Aurelia Butler

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – Argentine President Alberto Fernandez and protesters in Buenos Aires pushed back against the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Thursday amid heightened tensions with the lender as the country faces nearly 109% inflation and dwindling dollar reserves.The South American grains producer, which has a strained history with the IMF, agreed to a $57 billion program with the Washington-based body in 2018 under former conservative leader Mauricio Macri to stave of economic crisis. That failed and was replaced by a new $44 billion deal last year.But tensions have risen as a severe drought has battered grains exports, Argentina’s top source of dollars, forcing both sides back to the negotiating table to revamp the deal. Buenos Aires wants faster payouts and easier economic targets.”More than a debt, it’s a crime,” President Fernandez wrote in a tweet on Thursday, citing a new government auditor report that concluded the original deal had lacked the required impact study and not passed through proper legislative channels.Fernandez, who has criticized the original deal before, called for an investigation “with all the weight of the law.”Powerful but divisive Vice President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, a previous two-term president, called the original deal “scandalous” and a “scam” of the Argentine people.Macri and the IMF have defended the original deal as necessary to restore Argentina’s economic stability. Critics of the current government blame it for money printing to fund state spending, which they say stokes inflation and weakens the peso.The IMF declined comment on the new criticism of the deal.On the streets of Buenos Aires on Thursday, thousands of Argentines marched in protest against tough economic conditions and the IMF, which many blamed for austerity measures that sharpened Argentina’s worst economic crisis in two decades.”Our worry is that the IMF will meddle in Argentina’s own internal issues,” said protester Norma Morales, defending government subsidies as essential especially with poverty levels having risen to around 40%.”A lot of pensioners who get the minimum pension are in danger, so are many women with universal child allowance – a right so kids can keep studying and eating. We don’t have two plates of food a day guaranteed for children in our country.” (This story has been refiled to correct bylines) More

TikTok, which is wildly popular with American teens and owned by Chinese tech company ByteDance, is already banned on government-issued devices in around 30 U.S. states and for employees of the country’s federal agencies. While blocking apps by geography is not unheard of, the Montana law is notable for doing so at the state level, upending a single-market approach Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL)’s Google have long been able to use for their U.S. app stores.Montana’s ban is set to take effect on Jan. 1 2024.HAS THIS EVER BEEN DONE BEFORE?Sort of. Tech companies are now well-practiced in blocking apps at the country level, mostly to comply with U.S. sanctions or for business purposes, like Apple’s blocking of messaging and privacy apps in China upon government request.Enterprising young people in affected countries have an equally long track record of skirting the bans by downloading the apps while traveling internationally or using tools like virtual private networks (VPNs), which obscure their location.Within the United States, Pornhub recently disabled its services for IP addresses in Utah ahead of a state law that came into effect requiring adult content platforms to verify users’ ages. However, that involved a website only, not an app. Specifically for apps, Google and Apple appear to have navigated a tangle of different U.S. state rules around online gambling by leaving compliance to individual app developers, according to their app store guidance.Google only started allowing gambling apps in its U.S. app store as of 2021, prior to which it restricted the apps in all but four countries: Brazil, France, Ireland and the United Kingdom.Apple and Google declined to comment on how they approach state rules on gambling.IS A STATE-LEVEL BAN EVEN TECHNICALLY FEASIBLE?While TikTok can theoretically block IP addresses registered in Montana, app stores will have a more difficult time. Apple and Google declined comment on the technical aspects of implementing a ban, but TechNet, a trade group funded by both companies, told Montana lawmakers in March that app stores “do not have the ability to geofence on a state-by-state basis.””It would thus be impossible for our members to prevent the app from being downloaded specifically in the state of Montana,” the TechNet representative testified.According to cybersecurity researchers, that is likely because companies organize their app stores at the country level, meaning they have systems for shutting off downloads of a given app in some countries while keeping it accessible elsewhere.The companies do not appear to have built such controls at a more granular level, the researchers said. “I think it’s possible but it’s not possible today. It would require a bunch of code to be written,” Alex Stamos, the director of the Stanford Internet Observatory and former top security officer at Facebook (NASDAQ:META), said in a recent podcast.The app stores also would need to monitor more detailed location data from users’ phones than they currently use, infringing on users’ privacy, Stamos said.Even if the companies were to make those changes, TikTok-obsessed teens in Montana are likely to follow their peers around the world in learning how to use privacy tools and road trips to get the app onto their phones, said another researcher, John Scott-Railton at Citizen Lab.”The youth of Montana are about to become America’s experts in VPNs,” Railton said. More

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -China’s commerce minister will visit the United States next week for meetings with the commerce secretary and Washington’s top trade official, the Chinese embassy spokesperson in Washington said on Thursday, as the U.S. seeks engagement with Beijing to salve damaged ties.Liu Pengyu made the announcement at a Chinese embassy online briefing with journalists, adding that Beijing was open to communication at all levels with United States, but only on the basis of mutual respect.The Chinese embassy later said in an emailed statement that both sides were still discussing details of the plans.A source familiar with planning for the meetings said that Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao was expected to meet with Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo in Washington next week before traveling to Detroit for a meeting of Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) trade ministers. Wang would then meet with U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai on the sidelines of that gathering, scheduled for May 25-26.Spokespersons for Tai’s and Raimondo’s offices did not respond to requests for comment.Washington has expressed eagerness for high-level meetings with China in an effort to keep increasingly tense relations from veering toward conflict. President Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan met China’s top diplomat Wang Yi last week in Vienna, and both sides recognized the need to move beyond an alleged spy balloon incident that dented relations between the superpowers, a senior U.S. official has said.Biden has been seeking to hold a phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping but neither side has offered updates on the prospects for such a call, or on the possibility of rescheduling a visit to Beijing by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.Blinken postponed a planned February trip after the U.S. shot down a Chinese balloon that flew over sensitive military sites.”It is imperative for the U.S. side to adopt a correct perception of China and we hope the U.S. side will return to a rational and pragmatic China policy for the two countries to better develop themselves and prosper together,” Liu told reporters. Liu said China and the U.S. should put into practice what has been agreed between Xi and Biden at their last meeting in November and properly handle sensitive issues such as Taiwan, the democratically self-governed island claimed by China. The U.S. and Taiwan on Thursday agreed on an initial trade pact, a move likely to anger China, which sees official engagement by the island with other countries as a violation of its sovereignty.”China is open to communication at all levels and cooperation across the fields with the United States, but only on the basis of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit,” Liu said before that trade deal was announced. He added that the U.S. should work with China to “create favorable conditions for the future interactions between the two presidents.”Some Biden administration critics, including Republican lawmakers, have questioned U.S. overtures to Beijing to hold high-level meetings, arguing that past decades of engagement have failed to change China’s calculus on a slate of trade, security and human rights issues. Blinken, Raimondo, and U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen have all expressed interest in visiting China. More

(Reuters) -Five TikTok users in Montana who create content posted on the short-video app filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to block the state’s new ban on the Chinese-owned platform.Montana Governor Greg Gianforte on Wednesday signed legislation to ban TikTok in the state, effective Jan. 1. The five users seek to block the law, which makes it unlawful for the app stores of Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Inc’s Google and Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) to offer TikTok within the state. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Montana late on Wednesday, names the state’s attorney general, Austin Knudsen, who is charged with enforcing the law. The TikTok users argue the state seeks to “exercise powers over national security that Montana does not have and to ban speech Montana may not suppress.” The suit said users believe the law violates their First Amendment rights.”Montana can no more ban its residents from viewing or posting to TikTok than it could ban the Wall Street Journal because of who owns it or the ideas it publishes,” the lawsuit said.Emily Flower, a spokeswoman for Knudsen, said the state was ready for lawsuits. “We expected a legal challenge and are fully prepared to defend the law,” she said.TikTok, which is owned by China’s ByteDance, has faced growing calls from U.S. lawmakers and state officials to ban the app nationwide over concerns about potential Chinese government influence over the platform.According to the lawsuit, the five plaintiffs, all Montana residents, include a designer of sustainable swimwear who uses TikTok to promote her company and engage with customers; a former U.S. Marine Corps sergeant who uses TikTok to connect with other veterans; a rancher who uses TikTok to share content about her outdoor adventures; a student who is studying applied human physiology and shares content about her outdoor adventures; and a man who shares humorous videos on TikTok and earns revenue from the content he posts. On Wednesday, following the governor’s signing of the law, Knudsen, who, like Gianforte, is a Republican, called TikTok “a Chinese Communist Party spying tool that poses a threat to every Montanan.”TikTok on Wednesday, shortly after the governor signed the bill, said Montana’s ban “infringes on the First Amendment rights of the people of Montana by unlawfully banning TikTok,” and said it will “continue working to defend the rights of our users inside and outside of Montana.”Gianforte said the bill will further “our shared priority to protect Montanans from Chinese Communist Party surveillance.”TikTok has repeatedly denied that it has ever shared data with the Chinese government and has said the company would not do so if asked.The suit is assigned to Judge Donald Molloy, who was appointed by Democratic President Bill Clinton in 1995.Montana, which has a population of just over 1 million people, said TikTok could face fines for each violation and additional fines of $10,000 per day if it violates the ban.An attempt by former President Donald Trump to ban new downloads of TikTok and WeChat through a Commerce Department order in 2020 was blocked by multiple courts and never took effect. More

LONDON (Reuters) – British consumer confidence has risen for the fourth month in a row to its highest in 15 months as households take a more positive view about the economy and their finances, despite inflation still in double digits, a survey showed on Friday.Market research firm GfK’s headline confidence index rose to -27 in May from -30 in April, moving further away from the -49 record low last September when former prime minister Liz Truss’s “mini-budget” showed chaos in financial markets. May’s rise took the index to its highest since February 2022 and matched most forecasts in a Reuters poll of economists.Households have been grappling with high inflation which was running at 10.1% in March with the cost of food and drinks surging by the most since 1977.But GfK said all measures of consumer sentiment edged up compared to the previous month.”The overall trajectory this year is positive and might reflect a stronger underlying financial picture across the UK than many would think,” Joe Staton, GfK’s client strategy director said. “But everybody must hold on tight as it could still be a rocky ride out of these tough times.”Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told reporters this week that economic optimism was up and household incomes were “outperforming”, drawing criticism from the opposition Labour Party which accused him of being out of touch ahead of a national election expected next year. Britain has so far avoided forecasts of a recession and GfK’s measure of how consumers view the economy over the next 12 months rose to -30 from -34 in April while feelings about their personal finances increased by five points to -8.Britain’s high inflation rate has prompted the Bank of England to lift borrowing costs at 12 meetings in a row since late 2021, pushing Bank Rate to 4.5%, the highest since 2008.GfK’s sub-index of shoppers’ willingness to make expensive purchases also rose while its gauge of savings intentions was unchanged from the previous month.The survey of 2,000 people was conducted between May 3 and May 12. More