WASHINGTON (Reuters) &#8211; A U.S. judge said Thursday the Trump administration must either delay a ban on U.S. app stores offering TikTok for download or file legal papers defending the decision by Friday.



The U.S. Commerce Department order banning Apple Inc&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/companies/AAPL.O">AAPL.O</a>&nbsp;and Alphabet Inc&#8217;s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/companies/GOOGL.O">GOOGL.O</a>&nbsp;Google app stores from offering the short video sharing app for new downloads is set to take effect late Sunday. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols said the government must file a response to a request by TikTok for a preliminary injunction or delay the order by 2:30 p.m. EDT Friday.



A federal judge in San Francisco on Saturday issued a preliminary injunction blocking a similar Commerce Department order from taking effect on Sunday on Tencent Holdings’ WeChat app.







The Commerce Department said it plans to challenge the WeChat injunction, but government lawyers have not yet filed a appeal.



U.S. officials have expressed serious concerns that the personal data of as many as 100 million Americans that use TikTok was being passed on to China’s Communist Party government.



On Saturday, the Commerce Department announced a one-week delay in the TikTok order, citing “recent positive developments” in talks over the fate of its U.S. operations.







TikTok said the restrictions “were not motivated by a genuine national security concern, but rather by political considerations relating to the upcoming general election.”



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TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, said on Monday it will own 80% of TikTok Global, a newly created U.S. company that will own most of the app’s operations worldwide. ByteDance added that TikTok Global will become its subsidiary.



Oracle Corp and Walmart Inc have agreed to take stakes in TikTok Global of 12.5% and 7.5%, respectively. On Monday, Oracle said ByteDance’s ownership of TikTok would be distributed to ByteDance’s investors, and that the Beijing-based firm would have no stake in TikTok Global.

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BOSTON (Reuters) &#8211; Top asset managers Vanguard Group Inc and BlackRock Inc&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/companies/BLK.N">BLK.N</a>&nbsp;on Thursday introduced new exchange-traded funds that exclude oil companies, coal producers and other industries that a growing number of investors want to avoid.



The so-called ESG funds use environmental, social or governance criteria to pick investments.



“In our conversations clients continuously bring up the topic,” said Rich Powers, head of ETF product management for Vanguard, the largest mutual fund company with $6.6 trillion under management.



Researcher Morningstar Inc&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/companies/MORN.O">MORN.O</a>&nbsp;found flows into such funds reached a record pace this year, taking in $20.9 billion through June, just shy of the annual record of $21.4 billion for all of 2019.



The demand partly reflects the performance of the funds, which has often topped traditional investment products this year. That was despite many funds being held back by strategies such as not owning high-performing energy stocks, as second-quarter results showed.



The Vanguard ESG U.S. Corporate Bond ETF&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/companies/VCEB.O">VCEB.O</a>, the company&#8217;s first fixed income offering in the sector, will track the Bloomberg Barclays MSCI U.S. Corporate Select Index, which excludes oil and gas, alcohol and civilian firearms companies.







Previously the manager launched ESG equity products including the Vanguard ESG US Stock ETF,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/companies/ESGV.Z">ESGV.Z</a>&nbsp;now with about $2 billion in assets.



BlackRock, with $7 trillion in total assets, will offer three ESG stock funds that recreate exposure to S&amp;P indexes of large, mid-cap and small-cap companies.



The ETFs will screen out companies with certain levels of investment in the thermal coal, oil sands or shale energy sectors, BlackRock said.



Reporting by Ross Kerber; Editing by Richard Chang

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NEW YORK (Reuters) &#8211; The United States, China and Russia fought on Thursday during a United Nations Security Council meeting on the coronavirus pandemic after U.N. chief Antonio Guterres had warned the body that if the climate crisis was approached with the “same disunity and disarray” of COVID-19, then: “I fear the worst.”



Guterres said the coronavirus was out of control as the global death toll approaches 1 million, while more than 30 million have been infected. He blamed “a lack of global preparedness, cooperation, unity and solidarity.”



“The pandemic is a clear test of international cooperation – a test we have essentially failed,” he told the 15-member body.



Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and the Chinese government’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, both took veiled swipes at the United States during the virtual council meeting on global governance post-COVID-19, to which U.S. Ambassador Kelly Craft responded: “Shame on each of you.”



“I am astonished and I am disgusted by the content of today’s discussion &#8230; members of the council who took this opportunity to focus on political grudges rather than the critical issue at hand,” she said.



While not naming any countries, Lavrov noted that the pandemic had deepened differences between states.



“We see attempts on the part of individual countries to use the current situation in order to move forward their narrow interests of the moment, in order to settle the score with an undesirable government or geopolitical competitors,” he said.







Long-simmering tensions between the United States and China hit the boiling point over the pandemic, spotlighting Beijing’s bid for greater multilateral influence in a challenge to Washington’s traditional leadership.



Wang called for better coordination and cooperation among key powers on Thursday.



“Major countries are even more duty-bound to put the future of humankind first, discard Cold War mentality and ideological bias, and come together in the spirit or partnership to tide over the difficulties,” he said.



‘ENOUGH IS ENOUGH’



U.S. President Donald Trump is facing a Nov. 3 re-election battle as the United States is dealing with the world’s highest official number of deaths and infections from the coronavirus. Washington accuses Beijing of a lack of transparency that it says worsened the outbreak. China denies the U.S. assertions.



Craft reiterated those accusations on Thursday, echoing a call by Trump for the world body to hold China accountable.







China’s U.N. Ambassador Zhang Jun rejected her accusations and said: “Enough is enough. You have created enough troubles for the world already. &#8230; The U.S. should understand that blaming others will not solve its own problems.”



The United States has announced plans to leave the Geneva-based World Health Organization after Trump accused it of becoming a puppet for China during the coronavirus pandemic. The WHO has rejected Trump’s assertion.



“At times, geopolitics have tampered cooperation and hindered our agility. The pandemic has tested the international system like never before,” said Britain’s Minister of State for South Asia and the Commonwealth, Lord Tariq Ahmad of Wimbledon. “But now is not the moment to reject international institutions.”



French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian also appeared to take a stab at the United States when he said the pandemic should not be used to undermine “all the work has been done over recent decades by feminist movements for gender equality.”



“We must be on our guard, we must be watchful, particularly when it comes to protecting sexual reproductive rights,” he told the Security Council.



Trump’s administration has led a push at the United Nations against the promotion of sexual and reproductive health rights and services for women because it sees that as code for abortion. Earlier this month, the United States voted against a U.N. General Assembly resolution on the coronavirus pandemic partly because it included such language.

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(Reuters) &#8211; Facebook Inc’s long-delayed independent Oversight Board plans to launch in mid-late October, just before the November U.S. presidential election, but a Facebook spokeswoman said on Thursday it was unlikely that the board would handle election-related cases.



The board, created by Facebook in response to criticism of its handling of problematic content, will initially have the power to review decisions to take down posts from Facebook and Instagram, and recommend policy changes.



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Oversight Board member Alan Rusbridger told Reuters in an interview this week the board was now aiming for an October launch. A board spokesman said that the late launch, originally planned for last year, had been further slowed by the coronavirus pandemic.



Potential cases would come to the board from users who have exhausted the appeals process, or be sent over from Facebook. Deciding and implementing rulings would take up to 90 days, although Facebook could ask for them to be expedited within 30 days.



The Facebook spokeswoman said it was unlikely that cases related to the election would get through the process given that time frame.



Rusbridger also told Reuters that cases involving President Donald Trump’s posts were not among those that the board had looked at in trial runs.



“We haven’t done a Trump case,” said Rusbridger, a former editor-in-chief of Britain’s Guardian newspaper. “We have done a nudity case, we’ve done a blasphemy case.”







Facebook faced employee backlash in recent months over its decision to take no action over posts from Trump containing misleading claims about mail-in voting and inflammatory language about anti-racism protests. Its smaller rival Twitter, by contrast, attached fact-checking labels and warnings to the same posts.



Tech watchdog Accountable Tech, which launched a campaign asking the board’s members to demand “real authority” or resign, said in a statement on Thursday the launch would be “too late to address Facebook’s deficiencies ahead of the election.”



The board will initially review only appeals over posts that Facebook has taken down, rather than content the company decides to leave up. Some experts say that means it will be of little use in addressing problems such as misinformation and hate speech.



It will also at first only deal with individual posts, not Facebook ads, or groups.



Rusbridger said the board had not yet made any changes to its remit.



Rusbridger declined to comment on Facebook’s policy of exempting politicians’ speech and ads from its third-party fact-checking program, though he said: “I can’t imagine we won’t have a case brought to us on that.”







‘WIDER RESONANCE’



Since the first 20 members of the board were announced in May, they have had virtual meetings to discuss issues such as how to select cases and deal with minority opinions, Rusbridger said.



Rusbridger said the board would be looking for cases with “wider resonance,” though precedents set by decisions on individual posts would not be binding in future cases.



Facebook can also ask the board for policy recommendations though it does not have to act on them, a framework that was criticized by some U.S. Democratic lawmakers.



The board, which includes a former Danish prime minister, a Yemeni Nobel Peace Prize laureate, law experts and rights advocates from around the world, is expected to grow to a group of 40 members.



Rusbridger said the board was thinking about how it will select these candidates but was not yet choosing more members.

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(Reuters) &#8211; Tesla Inc&#8217;s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/companies/TSLA.O">TSLA.O</a>&nbsp;plan to produce lithium for electric vehicle batteries close to its Nevada Gigafactory faces stark challenges from the outset, including an onerous permitting process, uncertain access to water and questions about unproven methodologies.Slideshow&nbsp;( 2 images )



Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk told shareholders on Tuesday Tesla has secured rights to 10,000 acres in Nevada where it aims to produce lithium from clay deposits using a process developed internally.



The move would make Tesla the first company in the world to commercially produce the white metal from clay. Lithium is produced either from brine, commonly found in South America, or spodumene hard rock, usually in Australia.



In Nevada, Tesla plans to mix clay with table salt and then add water, which it says causes a reaction where the salt would leach out with lithium, which can then be extracted. The leftover clay would be put back in the earth to mitigate environmental damage.



“It’s a very sustainable way of obtaining lithium,” said Musk, who did not say where in Nevada the company had obtained the lithium rights or whether development has started.







The plan drew backlash almost immediately, with critics describing Musk’s plan as too simplistic and light on details. Returning rock to the earth after minerals are extracted, for instance, is already common industry practice through the use of tailings dams.



“This plan from Tesla brings up a lot more questions than it answers,” said Chris Berry, an independent lithium industry consultant. “Are we just supposed to take Elon Musk’s word for it that the cost will be lower than existing lithium projects?”



Palo Alto, Calif.-based Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.



Nevada already has several lithium clay projects under development, including one from Lithium Americas Corp&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/companies/LAC.TO">LAC.TO</a>&nbsp;that has been seeking federal permit approval for more than a decade and another from ioneer Ltd&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/companies/INR.AX">INR.AX</a>.



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Lithium Americas has said it is confident it can successfully extract lithium from clay through a process that involves acid leaching. Tesla said its process won’t involve acid, fueling further questions.



“If producing lithium in commercial amounts at battery quality grades from clay was feasible, why isn’t it already being done?” said Berry.



Any lithium project from Tesla would require an intensive application process for necessary permits that could stretch on for years.



&#8220;Mining lithium is very challenging,&#8221; said Pedro Palandrani of the Global X Lithium &amp; Battery Technology ETF&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/companies/LIT.P">LIT.P</a>, which holds shares in Tesla and lithium producers. &#8220;If Tesla really wants to fly solo, we&#8217;re talking about four to five years to really see any kind of lithium production.&#8221;







Tesla’s plan also would likely require substantial amounts of water, forcing the company to battle with cattle ranchers for access to underground reservoirs in the arid state.



Albemarle Corp&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/companies/ALB.N">ALB.N</a>&nbsp;operated the only existing U.S. lithium mine at a site roughly 200 miles (322 km) north of Las Vegas until it shut it down last month.



Operational since the late 1960s, the site produced less than 5,000 tonnes of lithium per year, a relatively small amount and far less than Tesla would need.

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LONDON (Reuters) &#8211; Achieving net zero emissions by mid-century would cost an estimated $1 trillion-$2 trillion a year of additional investments, or 1-1.5% of global gross domestic product, a report by the Energy Transitions Commission (ETC) said on Wednesday.



To limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius this century, global greenhouse gas emissions will need to reach net zero.



When this is achieved, the reduction in 2050 living standards in developed and developing countries would amount to less than 0.5% of global GDP, the report said.



The ETC is a global coalition of 40 energy producers, industrial companies and financial institutions, including ArcelorMittal, HSBC, BP, Shell, Orsted and Bank of America, which are committed to achieving a carbon-free economy by 2050.



The report said dramatic improvements in energy efficiency will need to be made; annual global electricity supply will have to grow four to five times to reach 90,000-115,000 terawatt hours and the annual pace of wind and solar capacity will need to be five to six times the increase achieved in 2019.



In addition, buildings, transport and industry sectors need to be electrified and hydrogen should be used in cases where that is not possible. Any remaining energy use should be decarbonised using carbon capture and storage and sustainable bioenergy.



“There is no doubt that it is technically and economically possible to reach the zero-carbon economy which we need by 2050; and zero must mean zero, not a plan which relies on the permanent and large-scale use of ‘offsets’ to balance continued emissions,” said co-chair of the ETC, Adair Turner.



“But action in the next decade is crucial – otherwise it will be too late,” he added.



China has the resources and technology to become a rich, developed carbon-free economy by 2050. All developing nations should be able to reach net-zero emissions by 2060 at the latest but will require development investment to attract private green investors, the ETC said.

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