China Evergrande, World’s Most-Indebted Property Developer, Ordered to Liquidate

China Evergrande Group was ordered to be liquidated by a Hong Kong court, a stunning legal coda for the world’s most-indebted property developer.

A wind-up could end up in management being replaced and addressing some issues, Judge Linda Chan said in the city’s High Court on Monday morning.

The ruling on Monday cements the homebuilder, carrying 2.39 trillion yuan ($333 billion) of liabilities, as the most prominent symbol so far of China’s real estate crisis, which has crimped economic growth and hurt consumer confidence. The order is also likely to send ripples through China’s financial system at a time when policymakers are trying to stem a stock market rout.

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Read More: How China’s Government Keeps Inadvertently Hurting Its Own Economy

Evergrande, which first defaulted on a dollar bond in December 2021, was for a time in the last decade the country’s largest builder by sales. The petition for liquidation was filed in June 2022 by Top Shine Global Limited of Intershore Consult (Samoa) Ltd., which was a strategic investor in the homebuilder’s online sales platform.

Trading in Evergrande shares was suspended on Monday morning after the stock tumbled 21%, giving it a market value of just HK$2.15 billion ($275 million).

Judge Chan, who has presided over a string of developer hearings and ordered the liquidation of one last year, will conduct the hearing on a potential regulating order at 2:30pm Monday, according to information on the city’s judiciary website. Such orders mean that the court would regulate the winding-up process, potentially including appointing a liquidator.

Read More: China’s Real Estate Crisis Has No Easy Fix—Just Ask Chinese Soccer Fans

But the liquidator is likely to face a daunting process in dealing with Chinese developers. Most Evergrande projects are operated by local units, which could be hard for the offshore liquidator to seize. And construction work, housing delivery and other activities in mainland China likely will continue while the process unfolds.

The property market has continued to sag even as China introduced a slew of new measures to stem sinking prices and sluggish demand.

Evergrande’s winding-up petition case number is HCCW 220/2022.

source https://time.com/6589524/china-evergrande-group-ordered-liquidate-developer-debt-hong-kong-court/

Taylor Swift Searches Blocked by X Amid Circulation of Deepfakes

Social media platform X, formerly Twitter, has blocked searches of Taylor Swift’s name to crack down on the proliferation of sexually explicit deepfakes of the pop star, revealing the challenges of tackling such content. 

“This is a temporary action and done with an abundance of caution as we prioritize safety on this issue,” Joe Benarroch, head of business operations at X, tells TIME in an email Sunday. At the time of publication, searches of Taylor Swift’s name on X were still inaccessible.

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On Friday, X’s Safety account on the platform posted that non-consensual nudity is strictly prohibited and the company has a “zero-tolerance policy towards such content.” Teams were “actively removing all identified images and taking appropriate actions against the accounts responsible for posting them,” the statement read. “We’re committed to maintaining a safe and respectful environment for all users.”

TIME has reached out to Swift’s publicist for comment. 

The Swift deepfakes have spotlighted the issue of AI-generated pornography, where the face of an individual is superimposed onto an explicit picture or video without their consent, and the need for more legal protections as regulation struggles to keep pace with technology. As X acknowledged, banning searches is a stopgap measure. Although it has been used to effect in this particular case, it’s not a long-term fix for the wide-reaching problem.

Ninety-six percent of all deepfakes online in 2019 were nonconsensual pornography, almost all of women, media analyst Sensity found, and the FBI warned last year that this content can be used for sextortion and criminal financial gain.

“It is alarming,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Friday when asked about the Swift deepfakes. “While social media companies make their own independent decisions about content management, we believe they have an important role to play in enforcing their own rules to prevent the spread of misinformation and non-consensual intimate imagery of real people.”

While 10 states criminalize deepfakes, federal law does not, and legislators in Congress are stepping up to try to outlaw the content. 

Rep. Joe Morelle, a Democrat from New York, introduced the Preventing Deepfakes of Intimate Images Act last year, but the bill has not moved forward yet. Another New York Democrat, Rep. Yvette Clarke, introduced the DEEPFAKES Accountability Act last year to protect against national security threats and provide legal recourse to victims.

In January, legislators introduced the No Artificial Intelligence Fake Replicas And Unauthorized Duplications (No AI Fraud) Act to protect Americans from AI-manipulations of their voice and images.

In response to a reporter’s question about proposed law, Jean-Pierre said “there should be legislation, obviously, to deal with this issue,” but pointed out that President Joe Biden already took action by authoring an executive order on how his administration would govern generative AI and creating a task force to tackle online harassment.

source https://time.com/6589487/taylor-swift-searches-blocked-x-twitter-deepfakes-response/

Three American Troops Killed In Drone Attack by Iran-Backed Militia in Jordan, Says Biden

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Three American troops were killed and “many” were wounded Sunday in a drone strike in northeast Jordan near the Syrian border, President Joe Biden said. He blamed Iran-backed militias for the first U.S. fatalities after months of strikes by the groups against American forces across the Middle East amid the Israel-Hamas war.

With an increasing the risk of military escalation in the region, U.S. officials were working to conclusively identify the precise group responsible for the attack, but they have assessed that one of several Iranian-backed groups was behind it.

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Biden said the United States “will hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner (of) our choosing.”

According to a U.S. official, at least 25 U.S. service members were wounded, but that number may grow. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details not made public, said a large drone struck the base, which is in Jordan, right on the Syrian border. It is used largely by troops involved in the advise-and-assist mission for Jordanian forces. The small installation includes U.S. engineering, aviation, logistics and security troops.

Jordanian state television quoted Muhannad Mubaidin, a government spokesman, as insisting the attack happened outside of the kingdom across the border in Syria. U.S. officials insisted that the attack took place in Jordan.

U.S. troops long have used Jordan, a kingdom bordering Iraq, Israel, the Palestinian territory of the West Bank, Saudi Arabia and Syria, as a basing point. U.S. Central Command said 25 service members were injured the attack in addition to the three killed.

Some 3,000 American troops typically are stationed in Jordan.

Two U.S. officials said the attack occurred at the base in northeastern Jordan known as Tower 22. Previously released U.S. military photos in 2018 identify troops working at the base as supporting special operation forces in the area, likely across the border into Syria. The U.S. military base at al-Tanf in Syria is just some 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of Tower 22. The installation provide a critical logistical hub for U.S. forces in Syria, including those at al-Tanf, which is near the intersection of the Iraq, Syria and Jordan borders.

Since Israel’s war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip began, U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria have faced drone and missile attacks on their bases. The attack on Jordan marks the first targeting American troops in Jordan during the war and the first to result in the loss of American lives. Other attacks have left troops seriously injured, including with traumatic brain injuries.

The U.S. in recent months has struck targets in Iraq, Syria and Yemen to respond to attacks on American forces in the region and to deter Iranian-backed Houthi rebels from continuing to threaten commercial shipping in the Red Sea.

Biden, who was in Columbia, South Carolina, on Sunday, was briefed by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, and principal deputy national security adviser Jon Finer, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said. He was expected to meet again with his national security team later Sunday.

The president called it a “despicable and wholly unjust attack” and said the service members were “risking their own safety for the safety of their fellow Americans, and our allies and partners with whom we stand in the fight against terrorism. It is a fight we will not cease.”

Syria is still in the midst of a civil war and long has been a launch pad for Iranian-backed forces there, including the Lebanese militia Hezbollah. Iraq has multiple Iranian-backed Shiite militias operating there as well.

Jordan, a staunch Western ally and a crucial power in Jerusalem for its oversight of holy sites there, is suspected of launching airstrikes in Syria to disrupt drug smugglers, including one that killed nine people earlier this month.

An umbrella group for Iran-backed factions known as the Islamic Resistance in Iraq earlier claimed launching explosive drone attacks targeting three areas in Syria, as well as one inside of “occupied Palestine.” The group has claimed responsibility for dozens of attacks against bases housing U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria since the Israel-Hamas war began.

source https://time.com/6589475/biden-americans-killed-iran-backed-militia-drone-attack/

Biden Aide Urges Beijing to Press Iran Over Attacks by Yemen’s Houthi Rebels

U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan pressed Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi during talks in Thailand to use China’s influence with Iran to ease tensions in the Middle East. The officials also agreed to work toward arranging a call between President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

The meetings Friday and Saturday in Bangkok, which followed up on the presidents’ discussions in November in California, took place after a ruling-party candidate opposed by Beijing won Taiwan’s recent presidential election and U.S. and Chinese military officials resumed a once-frozen dialogue. They played out as attacks by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen continue to threaten global shipping in the Red Sea.

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A senior U.S. official said Sullivan cited China’s extensive economic leverage over Iran and emphasized that the destabilizing effect of the Houthi attacks on international commerce. The official noted that China has publicly called for lower tensions, but said it was too soon to tell whether Beijing was using its diplomatic muscle to press Tehran on the matter. The official was not authorized to publicly discuss the private conversations between Sullivan and Wang and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Wang said Washington should stand by a commitment not to support independence for Taiwan. Wang said Taiwan’s election, won by Lai Ching-te, the current vice president, did not alter the Chinese position that the island is part of China and that the biggest challenge in U.S.-China relations is the issue of “Taiwan independence,” according to a statement from the ministry.

Biden has said he does not support independence, but U.S. law requires a credible defense for Taiwan and for the U.S. to treat all threats to the island as matters of “grave concern.”

The U.S. official said it was not clear when the next Biden-Xi conversation would happen, but that the officials hoped it would take place in the coming months.

Wang and Sullivan previously met on the Mediterranean island nation of Malta and in Vienna last year before the Biden-Xi meeting in California.

In November, both sides showcased modest agreements to combat illegal fentanyl and reestablish military communications, keeping the relationship from growing any worse. The U.S.-China Counternarcotics Working Group is set to hold its first meeting on Tuesday. American officials say fentanyl and its precursors are largely manufactured in China.

China claims self-ruled Taiwan as its own territory and in recent years has shown its displeasure at political activities in Taiwan by sending military planes and ships. Earlier Saturday, Taiwan’s defense ministry said China had sent more than 30 warplanes and a group of navy ships toward the island during a 24-hour period, including 13 warplanes that crossed the midline of the Taiwan Strait — an unofficial boundary that’s considered a buffer between its territory and the mainland.

Wang also said China and the U.S. should use the 45th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries this year as an opportunity to reflect on past experiences and treat each other as equals, rather than adopting a condescending attitude.

The countries should “be committed to mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation, building a correct way for China and the U.S. to interact,” the statement quoted Wang as saying.

Taiwan has said six Chinese balloons either flew over the island or through airspace just north of it, days after the self-governing island held its election. Lai’s Democratic Progressive Party largely campaigned on self-determination, social justice and a rejection of China’s threats.

Apart from cross-strait issues, Sullivan and Wang also discussed Russia’s war against Ukraine, the Middle East, North Korea, the South China Sea, and Myanmar, the White House said. Sullivan and Wang talked about progress toward holding a dialog this spring between U.S. and Chinese officials on artificial intelligence.

Sullivan highlighted that although Washington and Beijing are in competition, both sides have to “prevent it from veering into conflict or confrontation,” according to a White House summary of the meeting.

source https://time.com/6589389/biden-aide-beijing-iran-relations-yemen-houthis-attacks/

U.S. Suspends Funding to U.N. Agency Amid Claims Its Staff Were Involved in Hamas Attack

The United Nations fired several staffers at its Palestinian refugee agency over Israeli allegations that they took part in the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, news that prompted the U.S., the U.K. and other countries to suspend funding.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres “is horrified by the news” that workers with the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, may have been involved in the attack by Hamas militants on southern Israel, and urged the agency’s chief to refer the accused for potential prosecution, his office said in a statement Friday. According to the statement, there will be an “urgent and comprehensive independent review” of the agency.

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The claims come as a black eye for UNRWA, which provides humanitarian assistance and protection to Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the West Bank. It has long been regarded with suspicion by Israel and Republicans in the U.S., who argue that it only fuels the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and money going to food, education and health care frees up Hamas to fund hostilities against Israel.

“These shocking allegations come as more than 2 million people in Gaza depend on lifesaving assistance that the agency has been providing since the war began,” UNRWA Director-General Philippe Lazzarini said in a statement Friday. “Anyone who betrays the fundamental values of the United Nations also betrays those whom we serve in Gaza, across the region and elsewhere around the world.”

Israel said it will seek U.S. and European Union support to halt UNRWA operations in Gaza. Foreign Minister Israel Katz wrote in a post on X that his ministry wants to ensure the agency “will not be part of the day after.”

He urged the U.N. to take “immediate personal actions” against the UNRWA leadership.

While criticism over UNRWA’s role in the Israel-Palestinian conflict became even more charged after Hamas launched its surprise attack on Israel, the group has also paid a heavy price in Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, with more than 150 of its staff killed in the violence. 

A vast majority of UNRWA’s 30,000 staff is Palestinian, with 13,000 of those in Gaza. The U.S. State Department said in a statement Friday that 12 UNRWA staff had been accused of links to the attacks.

The U.S. — UNRWA’s main donor — also announced Friday it was suspending additional funding for the organization in the wake of the allegations. “There must be complete accountability for anyone who participated in the heinous attacks of Oct. 7,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in the statement. The US contributed more than $296 million to the group in 2023.

The U.K., Australia, Canada, Italy and Finland also said they are pausing additional funding to UNRWA.

Senator James Risch, an Idaho Republican who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he had warned the Biden administration for years about funding the agency, which he said “has a history of employing people connected to terrorist movements like Hamas.”

Despite the recent allegations, the U.S. signaled it continues to support the agency. UNRWA plays “a critical role in providing lifesaving assistance to Palestinians, including essential food, medicine, shelter, and other vital humanitarian support,” Miller said in the statement.

The EU also expressed concern over the allegations, and said it expects UNRWA “to provide full transparency on the allegations and to take immediate measures against staff involved.”

source https://time.com/6589373/us-suspends-funding-unrwa-hamas-staff-involvement-claims/

American Museum of Natural History Closes Certain Displays Amid New Federal Regulations

The American Museum of Natural History in New York City is the latest institution across the country to close access to Native American exhibits as authorities return or seek permission from tribes to display artifacts in accordance with a new Biden Administration rule.

The museum’s president Sean Decatur informed staff in a letter Friday of the closure of two of its halls filled with Native American objects, as well as the covering of cases in or just outside three other halls, starting Saturday. The museum will also suspend school field trips to one hall, but said it remains committed to supporting education about Indigenous peoples. Another exhibit developed with Indigenous communities remains open.

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“While the actions we are taking this week may seem sudden, they reflect a growing urgency among all museums to change their relationships to, and representation of, Indigenous cultures,” Decatur wrote. “The Halls we are closing are vestiges of an era when museums such as ours did not respect the values, perspectives, and indeed shared humanity of Indigenous peoples. Actions that may feel sudden to some may seem long overdue to others.” 

The Administration’s new rule, an update to the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act that regulates the return of Native American human remains and sacred, cultural or funeral objects to descendants of those communities, came into effect on Jan. 12. The Natural History Museum already pulled all human remains, many of Native American or Black enslaved people, from display in October.

Other museums across the country, including Chicago’s Field Museum, Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, and the Cleveland Museum of Art have covered exhibits, or are working on the repatriation of remains, to comply with the updated law.

The changes follow a reckoning in recent years over the history of publicly displayed items, as Native Americans sought justice and respect for the remains of their ancestors and artifacts obtained without consent. Universities across the U.S. have also come under scrutiny. Last year, University of California, Berkeley disclosed that it possessed thousands of Native American remains, some dug up from local graves, and began the process of identifying and returning them to tribes.

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, the first Native American to oversee the agency implementing the new rule, said in a statement in December that the updated law was “an essential tool for the safe return of sacred objects to the communities from which they were stolen.”

“Among the updates we are implementing are critical steps to strengthen the authority and role of Indigenous communities in the repatriation process,” she said. “Finalizing these changes is an important part of laying the groundwork for the healing of our people.”  

The debate extends beyond the U.S., as museums in former colonial power Britain previously repatriated Native American remains to an Oregon tribe and this week agreed to return looted gold and silver items to Ghana on a long-term loan agreement, one among a number of contested items subject to requests for return from other governments.

source https://time.com/6589334/natural-history-museum-native-american-displays-federal-regulations/

Who Needs Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2024?

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Recently, my mother, who escaped Hungary as a young teen in 1943 as the Nazis were closing in, called me from her home in Jerusalem. She was quite agitated, asking why even Israel’s loyal friends seem to be promoting compromise on issues fundamental to its security. She begged me to speak to anyone and everyone I know, from community leaders to elected officials.

As the world marks Saturday, January 27, as the annual International Holocaust Remembrance Day, it is clear that my mother needs no such day. The question the Jewish people must be asking is who will benefit from a day in January, 2024, designated to remember the Holocaust?

The Holocaust deniers, including President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, many Western nations’ preferred steward of Gaza for the day after the war, and Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose country funds Hamas and the other armed groups attacking Israel and its allies on multiple fronts, will not benefit from it. They cannot commemorate something they claim never occurred.

The United Nations, which at the initiative of its Israeli delegation designated the day back in 2005 to build Holocaust awareness and prevent further acts of genocide, now deploys the lessons of the Holocaust against the Jewish people. The U.N. has yet to condemn the explicitly and admittedly genocidal acts of Hamas against Israel on October 7 while its International Court of Justice is trying Israel for genocide in Gaza. If this is the result of remembering the Holocaust, we Jews would prefer they forgot about it.

Jews surely don’t need this day. Many of us have been remembering the Holocaust every day since that dark day in October. The Holocaust is why we do not use the word “unprecedented” to describe the monstrous and unspeakable acts of cruelty committed in Be’eri and Kfar Aza, the blind hatred that drives others to destroy us even if it destroys them, and the apathy of the nations of the world who – with the notable exception of the United States and a few others – are either supporting evil or standing silently by.

For my mother, for me, and for many Jews, the Holocaust is the precedent, the comparable, the question that, since the Hamas massacres, bewildered and frightened Jews have been asking themselves and anyone who will listen. The Holocaust is why we have no naivete about the tunnel builders, hang gliders, and missile launchers who, in their unflagging genocidal pursuit of the Jews, continue to dream, plan, rearm, and reorganize. It is why we in the U.S. are so frightened by the violent tone of the ubiquitous pro-Palestinian protests and by the intimidation of Jews on campuses. We have seen this all before and shame on us if we allow ourselves to forget and fall prey once again to the empty promises of those masquerading as peacemakers and to the assumption that in the Western civilized world of course Jews will be safe.

Everyday since Oct. 7, my mother is reminded of and haunted by the delusions of her grandparents and more than a dozen uncles and aunts who naively chose not to join her parents’ escape to Palestine as the Nazi menace spread, only to be turned to ashes in Auschwitz. She often muses aloud about how my father, of blessed memory, a Holocaust survivor, would process October 7th in Israel, October 8th in Harvard, and October 9th in the UN.

But let us not cancel Holocaust Remembrance Day. Let us mark it with those who have traditionally been our friends and supporters in government and the arena of public opinion, those people we have brought year after year to Yad Vashem and other Holocaust memorials, who have wished only good for the Jewish people but who see our situation from the outside. 

Although they have done much good for us, and still do mean well, it has now become obvious that they cannot possibly see the current realities as we do. These friends are now wavering, running out of patience, understandably shaken by the devastating images from Gaza and by their desperate desire to bring the hostages home, hoping against hope—as do all good people—for the imminent arrival of the blessings of peace. It is for these reasons they are urging Israel to stop the war short of achieving its critical goal of decisively destroying Hamas and its terror infrastructure.

There is a classic Jewish teaching that warns us against judging others until we stand in their place. Things look different from the sidelines than they do from the battlefield. Holocaust Remembrance Day is an opportunity for American and allied leaders and citizens to stand in our place and see Hamas, the United Nations, the ICJ, certain protestors and university leaders, and a long list of others through the eyes of Jews, the survivors of the Nazis and the Jew-haters of each and every generation, experiencing once again an all-too-familiar existential threat. To see them through the eyes of my mother.

It is also an opportunity for these allies and friends to stand in the places of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and President Franklin D. Roosevelt and of the leaders and press of the free world who failed miserably in the 1930’s and 40’s. It is the current generation’s opportunity, to do it right, to act decisively against evil by living up to the commitment made by Churchill on February 9, 1941: “Give us your faith and your blessing, and, under Providence, all will be well. We shall not fail or falter; we shall not weaken or tire. Neither the sudden shock of battle, nor the long-drawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us down. Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.”

That would make Holocaust Remembrance Day 2024 meaningful for everyone, even my mother. Maybe she would finally feel like people are listening, learning from the history she lived, and will take the right actions now.

source https://time.com/6589026/holocaust-remembrance-day-2024/