Hong Kong lifts its controversial hamster ban that made the furry animals a public enemy due to COVID

BYSHIRLEY ZHAO AND BLOOMBERG
January 4, 2023

Hong Kong plans to lift its ban on importing hamsters.
BERTHA WANG/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Hong Kong will lift a ban on importing hamsters for sale around the middle of this month, a year after the city ordered a culling of the furry mammals and shut down all pet shops selling them to eliminate the Covid-19 virus.

Imported hamsters will still need to test negative for Covid before they are made available for sale, because studies found that they are susceptible to the virus and could easily spread to humans, a spokesman for the city’s Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department said in an emailed statement.

The city banned the importation of all small mammals for commercial purposes in January last year after nearly a dozen hamsters imported from the Netherlands and sold at a local pet store were found to be infected with delta, a virulent Covid-19 variant that hadn’t been detected in the city for months until a worker there tested positive. Officials ordered a culling of thousands of the pets. By May, the government had resumed importation of all small mammals other than hamsters given the risks.

Hong Kong has been dismantling its Covid Zero policies for months, including scrapping hotel quarantine, lifting restrictions on new arrivals going to bars or restaurants, and removing PCR tests for travelers after they arrive in the city. The financial hub has said it plans to keep its mask mandate, citing concerns about the strain being put on health-care system from both Covid and influenza.

In recent weeks, China has also been rapidly shifting away from its zero tolerance to the virus after three years of isolation from the rest of the world. The country will reopen to the world and scrap quarantine for arrivals from Jan. 8 as it seeks to boost its flagging economy. Hong Kong, whose border with mainland China has been effectively shut since early 2020, is also pursuing a resumption of quarantine-free travel with the mainland on Jan. 8.

A MORNING JOE REGULAR

GLAAD Denounces NYT's Hiring of Anti-LGBTQ+ Columnist David French

BY TRUDY RING

JANUARY 04 2023 

The New York Times has brought on an anti-LGBTQ+ columnist, David French, a former National Review editor who was once an attorney with the Alliance Defending Freedom.

The Times announced French’s hiring Tuesday, calling him “an expert on the law, faith and politics.” But GLAAD is pointing to his “deep history of anti-LGBTQ activism.” GLAAD also notes that he joins the Times after the paper ended its relationship with acclaimed trans writer Jenny Boylan last year and brought on another anti-LGBTQ+ columnist, Pamela Paul.

“It is appalling that The New York Times hired and is now boasting about bringing on David French, a writer and attorney with a deep history of anti-LGBTQ activism,” GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said in a press release. “After more than a year of inaccurate, misleading LGBTQ coverage in the Times opinion and news pages, the Times started 2023 by announcing a second anti-transgender opinion columnist, without a single known trans voice represented on staff. A cursory search for French turns up numerous anti-LGBTQ articles and his record as an attorney for the Alliance Defending Freedom, an organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center designated an anti-LGBTQ hate group that actively spreads misinformation about LGBTQ people and pushes baseless legislation and lawsuits to legalize discrimination, including just last month at the Supreme Court. The Times left out these facts in its glowing announcement of French’s hiring, and also forgot to mention his work as a co-signer on the 2017 Nashville Statement, which erased LGBTQ voices of faith and falsely stated ‘that it is sinful to approve of homosexual immorality or transgenderism.’ The Times had the gall to claim French as a ‘faith’ expert despite this known history.

“The Times’ opinion section continues to platform non-LGBTQ voices speaking up inaccurately and harmfully about LGBTQ people and issues. This is damaging to the paper’s credibility. The Times opinion section editors’ love letter to French yesterday shows a willful disregard of LGBTQ community voices and the concerns so many have shared about their inaccurate, exclusionary, often ridiculous pieces. Last year, the Times ended popular trans writer Jenny Boylan’s column, leaving the opinion section with no trans columnists and a known lack of transgender representation on its overall staff. Who was brought on after Boylan? Pamela Paul, who has devoted columns to anti-transgender and anti-LGBTQ disinformation, and David French. This reflects a growing trend on the news and opinion pages of misguided, inaccurate, and disingenuous ‘both sides’ fearmongering and bad faith ‘just asking questions’ coverage. The Times started 2023 by bragging about hiring another anti-trans writer, so LGBTQ leaders, organizations, and allies should make a 2023 resolution not to stay silent as the Times platforms lies, bias, fringe theories, and dangerous inaccuracies.”

In the past few years, French has written columns with anti-LGBTQ+ and, often, specifically anti-trans opinions. “The sexual revolutionaries are moving on from the cause of gay marriage to recasting and rethinking law, culture, religion, and biology for the sake of indulging the troubled fantasies of a tiny, disturbed population of transgendered, or ‘genderqueer,’ Americans,” he wrote in 2015 in National Review. (Being transgender and being genderqueer are not the same thing.)

The Nashville Statement, issued in 2017, was drafted in that city by a coalition of conservative Christian leaders called the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, whose website says it “exists to equip the church on the meaning of biblical sexuality.” Part of the statement reads, “We affirm that it is sinful to approve of homosexual immorality or transgenderism and that such approval constitutes an essential departure from Christian faithfulness and witness.”

Last year, French actually praised the Respect for Marriage Act, which wrote marriage equality into federal law while assuring that it won’t interfere with religious liberty. The act “doesn’t solve every issue in America’s culture war (much less every issue related to marriage), but it’s a bipartisan step in the right direction,” he wrote in The Atlantic. But in the same article, he noted that he filed a friend-of-the-court brief in a case recently heard by the Supreme Court involving a web designer arguing that she has the right to refuse service to same-sex couples; he sided with the designer. And GLAAD points out that he has never repudiated the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing the designer, one of its many anti-LGBTQ+ clients over the years.

Paul became a Times columnist in 2022. Her contributions so far include one objecting to the use of “LGBTQ” rather than “gay” or “lesbian” and another asserting that trans-inclusive language around pregnancy and birth erases women.

CRIMINAL CRYPTO CAPITALI$M
US to seize $624m of Robinhood shares tied to FTX founder Bankman-Fried

JANUARY 04, 2023

Sam Bankman-Fried purchased about 7.42 per cent of Robinhood’s stock through Emergent Fidelity Technologies.

WILMINGTON, Delaware — United States prosecutors are in the process of seizing shares of Robinhood Markets tied to Sam Bankman-Fried, who has been charged with fraud in the collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, a US attorney told a judge on Wednesday (Jan 4).

The Department of Justice did not believe the 56 million shares of Robinhood, worth about US$465 million (S$624 million), were property of a bankruptcy estate, US attorney Seth Shapiro told US bankruptcy judge John Dorsey, who is overseeing the FTX bankruptcy.

Mr Shapiro said that competing claims to shares of the stock-trading app could be worked out in a forfeiture proceeding.

Bankrupt crypto firm BlockFi, FTX and liquidators in Antigua have all laid claim to the Robinhood stock, along with Bankman-Fried.

FTX, along with Bankman-Fried, has laid claim to the Robinhood stock.

Prosecutors have accused Bankman-Fried of engaging in a years-long “fraud of epic proportions” that cost investors, customers and lenders potentially billions of dollars by using customer deposits to support his Alameda Research hedge fund.

Read AlsoBankman-Fried's parents have received physical threats since FTX collapsed

He pleaded not guilty to counts of wire fraud and conspiracy. He has acknowledged risk management failures at FTX, but has said he did not believe he was criminally liable.

Bankman-Fried purchased about 7.42 per cent of Robinhood’s stock through Emergent Fidelity Technologies, using funds borrowed from Alameda Research, according to an affidavit he filed in December in an Antigua court.

Bankman-Fried said he owned 90 per cent of Emergent and Gary Wang, another former FTX executive, owned 10 per cent. Wang has pleaded guilty to fraud charges from the FTX collapse and is cooperating with prosecutors.

Mr Shapiro also said prosecutors had seized US bank accounts affiliated with FTX’s Bahamas-based business, known as FTX Digital Markets. Court records showed that the accounts at Silvergate Bank and Farmington State Bank, which does business as Moonstone Bank, held about US$143 million.

Mr James Bromley, an attorney for FTX, told Judge Dorsey that none of the assets targeted for seizure were currently in the direct control of any of FTX entities in Chapter 11.

He said the Robinhood shares were subject to litigation and it was an “open question” about who owns them.

The Robinhood stock, which closed on Wednesday at US$8.36 per share, is also being claimed by BlockFi, another bankrupt crypto firm, as well as liquidators of Emergent, which is in insolvency proceedings in Antigua, where it is incorporated.

BlockFi is suing Emergent in a bid to seize the stock, which was pledged by Alameda as collateral to guarantee repayment of a loan made by BlockFi. Two days after the pledge, Alameda filed for bankruptcy along with FTX.

FTX’s former top lawyer aided U.S. authorities in Bankman-Fried case

ANGUS BERWICK
REUTERS

FTX’s former top lawyer Daniel Friedberg has co-operated with U.S. prosecutors as they investigate the crypto firm’s collapse, a source familiar with the matter said, adding pressure on founder Sam Bankman-Fried who was arrested on criminal fraud charges last month.

Friedberg gave details about FTX in a Nov. 22 meeting with two dozen investigators, the person said. The meeting, held at the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York’s office included officials from the Justice Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the source said. Emails between attendees scheduling the meeting with those agencies were seen by Reuters.

At the meeting, he told prosecutors what he knew of Bankman-Fried’s use of customer funds to finance his business empire, the source said. Friedberg recounted conversations he had with other top executives on the subject and provided details of how Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund Alameda Research functioned, the source said.

Friedberg’s co-operation has not been previously reported. He has not been charged and has not been told he is under criminal investigation, the source said. Instead, he expects to be called as a government witness in Bankman-Fried’s October trial, the person said.

Friedberg’s lawyer, Telemachus Kasulis, the FBI and FTX did not respond to requests for comment on his co-operation. The SEC, the Department of Justice and Bankman-Fried’s spokesman declined to comment.

Bankman-Fried is accused of diverting billions of dollars in FTX client funds to Alameda to bankroll venture investments, luxury real estate purchases, and political donations. On Tuesday, he pleaded not guilty in Manhattan federal court.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, who is leading the criminal case against now bankrupt FTX, said last month: “If you participated in misconduct at FTX or Alameda, now is the time to get ahead of it.”

Two of Bankman-Fried’s closest associates, Caroline Ellison, Alameda’s former chief executive, and Gary Wang, FTX’s former chief technology officer, pleaded guilty to fraud and agreed to co-operate. A lawyer for Ellison didn’t respond to a request for comment. Wang’s lawyer declined to comment.

FTX filed for bankruptcy protection on Nov. 11. A few days later, on Nov. 14, Friedberg received a call from two FBI agents based in New York. He told them he was willing to share information but needed to ask FTX to waive his attorney-client privilege, according to a person familiar with the matter and emails viewed by Reuters.

Friedberg wrote to FTX the next day asking the company to waive his privilege so he could co-operate with prosecutors, according to the email seen by Reuters. FTX did not do so, but agreed with Friedberg on the points he could disclose to investigators, the person said.

Friedberg then wrote back to the two FBI agents, telling them in an e-mail reviewed by Reuters: “I want to co-operate in all respects.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office set up a meeting where Friedberg signed so-called proffer letters prepared for him by the SEC and other agencies, according to the source and an e-mail exchanged by participants. Proffer letters typically describe a potential agreement between authorities and individuals who are witnesses or subjects of an investigation.

Prior to his work advising FTX, Friedberg advised a mix of banking, fintech, and online gaming companies.

One of his previous employers, a Canadian online gaming firm named Excapsa Software, where he was general counsel, also drew controversy due to a cheating scandal involving a poker site it operated called Ultimate Bet. A Canadian gaming commission in 2008 fined Ultimate Bet $1.5 million for failing to enforce measures to prevent fraudulent activities. Excapsa has since dissolved.

According to an audio recording available on the website PokerNews, Friedberg and some other Ultimate Bet associates privately discussed that year how to handle the scandal and minimize the amount of refunds owed to players. Friedberg previously told NBC News that the audio was illegally recorded but NBC’s article did not say that Friedberg challenged its authenticity.

Friedberg first represented Bankman-Fried in 2017 as outside counsel while at U.S. law firm Fenwick & West, where he chaired its payment systems group, the source familiar with the matter said. At the time, the source said Friedberg advised Bankman-Fried on running Alameda, which he founded that year.

In 2020, when Bankman-Fried launched a separate exchange for U.S. customers called FTX.US, Friedberg moved in-house as FTX’s chief regulatory officer.

In a now-deleted blog post published that year on FTX’s website, Bankman-Fried wrote that Friedberg was FTX’s legal adviser “from the very beginning,” noting he had been “with us through thick and thin.”

Friedberg resigned from his position on Nov. 8, a day after Bankman-Fried disclosed to top executives that FTX was almost out of money, according to the source and three other people briefed on the talks, along with text messages his legal team exchanged at the time.

Will Crypto Ever Be a Safe Investment?

Analysis by Andy Mukherjee | Bloomberg
January 4, 2023 at 11:32 p.m. EST

The Bitcoin logo on souvenirs during the listing ceremony for the CSOP Bitcoin Futures and CSOP Ether Futures exchange-traded funds (ETFs) at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in Hong Kong, China, on Friday, Dec. 16, 2022. A pair of Hong Kong ETFs investing in Bitcoin and Ether futures raised $79 million as the city pushes ahead with a plan to become a crypto hub even as the sector globally reels from the FTX collapse. (Bloomberg)

In the annals of cryptocurrencies, 2022 will go down as the year when the industry nearly died. But then December saw the birth of a pair of exchange-traded funds in Hong Kong, offering new hope to both retail and professional investors.

Asia’s first futures ETFs for Bitcoin and Ether join a growing list of initiatives that will go some way toward ameliorating the current crisis of legitimacy facing virtual assets. A big dampener is the confusion surrounding safe custody of crypto holdings. Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX, the most spectacular of last year’s string of crypto debacles, has brought the hapless customers of the failed Bahamas-based exchange in front of a bankruptcy judge in Delaware who’ll determine if they’re entitled to their funds ahead of other creditors.

But FTX is not the only test for crypto custody. Last month, a US bankruptcy judge ordered the insolvent Celsius Network LLC to return the roughly $50 million that had never earned any interest. However, the fate of billions of dollars of users’ funds stuck in interest-bearing accounts is still in question: Does the money belong to the debtor’s estate or the customers?

This anxiety-inducing uncertainty should ease with more crypto investments moving to normal bourses as regular securities, no different from stocks and bonds. That will bring customer assets under the umbrella of standard safeguards, precluding the need for costly legal maneuverings to recover one’s money. For instance, the newly launched CSOP Bitcoin Futures ETF will entrust custody of customer funds to HSBC Holdings Plc’s licensed Hong Kong trust company that, as Bloomberg Intelligence notes, undergoes regular bank examinations and audits.

This is what fund managers have been waiting for. Adults getting into the crypto playpen will bring grown-up rules with them. Nobody knows if any of today’s digital assets will amount to anything more than vehicles for speculation. But tokens of the future might represent meaningful economic value. On that premise alone, it may be worthwhile to create a safe and secure setup now for capital to flow toward them.

The Hong Kong crypto ETF is just one of several recent examples of the financial industry trying to provide protection in a legal vacuum. Bank of New York Mellon Corp., the custodian of $43 trillion in customer assets, recently opened its vaults to receive some institutional clients’ cryptocurrencies. BlackRock Inc. has also entered the fray by adding crypto to its Aladdin platform, used by pension funds and other large investors to oversee their portfolios. Fidelity Investments, the brokerage unit of the asset management behemoth, has been offering custody services to hedge funds since 2018. It’s now launching a zero-commission Bitcoin and Ether trading service for retail clients.

Olivier Fines, the London-based head of advocacy for Europe, Middle East and Africa at CFA Institute, cautions against reading too much into private, industry-level efforts. “The de facto insurance offered by a BNY Mellon, a Fidelity or an HSBC is very much a product of their size and scale; it’s not something smaller institutions can easily replicate. For there to be a competitive market in custodial services for crypto, new laws must fill the existing legal holes,” Fines said.

One such gap is in the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s Customer Protection Rule. Under it, broker-dealers are required to segregate customers’ cash and securities from their own. This is an important assurance to clients parting with their money. They would be loath to stand in line alongside general creditors to recoup pennies on the dollar in the event of the bankruptcy of an intermediary.

But is an exchange token — such as FTX’s cryptocurrency FTT or Binance’s BNB — a security or a utility? In its complaint against FTX co-founder Gary Wang and former Alameda Research Chief Executive Officer Caroline Ellison, the SEC is claiming that FTT is a security. So far though, “custodial protections, like other investor protections for digital assets, remain largely untested in court,” Fines and his Washington-based colleague Stephen Deane wrote in a new report that summarizes the investment management industry’s current views on putting crypto on their menu.

“Revolutionary or not, technology alone cannot offer protection from age-old financial misdeeds, ranging from market manipulation and front-running to fraudulent disclosures and Ponzi schemes,” says the CFA Institute report. “The crypto ecosystem urgently needs a strong, clearly defined regulatory framework.”

For too long, the focus of crypto supervision has been on preventing money-laundering. Customer protection wasn’t the priority. Now the pendulum is beginning to swing, though, perhaps a bit too much in the other direction. In March, the SEC came up with new accounting guidance for financial companies that have an obligation to safeguard customers’ crypto assets: They need to explicitly record a liability and a matching asset. But this requirement may backfire if it’s perceived to be too onerous. A bloated balance sheet will push up banks’ capital requirements, making them reluctant to offer custodial services to clients.

This regulatory tug of war will ultimately settle down, hopefully with investors feeling better protected than now and intermediaries not shying away from the field. The techno-anarchist founders of trustless blockchains won’t be pleased that the same large middlemen they wanted to banish are trying to hijack their creation. But with some luck, future historians of the industry would conclude that crypto’s worst vulnerabilities crawled out of the woodwork in 2022. After that, things progressively got better. Digital assets continued to remain unsuitable for the majority of risk-averse small investors, but at least they became a safer bet for those who didn’t mind the volatility.

Silvergate Capital shares plunge nearly 50% amid crypto-related negativity

By: Benson Toti
on Jan 5, 2023

Silvergate shares fell sharply after report investor deposits fell $8 billion after FTX collapse.

The crypto-friendly bank is also cutting its workforce by 40% amid crypto market downturn.

The company's shares fell nearly 50%, dropping to lows of $11.52 on Thursday.

Silvergate Capital Corp (NYSE: SI) shares dropped sharply on Thursday, with intraday declines as of midday more than 47% to see the crypto-focused bank’s stock trade around $11.52.
Silvergate shares fall as investors withdraw $8 billion in deposits

Losses for crypto-friendly bank’s shares followed the company’s fourth-quarter report before markets opened. Per the update, Silvergate customers, most probably concerned by the shocking collapse of crypto exchange FTX, moved to make massive withdrawals. In total, investor deposits fell from $11.9 billion to $3.8 billion. Crypto-related deposits fell more than $8.1 billlion during the quarter.

The company also recorded a huge decline in average customer deposits across board, which dropped by $4.7 billion to $7.3 billion.

Silvergate to cut workforce by 40%

Shares were also down as Silvergate management announced plans to cut its workforce.

According to the bank’s announcement, the move to lay off 40% of the workforce – about 200 employees – are part of the measures being taken to reduce costs as the broader crypto industry continues to battle with the effects of the brutal 2022 bear market.

According to Silvergate CEO Alan Lane, the measures taken have been in response to the crypto market’s outlook and events as the year drew to a close. He noted in a statement:

“In response to the rapid changes in the digital asset industry during the fourth quarter, we took commensurate steps to ensure that we were maintaining cash liquidity in order to satisfy potential deposit outflows, and we currently maintain a cash position in excess of our digital asset related deposits.”

The reaction in the market saw the company’s shares plummet more than 47%, with prices moving from around $22 to the aforementioned lows of $11.52.

Silvergate shares have declined more than 69% since FTX’s implosion. Indeed, with broader crypto sentiment down, the crypto-friendly bank’s stock has dipped even further after US prosecutors announced they had seized FTX-related bank accounts at Silvergate.

Want to Succeed on Wall Street? Learn Poker, Not Economics

Analysis by Aaron Brown | Bloomberg

January 4, 2023 

Perhaps the most famous trading experiment ever conducted was when commodities investor Richard Dennis bet his partner William Eckhardt in 1983 that he could train a group of amateurs – dubbed “the Turtles” -- to be successful futures traders. The bet was to be settled by giving the Turtles real money to trade. In the end, the Turtles compiled an impressive record, handing Dennis the win.

Although the experiment settled the issue in popular imagination, it lacked the transparency, controls and statistical rigor demanded by academics. So ever since, researchers have strived to understand trading success through various studies – efforts that have not escaped notice of firms that are in the business of trading financial assets.

The latest entry in this quest comes from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in conjunction with researchers at the University of Southern California and University College London. For a paper titled “Strategic Sophistication and Trading Profits: An Experiment with Professional Traders,” the authors recruited 56 professional traders, plus an equal-size sample of students for controls, and evaluated their performance in a computer-simulated trading game. They then tested their subjects on a wide range of specific skills to see which skills were correlated to trading success.

The main finding was that among students the only useful predictor of trading success was general intelligence. Among professional traders, though, neither intelligence nor other personality traits and cognitive skills mattered much. Success did not depend on any fundamental insight about value. 

What mattered was strategic sophistication in the sense of taking analysis of other people’s behavior to high levels.

This calls to mind the folk wisdom found in poker, which is that “beginners think about their cards.

 With a little experience, they start thinking of the other guy’s cards. Poker begins when you think about what the other guy thinks about your cards.” The Fed paper suggests that professional traders are playing poker, while the students are playing games like chess, backgammon or blackjack that depend on intelligence rather than guessing what other people are thinking.

Most people will file this away as a mildly interesting factoid. It’s not surprising in that we know professional trading organizations use poker and other strategic games — such as Wall Street firm Jane Street’s Figgie -- to select and train traders. 

But the paper’s finding goes well beyond the claim that strategy is valuable for trading. It suggests that other things such as intelligence, risk strategies, personality traits or knowledge of fundamental value do not matter — or at least are so evenly distributed among traders that they can’t be used to predict success

Moreover, the paper, and many previous ones in this area, contradict the result of the Turtle experiment which suggests trading success is a matter of following certain rules, not anything in the trader’s personality or mind. Conventional Wall Street wisdom is that there are prerequisite mental traits for successful trading, but there are many variants, not a single strategic skill. 

Poker players sometimes make good traders, but not always. And chess players, backgammon and all other expert game players can succeed in different ways. Plus, whatever raw talent a person has, success is thought to require extended apprenticeship. In contrast, the Fed paper did not find any advantage to years of education or experience or other indicators of trading.

Who should you believe? The Turtle experiment and Wall Street folk wisdom have one great advantage, in that they are based on real people trading large amounts of money in real financial markets.

 Unfortunately, that makes controlled experimentation prohibitively expensive. Formal studies and other academic work conducted under laboratory conditions make the results much more scientific, but at the cost of being one layer removed from reality. The Fed study uses a particularly sophisticated trading simulation, but it’s still a simulation with relatively small-dollar stakes.

If you are not a trader but want to be one, either for your own account or for an institution, the study suggests you should play poker rather than attending class and take game theory courses over economics. Conventional wisdom says you should develop your comparative advantages, whatever they are, and study successful traders. If your interest is to understand the economic function of trading, the study suggests it is a game that rewards aggregating information from other’s bids and offers and using that information to provide liquidity.

 Conventional wisdom suggests trading is a broader skill that combines fundamental and technical information to produce an equilibrium, with many different types of traders performing different functions.

Of course, this is only one study that will not tip the balance in any direction. And its results only suggest, not prove, broader implications. Still, if you like poker more than class, and game theory more than economics, it’s good news. You may lose in trading competitions with fellow students, but you have a bright future on Wall Street. On the other hand, if you’re counting on traders to assess fundamental economic value, the study is bad news. It suggests they’re focused on outsmarting each other, not on investigating reality.

Whatever you think about the study and possible implications, it’s always good to see a careful, controlled, rigorous analysis in an area where opinions tend to be much stronger than the foundations for those opinions. Hopefully it will cause some deeper thinking about trading — both how to do it better and what its role in the economy is — from people of all opinions.

More from Bloomberg Opinion:

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Aaron Brown is a former managing director and head of financial market research at AQR Capital Management. He is author of “The Poker Face of Wall Street.” He may have a stake in the areas he writes about.

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com/opinion

©2023 Bloomberg L.P.

Heads of Churches in Jerusalem condemn vandalism by Israeli settlers on a cemetery

A worker of the church inspects a vandalized tombstone at the Protestant Mount Zion Cemetery in Jerusalem (Reuters Photo)

JERUSALEM, Thursday, January 5, 2023 (WAFA) – The Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in occupied Jerusalem condemned in a statement today the recent desecration by Israeli settlers of more than 30 gravestones at the Protestant Cemetery on Mount Zion on New Year’s Day.

“The choice of these specific targets signals to us that the perpetrators of these criminal deeds were clearly motivated by religious bigotry and hatred of Christians,” the statement read.

The Patriarchs and Heads of Churches described the attack as a terror act, and called on the concerned authorities to apprehend and prosecute the perpetrators to the fullest extent of the law, including those laws pertaining to hate crimes.

The statement added, “These acts cannot be seen as isolated incidents, but a clear and systematic attempt to bring about exclusivity in favor of one side, and a fierce attack on historical Status Quo enshrined in our beloved Holy Land”.

The statement urged the religious and political leaders across the region to condemn and combat these acts of vandalism and to promote safety and religious tolerance.

Jewish extremists appear to vandalize Christian graves in Jerusalem’s Old City

Christian sites in Israel have been frequent targets of vandals roundly determined to be Jews

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A priest shows a gravestone allegedly vandalized by Jewish men in the Christian cemetery on Mount Zion, in the Old City of Jerusalem, January 4, 2023. (Jamal Awad/Flash90)

By Andrew LapinJanuary 4, 2023

(JTA) – A pair of what appeared to be Jews were captured on camera vandalizing dozens of Christian graves in Jerusalem’s historic Old City on Jan. 1, drawing condemnation from church officials and the United Kingdom.

The video shows the vandals making a beeline for a large masonry cross inside the Protestant Mount Zion Cemetery, which was established in 1848 and is managed by an organization affiliated with the Anglican Church. After toppling the cross, the vandals, who appear to be young men and can be seen wearing kippahs and tzitzit typically worn by haredi Orthodox Jews, moved on to damage other tombstones.

Coming just days after the swearing-in of a new right-wing government whose critics say could embolden Jewish extremists, the vandalism extends a pattern of attacks on Christian sites in Israel. Vandals have targeted other cemeteries as well as churches and monasteries several times over the last decade. The church and the United Kingdom condemned the incident; the Israeli police have said it will investigate.

Church leaders in the country have long maintained that Israeli settlers and other Jewish extremist groups are trying to drive them out of the Old City, which the Israeli far right believes should exclusively be under Jewish control. They say some extremist Jewish groups have spat on Christians as well. Many Christians in the Jerusalem area are Palestinian, although the people buried in the cemetery include British Christians who were influential in pre-state Palestine. 

Last year, Israel’s high court ruled in favor of a right-wing Israeli group that had used shell companies to purchase three Old City buildings that had belonged to the Greek Orthodox church. The group, Ateret Cohanim, seeks to turn non-Jewish properties in Jerusalem into Jewish-owned ones; the church had sued them after the sales were made in 2004.

President Abbas: We will take all appropriate legal measures to respond to Israeli government's actions

RAMALLAH, Thursday, January 5, 2023 (WAFA) – President Mahmoud Abbas said tonight that the leadership "will continue to take all legal measures that international legitimacy allows us in order to take all necessary and appropriate steps" to respond to the Israeli government's actions, including the storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque by Israeli far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Speaking at the beginning of the meeting of the PLO Executive Committee in Ramallah, he said, "We will discuss all these issues, whether with regard to the Israeli government or with regard to the US government, because it is not a secret and there is nothing to hide, that he who stands behind this Israeli policy is the American administration".

The President continued: "I confirm that the storming [of Al-Aqsa Mosque] is the beginning of the implementation of the Netanyahu government’s policy, which we categorically reject. We have heard a lot of rejection of it [the storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque] in various countries of the world, and we have also heard rejection inside Israel. This is because many segments of Israeli society reject this policy, not out of love for us, but in defense of the State of Israel and its future."

"After Minister Bin-Gvir’s storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque, we went to the UN Security Council, and hours from now the Security Council session will start to discuss this issue", he added. "We hope that whoever used to give us a veto will not do so, especially since most countries of the world have condemned Minister Bin-Gvir’s act. He had said that he would storm the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and indeed he did, and this is a phenomenon that we will talk about. We cannot be silent about it at all."

President Abbas added that "there are meetings of the International Action Committee that have begun its work and preparations for international action. At the same time, we will take action at the local and regional levels with regard to responding to the program presented by the new Netanyahu government, a program that cannot be tolerated at all."

"A few months from now, there will be another event, which was approved by the United Nations regarding the commemoration of the Nakba, and this is the first time in the history of the United Nations that the Nakba is commemorated after it was denied by Israel, America and Western countries for a period of time," added the President.

He stressed: "We will also go to the International Court of Justice to determine the nature of the occupation. It took a long time and effort for this law to pass, and for it to go from the UN General Assembly to the ICJ. The issue is now before the court, and we hope that it will speed up the decision-making. We had been under great pressure to reverse this step, but we will not give up our rights."

M.N

Has your career gotten snagged by a noncompete clause? 

Biden’s FTC wants to ban them.

BYMICHELLE CHAPMAN AND THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
January 5, 2023 

FTC Chair Lina Khan.

The Federal Trade Commission is proposing a new rule that would prevent employers from imposing noncompete clauses for workers that prohibit them from joining a competitor, typically for a period of time, after they leave the company.

The proposed rule released Thursday follows an executive order signed by President Joe Biden in 2021 targeting what he labeled anticompetitive practices in tech, health care and other parts of the economy. The order included a call for banning or limiting noncompete agreements to help boost wages.

The FTC proposal is based on a preliminary finding that noncompete clauses quash competition in violation of Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act. Section 5 bans unfair methods of competition.

“Noncompetes block workers from freely switching jobs, depriving them of higher wages and better working conditions, and depriving businesses of a talent pool that they need to build and expand,” Chair Lina M. Khan said in a prepared statement.

The proposed rule would make it illegal for an employer to enter into or attempt to enter into a noncompete with a worker; maintain a noncompete with a worker; or represent to a worker, under certain circumstances, that the worker is subject to a noncompete.

It would apply to independent contractors and anyone who works for an company, whether paid or unpaid. It would also require employers to rescind existing noncompete clauses and actively inform workers that they are no longer in effect.


The proposed rule would generally not apply to other types of employment restrictions, like non-disclosure agreements, but other types of employment restrictions could be subject to the rule if they are so broad that they function as noncompete clauses.

The agency estimates that the new proposed rule could boost wages by nearly $300 billion a year and expand career opportunities for about 30 million Americans.