The US pressed China on Friday for a probe into claims by the Falun Gong spiritual group that thousands of followers at Chinese camps have been killed and their organs harvested and sold.
"The Chinese have publicly denied the allegations. We've made the point that a further investigation would be helpful. We urge that it be done," deputy State Department spokesman Adam Ereli told reporters.
"Well, obviously, any such reports are taken very seriously by us. We haven't been able to confirm them. We have contacted the government of China about them," Ereli said.
Asked whether the US had suggested any international investigation, he said: "No, we've raised it with the Chinese and urged them to investigate."
The Falun Gong spiritual movement alleged that as many as 75 percent of its 6,000 followers held in a state-run camp in the Sujiatun district of the northern city of Shenyang had been cremated after they were killed and their organs harvested and sold.
In a statement on Friday, the movement, quoting "a veteran medical doctor who has served in the Shenyang military zone," said there were 36 such camps and that "the scope of the problem far exceeds that previously imagined."
An American scientist convicted of lying to US authorities about payments from China while he was at Harvard University has rebuilt his research lab in Shenzhen, China, to pursue technology the Chinese government has identified as a national priority: embedding electronics into the human brain. Charles Lieber, 67, is among the world’s leading researchers in brain-computer interfaces. The technology has shown promise in treating conditions such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and restoring movement in paralyzed people. It also has potential military applications: Scientists at the Chinese People’s Liberation Army have investigated brain interfaces as a way to engineer super soldiers by boosting
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Jailed media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai (黎智英) has been awarded Deutsche Welle’s (DW) freedom of speech award for his contribution to Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. The German public broadcaster on Thursday said Lai would be presented in absentia with the 12th iteration of the award on June 23 at the DW Global Media Forum in Bonn. Deutsche Welle director-general Barbara Massing praised the 78-year-old founder of the now-shuttered news outlet Apple Daily for standing “unwaveringly for press freedom in Hong Kong at great personal risk.” “With Apple Daily, he gave journalists a platform for free reporting and a voice to the democracy movement in
As evening falls in Fiji’s capital, a steady stream of people approaches a makeshift clinic that is a first line of defense against one of the world’s fastest-growing HIV epidemics. In the South Pacific nation — a popular tourist destination of just under a million people — more than 2,000 new HIV cases were recorded last year, a 26 percent increase from 2024. The government has declared an HIV outbreak and described it as a national crisis. “It’s spreading like wildfire,” said Siteri Dinawai, 46, who came to be tested. The Moonlight Clinic, a converted minibus parked in a suburban cul-de-sac in Suva, is