TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, is weighing its options for building TikTok's global headquarters outside of China, the Wall Street Journal (subscription) reports.
The big picture: The video-sharing app is likely trying to distance itself from its Chinese ownership amid concerns around its user data and possible censorship on issues deemed off-limits by the Chinese Communist Party.
About a half-million Uighur children have been separated from their families and placed in boarding schools as part of China's effort to eradicate the Uighur identity, The New York Times reports.
The big picture per Axios' Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian: Forced family separation is a tried-and-true method that governments have used to permanently eradicate minority identities and culture. The New York Times reveals for the first time the true scale — and the genocidal intent — of China's intergenerational family separation policies in Xinjiang, a province with a large population of Uighurs.
The United Nations General Assembly approved a Russian-drafted resolution to create a new international treaty to fight cybercrime — ignoring objections from the European Union and the U.S., AP reports.
Why it matters: The resolution creates an expert committee "to elaborate a comprehensive international convention on countering the use of information and communications technologies for criminal purposes.”
A Bek Air plane crashed shortly after taking off from Almaty International Airport in Kazakhstan on Friday morning, leaving at least 12 people dead, the New York Times reports.
Why it matters: It's the latest aviation tragedy in the former Soviet region, which faces a spotty historic safety record and masses of new passengers thanks to the creation of low-cost carriers like Bek Air.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu confirmed Friday that the Avangard, the country's new intercontinental hypersonic weapon, became operational and entered combat duty, per the AP.
Why it matters: Russian President Vladimir Putin has emphasized that Russia is the only country armed with hypersonic weapons. He also has compared the success of the Avangard's development to the Soviet Union's first satellite launch in 1957.
Muslim minorities from China to India and beyond are facing discrimination, mass internment, and even extermination at the hands of their own governments.
Why it matters: The global trend is rooted in the U.S. war on terror, inflated fears of Islamic terrorism, and the rise of authoritarian populism around the world.
