TikTok said it would “go dark” in America, unless President Joe Biden stepped in to save it. On Friday the Supreme Court upheld a law forcing the app’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell it by Sunday or face a nationwide ban. Donald Trump, who will be inaugurated the day after any ban comes into effect, said he needed time to review the situation.
Israel’s government approved the Gaza ceasefire deal, paving the way for the agreement to take effect on Sunday. Hamas is expected to release the first hostages that day. Hard-right members of Binyamin Netanyahu’s coalition oppose the deal and have threatened to resign in protest.
Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, and his Iranian counterpart, Masoud Pezeshkian, signed a 20-year strategic-partnership treaty in Moscow. The pact will deepen economic, energy and defence co-operation. Both countries are under Western sanctions. They have strengthened ties since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Iran has been accused of supplying Russia with drones for the war.
Meanwhile, a Russian court jailed three lawyers who had defended Alexei Navalny, one of the Kremlin’s fiercest critics. The men were convicted of “participation in an extremist community”—ie, of passing Mr Navalny’s words to the outside world while he was locked up on spurious charges of fraud and extremism. He died in jail in February.
Mr Trump said that he had a “very good” phone call with Xi Jinping, China’s president. In a social-media post America’s president-elect wrote that they discussed trade, fentanyl and TikTok, among other topics. The Chinese government said the pair agreed to establish a “channel of strategic communication”. Han Zheng, China’s vice president, will attend Mr Trump’s inauguration.
The European Commission told X to disclose recent changes to its recommendation algorithm, as part of an investigation launched in 2023 into the social-media platform’s role in European politics. The move follows complaints that X is promoting hard-right views. Elon Musk, the firm’s boss, has publicly supported the Alternative for Germany party.
Goldman Sachs said it would hand David Solomon, its CEO, $80m-worth of stocks to keep him at the bank for the next five years. It also said it had bumped up his pay by a quarter in 2024, to $39m. Following a bumpy few years—which included a disastrous attempt to launch a consumer bank—Goldman posted net income of $14.3bn in 2024.
Correction: An earlier edition of the World in Brief misspelt Kristi Noem’s name. Sorry.
Word of the week: chanoyu, a Japanese tea ceremony that contributed to the spread of matcha. Read the full story.
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