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 S4S55Fed's Global Detractors Grumble as Central Bankers Debate Rate Cuts   Federal Reserve policymakers have coalesced around the idea of keeping borrowing costs where they are until perhaps well into the year, given slow and bumpy progress on inflation, and a still-strong U.S. economy.On Thursday New York Fed President John Williams became the latest U.S. rate-setter to embrace the "no rush" on rate cuts view articulated in February by Fed Governor Christopher Waller and since echoed by many of his colleagues.Â
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S11S6Why midlife looks different for millennials - Culture (No paywall)  If you want to get a sense of how American midlife has changed, look no further than 1991 comedy “Father of the Bride,” in which actors Steve Martin and Diane Keaton play parents in their mid-40s. Conversation around a 2022 viral tweet calling out those portrayals largely agrees: whatever the movie’s ideal of middle age, it doesn’t resemble today’s spry 40-year-olds.Yes, midlife looks different now—in fashion, in youthful attitude, and in cold, hard numbers. Most days, with no kids, no husband, no mortgage, I don’t think of myself as a “real” grown-up at 37, at least not of the Keaton-Martin caliber. Sure, some people of my generation will soon have kids old enough to get married. But many are just having their first children—the median age of mothers giving birth increased to 30 between 1990 and 2019—or, like one fifth of adults, don’t plan to have kids at all.
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S46S54San Francisco Sues Oakland Over New Airport Name  San Francisco on Thursday sued Oakland after officials there voted in favor of changing the name of the city's airport to San Francisco Bay Oakland International Airport, saying the change will cause confusion and is already affecting its airport financially.Last week, the Board of Commissioners for the Port of Oakland voted unanimously to move forward with the name-change and scheduled a second vote for final approval on May 9. The airport is currently called Oakland International Airport.
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S20'Helldivers 2' Players Just Pulled Off Something We Thought Was Impossible  The Helldivers 2 community was given six days to exterminate two billion bug-eyed Terminids, and – somehow, someway – players accomplished this seemingly unconquerable goal in under 24 hours. As part of the ongoing in-game effort to snuff out both the bug-eyed invaders and the evil robot Automatons from the known galaxy, the directive was the latest Major Order from Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead pushing players to band together for this common goal.
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S21How to Choose Between Anbernic's 5 Different RG35XX Retro Game Handhelds  What’s the difference between the RG35XX, RG35XX Plus, RG35XX 2024, RG35XX H, and the leaked RG35XX SP? We got you covered.There’s no shortage of handhelds for playing retro games. Anbernic, Retroid, Powkiddy, and more have filled a demand that Nintendo, Sony, Sega, and more are not serving.
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S5Plastic pollution facts and information - Environment (No paywall)  Plastic pollution has become one of the most pressing environmental issues, as rapidly increasing production of disposable plastic products overwhelms the world’s ability to deal with them. Plastic pollution is most visible in developing Asian and African nations, where garbage collection systems are often inefficient or nonexistent. But the developed world, especially in countries with low recycling rates, also has trouble properly collecting discarded plastics. Plastic trash has become so ubiquitous it has prompted efforts to write a global treaty negotiated by the United Nations.Plastics made from fossil fuels are just over a century old. Production and development of thousands of new plastic products accelerated after World War II, so transforming the modern age that life without plastics would be unrecognizable today. In plastic, inventors found a light, durable material that can be used in everything from transportation to medicine.
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S12Editor's Note: For example, a study conducted into classroom colours by researchers at the Valencia Polytechnic University, published in Building and Environment in 2021, found university students in cool-coloured rooms (green and blue) reported increased attention and memory, while white was linked to a 25 per cent drop in human efficiency, as measured by a mixture of performance-based tasks and neurophysiological responses (such as heart rate and brain activity). S172024's Most Deranged Vampire Thriller Injects New Blood Into the Genre  Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, the directing duo otherwise known as Radio Silence, are intensely aware of the audience they’re serving: one that knows the horror genre inside and out. So, as with their absurdly fun breakout hit Ready or Not, the duo’s riotously bloody vampire flick Abigail plays directly to that audience.Based on the 1936 classic Dracula's Daughter, Abigail is a reimagining of the Universal Classic Monsters film in the loosest sense of the word. The only thing it has in common with Lambert Hillyer’s Dracula sequel is the idea that Count Dracula has a daughter. Gne are the 1936 film’s vague lesbian overtones, in its place is a gleefully campy child-monster who feels like M3GAN got a bloodsucking makeover. But therein lies the fun of Abigail: watching a tiny girl in a delicate ballet costume rip to shreds a group of colorful characters who are very aware of what a vampire is but woefully underprepared to deal with one.
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S22Here Are the 75 Coolest Things Trending on Amazon Under $30  Amazon has a lot of cool things. And it has a lot of cheap things. Unsurprisingly, the mega e-tailer also has a ton of cool, cheap things, and shoppers tend to flock to those products in droves. This list is just a small sampling of trendiest sub-$30 things on Amazon right now that are backed by rave reviews, bestseller statuses, and thousands upon thousands of monthly shoppers.Instead of using a standard night-light that takes up one of your outlets, why not switch to this outlet cover with a built-in light? It’s super easy to install in place of your existing cover — and it comes three variations to best suit your outlet type. These outlet covers feature motion-sensing LED lights that illuminate the floor, offering a guide to help you see in the dark. And they come in five hues to match your space.
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S25Sasquatch Sunset Spotlights the Bizarre, Cult-Like World of Lazarus Taxa  Sasquatch Sunset, a comedic, dramatic, “grossly adorable” new movie directed by Nathan and David Zellner isn’t a work with much scientific integrity. The film imagines a foursome of the mythical giant apes carrying on under the radar, trekking the forests of the Pacific Northwest, fighting, copulating, defecating, and giving us a raw mirror to hold up to our own fraught humanity.Though such a creature has never (verifiably) been discovered, you could argue that just because we’ve never seen a sasquatch doesn’t mean it’s nonexistent. A handful of real animals believed extinct have made comebacks, after all. These creatures demonstrate that it’s possible to live out quiet, beautiful lives unbeknownst to humans.
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S31From sumptuous engravings to stick-figure sketches, Passover Haggadahs - and their art - have been evolving for centuries  The Jewish festival of Passover recalls the biblical story of the Israelites enslaved by Egypt and their miraculous escape. During a ritual feast known as a Seder, families celebrate this ancient story of deliverance, with each new generation reminded to never take freedom for granted.Every year, a written guide known as a “Haggadah” is read at the Seder table. The core text comprises a description of ritual foods, the story of the Exodus, blessings, commentaries, hymns and songs. The word Haggadah – “telling,” in Hebrew – was derived from Exodus 13:8, a verse which instructed the Israelites to commemorate their liberation and tell the story to their children.
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S32TikTok fears point to larger problem: Poor media literacy in the social media age  The U.S. government moved closer to banning the video social media app TikTok after the House of Representatives attached the measure to an emergency spending bill on Apr. 17, 2024. The move could improve the bill’s chances in the Senate, and President Joe Biden has indicated that he will sign the bill if it reaches his desk.The bill would force ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, to either sell its American holdings to a U.S. company or face a ban in the country. The company has said it will fight any effort to force a sale.
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S34Bitcoin is halving again - what does that mean for the cryptocurrency and the market?  Bitcoin, the largest and most talked about digital asset, has been on a rollercoaster of a ride since its launch in January 2009. With a market capitalisation that reached a high of more than US$1.4 trillion (£1.125 trillion) this February and volatile swings since, bitcoin has attracted lots of attention recently. Now a hotly anticipated recurring event that happens roughly every four years is taking place: the bitcoin halving. This could have further significant impact on the value of the cryptocurrency.
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S39The world's oldest conjoined twins have died - what we know about this rare condition  Doctors predicted that the twins (who were joined at the skull and shared 30% of their brain) would not live past the age of 30. But the twins defied expectations and managed to live long and successful lives.Conjoined twins are incredibly rare, accounting for about one or two in every 100,000 births. Sadly, about 60% of conjoined twin births are stillborn or die shortly after birth. Conjoined female twins are three times more likely to survive than males.
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S41Rhapsody in Blue: celebrating 100 years of Gershwin's groundbreaking classical-jazz masterpiece  George Gershwin’s 1924 composition Rhapsody in Blue is so timeless that it seems scarcely possible that he composed it 100 years ago. Its centenary offers us a special opportunity to celebrate this iconic work that defies time and place.As the director of University of Plymouth’s Musica Viva concert series, I organised a special celebration concert on January 27, featuring the London Gershwin Players conducted by the wonderful Mark Forkgen. It was an all-Gershwin programme that also included the overture to the musical Girl Crazy, A Porgy and Bess Fantasy and An American in Paris.
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S42S44Don't blame Dubai's freak rain on cloud seeding - the storm was far too big to be human-made  Some years ago, I found myself making my way up the narrow stairs of a Learjet on a sultry runway in a deserted airport near the South Africa-Mozambique border. The humidity was there to taste – the air thick with it. The weather radar was showing a fast-developing thundercloud. Our mission was to fly through the most active part of the storm, measure it, fly through again while dumping a bin load of dry ice, turn hard and fly through for a final measurement.
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S45S56Meta's AI Model Agents Get Weird on Social Media  Facebook parent Meta Platforms unveiled a new set of artificial intelligence systems Thursday that are powering what CEO Mark Zuckerberg calls "the most intelligent AI assistant that you can freely use."But as Zuckerberg's crew of amped-up Meta AI agents started venturing into social media this week to engage with real people, their bizarre exchanges exposed the ongoing limitations of even the best generative AI technology.
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S57Don't Compete--Collaborate. How Cannabis Partnerships Are Driving Growth  In the 10 years since Colorado became the first state to legalize recreational cannabis, the industry has grown into a more than $30 billion market, with more than half of all Americans now living in a state where recreational cannabis is legal. To capitalize on this growth, companies in the legal marijuana industry are collaborating and leveraging partnerships, helping some land on Inc.'s list of the fastest-growing private companies in America. Sebastian Solano, co-founder of cannabis brand Jeeter, says collaborations have become a core part of his company's success. On Saturday, for 4/20, the Desert Hot Springs, California-based company will offer a limited edition pre-rolled joint product, and hold its third-annual "high dining" event, a dinner where every dish is paired with the reveal of a brand-new Jeeter product. This year, the event will feature an acoustic tribute to Bob Marley performed by his grandson, Skip Marley, as part of a larger collaboration between Jeeter and the Marley estate. Founded in 2018, Jeeter claimed the No.144 spot on the 2022 Inc. 5000, with a three-year growth rate of 3,346 percent.
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S6818 Best Keyboards for PC (2024): Gaming and Work If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIREDThere are few things as polarizing as PC keyboards. There are message boards and subreddits filled to the brim with opinions dissecting every aspect and component, mechanical vs. membrane, different switch mechanisms, and the plastic used in the key caps.
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S6920 Best Earth Day Deals (2024): Ebikes, Chargers, and Bags Made of Recycled Plastic Earth Day arrives on Monday, April 22, but you can already take part. We at WIRED value sustainability all year long, and right now you'll find plenty of sales on our favorite eco-conscious gear. Be sure to check out our related buying guides, including Best Reusable Products, Best Recycled and Upcycled Gear, Best Clothing Made of Recycled Materials, Best Recycled Backpacks, and Best Eco-Friendly Cleaning Supplies.Special offer for Gear readers: Get WIRED for just $5 ($25 off). This includes unlimited access to WIRED.com, full Gear coverage, and subscriber-only newsletters. Subscriptions help fund the work we do every day.
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S19How the Cast of 2024's Best Vampire Thriller Dealt with the Movie's Buckets of Blood  The production team behind such hits as Ready Or Not and the Scream reboot have an affinity for gore. Blood, guts, and exploding heads are par the course in their filmography — but their latest project, Abigail, might take things a step further.For what it’s worth, Abigail is a story that requires a fair amount of bloodshed. The film is part-heist movie, part-vampire slasher, following a band of criminals who abduct a young girl (Matilda’s Alisha Weir) for ransom... only to realize that she’s actually a centuries-old bloodsucker. Armed with only their wits and locked in a dilapidated mansion, our unlikely heroes have to fight to survive the night. Of course, not everyone makes it out alive, resulting in some crazy kills that required buckets and buckets of red corn syrup to pull off.
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S2S14S23S2635 Years Ago, Stephen King Made an Iconic Zombie Thriller With 2 Underrated Sci-Fi Legends  There’s a lot to say about Pet Sematary. But the actual cast was a big deal. At least, at the time.For horror fans, the 1989 film version of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary represents a kind of platonic ideal of supernatural ‘80s horror. Like the best of King, Pet Sematary is both subtle and gonzo, with real themes of grief, crisscrossing with scary undead children, undead cats, and a couple of parents who really tried to do the right thing, but messed with dark powers that they couldn’t possibly understand.
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S29S62Beyond Black and White Logos, These Are the Emerging Design Trends to Watch  That's according to experts like Alex Center, founder of CENTER, a New York City-based branding and design company. "You always want to look at the category and look at your competitors and see how you can stand out amongst the crowd," says Center. "So something that's familiar, but surprising, I think is what makes for a hit."Center says he first noticed the black-and-white trend pop up in 2023, when Elon Musk unveiled a new black-and-white X logo to replace Twitter's famous blue bird. "When all the apps are trying to be the brightest, most colorful to stand out, then nothing stands out," Center says. "Going to black and white kind of became sort of the antithetical way to differentiate from all the colorful app icons on your phone."
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S66Tesla Recalls Cybertruck Over Faulty Pedals--Its Worst Flaw Yet TeslaâÂÂs Cybertruck has been widely derided. Its panel gaps are wide and amateurish, itâÂÂs prone to rust, and it looks like an ergonomic cheese grater. Its most serious flaw to date, though, has resulted in a recall of nearly 4,000 vehicles.The US National Highway Traffic Safety Association has recalled 3,878 Cybertrucks, which comprises any that were manufactured between November 13 of last year and April 4. At issue is the accelerator pedal: Its pad can become dislodged, resulting in the pedal becoming trapped in the trim above it. This is, needless to say, quite bad.
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S24Amazon's Biggest Sci-Fi Hit Makes One Brilliant Storytelling Decision  Fallout has no right being as good as it is. Amazon’s TV adaptation of the video game franchise is accessible, entertaining, and incredibly watchable. Rather than being weighed down by the size and scope of its source material, it feels relatively light and moves through its story at a considered pace. It isn't quite as masterful as HBO's The Last of Us, but it’s still one of the best video game adaptations Hollywood has produced to date.Despite premiering at a time when dystopian and post-apocalyptic stories are everywhere, Fallout doesn't feel nearly as familiar or tired as one would expect. There are, in fact, moments throughout its eight-episode first season where it feels like the most imaginative mainstream Hollywood addition to the dystopian genre since 2015's Mad Max: Fury Road.
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S27Nintendo Switch Gets A Better Version of 2022's Best Management Sim This Fall  The best management sim of the past few years just announced a new edition with some major updates, and it’s the perfect time to remember what made the original so great in the first place. Publisher XSEED Games announced Potionomics: Masterwork Edition earlier this week, which brings a host of free upgrades for the game, along with a fancy new physical edition for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.The Potionomics: Masterwork Edition physical release includes all the bonuses you’d expect from a collector’s edition game, including a two-disc soundtrack and a digital artbook. In addition to the game’s original soundtrack, the set includes some unreleased songs from the game. In keeping with Potionomics’ deckbuilding elements, the new edition also includes a set of 12 trading cards with new illustrations of the game’s characters.
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S287,000 Years Ago, Ancient Humans May Have Lived in This Giant Arabian Lava Tube  Until recently, no archaeologists had surveyed any of the hundreds of caves and lava tubes recorded across northern Arabia.If you look from above, you can see thousands of stone structures dotting the landscape of the Arabian peninsula. On the ground, you can find a bounty of stone tools and ancient fireplaces scattered along the edges of ancient lakes, as well as rock art depicting hunting and herding scenes in the surrounding mountains.
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S30S35Liz Truss: an economist explains what she got wrong (and what she's actually right about)  Liz Truss’s 49 days as UK prime minister will probably be best remembered for her 2022 “mini budget”. Her plan for £45 billion of unfunded tax cuts led to economic panic, caused chaos on the financial markets, and she was forced to quit her job. But she still appears to be fairly resolute about her economic philosophy. Busy promoting her new memoir, she has dismissed anyone who blames her for crashing the UK economy as “stupid or malevolent”.
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S36Domestic politics will be a key factor in how far things escalate between Israel and Iran  The military standoff between two of the Middle East’s regional powers, Israel and Iran, risks escalating into a wider conflict that could plunge the entire region into a complete state of chaos. Following Iran’s barrage of drone and missile attacks on April 13, Israel has retaliated and conducted a strike attack near the city of Isfahan in southern Iran.Both sides have now matched each other in striking targets within each other’s national border. But the contrast in the two countries conventional capabilities is now becoming apparent.
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S37Peter Higgs' famous particle discovery is now at the heart of strategies to unlock the secrets of the universe  A giant of particle physics, Peter Wade Higgs, passed away at his home in Edinburgh on April 8 2024, having lived to 94 years. His unparalleled legacy, epitomised by the discovery of the Higgs boson, continues to profoundly shape the future of particle physics like no other discovery before it. This is the story of his legacy. When Higgs was born in 1929, our understanding of matter was completely different. Physicists had developed a simple model of matter with three fundamental, or elementary, particles (those that can’t be broken down into smaller particles).
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S38Why you shouldn't be afraid to start running after middle age  As someone who started marathon running in mid-life, I know how many aches and pains (and doubts) you can have if you take on the challenge to start running at an older age. But as an orthopaedic surgeon who has replaced thousands of worn-out hips and knees throughout my career, I also know just how much exercise actually helps the joints.The findings were very surprising to me, particularly in the knee study. The high-resolution MRI scans found most of the 115 middle-aged participants had abnormalities in their knees before starting marathon training. Half of these abnormalities would typically have required keyhole surgery in the past.
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S43Why many policies to lower migration actually increase it  Every spring and summer, when the weather improves, the numbers of people trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe drastically increase, sometimes tripling. Distressing photos and headlines dominate front pages, and politicians stoke negative narratives about migration. People migrate for many reasons: safety, work, education, family or adventure. Even though politicians like to divide migrants into neat categories, such as refugees and economic migrants, the messy reality is that most people moving fit into several categories at once. This makes it all the harder for governments to stop it from happening, try as they might.
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S48The idea that matter is mostly empty space is mostly wrong  One thing you can be sure of, as you measure and observe the Universe around you, is this: the physical objects you see, touch, and otherwise interact with all occupy a volume of space. Whether in the form of solid, liquid, gas, or any other phase of matter, it costs energy in order to reduce the volume that any tangible material occupies, as though the very components of matter themselves are capable of resisting the impetus to occupy a smaller amount of three-dimensional space.And yet, seemingly paradoxically, the fundamental constituents of matter — the particles of the Standard Model — occupy no measurable volume at all; they’re simply point particles. So how, then, can substances made out of volume-less entities come to occupy space at all, creating the world and Universe as we observe it? That’s what Pete Sand is curious about, asking:
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S49Want true success? Be more philosophical about "good" and "bad" failure.  Failing is cool at the moment. This is an era of reframing. A setback isn’t bad; it’s a learning experience. An obstacle shouldn’t bother you; it’s an opportunity to grow. If you’ve read any self-help article written in the last five years, you will often find, at some point, the idea that “failing is necessary for success.” There’s a cottage industry of celebrities and self-help personalities who lionize the great benefits of having to overcome. All will start with a similar refrain: “We live in an age of perfection,” or “We don’t treat failure with respect.” Perhaps a decade ago, but after several years of bestselling books and viral videos, it’s getting harder to uphold that refrain. It could even be argued the pendulum has shifted the other way; this is an age of failure fetishization.The real problem, though, is that the issue is too often oversimplified. A child getting a bad grade at school or an athlete who doesn’t get their PB might make them better. Yes, some failure means growth, but as the philosopher Jonathan Mitchell argues, the fetishization of failure often overlooks one key thing: sometimes, failure can break you. So how can you tell the difference between “good” and “bad” failure, especially in our daily lives? And how can we shift the pendulum back to somewhere more balanced?
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S53Missouri Backs Big Expansion of Low-Interest Loans as Demand for State Aid Grows  Â Missouri lawmakers gave final approval Thursday to significantly expand a low-interest loan program for farmers and small businesses, in a move that reflects strong consumer demand for such government aid amid persistently high borrowing costs.The legislation comes as states have seen surging public interest in programs that use taxpayer funds to spur private investment with bargain-priced loans. Those programs gained steam as the Federal Reserve fought inflation by repeatedly raising its benchmark interest rate, which now stands at a 23-year high of 5.3 percent.
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S58Early AI Regulation Efforts Get Pushback From All Sides  Artificial intelligence is helping decide which Americans get the job interview, the apartment, even medical care, but the first major proposals to rein in bias in AI decision making are facing headwinds from every direction.Lawmakers working on these bills, in states including Colorado, Connecticut and Texas, came together Thursday to argue the case for their proposals as civil rights-oriented groups and the industry play tug-of-war with core components of the legislation.
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S59Here's How a TikTok Ban Got Tied to Military Aid for Israel and Ukraine  Legislation that could ban TikTok in the U.S. if its China-based owner doesn't sell its stake won a major boost late Wednesday when House Republican leaders included it in a package of bills that would send aid to Ukraine and Israel. The bill could be law as soon as next week if Congress moves quickly.The TikTok legislation, which passed the House in March and has widespread support in both chambers, was included in the House package as leaders have worked to win votes for the foreign aid bills and after negotiations with the Senate over how long the Chinese technology firm ByteDance Ltd. would have to sell its stake in the app to continue operating in the United States. President Joe Biden has said he would sign the TikTok legislation if it reaches his desk.
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