A former University of Kansas professor on Wednesday avoided prison for making a false statement related to work he was doing in China, in the latest setback for a US Department of Justice crackdown on Chinese influence within US academia.
Prosecutors had asked US District Judge Julie Robinson in Kansas City to sentence Franklin Tao (濤馮) to two-and-a-half years in prison, even after she had thrown out most of his trial conviction for concealing work he did in China.
Robinson instead sentenced Tao to time served, saying there was no evidence he shared proprietary information with anyone in China, and that the chemical engineering professor did research that was “freely shared in the scientific community.”
Photo: AP
“This is not an espionage case,” Robinson said. “Maybe that’s what the Department of Justice thought what was going on, but that’s not what was going on.”
Tao’s lawyer, Peter Zeidenberg, said his client was “immensely relieved by the sentence.”
He said Tao plans to appeal his remaining false statement conviction for failing to disclose his affiliation with a Chinese university on a form submitted to the University of Kansas.
Tao, who was indicted in 2019, was among about two dozen academics who were charged as part of the so-called China Initiative, which was launched in 2018 by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, and aimed to counter suspected Chinese economic espionage and research theft.
The justice department under US President Joe Biden in February last year ended the China Initiative following several failed prosecutions and criticism that it chilled research and fueled bias against Asians, although it said it would continue pursuing cases over national security threats posed by China.
Prosecutors said Tao, who worked on renewable energy projects, concealed his affiliation with Fuzhou University from the University of Kansas and two federal agencies that provided grant funding for the professor’s research.
A jury in April last year convicted him of four of the eight charges against him. Robinson in September overturned three wire fraud convictions, citing a lack of evidence.
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
Former Lima mayor Rafael Lopez Aliaga, a Peruvian presidential hopeful, gathered hundreds of supporters in Lima on Tuesday and gave authorities 24 hours to annul the first round of the country’s election over allegations of fraud. Lopez Aliaga is locked in a tight three-way race with two other candidates for second place in Sunday’s vote. The election runner-up wins a ticket to June’s presidential run-off against front-runner Keiko Fujimori. “I am giving them 24 hours to declare this electoral fraud null and void,” said Lopez Aliaga, surrounded by a crowd of several hundred supporters. “If it is not declared null and void tomorrow,
PAPAL RETORT: Pope Leo told reporters that he has ‘no fear, neither of the Trump administration nor speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel’ US President Donald Trump has feuded with Pope Leo XIV over the Iran conflict — setting off an unholy row that could have serious political implications for the Republican leader back in the US. Trump has drawn barbs even from some allies over the attacks on the US-born pontiff, who has criticized the Trump administration over its immigration crackdown, the intervention in Venezuela and the Iran war. The president risks alienating the religious right in November’s crucial US midterm elections. So far the unprecedented clash between the leader of the most powerful military on Earth and the head of the world’s 1.4 billion
A 16-year-old boy has been charged with murder and aggravated sexual abuse in Florida in the death of his 18-year-old stepsister on a Carnival Cruise ship, the US Department of Justice said on Monday. Timothy Hudson was initially charged in February and subsequently indicted on March 10, but the breadth of the case was not known until a seal was lifted on Friday last week, weeks after US District Judge Beth Bloom in Miami said that he would be prosecuted as an adult at the request of the government. Anna Kepner had been traveling on the Carnival Horizon ship in November last
RSS