MAKASSAR: At least 13 people died when a passenger boat overloaded with holidaymakers celebrating Eid capsized off the Indonesian island of Sulawesi on Wednesday, officials said.
Twenty-four surviving passengers were admitted to hospital but dozens are believed still missing, said local disaster agency head Amiruddin, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.
The packed traditional wooden boat — known locally as a jolloro — left Makassar, provincial capital of South Sulawesi, in the afternoon for a short journey to the tiny resort island of Barrang Lompo, some 15 kilometers northwest of the city’s coast.
“The boat reportedly hit a large wave amid bad weather and capsized,” Amiruddin said.
The passengers were thought to be Barrang Lompo natives who work in Makassar and were heading home to spend the Islamic holiday Eid Al-Fitr with their families.
Makassar police chief Aris Bachtiar said the boat was overloaded. “We are still investigating,” he said, adding that the captain had been detained.
Almost 32 million Indonesians are on the move this week in the annual Eid exodus, official figures showed Wednesday.
It was the latest deadly maritime accident in the vast Indonesian archipelago, which relies heavily on boats to ferry people around its 17,000 islands but has a patchy safety record.
On New Year’s Day, nine people died after a passenger boat capsized when traveling from the city of Tarakan to Tanjung Selor on Borneo island.
13 dead as boat capsizes off Indonesia’s Sulawesi
13 dead as boat capsizes off Indonesia’s Sulawesi
TikTok finalizes deal to form new American entity
TikTok has finalized a deal to create a new American entity, avoiding the looming threat of a ban in the United States that has been in discussion for years.
The social video platform company signed agreements with major investors including Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX to form the new TikTok US joint venture. The new version will operate under “defined safeguards that protect national security through comprehensive data protections, algorithm security, content moderation and software assurances for US users,” the company said in a statement Thursday. American TikTok users can continue using the same app.
Adam Presser, who previously worked as TikTok’s head of operations and trust and safety, will lead the new venture as its CEO. He will work alongside a seven-member, majority-American board of directors that includes TikTok’s CEO Shou Chew.
The deal marks the end of years of uncertainty about the fate of the popular video-sharing platform in the United States. After wide bipartisan majorities in Congress passed — and President Joe Biden signed — a law that would ban TikTok in the US if it did not find a new owner in the place of China’s ByteDance, the platform was set to go dark on the law’s January 2025 deadline. For a several hours, it did. But on his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to keep it running while his administration sought an agreement for the sale of the company.
In addition to an emphasis on data protection, with US user data being stored locally in a system run by Oracle, the joint venture will also focus on TikTok’s algorithm. The content recommendation formula, which feeds users specific videos tailored to their preferences and interests, will be retrained, tested and updated on US user data, the company said in its announcement.
Oracle, Silver Lake and the Emirati investment firm MGX are the three managing investors, who each hold a 15 percent share. Other investors include the investment firm of Michael Dell, the billionaire founder of Dell Technologies. ByteDance retains 19.9 percent of the joint venture.
