GERMANY
Agency warns companies
The domestic spy agency on Wednesday told companies that they should be on guard against industrial espionage by Beijing, warning them not to be naive or overreliant on China. The warning from the agency’s deputy head Sinan Selen came days after three German nationals were arrested on suspicion of handing over technology with military applications — a case which has highlighted mounting anxiety across Western Europe about Chinese spying. Germany is seen as particularly under threat due to its strong industrial sector and good business relations with China, its top trade partner. Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited China 10 days ago with a business delegation in tow.
UNITED NATIONS
Resolution rejected
Russia on Wednesday vetoed a UN resolution sponsored by the US and Japan calling on all nations to prevent a dangerous nuclear arms race in outer space, calling it “a dirty spectacle” that cherry-picks weapons of mass destruction from all other weapons that should also be banned. The vote in the 15-member UN Security Council was 13 in favor, Russia opposed and China abstaining. The resolution would have called on all countries not to develop or deploy nuclear arms or other weapons of mass destruction in space, as banned under a 1967 international treaty that included the US and Russia, and to agree to the need to verify compliance.
UNITED STATES
Chinese man sentenced
A former Berklee College of Music student from China was on Wednesday sentenced to nine months in prison for stalking and threatening a person who posted a flyer in support of democracy in the Asian country, authorities said. The leaflet that was posted on the campus in Boston on Oct. 22 read: “Stand with Chinese People,” along with other statements such as “We Want Freedom” and “We Want Democracy,” the Attorney’s Office in Boston said. In response, Wu Xiaolei, 26, threatened to chop off the person’s hands, reported their family to China’s public security agency, asked others to find out where the person was living and publicly posted their e-mail address, prosecutors said. “Mr. Wu’s criminal conduct is very serious. He harnessed the fear of potential retribution from the PRC government to harass and threaten an innocent individual who had posted an innocuous, pro-democracy flier on the Berklee campus,” acting Attorney Joshua Levy said in a statement.
IRAN
Rapper sentenced to death
The judiciary confirmed the death sentence of well-known rapper Toomaj Salehi, but added that he is entitled to a sentence reduction, state media reported yesterday. Salehi’s lawyer Amir Raisian told the Sharq newspaper on Wednesday that an Iranian Revolutionary Court had sentenced his client to death for charges linked to Iran’s unrest in 2022 and last year. Salehi was arrested in October 2022 after making public statements in support of the nationwide protests, sparked by the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman arrested over wearing an “improper” hijab. Yesterday, the judiciary’s media department confirmed Salehi’s death sentence based on charges of “corruption on Earth,” adding that the verdict entitled the defendant to a sentence reduction due to “his expression of remorse and cooperation with authorities.” Salehi has 20 days to appeal his sentence with the Supreme Court.
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
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
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other
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