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President Biden issues an executive order restricting US investment in Chinese technology

On Wednesday, US President Joe Biden issued an executive order that limits some US investments in delicate high-tech fields in China. This move is thought to have the potential to aggravate tensions between the top two economies in the world.

Washington wants to restrict access to important technology, so the long-awaited regulations, which are anticipated to go into force next year, target industries like semiconductors and artificial intelligence.

In a letter to congressional leaders announcing the executive order, Biden stated that “the United States’ commitment to opening up investment is a cornerstone of our economic policy and provides substantial benefits to the United States.”

Treasury Department officials say the program will restrict new investments in advanced semiconductors and certain quantum information technologies in China through private equity, venture capital, and joint ventures.

President Joe Biden signed an executive order to block and regulate high-tech US-based investments going toward China – a move the administration said was targeted even though it reflected an intensifying competition between the world’s two biggest powers. https://t.co/rjiiOaqmln
— Inquirer (@inquirerdotnet) August 10, 2023

Good news for Indian IT professionals! America will officially accept H1B visa applications from March 1

H1B Visa Applications: Applications for the eagerly expected H1B visa for the fiscal year 2023–2024 in America will start to be formally accepted on March 1. Beginning March 1, the US immigration service will accept visa applications from qualified overseas workers.

Indian IT professionals are the most interested in obtaining this visa. A non-immigrant visa called the H-1B enables US businesses to hire foreign workers in specialty fields.

For the fiscal year beginning October 1, 2023, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that it will accept H-1B visa applications between March 1 and March 17. For up to six years, those with an H-1B visa can work and live in the US in specialized industries like engineering and medicine.

Each year, the US grants 85,000 H-1B visas, of which 20,000 are set aside for employees pursuing advanced degrees from US universities and the remaining 65,000 are chosen at random.

TikTok has overtaken YouTube in Average Watch Time in the US

Reports from app analytics firm App Annie indicate that TikTok users now watch more videos than YouTube users every month. As of June 2021, ByteDance’s app had overtaken YouTube in the US, and its users had watched over 24 hours of content per month, compared with 22 hours and 40 minutes on YouTube.

The difference is even more stark in the UK: TikTok overtook YouTube last May, and the site now has almost 26 hours of content viewed in a month, while YouTube only has 16.

As these are only Android-based figures, they may not be indicative of mobile users in general. In spite of these caveats, these figures are impressive, and even more so given that most videos on TikTok last only three minutes, not the longer videos found on YouTube.

Meanwhile, TikTok was facing bans during much of 2020 as negotiations unraveled (Biden officially revoked Trump’s executive orders earlier this year).

TikTok’s 700 million users lag behind YouTube’s two billion, no doubt because for TikTok, there are roughly two billion users. YouTube remains the top “Social and Entertainment” app on Android smartphones, including iOS users and users of the app renamed Douyin in China. Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram are the next three.

In addition, App Annie’s research shows that YouTube is a more popular app than TikTok worldwide (excluding Chinese users), depending on the platform.