Business

BEIJING — Zhang Yiming, the founder of TikTok parent company ByteDance, saw his personal fortune fall by $17 billion last year, according to a new Chinese ranking published on Thursday. 

The reasons for the losses are unknown, but Zhang is still the second-richest entrepreneur in the world under the age of 40, with wealth valued at $37 billion, according to statistics published by the Chinese firm Hurun.

Ahead of him is Mark Zuckerberg, boss of US tech giant Meta — the owner of Facebook and Instagram — whose fortune was estimated by Hurun at $68 billion. 

According to the ranking, Zuckerberg also lost money last year to the tune of $8 billion.

Zhang co-founded ByteDance in Beijing in 2012, but resigned from the group in 2021 in the midst of regulatory tightening on China's tech industry.

A Chinese citizen, Zhang is now based in Singapore. 

ByteDance's success in China's highly competitive internet sector has been largely thanks to its popular short video app Douyin.

The app is the most valuable start-up globally, with a market capitalisation of $200 billion, according to Hurun. 

Its international version, TikTok, is wildly popular with teenagers around the world, but concerns over national security have left its future uncertain in many countries. 

Critics say TikTok allows Chinese authorities access to global user data — allegations the firm has vehemently denied.

Still, the US, Canadian, British and Australian governments, as well as the European Commission, have recently banned their officials from installing TikTok on work phones.

And Washington has threatened the app with a total ban, with TikTok boss Shou Zi Chew hauled before a US congressional hearing recently to defend it. 

On Tuesday, TikTok was fined 12.7 million pounds ($15.8 billion) by the British digital regulator over its use of the personal data of children.

LONDON — Despite the enticing produce in their windows, Muslim-owned retailers on east London's Brick Lane are unusually quiet as a cost-of-living crisis bites into Ramadan earnings.

The historic street is the hub of London's Bangladeshi community, and normally a vibrant destination for shoppers during the Islamic holy month, which in Britain started on the evening of March 22.

But this year, Muslim and other customers are paring back on non-essentials, according to Taj Stores co-owner Jamal Khalique, who has had to put up his prices to keep pace with double-digit inflation.

"This makes it a bit more difficult for people already suffering from high costs of living," said the 51-year-old, who sells everything from fresh produce and halal meat to South Asian sweets and snacks.

People are "purchasing what they need, necessities, not extra things like they normally do", Khalique added.

Business is also depressed across the road at Rajmahal Sweets, which would normally be bustling with shoppers picking out Iftar treats to break the daily fast.

"People have no money because of this crisis," said Rajmahal worker Ali, who declined to give his last name.

Customers who once bought two to three kilogrammes (4.4-6.6 pounds) now only purchase a half-kilo of offerings like jalebis — swirls of deep-fried batter soaked in syrup — and sugar-dusted Turkish delight.

England and Wales are home to nearly four million Muslims, and just under 40 per cent of them live in the most deprived areas, according to census data released last year. 

That makes the cost-of-living crisis particularly painful for communities such as those around Brick Lane, one of the poorest parts of London. 

Supermarkets muscle in 

A November 2022 survey by the campaign group Muslim Census found that nearly one in five British Muslims were relying on handouts from charitable food banks.

"It's shocking to see how dependent people are becoming on food banks," said Sahirah Javaid of Muslim Hands, a charity that runs two community kitchens in London and the English Midlands city of Nottingham.

"Food poverty makes Muslims unable to break their fast with their community," she added.

Huzana Begum, 27, is one of those feeling the pinch. 

"Before, if we brought £20 [$25] here, we would get everything. It's very expensive now," she said, browsing the shelves of Brick Lane's Zaman Brothers store, boxes of spice mix in hand.

While Begum has tried to cut down on groceries in general, Ramadan poses a unique challenge.

Iftar meals after sunset bring together relatives and communities, and she is hosting and cooking for extended family including cousins.

That means spending rather than saving. 

"We have a plan, me and my husband, every month we can save money from my work and from his salary as well. But this month, we can't," said Begum.

Independent retailers such as those on Brick Lane are seeing more competition from supermarket giants like Tesco, Sainsbury's and Asda, which have been targeting Muslims with their own Ramadan ranges.

"They can afford to slash their prices. We can't. So obviously, they do divert the customers to them," Khalique of Taj Stores said.

"We've been established since 1936, I've been in the family business for 34 years, and I've never felt hardship in my life. But I'm feeling it now," he added.

"If this continues, God knows if we can carry on."

BERLIN — Germany's anti-cartel watchdog said Wednesday it had placed US computing giant Apple under closer surveillance for any possible abuse of its market position.

The Federal Cartel Office said it had determined Apple to be a company of "paramount significance for competition across markets", a move that would allow it to "take action against and effectively prohibit anti-competitive practices".

Apple joins Amazon, Google parent Alphabet and Meta, the group behind Facebook, in falling under reinforced monitoring made possible by the German Competition Act.

The act, which came into force in January 2021, allows the cartel authority to intervene earlier, particularly against the world's tech giants.

Products such as the hugely successful iPhone meant Apple presided over a "wide-ranging digital ecosystem which is of great importance to competition" in Germany and worldwide, Federal Cartel Office chief Andreas Mundt said in a statement.

The group controlled "access to the ecosystem and Apple customers" through software products such as the iOS operating system and its app store, Mundt said.

This "outstanding position" was backed by the US group's significant financial resources, broad user base and the strength of the Apple brand, the competition authority said.

Apple also had "privileged access to data relevant for competition" via its network of products, the agency said.

All in all, the group had a "position of power" that created the potential to act in ways "not sufficiently controlled by competition", it said.

In practice, the Federal Cartel Office was also looking to see whether app tracking rules "could favour Apple's own offers" but said that "no decision has been taken on initiating further proceedings".

The agency's move "misrepresents the fierce competition Apple faces in Germany", the US group said in a statement, adding that it planned to appeal the decision. 

The Federal Cartel Office said last week it was examining if it needed to place Apple's rival Microsoft under increased surveillance for anti-competitive practices.

BAGHDAD — Iraq's federal government and the Kurdistan autonomous region signed an accord Tuesday to allow Kurdish oil exports to resume through Turkey after they were halted 10 days earlier. 

The agreement, signed in Baghdad in the presence of Prime Minister Mohamed Shia Al Sudani and Kurdish premier Masrour Barzani, was to be implemented "today", a Kurdish regional government official told AFP.

The deal was described as temporary but signals the end of independent oil exports by northern Iraq's Kurdish regional government and marks a clear limit to its autonomy.

The agreement comes two days after Iraq, Saudi Arabia and several other major oil exporters announced a sharp reduction in their production from May that sent up global energy prices.

Barzani said on Twitter that the deal is "temporary" until Iraq's parliament agrees a new oil and gas law, but he called it "a crucial step towards ending the long-standing dispute" between Arbil and Baghdad.

Ankara had stopped handling Iraqi Kurdish oil last month after an international tribunal ruled in a nine-year-old dispute that Baghdad was right to insist on overseeing all Iraqi oil exports.

Oil exports are the key revenue source for both the federal and regional governments and their management has long been a sensitive topic in relations.

The government of war-scarred Iraq is betting on earning around $70 per barrel in its budget calculations for the next three years and has been irritated to see the autonomous region go it alone by exporting its oil via Turkey.

The Kurdistan government sees Baghdad as trying to profit from the region's resources while dragging its feet on paying the salaries of Kurdish civil servants and other funds for its regional public sector.

'Breakthrough deal' 

Gulf Analyst Yesar Al-Maleki, of the Middle East Economic Survey (MEES), said the deal aimed "first and foremost" at quickly re-starting exports to Turkey.

"But it also presents an opportunity for Baghdad to finally be involved in Iraqi Kurdistan's oil sector" and should also allow Kurdistan "to accrue higher revenues" in future.

Maleki hailed the deal as a "breakthrough for the two PMs" that could help both sides draft the new energy law and "resolve the existing historic disputes once and for all".

Sales of Kurdistan crude will be managed from now by the State Oil Marketing Organisation, a federal government official and a Kurdish official told AFP.

A joint committee formed by the federal and regional governments will supervise the export process, they added.

Revenues will be paid into an account under the control of the Kurdish government which will be overseen by Baghdad, they said.

The halt to exports through a pipeline to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan had left foreign oil firms with nowhere to pump Kurdish oil.

Norway's DNO, one of the main firms operating in Iraqi Kurdistan, announced it was halting production at its wells.

Prior to Ankara's action on March 25, the autonomous region was exporting roughly 450,000 barrels per day of crude.

Iraq, the second largest producer within the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, exports an average of 3.3 million bpd.

RIYADH — Major oil powers led by Saudi Arabia announced a surprise production cut of more than 1 million barrels per day on Sunday, calling it a "precautionary" move aimed at stabilising the market.

The reductions, on top of a Russian decision to extend a cut of 500,000 barrels per day, and despite US calls to increase production, risk stoking inflation and pressure to raise interest rates.

Cuts by Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the UAE, Kuwait, Algeria and Oman from May to the end of the year will top one million barrels per day — the biggest reduction since the OPEC+ cartel slashed two million barrels per day in October.

Russia, a leading member of the OPEC+ cartel, said it was also extending an existing cut of 500,000 bpd to the end of this year, describing it as "a responsible and preventive action".

Oil prices soared almost 6 per cent in Asian trade on Monday morning with West Texas Intermediate jumping by 5.74 per cent to $80.01 a barrel and Brent climbing 5.67 per cent to $84.42.

A Saudi energy ministry official "emphasised that this is a precautionary measure aimed at supporting the stability of the oil market", the official Saudi Press Agency said.

The cuts follow a drop in oil prices triggered by jitters over the banking sector, following the collapse of US lender SVB and UBS's hurried buy-out of troubled rival Credit Suisse, UAE-based oil expert Ibrahim Al Ghitani told AFP.

Brent crude oil prices, trading just below $80 a barrel late last week, should bounce to above $80 as a result of the reductions, he said, calling prices below $80 "unacceptable" for OPEC+.

"The producing countries adhere to a balancing level that supports their large financial budget this year, and their next economic plans," Al Ghitani said.

'Recessionary pressures' 

The reductions follow a controversial decision in October by OPEC and its allies including Russia — collectively known as OPEC+ — to slash production by two million barrels per day.

That cut, the biggest since the height of the COVID pandemic in 2020, also came despite concerns it would fuel further inflation and push central banks to hike interest rates.

OPEC raised its 2023 world oil demand forecast in February, saying it expected demand to grow by 2.3 million barrels per day to an average of 101.87 million barrels per day this year.

But "initial expectations of higher demand in the second half are now challenged by the prospects of continued high inflation and recessionary pressures", said Gulf analyst Yesar Al Maleki.

"OPEC is taking a pre-emptive measure in case demand reduction in the second half is possibly higher," he told AFP.

Saudi Arabia will cut 500,000 barrels per day, Iraq 211,000, the UAE 144,000, Kuwait 128,000, Algeria 48,000 and Oman 40,000, each country announced.

The reductions ignore calls from the United States to raise production as consumption rises and as China, the world's biggest oil consumer, reopens after its COVID shutdown.

"As world economies recover, we'll see more consumption. And therefore we'd like to see supply meet demand," said Jose Fernandez, the US undersecretary of state for economic affairs, Energy and the environment, on the sidelines of the CERAWeek energy conference, in Houston, Texas, last month.

On Monday, OPEC+ — the 13 members of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and 11 non-OPEC allied countries — will hold a Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee meeting by video-link.

US President Joe Biden has regularly called for an increase in the OPEC+ output since Russia's invasion of Ukraine early last year sent prices soaring to above $120 a barrel. 

After the cut in October, which preceded US mid-term elections, he warned of "consequences" for Saudi Arabia, a long-standing ally.

LONDON — UK passport office workers launched a five-week stoppage Monday, the latest walkout in strike-hit Britain as the country reels from the worst cost of living crisis in a generation.

The Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) accused the government of failing to deal even-handedly with public sector workers.

The UK has been hit by a wave of industrial action across the economy in recent months ranging from ambulance staff and rail staff to doctors, teachers and dock workers.

Unions say their members have been hit by a combination of decades-high inflation and stagnating wages that has left them struggling to pay their bills.

Ministers had failed to "hold any meaningful talks" with civil servants despite negotiations having been opened with unions representing health workers and teachers, PCS General-Secretary Mark Serwotka said.

"They're treating their own workforce worse than anyone else. They've had six months to resolve this dispute but for six months have refused to improve their 2 per cent imposed pay rise, and failed to address our members' other issues of concern," he said.

"They seem to think if they ignore our members, they'll go away. But how can our members ignore the cost-of-living crisis when 40,000 civil servants are using foodbanks and 45,000 of them are claiming the benefits they administer themselves?" he added.

The union wants talks about pay, jobs, pensions and conditions.

More than 1,000 members of the PCS civil servants union are due to take part in the walkout with picket lines mounted outside eight sites.

A nationwide walkout of more than 130,000 civil servants is also planned for April 28.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has rejected demands for big pay hikes in the public sector, saying they are unaffordable and will fuel inflation.

The UK government and teaching unions earlier this month agreed to hold "intensive talks" a day after health unions said they had reached a deal on pay.

But teacher union leaders said on Monday that they rejected the latest pay offer and announced further walkouts.

The government had offered teachers a £1,000 ($1,231) one-off payment for the current school year and an average rise of 4.5 per cent pay rise for next year.

But National Education Union (NEU) members in England voted to turn down the deal and to strike on April 27 and May 2.

"The offer shows an astounding lack of judgment and understanding of the desperate situation in the education system," said Mary Bousted and Kevin Courtney, joint general secretaries of the NEU.

ROME — Italy said on Friday it was temporarily blocking ChatGPT over data privacy concerns, becoming the first western country to take such action against the popular artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot.

The country's Data Protection Authority said US firm OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, had no legal basis to justify "the mass collection and storage of personal data for the purpose of 'training' the algorithms underlying the operation of the platform".

ChatGPT caused a global sensation when it was released last year for its ability to generate essays, songs, exams and even news articles from brief prompts.

But critics have long fretted that it was unclear where ChatGPT and its competitors got their data or how they processed it.

Universities and some education authorities have banned the chatbot over fears that students could use it to write essays or cheat in exams.

And hundreds of experts and industry figures signed an open letter this week calling for a pause in the development of powerful AI systems, arguing they posed "profound risks to society and humanity".

The letter was prompted by OpenAI's release earlier this month of GPT-4, a more powerful version of its chatbot, with even less transparency about its data sources.

OpenAI said on Friday that it has "disabled ChatGPT for users in Italy".

"We are committed to protecting people's privacy and we believe we comply with... privacy laws. We actively work to reduce personal data in training our AI systems like ChatGPT because we want our AI to learn about the world, not about private individuals," an OpenAI spokesperson said.

"We also believe that AI regulation is necessary — so we look forward to working closely with [authorities in Italy] and educating them on how our systems are built and used," the spokesperson said.

"Our users in Italy have told us they find ChatGPT helpful for everyday tasks and we look forward to making it available again soon."

'Unsuitable answers' 

The Italian authority imposed a "temporary limitation of the processing of Italian user data" by OpenAI and said it had launched an investigation. 

As well as a lack of legal basis for data collection, the authority also highlighted a lack of clarity over whose data was being collected.

It said wrong answers given by the chatbot suggested data was not being handled properly, and accused the firm of exposing children to "absolutely unsuitable answers".

The watchdog further referenced a data breach on March 20 where user conversations and payment information were compromised — a problem the firm blamed on a bug.

Nello Cristianini, an AI academic from Bath university in Britain, said securing user data and enforcing age limits were easy to fix.

But the other two accusations were more problematic — that the model is trained on personal data that is gathered without consent and then not treated properly.

"It is not clear how these can be fixed anytime soon," he said.

The company has been given 20 days to respond and could face a fine of 20 million euros ($21.7 million) or up to 4 per cent of annual revenue.

The runaway success of ChatGPT garnered OpenAI a multibillion-dollar deal with Microsoft, which uses the technology in its Bing search engine and other programs.

It also sparked a gold rush among other tech firms and venture capitalists, with Google hurrying out its own chatbot and investors pouring cash into all manner of AI projects.