Chinese telecom giant Huawei has been blocked from tendering for equipment contracts with Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN) because of security concerns, a report said yesterday.
The government refused to confirm the specifics of the Australian Financial Review (AFR) report. However, a spokesperson for Australian Attorney General Nicola Roxon said protecting the integrity of the ambitious NBN was of paramount importance.
“The National Broadband Network is the largest nation-building project in Australian history and it will become the backbone of Australia’s information infrastructure,” Roxon’s spokesperson said. “As such, and as a strategic and significant government investment, we have a responsibility to do our utmost to protect its integrity and that of the information carried on it.”
Huawei, which was founded by a former Chinese People’s Liberation Army engineer, was instructed late last year by Canberra that it was banned from bidding for NBN equipment contracts, the AFR said.
NBN Co, the government corporation implementing Australia’s largest ever infrastructure project, had internally endorsed Huawei, but the government intervened because of concerns about cyberattacks from China, the AFR said.
Huawei’s technology is used to build mobile phone networks around the world. It has repeatedly denied any links to the Chinese military, but has also run afoul of regulators and lawmakers in the US.
There was no immediate comment from Huawei to the AFR report. Officials say the A$35.9 billion (US$37.5 billion) NBN will connect 93 percent of Australian homes to high-speed fiber Internet, with the remainder linked via fixed-wireless services and satellite.
Roxon’s spokesperson said Canberra’s stringent approach to the network was “consistent with the government’s practice for ensuring the security and resilience of Australia’s critical infrastructure more broadly.”
Auschwitz survivor Eva Schloss, the stepsister of teenage diarist Anne Frank and a tireless educator about the horrors of the Holocaust, has died. She was 96. The Anne Frank Trust UK, of which Schloss was honorary president, said she died on Saturday in London, where she lived. Britain’s King Charles III said he was “privileged and proud” to have known Schloss, who cofounded the charitable trust to help young people challenge prejudice. “The horrors that she endured as a young woman are impossible to comprehend and yet she devoted the rest of her life to overcoming hatred and prejudice, promoting kindness, courage, understanding
‘DISRESPECTFUL’: Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s most influential adviser, drew ire by posting an image of Greenland in the colors of the US flag, captioning it ‘SOON’ US President Donald Trump on Sunday doubled down on his claim that Greenland should become part of the US, despite calls by the Danish prime minister to stop “threatening” the territory. Washington’s military intervention in Venezuela has reignited fears for Greenland, which Trump has repeatedly said he wants to annex, given its strategic location in the arctic. While aboard Air Force One en route to Washington, Trump reiterated the goal. “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it,” he said in response to a reporter’s question. “We’ll worry about Greenland in
PERILOUS JOURNEY: Over just a matter of days last month, about 1,600 Afghans who were at risk of perishing due to the cold weather were rescued in the mountains Habibullah set off from his home in western Afghanistan determined to find work in Iran, only for the 15-year-old to freeze to death while walking across the mountainous frontier. “He was forced to go, to bring food for the family,” his mother, Mah Jan, said at her mud home in Ghunjan village. “We have no food to eat, we have no clothes to wear. The house in which I live has no electricity, no water. I have no proper window, nothing to burn for heating,” she added, clutching a photograph of her son. Habibullah was one of at least 18 migrants who died
Russia early yesterday bombarded Ukraine, killing two people in the Kyiv region, authorities said on the eve of a diplomatic summit in France. A nationwide siren was issued just after midnight, while Ukraine’s military said air defenses were operating in several places. In the capital, a private medical facility caught fire as a result of the Russian strikes, killing one person and wounding three others, the State Emergency Service of Kyiv said. It released images of rescuers removing people on stretchers from a gutted building. Another pre-dawn attack on the neighboring city of Fastiv killed one man in his 70s, Kyiv Governor Mykola
RSS