A Chinese businessman on Wednesday was sentenced to two years in prison for illegally exporting marine technology with uses in anti-submarine warfare from the US for the benefit of a Chinese military university.
Qin Shuren (覃樹人), who founded a company that sold oceanographic instruments, was sentenced by US District Judge Denise Casper in Boston after admitting he illegally exported devices called hydrophones that can be used to monitor sound underwater.
Prosecutors had sought seven-and-a-half years in prison for Qin, who was also fined US$20,000.
His guilty plea was conditional, allowing him to appeal a ruling by Casper not to suppress the evidence against him.
The 45-year-old marine biologist was charged in 2018 and had already served three months in jail after his arrest.
Defense lawyers said he founded LinkOcean Technologies Ltd in China in 2005 to provide oceanographic instruments to scientists, and immigrated to the US with his family in 2014 as a permanent resident.
Prosecutors said that Qin from 2015 to 2016 exported hydrophones to Northwestern Polytechnical University, a Chinese military research institute involved in underwater drone projects, by deceiving a US supplier and without obtaining export licenses.
His lawyers say Qin was unaware of the university’s intended purposes for the products, which also had civilian scientific uses.
“These are not top-secret technologies,” Qin’s lawyer, Sara Silva, said.
Qin pleaded guilty in April to 10 counts, including conspiring to commit export violations, visa fraud, money laundering and smuggling.
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
RSS