape say, while noting that, based on “general endurance and skill for cage fighting, Mark Zuckerberg would have the upper hand”. However, “having strength and longer reach can give a fighter a lead when it comes to forceful striking and make it more difficult for the opponent to strike back”. Ultimately, the health and fitness experts at Total Shape conclude: “Placing both titans in a cage, Mark Zuckerberg would have the edge of agility and endurance needed to take Mr Musk down, given Mr Musk isn’t able to forcefully strike him earlier on in the fight.” The potential face-off comes amid rumours that Mr Zuckerberg is preparing to create a new app to rival Twitter, which is expected to be called Threads. The app, internally codenamed Project 92, will reportedly feature a continuous scroll of text, buttons similar to Twitter’s like and retweet functions, and a 500-character limit on posts. It is not the first time Mr Musk has called for a fight with a global figure. In August last year he challenged the Russian president to a scrap. "I hereby challenge Vladimir Putin to a fight. The prize is Ukraine," he wrote. Putin didn’t respond to the goading but the irony was apparently lost on his Chechen war lord ally, Ramzan Kadyrov. "A word of advice: don’t measure your strength against Putin’s, you’re in two different leagues," the henchman warned. In a statement to Verge about whether a fight will indeed take place between Mr Zuckerberg and Mr Musk, a spokesperson for Meta said: “The story speaks for itself.” Read More Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg’s battle of the billionaires is an ego trip worth taking Elon Musk confirms cage fight with Mark Zuckerberg Mark Zuckerberg takes a swipe at Twitter over handling of Hunter Biden laptop story Elon Musk’s sparring partner says he’s ‘extremely impressed’ by his strength Elon Musk picks UFC legend to train him for Mark Zuckerberg fight Twitter hacker who took over Musk, Obama, Biden accounts gets prison sentence

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A well-known biochemist has shared a compelling analysis of what “probably” caused the Titan submersible to implode. Philip E. Mason, who goes by the username Thunderf00t on YouTube, said the main reason why the tiny OceanGate vessel failed was “so painfully simple” that he initially thought he must be making a “boneheaded mistake” in his calculations. However, he acknowledged, his theory behind the sub’s tragic destruction contradicts the widely-reported suggestion that it was like a "Coke can" which suddenly burst due to the high surrounding pressure. In a video posted on Monday, Mason suggested that “by far the most probable” cause of the catastrophe was a “single pinhole leak” which, at such a profound depth (the Titan is believed to have been 3,500 metres below sea level when contact was lost), would have been fatal. It is worth noting that authorities have not yet confirmed the cause of the disaster, which claimed the lives of all five people on board, and Mason's conclusions are based on his own scrutiny of the available information and his particular expertise. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter “So how quickly would a single pinhole leak sink a sub like this?” the YouTuber asked in his lengthy tutorial. The answer, he pointed out, would greatly depend on the size of the leak. If it measured one 10th of a millimetre by one 10th of a millimetre, the vessel would take several hours to go down, he said. However, if the leak measured 1mm by 1mm, it would only take about 10 minutes for the sub to completely fill with water, and if it was 1cm by 1cm, around 10 seconds. Mason then pointed out that water entering any sized leak at that depth would be transformed by the pressure into a sort of “cutting jet”. “Faced with a soft material like plastic, a hair-sized leak would rapidly transform into [...] a millimetre-sized leak and then a centimetre-sized leak,” he explained. Why the Titan sub failed www.youtube.com He then set out why it was likely that the Titan suffered such a leak, pointing to the materials used to make it. He noted that most deep-sea submersibles essentially consist of a ball which is made up entirely of the same material, namely, metal. “No joints, nothing fancy, maybe a couple of seals – one for where you get in and out of the sub and one for mounting a window,” he said. And yet, the Titan was different. “The ends were made up of a metal, titanium,” the YouTuber said. But the problem was that the middle of the sub wasn’t: it was made out of a carbon fibre composite. The two materials have distinctly different compressibilities, with carbon fibre being much easier to squeeze than titanium. “Having a joint where one side will expand or construct more than the other can be a real problem,” Mason stressed. On the surface, when the different components of the vessel were sealed, it wouldn’t have mattered that the materials were different, he continued. However, once the Titan got down to its deepest point, the carbon fibre would have “wanted to shrink” while the titanium wouldn't have changed at all. He then played a clip showing the creation of the sub, in which OceanGate CEO, Stockton Rush, admitted that the carbon fibre and titanium components were held together with a “peanut butter”-like “glue”. Rush, who lost his life along with five others in the Titan disaster, then said ominously: “It’s pretty simple but if we mess it up, there's not a lot of recovery.” Analysing the vessel's construction, Mason then said he was “honestly stunned it survived any dives”. “The bottom line is the tube is more compressible than the end caps,” he continued. “The only way this could have possibly worked is if they used some exotic alloy of titanium, like they do with bone replacement joints, and it doesn't look like they did that.” Turning to what ultimately destroyed the Titan, he concluded: “What you're probably more looking at is the differential compression of the carbon fibre composite and the titanium resulting in a crack.” In other words, “a pinhole leak, which would rapidly widen due to the rapid ingress of the water, further widening the crack and the rapid flooding of the sub in probably a fraction of a second. “And when that water hammer hits the end of the sub, it's likely that the sub broke into pieces.” Wrapping up his video, he said: “It's a mind-blowingly simple explanation based around the most likely failure points.” Investigators are continuing to examine wreckage from the submersible which was recovered from the ocean floor at the end of June. They have yet to determine the cause of the explosion and, last week, the Marine Board of Investigation’s (MBI) chairman Captain Jason Neubauer said: “There is still a substantial amount of work to be done to understand the factors that led to the catastrophic loss of the Titan and help ensure a similar tragedy does not occur again.” Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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