By BARBARA ORTUTAY, AP Technology Writer

The Trump administration has been signaling that it may have finally reached a deal with China to keep TikTok running in the U.S., with the two countries finalizing it as soon as Thursday.

President Donald Trump is visiting South Korea, where he will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping to try to de-escalate a trade war.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday that the two leaders will “consummate that transaction on Thursday in Korea.”

If it happens, the deal would mark the end of months of uncertainty about the fate of the popular video-sharing platform in the United States. After wide bipartisan majorities in Congress passed — and President Joe Biden signed — a law that would ban TikTok in the U.S. if it did not find a new owner in the place of China’s ByteDance, the platform was set to go dark on the law’s January deadline. For a several hours, it did. But on his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order to keep it running while his administration tries to reach an agreement for the sale of the company.

Three more executive orders followed, as Trump, without a clear legal basis, continued to extend the deadline for a TikTok deal. The second was in April, when White House officials believed they were nearing a deal to spin off TikTok into a new company with U.S. ownership that fell apart after China backed out following Trump’s tariff announcement. The third came in June, then another in September, which Trump said would allow TikTok to continue operating in the United States in a way that meets national security concerns.

Trump’s order was meant to enable an American-led group of investors to buy the app from China’s ByteDance, though the deal also requires China’s approval.

However, TikTok deal is “not really a big thing for Xi Jinping,” said Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the German Marshall Fund’s Indo-Pacific program, during a media briefing Tuesday. “(China is) happy to let (Trump) declare that they have finally kept a deal. Whether or not that deal will protect the data of Americans is a big question going forward.”

“A big question mark for the United States, of course, is whether this is consistent with U.S. law since there was a law passed by Congress,” Glaser said.

About 43% of U.S. adults under the age of 30 say they regularly get news from TikTok, higher than any other social media app, including YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, according to a Pew Research Center report published in September.

Americans are also more closely divided on what to do about TikTok than they were two years ago.

A recent Pew Research Center survey found that about one-third of Americans said they supported a TikTok ban, down from 50% in March 2023. Roughly one-third said they would oppose a ban, and a similar percentage said they weren’t sure.

Among those who said they supported banning the social media platform, about 8 in 10 cited concerns over users’ data security being at risk as a major factor in their decision, according to the report.

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The TikTok recommendation algorithm — which has steered millions of users into an endless stream of video shorts — has been central in the security debate over the platform. China previously stated the algorithm must remain under Chinese control by law. But a U.S. regulation that Congress passed with bipartisan support said any divestment of TikTok must mean the platform cut ties with ByteDance.

American officials have warned the algorithm — a complex system of rules and calculations that platforms use to deliver personalized content to your feed — is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities, but no evidence has been presented by U.S. officials proving that China has attempted to do so.

Associated Press Writer Fu Ting contributed to this story from Washington.

Florence + the Machine and Demi Lovato are among the acts recently announced to play Target Center in the new year.

Here’s a look at what’s coming up at the downtown Minneapolis basketball arena. Tickets are available through Ticketmaster unless otherwise noted.

Bad Omens

Joakim “Jolly” Karlsson, left, Noah Sebastian and Nicholas Ruffilo of Bad Omens perform on board the Carnival Magic during day six of the ShipRocked cruise on Friday, Jan. 27, 2023. (Amy Harris/Invision/AP)

The metal band formed in Virginia in 2015 by three locals and Swedish guitarist Joakim Karlsson. Their first demo earned the attention of underground metal label Sumerian, which signed the band and put them on the road with other acts on the label. A spot on the 2017 Warped Tour further expanded their audience.

Bad Omens’ third album, “The Death of Peace of Mind,” went gold and hit No. 11 on the Billboard rock chart, while its single “Just Pretend” was a breakthrough hit that topped four different singles charts. The band’s recent single “Specter” found similar success and is expected to be included in their upcoming fourth record.

Show date: March 2, on sale at 10 a.m. Friday.

New Edition

Bobby Brown and his childhood friends formed New Edition in the early ’80s and, after winning a Boston talent contest, attracted the attention of singer/producer Maurice Starr. But after their 1983 debut album “Candy Girl” was a hit here and in England, they parted ways with Starr over money issues. (Starr went on to create New Kids on the Block.)

New Edition scored hits with “Cool it Now” and “Mr. Telephone Man” and continued after Brown departed for a solo career in 1986. They worked with Minneapolis producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis on their fifth album “Heart Break,” which established a more mature sound for the group.

Over the next several decades, the group has reunited numerous times. The current lineup includes Brown, Ricky Bell, Michael Bivins, Ronnie DeVoe, Ralph Tresvant and Johnny Gill. The local tour stop will also include ’90s hitmakers Boyz II Men and Toni Braxton.

Show date: March 22, on sale at 10 a.m. Friday through Axs.

Florence + the Machine

Singer/songwriter Florence Welch began performing as a teenager with her friend Isabella “Machine” Summers. The pair had a band in place by the time they released the first Florence + the Machine album, 2009’s “Lungs.” It found instant success in England and, soon after, earned fans around the world, including the U.S., where it went platinum and earned the band a best new artist Grammy nomination on the strength of the single “Dog Days Are Over.”

The group has scored further hits with “You’ve Got the Love,” “Cosmic Love,” “Shake it Out” and “Hunger.” They’ve previously played Target Center twice and, in 2022, the former Xcel Energy Center.

Show date: April 8, on sale at 10 a.m. Nov. 5.

Demi Lovato

Demi Lovato performs at “One Night Only” on Sunday, Oct. 26, 2025, at Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles. (Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)

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After appearing on “Barney and Friends” when she was 10, Demi Lovato went on to establish herself as a Disney star through appearances in the “Camp Rock” films and “Sonny with a Chance” TV series. An opening spot on the Jonas Brothers’ 2008 tour helped turn her debut album “Don’t Forget” into a hit.

Each of her seven subsequent records made it into the Top 10, including 2022’s rock-inspired “Holy Fvck.” She returned to her dance pop roots with her just-released album “It’s Not That Deep.”

Show date: May 2, on sale at 10 a.m. Friday.

By FARNOUSH AMIRI, Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Iran does not appear to be actively enriching uranium but that the agency has recently detected renewed movement at the country’s nuclear sites.

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Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said that despite being unable to access Iranian nuclear sites, inspectors have not seen any activity via satellite to indicate that the Islamic Republic has accelerated its production of uranium enriched beyond what it had compiled before the 12-day war with Israel in June.

“However, the nuclear material enriched at 60% is still in Iran. And this is one of the points we are discussing because we need to go back there and to confirm that the material is there and it’s not being diverted to any other use,” Grossi said in an interview at the United Nations headquarters in New York. “This is very, very important.”

Grossi said, however, that inspectors have seen movement around the sites where the stockpiles are stored. Without additional access, the IAEA has had to rely on satellite imagery, which can only show so much, he said.

That stockpile could allow Iran to build as many as 10 nuclear bombs, should it decide to weaponize its program, Grossi warned. Iran long has insisted its program is peaceful, but the IAEA and Western nations say Tehran had an organized atomic bomb program until 2003.

Iran and the IAEA signed an agreement last month in Cairo to pave the way for resuming cooperation, including on ways of relaunching inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities, that has yet to be implemented. The agreement came after Iranian officials suspended all cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog following the war with Israel in which the U.S. struck several Iranian nuclear sites.

Since that agreement, a series of U.N. sanctions have been reimposed on Iran over what European parties to the 2015 nuclear deal have deemed Iran’s lack of compliance with the IAEA and the breakdown of peace negotiations with the U.S. That has complicated the tenuous relationship between the IAEA and Iran, but Grossi said that inspectors are inside the country as of Wednesday.

The Iranian mission to the U.N. did not immediately return a request for comment.

By JON GAMBRELL, Associated Press

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — An American airstrike in April on a prison run by Yemen’s Houthi rebels that killed over 60 detained African migrants should be investigated as a possible war crime, activists said Wednesday.

The call by Amnesty International renews scrutiny on the April 28 strike in Yemen’s Saada province. The attack came as part of an intense campaign of airstrikes waged under U.S. President Donald Trump targeting rebels for disrupting shipping through the Red Sea corridor amid the Israel-Hamas war.

The U.S. military’s Central Command has yet to offer any explanation for the strike on the prison, which previously had been hit by a Saudi-led coalition also fighting against the Houthis and had been known to hold detained African migrants trying to reach Saudi Arabia through the war zone.

“We take all reports of civilian harm seriously and are working to release the assessment results for Operation Rough Rider soon,” said U.S. Navy Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesperson for Central Command.

Dozens killed

After the strike, the Houthis displayed debris likely from two, 250-pound precision-guided GBU-39 small-diameter bombs used by the U.S. military, Amnesty said. Survivors interviewed by Amnesty, all Ethiopian migrants detained while trying to reach Saudi Arabia, told the rights group that they saw no Houthi fighters posted inside the building.

Amnesty said the strike appeared to be an “indiscriminate attack” as it assessed there was no clear military objective. International law prohibits striking sites like hospitals and prisons unless the structures are being used to plan attacks or stockpile weapons — and even then, every precaution should be made to avoid hurting civilians.

Amnesty said the Houthis recently put the death toll in the strike at 61, lower than the 68 it initially reported. Gunfire could be heard in footage filmed after the airstrikes, with the Houthis saying their guards fired warning shots around the time of the strikes.

The April strike recalled a similar strike by a Saudi-led coalition battling the Houthis in 2022 on the same compound, which caused a collapse killing 66 detainees and wounding 113 others, a United Nations report later said. The Houthis shot dead 16 detainees who fled after the strike and wounded another 50, the U.N. said.

The Houthis denied any misconduct in the April strike, but Amnesty noted the rebels’ “ongoing crackdown on … activists, journalists, human rights defenders and humanitarian workers” limited its ability to investigate. The Houthis hold at least 59 United Nations staffers and more aid group workers, with the rebels seizing electronics at U.N. offices in recent days. The Iranian-backed rebels, under economic pressure, also increasingly have been threatening Saudi Arabia in recent weeks as well.

“I didn’t actually believe that it was possible that the U.S. would carry out an airstrike on the same compound, resulting in a significant level of civilian harm,” said Kristine Beckerle, Amnesty’s deputy Middle East and North Africa director. “It kind of defies belief that the U.S. would not have known.”

US campaign believed to have killed other civilians

The U.S. airstrikes against the Houthis began over the rebels’ attacks on shipping under U.S. President Joe Biden. However, the attacks sharply escalated under Trump’s Operation Rough Rider, hitting some 1,000 targets in Yemen.

Those strikes hit power stations, mobile phone infrastructure and military targets in Yemen. However, activists say the attacks also killed civilians, particularly an April strike on an oil depot that killed more than 70 people.

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Airwars, a United Kingdom-based group studying casualties in aerial warfare, believes strikes in the Operation Rough Rider at least 224 civilians during the weekslong campaign — nearly as many civilians killed over more than 20 years of American strikes on the country.

U.S. Army Gen. Michael Kurilla, CENTCOM’s former commander, promised details on civilian casualties in the Yemen campaign “absolutely” would be made public during congressional testimony in June, though that has yet to happen.

“One of the things that was relatively devastating is again you’re talking about people who left Ethiopia to travel to Yemen because they’re trying to get to the Gulf” to earn money for their families back home, Beckerle said. “They have to have their family send money to them in Yemen to deal with the effects of the injury.”