Morning news brief: US probes TikTok over spying allegations, Trump posts on reinstated FB account, & more

In the latest, the US law department is looking into the Chinese company that controls TikTok’s monitoring of US residents, including numerous journalists who cover the tech sector. In other news, former US president, Donald Trump has posted on Facebook for the first time after being reinstated. Separately, India and Bangladesh are all set to unveil a new energy pipeline today (March 18), adding a fresh layer to their bilateral relations. 

Click on the headlines to read more.

TikTok, the video-sharing application owned by Chinese company ByteDance, is being investigated by the Department of Justice and FBI over the allegations of its employees spying on journalists, said a law enforcement official on Friday as per media reports.

Justice Department prosecutors are conducting the investigation in the Eastern District of Virginia and in Washington along with the FBI, said the officials.

United States former president Donald Trump on Friday uploaded his first post on his Facebook and YouTube accounts which were reinstated after being banned for more than two years over the US Capitol insurrection.

“I’M BACK,” Trump wrote, while sharing a 12-second video clip in which he appeared to be giving his victory speech after winning the elections in 2016. In the video, he was seen exclaiming, “Sorry to keep you waiting – complicated business.”

Twitter owner Elon Musk on Friday announced that the social media platform will soon make the long-secret algorithm public for recommending tweets.

The code through which recommendations for posts are made to users will become “open source” by the end of March, said Musk in a tweet. 

The first energy pipeline between India and Bangladesh will be opened on Saturday (March 18) via video conference between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bangladeshi counterpart, Sheikh Hasina. 

This pipeline, which is expected to cost Rs 377 crore, will be the first cross-border pipeline between the two nations. The sum of the costs includes the Rs 285 crore spent on paving the section on the Bangladeshi side, as reported by PTI. 

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