China rolls out new measures to fix its property crisis, spur growth

China has announced fresh measures to revive its ailing property industry after the latest data showed housing prices slumped further in April. Other figures reported Friday showed factory output rose but consumer spending remained lackluster. China’s housing market has slumped after a crackdown on excessive borrowing by property developers, dragging on a wide range of other businesses and slowing growth in the world’s No. 2 economy. The government has cut interest rates and freed up billions of dollars of financing to help financially struggling developers deliver housing already promised and paid for. Local governments are being encouraged to buy apartments that are going unsold due to weak demand to use as affordable housing.

Vindicated by Supreme Court, CFPB director says bureau will add staff, consider new rules on banks

NEW YORK (AP) — Since its creation roughly 14 years ago, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has faced lawsuits, political and legal challenges to the idea of whether the Federal Government’s aggressive consumer financial watchdog agency should be allowed exist at all. Now cleared of any legal ambiguity, CFPB Director Rohit Chopra told reporters Friday that the bureau plans to increase the size of its enforcement bureau, hiring additional investigators, and has already filed legal motions on roughly a dozen cases pending against companies accused of wrongdoing that have been held up due to the pending Supreme Court case.

A former OpenAI leader says safety has ‘taken a backseat to shiny products’ at the AI company

A former OpenAI leader who resigned from the company earlier this week says that product safety has “taken a backseat to shiny products” at the influential artificial intelligence company. Jan Leike had run OpenAI’s “Super Alignment” team alongside a company co-founder who also resigned this week. On Friday, Leike wrote on the social media platform X that he joined the San Francisco-based company because he thought it would be the best place to do AI research. But he says he’s been disagreeing with the company’s leadership about its “core priorities” for some time until they finally reached a breaking point. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says the company has a lot more to do and is committed to doing it.

Taiwan is selling more to the US than China in major shift away from Beijing

WASHINGTON (AP) — Taiwan is reducing its reliance on the Chinese mainland as it seeks to insulate itself from pressure from Beijing and forge closer economic and trade ties with the United States. In a stark illustration of the shift, the U.S. displaced mainland China as the top destination for Taiwan’s exports in the first quarter of the year for the first time since the start of 2016. That’s when comparable data became available. The world’s biggest maker of computer chips, TSMC, is among the companies shifting manufacturing to the U.S., Japan and other countries as a part of that trend. Meanwhile, the island’s investments in the Chinese mainland fell to the lowest level in more than 20 years last year.