A third man has pleaded guilty to his role in a plot to illegally export materials used in space and weapons technology to China, Hong Kong and Singapore, the US attorney’s office announced on Monday.
Jian Wei Ding, 50, of Singapore, pleaded guilty on Friday in the US District Court in Minneapolis to one count of conspiracy to violate export regulations. His co-defendants — Ping Cheng, 46, of Manhasset, New York, and Kok Tong Lim, 36, of Singapore — also pleaded guilty in recent weeks to one count of conspiracy.
In their plea agreements, the three men admitted that from March 23, 2007, through April 6 last year they conspired to violate export regulations by exporting and attempting to export high-modulus carbon-fiber material without a license.
The material is used in rockets, satellites, spacecraft and uranium enrichment. For national security reasons, a license from the US Department of Commerce is required to export it.
The plea agreements said Ding controlled several import and export firms, including one that acquired high-technology items for its customers. One of those customers is the China Academy of Space Technology, which builds satellites for the Chinese government.
Ding’s role was to manage the companies, maintain a relationship with the Chinese users of the material and provide money to buy the material. Cheng acted as the US agent for Ding’s companies and Lim’s role was to reach out to US suppliers.
The defendants dealt with an undercover Minnesota company that purported to be a supplier of aerospace commodities.
The men each face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a maximum US$1 million fine. A sentencing date has not been set.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RSS