The Albanian Cabinet decided on Thursday to shut down TikTok for 12 months, blaming the popular video-sharing platform for inciting violence and bullying, especially among children.

Education Minister Ogerta Manastirliu said officials are in contact with TikTok on installing filters like parental control, age verification and the inclusion of the Albanian language in the application.

Authorities had conducted 1,300 meetings with some 65,000 parents who “recommended and were in favor of the shut down or limiting the TikTok platform,” the minister said.

The Cabinet initiated the move last year after a teen stabbed another teenager to death in November after a quarrel that started on TikTok.

TikTok did not immediately respond to a request to comment on the government’s decision.

When Prime Minister Edi Rama said in December they were aiming at closing the social media platform, TikTok asked for “urgent clarity from the Albanian government” on the case of the stabbed teenager.

On Thursday Rama said they were in a “positive dialogue with the company,” and that TikTok would visit the country soon to offer “a series of measures on increasing the security for children.”

The company said it had “found no evidence that the perpetrator or victim had TikTok accounts, and multiple reports have in fact confirmed videos leading up to this incident were being posted on another platform, not TikTok.”

Albanian children comprise the largest group of TikTok users in the country, according to researchers.

There has been increasing concern from Albanian parents after reports of children being inspired by content on social media to take knives to school, or cases of bullying promoted by stories they see on TikTok.

Authorities have increased police presence at some schools and set up other measures including training programs for teachers, students and their parents.

The opposition has not agreed with TikTok’s closure and has set March 15 for a protest against the move. It said the ban was “an act of intolerance, fear and terror from free thinking and expression.”

TikTok, which is operated by Chinese technology firm ByteDance, has faced questions in many countries and was briefly offline in the United States recently to comply with a law that requires ByteDance to divest the app or be banned in the U.S.

The app suspended its services in the US for less than a day before restoring service following assurances from Trump that he would postpone banning it.

Earlier this week, the UK’s data protection watchdog said was investigating how the app uses the personal information of 13 to 17-year-olds to deliver content recommendations to them.

The Information Commissioner’s Office said that there are growing concerns around how social media platforms were using data generated by children’s online activity to power their recommendation algorithms, and the potential for young people to see inappropriate or harmful content as a result.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, who lawmakers voted to impeach and was indicted on criminal charges for declaring martial law last December, was cleared to be released from detention on Friday.

In its ruling, the court said the crime of insurrection is not included within the investigative jurisdiction of the Corruption Investigation Office for High-Ranking Officials (CIO) – the agency that had requested the arrest warrant against Yoon.

The court also said it was questionable whether the insurrection charges indictment was filed after the defendant’s detention period had expired. It therefore canceled Yoon’s arrest warrant to “ensure procedural clarity and eliminate doubts regarding the legality of the investigation process,” it said.

Any further unresolved “legal controversies” during the criminal trial could “serve as grounds for annulment in a higher court and may also provide grounds for a retrial even after a significant amount of time has passed,” it added.

The court will now send its ruling to the detention center – which said it expects to release Yoon by the end of Friday after receiving the documents.

Yoon’s lawyers praised the ruling, saying in a statement that the court had “set the definition straight, declaring what laws and principles are,” and that its decision showed “the rule of law is alive in this country.”

The ruling adds to the uncertainty swirling around Yoon’s various legal battles and the country’s political future. South Korea’s government has been in disarray for months, with parliament also voting to impeach its prime minister and the previous acting president.

Yoon’s criminal charges are separate from his impeachment trial. The country’s highest court, the Constitutional Court, is expected to decide in the coming weeks whether to uphold his impeachment or reinstate Yoon to office.

Friday’s ruling means Yoon can now await the impeachment verdict from home instead of in detention.

His expected release will undoubtedly dismay the country’s opposition – but be celebrated by supporters, many of whom have regularly gathered outside his detention center since January.

Kwon Young-se, chairman of Yoon’s ruling People Power Party, welcomed the court’s decision on Friday, calling it “an important moment to confirm that the rule of law and justice of the Republic of Korea are alive.”

He added that he hoped the Constitutional Court “will make a fair and just ruling based solely on constitutional values” during the impeachment trial.

Pope Francis thanked his supporters for their prayers on Thursday in a breathless audio message that nonetheless lifted spirits among his faithful as concerns grow for the 88-year-old pontiff’s health.

The Pope’s pre-recorded remarks, broadcast on loudspeakers at the Vatican’s St. Peter’s Square ahead of the nightly recitation of the rosary prayer, marked the first time supporters heard the pontiff’s voice since his hospitalization around three weeks ago.

“I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your prayers for my health from the Square, I accompany you from here. May God bless you and the Virgin protect you. Thank you,” Pope Francis said, speaking slowly in his native Spanish in a voice where he struggled to catch his breath.

The square erupted in applause upon hearing Francis’ words, heartened to hear his voice.

Although the Pope has issued written messages from the hospital and the Vatican has given twice-daily updates on his condition, he has not been seen on photo or video since February 14 when he was hospitalized after being plagued by a string of lung-related medical struggles, including bronchitis and double pneumonia.

This is the ailing pontiff’s fourth, and now longest, hospital stay since he became pope in 2013. Francis has lived with lung-related issues for much of his life. As a young man, he contracted severe pneumonia and had part of one lung removed.

Doctors said the Pope’s health prognosis remains “reserved” after he had several episodes of acute respiratory failure on Monday, although he has remained stable since, according to the Vatican.

He has not presented any further episodes of respiratory failure and does not have a fever, the Vatican added on Thursday.

The Pope is continuing with respiratory and motor physiotherapy, the Vatican said, adding that he had an active Thursday and engaged in several work activities throughout the day while receiving the Eucharist before lunch.

The Argentinian leader’s schedule has been cleared to accommodate his intensive medical treatment.

He did not lead the Ash Wednesday service, which marks the start of Lent, for only the second time in his 12-year papacy, according to the Vatican, and has not led the Angelus prayer for three Sundays in a row.

On Friday morning the Vatican said the Pope had spent a “peaceful night” and woke up shortly after 8 am.

Europe is staring down the barrel of a stark new reality where the United States being the backbone of NATO – the alliance that has guaranteed the continent’s security for almost 80 years – is no longer a given.

President Donald Trump’s public animosity towards Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, his willingness to embrace Russia’s Vladimir Putin and recent comments casting doubt over whether he would defend NATO allies “if they don’t pay” have all forced European leaders to start thinking the previously unthinkable – is the US a reliable security partner at a time when the continent is being rocked by its biggest war since the 1940s?

But NATO without the US is far from impotent, with more than a million troops and modern weaponry at its disposal from the 31 other countries in the alliance. It also has the wealth and technological knowhow to defend itself without the US, analysts say.

The US and Germany are the biggest contributors to NATO’s military budget, civil budget and security investment program, at almost 16% each, followed by the UK at 11% and France at 10%, a NATO fact sheet says. Analysts say it wouldn’t take much for Europe to make up for the loss of Washington’s contribution.

“Europe alone (still has) a capacity to muster the resources it would need to defend itself, it’s just a question of whether (it is) willing to,” Schreer said.

And that’s the key question. Over more than 75 years and the administrations of 14 different US presidents, including the first Trump administration, the US has been the sinew that has kept the alliance together.

During the Cold War, US troops on the continent were there as a deterrent to any Soviet ambitions to expand the Warsaw Pact alliance and eventually saw out its end when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. NATO campaigns in the Balkans in the 1990s were conducted with US troops and airpower. And, until the second Trump administration took office on January 20, Washington spearheaded aid for Ukraine.

Those decades of trans-Atlantic solidarity may have come to an end in recent days, analysts say.

Trump’s Oval Office blow-up with Zelensky – after which he halted US aid to Kyiv – “felt like a deeper rupture, not just with Ukraine, but with the US ‘free world’ strategy from Truman through Reagan,” Dan Fried, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and former US assistant secretary of state for Europe, said on the council’s website.

John Lough, a former NATO official who is now an associate fellow at the Chatham House think tank in London, sees an even more profound split in the alliance.

It’s a fracture that Lough sees as unrepairable.

“Once you start to lose part of that commitment, you effectively lose it all,” Lough said.

Some people in European circles are starting to ask whether Washington should be described “in some ways as an enemy,” he said.

But some analysts say a NATO without the US is not a bad idea.

“As soon as US allies become convinced that they can no longer trust in US capabilities to defend them when push comes to shove, they will rush to pick up the slack and work towards growing their own capabilities,” Moritz Graefrath, a postdoctoral fellow in security and foreign policy at William & Mary’s Global Research Institute, wrote in War on the Rocks last year.

“It is in this sense that — perhaps counterintuitively — a withdrawal of US forces will create an even stronger, not weaker, Europe,” Graefrath wrote.

Prime Minister of NATO member Poland, Donald Tusk, thinks this process has started already.

“Europe as a whole is truly capable of winning any military, financial, economic confrontation with Russia – we are simply stronger,” he said ahead of a European Union summit this week. “We just had to start believing in it. And today it seems to be happening.”

What does Europe have?

In concept, a European military could be formidable.

Turkey has NATO’s largest armed forces after the United States, with 355,200 active military personnel, according to the Military Balance 2025, compiled by the IISS. It’s followed by France (202,200), Germany (179,850), Poland (164,100), Italy (161,850), the United Kingdom (141,100), Greece (132,000) and Spain (122,200).

Turkey also has the most army personnel, which make up of the majority of frontline ground troops, with (260,200), France (113,800), Italy (94,000), Greece (93,000), Poland (90,600) the UK (78,800), Spain (70,200) and Germany (60,650), according to the IISS report.

In contrast, there were about 80,000 US troops assigned or deployed to bases in NATO countries as of June 2024, a July 2024 report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) says.

Most of those US troops are in Germany (35,000), Italy (12,000) and the UK (10,000), the CRS says.

Some of the larger NATO nations also have weapons equal to or many times better than what Russia has.

Take aircraft carriers for instance. While Russia has a single, antiquated aircraft carrier, the UK alone has two modern carriers capable of launching F-35B stealth fighters. France, Italy and Spain field aircraft carriers or amphibious ships capable of launching fighter jets, according to the Military Balance.

Aside from the US, France and the UK maintain nuclear forces, with both deploying ballistic missile submarines.

The NATO allies besides the US have about 2,000 fighter and ground-attack jets among them, with dozens of new F-35 stealth jets included in that number.

Ground forces include modern tanks, including German Leopards and British Challengers, donated units of which are now serving in the Ukrainian military. European NATO countries can field powerful cruise missiles, like the joint Franco-British SCALP/Storm Shadow, which has also proven itself on the Ukrainian battlefield.

The Military Balance 2025 report notes that Europe is taking steps to improve its military forces without US help. In 2024, six European countries united in a project to develop ground-launched cruise missiles, made moves to increase munitions production capacity and to diversify their supplier base, looking to countries like Brazil, Israel and South Korea as new sources for military hardware.

Analysts say even if the US were to completely pull out of Europe, it would leave important infrastructure behind.

The US has 31 permanent bases in Europe, according to the Congressional Research Service – naval, air, ground and command-and-control facilities that would be available to the countries where they are located if the US were to leave.

And Graefrath notes, that infrastructure would not be lost to Washington if there is regret after a possible US withdrawal.

“It leaves much of the US military infrastructure intact for an extended period (ensuring) that the United States retains the ability to make a military return if Europe were to fail to respond as predicted,” he wrote.

What comes next?

Some hope that the talk of a US withdrawal from NATO is just Trump bluster aimed at pushing allies to cough up and spend more on defense.

They say the world, and another key US alliance, have been here before – during Trump’s first administration, when he reportedly asked the Pentagon to look at options for drawing down US troops stationed in South Korea as protection against nuclear-armed North Korea.

That came as Trump prepared for meetings with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un at which he hoped to persuade Kim to commit to giving up his nuclear arsenal.

But Kim rejected all entreaties for him to give up his nuclear weapons program.

The Trump-Kim meeting “was sold as a big success despite that fact that it wasn’t,” said Schreer.

Afterward, the US returned to “business as usual” on the Korean Peninsula, Schreer said. The US – with tens of thousands of troops in South Korea – kept them there. Bilateral exercises with Seoul’s forces resumed, US warships visited South Korean ports and US Air Force bombers flew over the region.

The same could occur in Europe if Trump doesn’t get what he wants from Putin, analysts said. NATO could go on, with the recent threats to depart just a small bump in the road.

“If Putin tries to … screw Donald too much, even Donald Trump might recognize that,” Schreer said.

When King Charles gets up in the morning, what tunes does he select to start his day?

It’s a mix of genres across decades, according to a new Apple Music broadcast show and playlist the monarch has curated – from reggae legend Bob Marley to the more recently Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter RAYE.

“Throughout my life, music has meant a great deal to me. I know that is also the case for so many others,” the King says in the opening remarks of the broadcast, recorded at Buckingham Palace and scheduled to air March 10 to mark Commonwealth Day.

“It has that remarkable ability to bring happy memories flooding back from the deepest recesses of our memory, to comfort us in times of sadness, and to take us to distant places,” he says, according to a press release on Friday from Apple Music.

“But perhaps, above all, it can lift our spirits to such a degree, and all the more so when it brings us together in celebration. In other words, it brings us joy.”

His Apple playlist also includes other familiar names such as Kylie Minogue, Grace Jones and Davido.

Besides the music itself, the King also shares “anecdotes about his encounters with some of the artists featured and reveals why the songs help form the soundtrack to his life,” according to the press release.

In a video message released on Apple’s website, Charles explained his love of music spliced with footage from a royal brass band playing a rendition of Bob Marley and the Wailers’ “Could You Be Loved” outside Buckingham Palace.

Listeners can tune in on Apple Music 1 throughout Monday and Tuesday.

The outer bands of Tropical Cyclone Alfred are lashing Australia’s east coast with wind and rain as the rare southerly storm’s eye inches closer to landfall expected on Saturday morning.

The storm system has been swirling ever so slowly west toward the Queensland capital of Brisbane, prompting cyclone warnings along a stretch of coast home to around 4 million people.

As of Friday evening, Alfred was around 105 kilometers (65 miles) east of Brisbane, moving west with damaging winds around 95 kilometers per hour (59 miles per hour), according to Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology (BOM).

The cyclone had initially been expected to hit on Thursday night, then Friday morning, and the extra delay raised anxiety levels among residents in an area where cyclones are rare.

They usually form further north over warmer seas, but this one followed an erratic path to become the most southerly cyclone to hit the region in more than 50 years.

The cyclone was already bringing heavy rainfall to coastal areas on Friday, along with damaging winds and storm surges.

Cyclone to hit Saturday

Tropical Cyclone Alfred was forecast to cross islands in Moreton Bay Saturday morning local time before hitting the mainland in two states.

Queensland’s Gold Coast and other coastal areas were considered most vulnerable to storm surges, wind gusts and flash flooding, though warnings extended well inland.

In New South Wales, Australian Defence Force personnel, state emergency services and police were pre-positioned in the Northern Rivers – an area beset by flooding in recent years.

Some residents were still living in temporary housing after the last major flood submerged homes and businesses in 2022.

Authorities repeatedly acknowledged their trauma during press conferences as they sought to assure them that this time there would be no long wait for help.

“Our sincere hope is that the community gets through this without any loss of life, and that we can – when this is all over – focus on the rebuild,” said NSW Premier Chris Minns in the city of Lismore on Friday, where he was expected to ride out the cyclone.

Huge waves

The delay in Cyclone Alfred’s arrival gave authorities more time to issue warnings to residents, many of whom had never lived through a cyclone.

The last one to cross this far south was Tropical Cyclone Zoe in 1974.

The delay also gave sightseers time to explore Alfred’s effects on the coast – including surfers who earlier this week braved waves that by Friday were too dangerous to surf.

Stuart Nettle, the editor of Swellnet, a forecaster service that operates 100 cameras near the coast, said Alfred had produced waves that will be talked about for years.

“The fourth and fifth of March are going to live on in infamy in the memory of Gold Coast surfers,” he said. “Tropical Cyclone Alfred just sat there at the optimum distance and the optimum direction from the Gold Coast and delivered two days of exceptional waves. There’ll be surfers talking about it for a long time to come.”

Few dared to enter the water Friday as waves lashed the coast, prompting warnings from authorities of fines of $10,000 (16,000 Australian dollars) for risky behavior.

Police had stern words for one teenager caught surfing and four others were also reprimanded for putting themselves and others in danger.

“The waves are horrendous, the beaches are hazardous,” said acting Gold Coast City Council Mayor Donna Gates. “Please listen to us and stay away from the beaches. I keep repeating that because somehow, not everyone is listening.”

Eurostar trains to London and all trains heading to northern France were brought to a halt Friday following the discovery of an unexploded World War II era bomb on tracks leading to the nation’s busiest station.

Paris police said that at 4 a.m. Friday morning, a WW2 bomb was discovered by workers along railway tracks in Saint Denis.

Technicians from Paris’ demining team are currently at the site, according to the police, with an SNCF spokesperson describing the bomb as “really huge”.

“The bomb could be a serious threat to people’s lives,” the spokesperson said.

Traffic was “completely blocked” as of 9a.m. Friday morning, French Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot said, disrupting suburban, regional and international trains.

Tabarot warned services will be “strongly shook up” all day.

Gare du Nord is a major European transit hub, serving international destinations north of France as well as the main Paris airport and many regional commuters.

Tabarot said that he hoped a reduced service would be running on French lines by the afternoon.

“There’s no reason to fear,” the minister told Sud Radio, “It can happen that deminers have to clear a certain number of abandoned bags sometimes. But it’s quite rare for a WW2 bomb.”