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Beijing is seeking to assure tech sector crackdown has passed as questions remain about direction of regulatory policy.

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Beijing is seeking to assure tech sector crackdown has passed as questions remain about direction of regulatory policy. Justin Sun’s biggest lesson from his mentor, Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma, was how to use shared values to scale up a company quickly and manage larger and larger numbers of employees. “We learned a lot from Alibaba and Jack Ma about trying to adapt our business,” Sun, the founder of global cryptocurrency network Tron, told Al Jazeera Channel  in a recent interview. Sun, 32, and Ma, 58, represent different generations of Chinese entrepreneurs. But they have both navigated choppy regulatory waters amid a years-long campaign by the Chinese government to roll back the influence of its tech giants. Ma, once the poster child for China’s entrepreneurship-fuelled economic growth, saw the initial public offering of his Ant Group – which at $37bn would have been the world’s largest – abruptly cancelled by Chinese regulators in November 2020, marking the onset of a broad regul
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Asia set for strong growth after China’s opening, ADB says

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Manila-based development bank estimates region will grow by 4.8 percent in 2023 and 2024, up from 4.2 percent last year. Asia will see strong economic growth this year following China’s scrapping of strict pandemic curbs, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has said. Economies in Asia and the Pacific are expected to grow by 4.8 percent in 2023 and 2024, up from 4.2 percent last year, amid rising consumption, tourism and investment, the ADB said in its latest growth outlook released on Tuesday. The Manila-based development bank pointed to China’s reopening following the end of its strict “zero COVID” strategy as “the main factor” behind the brighter outlook. Still, the ADB said the global outlook faces several risks that must be “carefully monitored and proactively addressed”, including a prolongation or escalation of Russia’s war in Ukraine, rising interest rates and high levels of debt. China’s economy is on track to grow by 5 percent this year and 4.5 percent in 2024, the ABD said. The
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JPMorgan may face expanded lawsuit over Epstein ties

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US Virgin Islands said Epstein’s behaviour was ‘so widely known’ at the bank that executives joked about it. The US Virgin Islands wants to expand its lawsuit accusing JPMorgan Chase & Co of aiding in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking of girls and young women, adding a new obstruction charge and a claim that bank executives joked about the late financier. In a Monday filing in Manhattan federal court, the territory said Epstein’s behaviour had been “so widely known” at JPMorgan, where he was a client from 2000 to 2013, that senior executives “joked about Epstein’s interest in young girls”. The obstruction charge concerns JPMorgan’s alleged effort to thwart enforcement of a US anti-trafficking law by processing large cash withdrawals for Epstein and his associates, with the “purpose” of helping Epstein evade criminal liability. Among the beneficiaries of Epstein’s largesse was his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, who received more than $23m from 1999 to 2002, the territory said.
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Carmaker Tesla ordered to pay $3.2m in US racial bias lawsuit

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The multimillion-dollar award is significantly less than previously awarded in the case, brought by a former employee. The electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla has been ordered to pay $3.2m in a lawsuit that alleged the company allowed for racial harassment to go unchecked at its flagship assembly plant in the United States. On Monday, a federal jury in San Francisco, California, awarded $175,000 for emotional distress and $3m in punitive damages to Owen Diaz, a Black employee who formerly worked at Tesla’s factory in Fremont. Diaz has alleged that Tesla failed to respond when he reported enduring consistent harassment in his role as a lift operator from 2015 to 2016. That harassment allegedly included racial slurs, insulting caricatures and swastikas etched onto toilet walls. Monday’s decision, however, is a significant decrease from what a jury initially awarded Diaz in 2021. In one of the largest penalties for employment discrimination in US history, that jury ordered compensation of
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UN says its female staffers banned from working in Afghanistan

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The United Nations has reportedly asked all staff not to come to the office for 48 hours. The Taliban have issued an order to ban Afghan women employees of the United Nations staff from working throughout Afghanistan, according to a UN spokesman. Stephane Dujarric said this was the latest in a “disturbing trend” undermining the ability of aid organisations to work in Afghanistan where some 23 million people, more than half the country’s population, need help. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres would view any ban on Afghan women working for the United Nations in their country as “unacceptable and, frankly, inconceivable”, he said. Spokespeople for the Taliban administration and the Afghan information ministry did not immediately reply to requests for comment from the Reuters news agency. Two UN sources told Reuters that concerns about the enforcement of the ban had prompted the United Nations to ask all staff not to come to the office for 48 hours. “We’re still looking into how this
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What’s happening with Twitter blue checks?

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Saturday’s deadline to pay for blue checkmarks has passed and the blue ticks are still there, with a new disclaimer. Elon Musk had promised to take away all of Twitter’s blue checkmarks doled out to Hollywood stars, professional athletes, business leaders, authors and journalists unless they start buying a monthly subscription to the social media service. Musk’s goal was to shove the advertising-dependent platform he bought for $44bn last year into a pay-to-play model – and maybe antagonise some enemies and fellow elites in the process. But the Saturday deadline passed and the blue checks are still there, many with a new disclaimer explaining they might have been paid for or they might not have been paid for — nobody but Twitter knows. The company did not return a request from the Associated Press to clarify its changing policies on Monday. Blue tick or a ‘scarlet letter’? Matt Darling has been on Twitter for about 15 years and never cared about not having a blue check, though he would
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Australia to ban TikTok on government devices, following US, UK

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Canberra’s announcement is the latest move to restrict the popular video-sharing app over alleged security risks. Australia will ban the use of TikTok on federal government devices over security concerns, joining a list of countries restricting the video-sharing app that includes the United States, France and the United Kingdom. The ban follows warnings by Western officials that China could use the app, which is owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, to spy on users and manipulate public debate. Australia’s Attorney General Mark Dreyfus said on Tuesday the ban would come into effect “as soon as practicable” while exemptions would be allowed on a case-by-case basis subject to security precautions. The ban makes Australia the last of the “Five Eyes” intelligence partners to introduce such restrictions, following the US, UK, Canada and New Zealand. The announcement comes amid heightened concerns in Australia about alleged espionage and interference by Beijing, which led Canberra to pass sweepi
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