T20 Challenge announcement shows women’s cricket has bounced back in India: Shantha Rangaswamy | Cricket News

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Shantha Rangaswamy. (TOI Photo)

MUMBAI: The BCCI’s decision to host the third edition of the Women’s T20 Challenge in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) from November 1-10, involving three teams, has pleased Board Apex Council member and former India women’s captain Shantha Rangaswamy.
Rangaswamy believes that the announcement of the tournament is a reminder to those who were pessimistic about the future of women’s cricket in India after the BCCI cancelled the India women’s tour to England for a Tri-Series in September due to a the covid situation, that women’s cricket in the country is in safe hands.
“I welcome IPL Governing Council chairman Brijesh Patel’s statement that three teams will play in the women’s T20 Challenge this year. I would like to thank him, and everyone connected with this decision at the BCCI. Just a fortnight back, people were predicting a doom’s day for women’s cricket in India. This is just a reminder to them that nothing is permanent. Women’s cricket has bounced back, and will bounce back in the future too,” Rangaswamy, , who is a nominee of the Indian Cricketers Association (ICA) in the BCCI Apex Council, told TOI on Monday.
“This is excellent news . Our ODI World Cup campaign to finally kick start . A big thank you to @SGanguly99@BCCI@JayShah and thank you @BoriaMajumdar for your support to women’s cricket,” India’s ODI captain Mithali Raj had tweeted on Sunday after getting the news.

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Expression of opinion cannot constitute contempt of court: Prashant Bhushan to SC | India News

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NEW DELHI: The expression of opinion, “however outspoken, disagreeable or unpalatable to some”, cannot constitute contempt of court, activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan said on Monday in his reply to a show cause notice issued by the Supreme Court.
The top court on July 22 issued notice to Bhushan for hearing on August 5 the criminal contempt proceedings initiated against him for his two alleged derogatory tweets against the judiciary, observing his statements prima facie “brought the administration of justice in disrepute”.
In a 142-page reply affidavit filed through lawyer Kamini Jaiswal, the activist lawyer has referred to several apex court judgements, speeches of former and serving judges on contempt of court and the “stifling of dissent” in a democracy and his views on judicial actions in some cases.
Bhushan also stood by his two tweets.
“The respondent (Bhushan) states that expression of his opinion however outspoken, disagreeable or however unpalatable to some, cannot constitute contempt of court. This proposition has been laid down by several judgments of the Supreme Court and in foreign jurisdictions such as Britain, USA and Canada,” he submitted.
He also referred to the freedom of speech and expression under Article 19 (1)(a) of the Constitution, and said this right was the ultimate guardian of all the values that the Constitution holds sacred.
“The relationship between Article l9 (1A) and Article 129 (this gives power of contempt to SC) is governed by Article 19(2). Article l9 (2) (reasonable restrictions) recognizes the fetters that can be placed on freedom of speech & expression under the court's power to punish for contempt under Article 129.
“ 'Reasonable restriction' being the operative word under Article l9(2), any exercise of contempt powers by the Supreme Court must necessarily not be of a nature that goes beyond 'reasonable restrictions',” Bhushan said in the affidavit.
To prevent a citizen from forming, holding, and expressing a ‘bonafide opinion' in public interest on any institution that is a creature of the Constitution is not a reasonable restriction and violates the basic principles on which our democracy is founded, he said.
The affidavit said the power of contempt under Article 129 of the Constitution should be “utilized to aid in administration of justice and not to shut out voices that seek accountability from the court for the errors of omissions and commissions”.
It said that to curb constructive criticism from “persons of knowledge and standing” is not a 'reasonable restriction'.
Preventing citizens from demanding accountability and reforms and advocating for the same by generating public opinion is not a 'reasonable restriction', it said, adding that the Article 129 cannot be pressed into service to stifle bonafide criticism.
The affidavit also raised objections related to procedures on taking up the contempt petition filed by one Mehak Maheshwari on July 21.
Earlier, the apex court had issued notice to Bhushan, and had also sought assistance of Attorney General K K Venugopal.
While referring to the tweets by Bhushan, the apex court had said these statements are prima facie capable of "undermining the dignity and authority" of the institution of the Supreme Court in general and the office of Chief Justice of India in particular, in the eyes of public at large.
Recently, Bhushan filed a separate plea seeking recall of the show cause notice of July 22 order in the contempt proceeding initiated for his alleged contemptuous tweets against the judiciary.
Simultaneously, Bhushan along with former Union Minister Arun Shourie and veteran journalist N Ram have also moved the Supreme Court challenging the constitutional validity of a legal provision, dealing with criminal contempt on the ground of “scandalizing the court”, saying it was violative freedom of speech and right to equality.

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Poland’s Supreme Court Declares Presidential Election Valid

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Poland’s Supreme Court on Monday upheld the results of President Andrzej Duda’s narrow victory in presidential elections last month, the country’s closest contest since the fall of communism in 1989, a decision that clears the path for the country’s conservative Law and Justice party to continue in power.

Thousands of supporters of the opposition candidate and rights groups had filed legal challenges in the country’s highest court demanding that the election be reassessed after Mr. Duda edged out Rafal Trzaskowski, the opposition candidate and the liberal mayor of Warsaw. Mr. Duda secured 51.03 percent of the vote, while Mr. Trzaskowski won 48.97 percent, in a mid-July runoff.

Opponents of Mr. Duda pointed to many irregularities during the campaign and election, including pushing forward with the vote despite the coronavirus pandemic, limited access to the vote for Poles abroad, and the role of the public media and government officials in the campaign.

Miroslaw Wyrzykowski, a former judge of the country’s constitutional tribunal, was among those who criticized the court’s decision.

“The whole electoral procedure from the beginning until the end violates the Constitution,” he said in an interview. “We will have a president elected in an unconstitutional manner.”

The court’s decision was not a surprise in light of sweeping changes to the country’s judicial system introduced by the governing party, which drew widespread condemnation from the European Union and international human rights organizations, as well as from Poland’s opposition and some of its judges.

The country’s judges had been selected for decades by an independent council, but legislation signed by Mr. Duda in 2017 introduced changes that gave the president more direct power over the Supreme Court.

Joanna Lemanska, who heads the chamber of the Supreme Court that ruled on the validity of the election — and who was appointed by Mr. Duda — had stepped away from the process, but critics said her departure was not enough to remove the likelihood of bias.

“I had no doubt what the decision would be,” said Michal Wawrykiewicz, a lawyer from the Free Courts Initiative and the Committee for Defense of Justice. “We are not talking here about an independent court, but a party tribunal.”

Mr. Wawrykiewicz pointed out that the court had ruled that an overwhelming majority of complaints did not fulfill the formal criteria, and were not even assessed on the grounds of their merit.

“The European Court of Justice will rule on Sept. 22 whether the chamber of the Supreme Court fulfills the criteria of an independent court,” he said, “which will give us answers to many questions.”

Given the margin of defeat — almost half a million votes — the supporters of Mr. Trzaskowski who lodged complaints after the election said the move was not intended to overturn the result of the election, but to publicly question the validity of the vote and demonstrate that the elections were unfair.

“These elections were not equal, didn’t meet democratic standards, they were dishonest,” Borys Budka, the head of the main opposition party, Civic Platform, said after the election. “Because of that, we demand that they are declared invalid.”

Other opposition members of Parliament echoed his concern, including Kamila Gasiuk-Pihowicz, who questioned the decision in a post on Twitter and added, “Who needs a Supreme Court that will accept everything the authorities want?”

The majority of issues with the election were reported by voters from abroad, where tens of thousands of a record 520,000 ballots may have gone uncounted.

In Britain, more than 30,000 ballots — 16.6 percent of the total number of registered Polish voters in that country — went missing, according to the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza. Cezary Tomczyk, the head of Mr. Trzaskowski’s campaign, said it had also received reports from across Poland of ballots that were not properly stamped, a requirement for them to be validated.

Some of the claims filed to the court that questioned the validity of the election concerned the role of the country’s public media in what critics called an unfair electoral campaign.

But on Monday the court determined that the activity of public media outlets during the campaign did not limit free choice.

Representatives from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which sent an election monitoring mission to Poland, said that the public media had “failed in its duty to offer balanced and impartial coverage.” Instead, it said, the media “acted as a campaign vehicle for the incumbent and frequently portrayed his main challenger as a threat to Polish values and national interests.”

Even if the vote itself is considered fair, “the use of public funds, the engagement of the so-called public media, caused the situation to be unequal,” said Mr. Budka of the opposition.

Aleksander Stepkowski, the spokesman for the Supreme Court, said on Sunday that the court had processed all of the complaints, and found 93 of the 5,847 complaints valid, not enough to influence the overall result of the election.

The court said that the complaint filed by Mr. Trzaskowski’s campaign committee did not contain sufficient proof to sustain its claims.

Anatol Magdziarz contributed reporting.

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A Hospital Forgot to Bill Her Coronavirus Test. It Cost Her $1,980.

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The New York Times is investigating the costs associated with testing and treatment for the coronavirus and how the pandemic is changing health care in America. You can read more about the project and submit your medical bills here.

When Debbie Krebs got the bill for a March emergency room visit, she immediately noticed something was missing: her coronavirus test.

Ms. Krebs, a lawyer who focuses on insurance issues, had gone to the Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, N.J., with lung pain and a cough. A doctor ran tests and scans to rule out other diseases before swabbing her nose. A week later, the medical laboratory called, telling her it was negative.

Ms. Krebs had a clear memory of the experience, particularly the doctor saying the coronavirus test would make her feel as if she had to sneeze. She wondered whether the doctor could have lied about performing the test, or if her swab could have gone missing. (But if so, why had the laboratory called her with results?)

The absence of the coronavirus test made a big price difference. Congress, Ms. Krebs had heard, barred insurers from charging patients for visits meant to diagnosis coronavirus. Without the test, Ms. Krebs didn’t qualify for that protection and owed $1,980. She called the hospital to explain the situation but immediately ran into roadblocks.

“When I called the hospital, they said, ‘You did not get a coronavirus test,’” she said. “I told them I absolutely did.”

Across the country, Americans like Ms. Krebs are receiving surprise bills for care connected with coronavirus. Tests can cost between $199 and $6,408 at the same location. A coming wave of treatment bills could be hundreds of multiples higher, especially for those who receive intensive care or have symptoms that linger for months. Services that patients expect to be covered often aren’t.

This patchwork of medical billing is one reason we’re starting something new today: soliciting your medical bills. We’re asking you to send us copies of your bills for coronavirus testing and treatment, so we can understand what costs look like across the country. We want to know how patients are managing their medical bills in the midst of a pandemic. This is part of our larger effort to understand how the pandemic is reshaping American health care.

American medical billing is unlike that of any other developed country. The government does not regulate health care prices, but instead lets insurers and hospitals negotiate fees. Those deliberations happen in secret, and patients often do not learn the cost of their care until a bill shows up in the mail.

Sometimes, insurers give reporters a peek at their data. That’s how I learned that a laboratory in Texas had charged $2,315 for individual coronavirus tests. But more often, they keep that information confidential, which is why we need readers’ bills and explanation-of-benefit documents for any care related to coronavirus.

Readers’ bills have already shown that surprise medical bills for coronavirus have been in the United States nearly as long as the disease itself.

In late February, an American man and his 3-year-old daughter were hit with medical bills totaling thousands of dollars for care received during a government-mandated quarantine. This was only weeks after Washington State announced the country’s first known case.

“I assumed it was all being paid for,” Frank Wucinski, the patient, said at the time. “We didn’t have a choice. When the bills showed up, it was just a pit in my stomach, like, ‘How do I pay for this?’”

The federal government has since resolved to give Americans special protections against outlandish medical bills. Congress enacted new rules to make the tests a rare oasis within the American health care system — the price had to be public; and co-payments, deductibles or other charges weren’t allowed.

Or at least, Congress tried to. The experiences of patients who had or suspected they might have Covid-19 show how hard it is to write different billing rules for a tiny sliver of the country’s $3 trillion in health spending. Numerous doctor’s offices and hospitals do not post the cash prices for their coronavirus tests, despite the federal requirement to do so. Some patients have encountered unwarranted co-payments as doctors and hospitals have stuck to their regular billing habits. Others have failed to qualify for the protections because they did not receive a coronavirus test as part of their care — or, in the case of Ms. Krebs, had it left off the bill.

Aside from mandating that Covid-19 tests cost the patient nothing, there are no new rules to protect insured Americans from coronavirus treatment bills. Health policy experts worry that even those with good insurance could end up facing high costs. One outcome they envision: A patient goes to an in-network hospital for coronavirus treatment, but that hospital is overwhelmed and has no beds left. The patient is transferred to an out-of-network hospital, and gets significant bills as a result.

“Our system is so complicated,” said Karen Pollitz, a senior fellow at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “If things aren’t exactly right or weren’t coded correctly, you get thrown into the blizzard.”

The protections that do exist are based on the receipt of something that can be in short supply: a coronavirus test. If doctors can’t obtain a test and turn to other diagnostic methods — testing for other diseases, for example — the patient will have to cover the visit’s cost.

The Trump administration has also set aside an undisclosed sum to pay for uninsured Americans’ testing and treatment, a program that has become increasingly important as millions have lost coverage in the economic downturn. So far, that fund has paid out $348 million to providers, but it is unknown how much money remains or what happens when it runs out.

Billing challenges have persisted, despite these new rules and programs. Many stem from the decision by legislators to condition aid on receipt of a test.

Dr. Kao-Ping Chua, a pediatrician in Michigan, started running into problems in March when he had patients with coronavirus-like symptoms seeking tests. His health system, like many others, required patients to undergo testing for other conditions before coronavirus.

“I had to tell my patients that, if the test I run first comes back positive and says you have the common cold, you’ll have to pay for it,” he said. “But if you test negative, that allows you to get the Covid test, and that waives your cost sharing.”

Luciano Aita, 35, sought treatment in early July at St. Mary’s Medical Center in San Francisco after his “chest started closing up” and he felt as if he couldn’t breath.

The Coronavirus Outbreak ›

Frequently Asked Questions

Updated August 3, 2020

• I’m a small-business owner. Can I get relief?

  • The stimulus bills enacted in March offer help for the millions of American small businesses. Those eligible for aid are businesses and nonprofit organizations with fewer than 500 workers, including sole proprietorships, independent contractors and freelancers. Some larger companies in some industries are also eligible. The help being offered, which is being managed by the Small Business Administration, includes the Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program. But lots of folks have not yet seen payouts. Even those who have received help are confused: The rules are draconian, and some are stuck sitting on money they don’t know how to use. Many small-business owners are getting less than they expected or not hearing anything at all.

• What are my rights if I am worried about going back to work?

• Should I refinance my mortgage?

  • It could be a good idea, because mortgage rates have never been lower. Refinancing requests have pushed mortgage applications to some of the highest levels since 2008, so be prepared to get in line. But defaults are also up, so if you’re thinking about buying a home, be aware that some lenders have tightened their standards.

• What is school going to look like in September?

  • It is unlikely that many schools will return to a normal schedule this fall, requiring the grind of online learning, makeshift child care and stunted workdays to continue. California’s two largest public school districts — Los Angeles and San Diego — said on July 13, that instruction will be remote-only in the fall, citing concerns that surging coronavirus infections in their areas pose too dire a risk for students and teachers. Together, the two districts enroll some 825,000 students. They are the largest in the country so far to abandon plans for even a partial physical return to classrooms when they reopen in August. For other districts, the solution won’t be an all-or-nothing approach. Many systems, including the nation’s largest, New York City, are devising hybrid plans that involve spending some days in classrooms and other days online. There’s no national policy on this yet, so check with your municipal school system regularly to see what is happening in your community.

• Is the coronavirus airborne?

  • The coronavirus can stay aloft for hours in tiny droplets in stagnant air, infecting people as they inhale, mounting scientific evidence suggests. This risk is highest in crowded indoor spaces with poor ventilation, and may help explain super-spreading events reported in meatpacking plants, churches and restaurants. It’s unclear how often the virus is spread via these tiny droplets, or aerosols, compared with larger droplets that are expelled when a sick person coughs or sneezes, or transmitted through contact with contaminated surfaces, said Linsey Marr, an aerosol expert at Virginia Tech. Aerosols are released even when a person without symptoms exhales, talks or sings, according to Dr. Marr and more than 200 other experts, who have outlined the evidence in an open letter to the World Health Organization.

“I was super scared and worried about Covid, since I never had experienced anything like that before,” he said. A doctor checked his blood pressure, listened to his lungs and took his temperature — but did not administer a coronavirus test. He recalls being told that the emergency room was giving the test only to “critically ill” patients, and he did not qualify.

Mr. Aita, who lost his job at a record store at the start of the pandemic and is uninsured, received a document at the end of his visit estimating he would owe $1,157. If the hospital had tested him for coronavirus, the federal fund could have covered the visit entirely.

Last week, he received a medical bill for the visit that was only $350. He initially thought this was good news — that the hospital had dropped his charge. But when he looked into the issue, he learned this was an additional charge from the doctor who saw him.

“I understood that if it was related to Covid, it would be taken care of,” Mr. Aita said. “It’s a pandemic, I’m unemployed, and now I’m dealing with the stress of this situation.”

A spokesman for Dignity Health, which owns St. Mary’s Medical Center, said the hospital uses C.D.C. protocols to decide who is tested, but he declined to comment on Mr. Aita’s case.

“We have suspended billing patients for their portion of their bill for the testing and treatment of Covid-19 while we work with insurers and the government to exhaust financial assistance options for patients,” Chad Burns, the spokesman, said. Mr. Aita, however, does not appear to qualify for those protections because he did not receive a test.

As coronavirus spreads and hospitalizations mount, so will the ranks of those managing unexpected bills.

The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that a fifth of all coronavirus hospitalizations could result in a surprise medical bill from an out-of-network doctor who became involved in the patient’s care. The nonpartisan foundation also projects that, on average, an American with employer-sponsored coverage would face $1,300 in costs for a coronavirus hospitalization.

Congressional staffers working on the issue say they’ve come across cases in which health providers are not following the new rules on coronavirus billing. The providers are charging patients for services when they shouldn’t, or not posting their cash prices for testing online as they are legally required to.

“Billing offices may just be doing what they’re used to — looking at your card, seeing that it says $30 co-pay and collecting it,” Ms. Pollitz said. “The person at the front desk may not know you got a test. The protections aren’t airtight.”

Congress is currently split over how far to go in protecting coronavirus patients from surprise medical bills. House Democrats have supported mandating that insurers cover all costs related to treatment as part of the HEROES Act, a larger stimulus package.

Senate Republicans introduced their stimulus proposal, the HEALS Act, last week. It does not include a similar mandate.

In the case of Ms. Krebs, she shared her bill with me after reading another article I wrote about coronavirus test billing. Together, we tracked down a record for her coronavirus test to prove that it did indeed occur.

Two days after I inquired about the case, the Valley Hospital resubmitted her bill with the coronavirus test included. Her insurer, Aetna, reprocessed the bill and confirmed that she would no longer be charged.

“We were trying to come up with extraordinary processes quickly to react to the many changes placed on all of us, including payer requirements of coverage,” Josette Portalatin, an assistant vice president at the hospital, wrote in an email to Ms. Krebs. “We apologize that your lab Covid test was not on your original claim, but happy to report we tracked down the issue.”

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World Snooker Championship 2020: Martin Gould says 'lockdown saved me'

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Gould featured at the Crucible last year where he was beaten by Mark Williams in the first round

Venue: Crucible Theatre, Sheffield Dates: 31 July-16 August
Coverage: Watch live on BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Four and Red Button, with uninterrupted coverage on BBC iPlayer, BBC Sport website and BBC Sport app. Full details and times.

Qualifier Martin Gould says lockdown "saved" him after he was driven into a "dark place" by abuse on social media.

Former German Masters champion Gould, 38, has dropped to number 60 in the world after struggling in recent years.

The Englishman, who has a career-high ranking of 11, faces Scotland's Stephen Maguire in the first round of the World Championship on Tuesday.

"My mind, body and soul weren't in it," said Gould. "I fell completely out of love with the game."

Gould has not progressed past the third round in the 10 events he has competed in this season, but he won his three qualifying matches - including beating former world champion Graeme Dott in the final round - to book his 10th appearance at the Crucible in Sheffield.

"My dad and my girlfriend were looking out for me because they knew there was something wrong," he said.

"I'd get to tournaments and as soon as I arrived I'd be looking at train times to see when I could go home. I just didn't want to be there.

"Lockdown basically helped me get my head back into wanting to play snooker again. It was hard but thankfully my family and friends have helped me to get back focused and ready."

Gould previously said he had a "retirement speech ready" because he was not expecting to stay on the tour, but progression earned him a new two-year deal.

"I was in a pretty dark place," he added. "You get a lot of stick from social media and a lot of people don't understand how we feel when we receive those kinds of messages.

"This is a game that can be really hard not just mentally, but physically. I've had lots of back and neck issues, and some days I don't even know if I'm going to get out of bed.

"They don't understand how much pressure we can be under just to pot balls."

Sign up to My Sport to follow snooker news on the BBC app.

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TikTok Ban: Creators Respond to Trump

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It was a weekend of chaos on TikTok — unleashed on Friday night when President Trump said, while aboard Air Force One, that he might ban the video app.

The surprise announcement sent influencers in droves onto livestreams to give possibly premature teary and heartfelt goodbyes to their fans, asking them to join them on apps like Instagram, YouTube and Triller. For agencies that manage talent on the platform, it was a long weekend of hand-holding and downloading TikTok archives for posterity. Some users, in a last-hurrah bid for virality, reposted TikToks they said had previously been removed by the service for violating nudity or profanity guidelines.

Others tried to make light of the situation. Addison Easterling, 19, a TikTok star who dropped out of Louisiana State University to pursue a full-time influencer career, posted a video of herself pretending to knock on the college’s doors to let her back in. “Me at LSU tomorrow,” she captioned it.

TikTok is known mostly for dance videos and comedic skits, but that silliness can obscure two facts: TikTok has become a powerhouse in the entertainment industry and the primary platform that music executives and talent agents use to scout the next big act. And, at the same time, especially as the election nears, the app has become an information and organizing hub for Gen Z activists and politically-minded young people.

TikTok has had a fraught relationship with the United States government for some time. Several administration officials, including the president, fear the app is a security risk because its parent company, ByteDance, is Chinese, potentially giving the Chinese government access to American user data. TikTok and ByteDance have vehemently denied any relationship with the Chinese government.

The president’s comments suggesting he would shut down TikTok in the United States stalled ByteDance’s negotiations to sell the app to Microsoft as a way to address the security concerns. On Sunday, Microsoft said that it had resumed talks after consulting with the president, giving some hope to users that the app would survive.

Young users say TikTok is a crucial outlet for education about climate change, systemic racism and the Black Lives Matter movement. The talk of a ban only politicized them further, with many TikTokers believing Mr. Trump’s threats were a direct response to their campaigns against him.

“TikTok is to Black Lives Matter what Twitter was to the Arab Spring,” said Kareem Rahma, 34, a TikTok creator with nearly 400,000 followers on the app. Mr. Rahma’s TikToks from the Black Lives Matter protests in Minneapolis garnered tens of millions of views. “I saw a lot of youth on the ground TikToking the protests as opposed to livestreaming, tweeting or Instagramming,” he said. “The conversations these kids are having with each other are essential.”

In June, teenage TikTok users claimed responsibility for inflating attendance expectations, leading to rows upon rows of empty seats, for Mr. Trump’s rally in Tulsa, Okla., after thousands of them registered for tickets to the event that they had no plans to redeem.

TikTok users have also waged coordinated campaigns to rate Mr. Trump’s businesses poorly on Google, to spam online surveys aimed at Trump supporters with useless information and to damage the Trump campaign’s e-commerce store by collecting in their shopping baskets items they never intend to buy.

Ellie Zeiler, 16, who has 6.3 million followers on TikTok, said that Mr. Trump’s threat to ban the app may even sway more young people to vote against him. “I think that a lot of people didn’t like Trump before, and this has driven people to not like him even more,” she said.

“For many kids, politics feel very distant,” said Eitan Bernath, 18, who has 1.2 million followers on TikTok. “This might be the first time it hits home for a lot of kids.”

On Sunday, nine TikTok creators with a collective 54 million followers, including Brittany Broski, Hope Schwing and Mitchell Crawford, published an open letter addressed to Mr. Trump on Medium.

“TikTok has enabled the kinds of interactions that could never take place on the likes of Facebook and Instagram,” they wrote. “Our generation has grown up on the internet, but our vision of the internet is going to require more than two gatekeepers. Why not use this as an opportunity to level the playing field?” they urged.

Vanessa Pappas, the general manager of TikTok North America, attempted to quell concerns on Saturday. “We’re not planning on going anywhere,” she said in a statement released on the app.

Disrupting the new entertainment business

The TikTok creator Curtis Newbill, 24, is one of thousands of young creators who has found fame through the app.

When he walked into a friend’s house in Los Angeles on Friday night, his stomach sank. He was there for a gathering with fellow TikTok stars known as the Sway Boys. “They were like, ‘Did you hear about TikTok? It’s getting banned,’” Mr. Newbill said.

Mr. Newbill’s next few hours were a blur. He remained at the gathering and tried not to think about the situation, but a pit in his stomach grew throughout the night. He went live on the app, telling his 4.3 million followers to follow him on Instagram.

All night, Mr. Newbill fielded a barrage of texts from concerned family and friends. He stayed up until 6:30 a.m., waiting for any information about his future.

Like thousands of other entertainers who have made the pilgrimage to Los Angeles in the most recent West Coast entertainment gold rush, Mr. Newbill relies solely on income from TikTok to make a living. “I live song deal to song deal,” he said.

The loss of TikTok would upend large swaths of the entertainment industry that have just been completely reoriented around the app.

TikTok has rewritten the pop charts, becoming a new default for how labels and aspiring artists promote their songs. And TikTok is where major brands like American Eagle, Chipotle and others spend millions to reach the next generation of consumers.

“I’ve lost brand deals in the past week,” Ms. Zeiler said. “They’re saying, ‘We don’t want to do this anymore.’ They’re worried if TikTok gets taken down, they’re not going to get their full potential on the deal.”

Management teams worked all night on Friday to back up their clients’ videos using FYP. RIP, a tool that downloads users' TikTok videos and emails them copies. Several managers held conference calls with skittish brands that were seeking to cancel deals. “We’re preparing for the worst,” said Mario Ayuso, an influencer manager.

“A lot of the newer talent I work with began their career on TikTok and it has been the foundation for everything they know today,” said Keith Dorsey, another talent manager. “They are concerned, worried and somewhat freaked out. One of them actually planned on quitting his job tomorrow to take his TikTok career to the next level. Our group chats are on fire right now.”

Emerging platforms and competitors see a moment

If the app’s potential shutdown or instability around a sudden sale has any silver lining, it’s a flood of new users to smaller platforms. Clash, a new short-form video app founded by Brendon McNerney, a former Vine star, became available on Friday night after the news and shot up the app store rankings on Saturday. Byte and Dubsmash, two other short form video apps, have also begun actively recruiting TikTok stars.

Last Wednesday, Triller, an app that functions similarly to TikTok, announced it had hired the 18-year-old TikTok star Josh Richards as the platform’s chief strategy officer, and successfully wooed Mr. Richards along with two other large TikTok stars, Griffin Johnson, 21, and Noah Beck, 19, to join the platform as investors.

Instagram is also offering TikTok creators deals of hundreds of thousands of dollars to create content on Reels, its new product with similarities, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Perez Hilton, a longtime celebrity news chronicler who has amassed 850,000 followers on TikTok, said he hoped that just the threat of a ban would serve as a note of caution for the young talent on the app. “These influencers on TikTok can’t have all their eggs in one basket,” he said. “You have to be everywhere,” he said, if you want to stay famous.

“You need to hustle,” he said. “A lot of the TikTokers that are just pretty, those are the ones that are really going to struggle. Pretty doesn’t age well and it doesn’t translate. The ones that are willing to work on and off TikTok and other platforms, they’re the ones that will be able to continue to thrive.”

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Portugal reports no coronavirus deaths for first time since March

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LISBON (Reuters) - Portugal reported no coronavirus-related deaths on Monday from a day earlier for the first time since mid-March, when a lockdown was put in place, and the lowest number of new infections in almost three months.

"It has been very difficult in recent times - we are very happy this happened," the secretary of state for health, Antonio Sales, said as he teared up during a news conference.

"I want to leave this message of hope to the Portuguese but I want to ask them to help us maintain these numbers," he said.

Portugal's total confirmed cases rose by 106 from Sunday to 51,569, with 62% of new infections reported in and around Lisbon, where localised outbreaks on the outskirts have worried authorities for the past two months.

The death toll remained unchanged at 1,738.

The country, heavily dependent on tourism, began lifting restrictions imposed during a six-week lockdown on May 4 and was initially hailed as a success story in its fight against the disease.

But the outbreaks around Lisbon forced the government to reinstate some measures in affected areas, and led several European nations, including Ireland, Belgium and Finland, to impose travel restrictions on Portugal.

Portugal was also left off a list of dozens of countries Britain considered safe enough for travel without having to quarantine upon return.

The need for holidaymakers returning to Britain from Portugal to quarantine for 14 days has particularly affected the Algarve, a region popular for its beaches and golf courses.

(Reporting by Catarina Demony; Additional reporting Patricia Vicente Rua, Editing by Andrei Khalip; Editing by Giles Elgood)

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