UNITED STATES
Chinese jailed for espionage
A Chinese businessman was on Wednesday sentenced to about four years in prison for conspiring to export sensitive military information to China after accessing the computer systems of US defense contractors, including Boeing. Su Bin (蘇斌) was sentenced to 46 months in prison in a federal court in Los Angeles. He had faced 30 years in prison before reaching a plea agreement with prosecutors in March. His attorneys were requesting two-and-a-half years. The 51-year-old Bin admitted to conspiring with two unnamed hackers in China to export US military information between 2008 and 2014, according to Bin’s plea agreement. The men targeted fighter jets such as the F-22 and the F-35, as well as Boeing’s C-17 military cargo aircraft program, according to court records.
UNITED STATES
Beijing suspected in hacking
The Chinese government is believed to have infiltrated computers belonging to a US banking regulator, which employees then tried to cover up, a congressional report released on Wednesday said. The computer system at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC), which guarantees US banking deposits, was “hacked by a foreign government, likely the Chinese” the document said. According to the report, which was released by the Republican-led Science, Space and Technology Committee, the agency then tried to hide the attacks. According to the committee, the first hacking was detected in 2010, and the problem reared its head again in 2011 and 2013. “In all, 12 workstations were compromised and 10 FDIC servers were penetrated and infected by a virus created by a hacker,” the committee said.
AUSTRIA
IS recruiters jailed
A Muslim preacher at the center of an extremist propaganda network was on Wednesday sentenced to 20 years in jail for recruiting young fighters to the Islamic State (IS) group. The 34-year-old “brainwashed” dozens of people aged between 14 and 30, according to the public prosecutor, and recruited a number of them to fight for the organization in Syria. A court in the southern city of Graz found the preacher, who goes by the name of Ebu Tejma, guilty of belonging to a terrorist organization and of inciting terrorist attacks following a trial that has been running since February.
KUWAIT
Maids guaranteed wages
The government has set a minimum wage for its hundreds of thousands of mostly Asian domestic staff, the first country in the Gulf to do so, local media reported yesterday. A decree issued by Interior Minister Sheikh Mohammad Khaled Al Sabah set the minimum wage at 60 dinars (US$200) a month and also granted domestic staff a raft of other rights, al-Anbaa newspaper reported. Kuwait is the first country in the Gulf to regulate the work conditions of domestic staff and Human Rights Watch and other rights groups have urged others to follow suit to tackle widespread abuses.
UNITED STATES
Lobster Day to be observed
The senate said Sept. 25 should once again be designated as National Lobster Day in honor of New England’s most celebrated crustacean. New England senators made the request last month, citing the lobster’s cultural and economic importance to the region. The senate passed this year’s resolution on Tuesday. The same day was named in the lobster’s honor last year.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion