Free Republic

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A California man has pleaded guilty to providing restricted software products to China, marking the first successful U.S. prosecution for illegal exports of military-related software code, U.S. prosecutors said on Thursday. Xiaodong Sheldon Meng, 42, formerly of Beijing and now a resident of Cupertino, California, has pleaded guilty to violating U.S. laws on economic espionage and arms export controls, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement. Prosecutors said Meng improperly installed a demonstration unit of a simulation product at the Peoples' Republic of China Navy Research Center and exported to China a restricted visual...

The last defendant in an extended family charged with conspiring to export U.S. defense technology to China reached a plea deal that brought the case to an abrupt end, authorities said Wednesday. Rebecca Laiwah Chiu, 63, reached the deal with federal prosecutors late Tuesday on the eve of her trial on charges of conspiracy to export defense articles, failure to register as a foreign agent and making false statements to the FBI. Chiu instead pleaded guilty to one count of acting as a foreign agent without registering with the U.S. government and will serve three years in prison, said her...

Testimony in the case of a Chinese-born engineer accused of stealing U.S. defense secrets revolved Thursday around whether he needed government approval to export a document on a quiet submarine propulsion system to China. Authorities believe Chi Mak, a naturalized U.S. citizen, stole thousands of pages of defense documents from his defense contractor employer, Power Paragon, and gave them to his brother, who passed them along to Chinese authorities over a number of years. He was arrested in 2005 in Los Angeles after FBI agents stopped his brother and sister-in-law as they boarded a flight to Hong Kong. Investigators said...

Tuesday April 24, 8:02 AM Momentum seen for allowing some exports of F-22s WASHINGTON, April 23 (Reuters) - Japan is interested in buying Lockheed Martin Corp.'s radar-evading F-22 fighter at a time when sentiment is growing in the Air Force and among lawmakers in favor of allowing selected exports, defense analysts and congressional aides said on Monday. Any move to sell the F-22 or "Raptor" abroad would require a change in federal law and probably some changes in the software currently used by the F-22, they said. But exports would help keep the F-22 production line running until Lockheed is...

[Sudarshan and Gopal], both of Simpsonville, S.C., were arrested March 23 based on a 15-count federal grand jury indictment in the District of Columbia unsealed Friday. According to the indictment, the two conspired with at least two other Indians to circumvent the U.S. Arms Export Control Act between 2002 and 2006 by purchasing U.S. electronic components used in missiles, sending them to Singapore and then re-exporting them secretly to India's missile and space-launch manufacturer.

(2007-03-10) — President George Bush will return from his Latin American tour this week with an agreement-in-principle to aid several nations by providing them with a steady supply of low-cost, American-made anti-Bush protesters. “Our experienced, homegrown protesters will augment the budding anti-me industry in these developing nations,” Mr. Bush said at a news conference today in Uruguay. “I think Latin Americans will be impressed by our high-volume products.” In an extraordinary goodwill gesture, the president did not ask his Latin American counterparts for anything in return. “We’re more than glad to help,” said Mr. Bush. “After all you’ve shipped to...

On Aug. 27, the leading Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun reported: By 2004, when China receives from Russia 38 SU-30 MK fighters, ordered several days ago, China will have 200 units or more of Russian-made SU-27 and SU-30 fighters. In addition, by 2004, the Chinese Air Force will get the recently ordered 28 SU-30 MKK fighters, capable of carrying advanced Russian air-to-ground missiles. The supply of the 66 fighters will increase the number of Russian-made SU-27 and SU-30 fighters in the Chinese inventory to 192...

The article, from one of the world's leading newspapers, touches on what a blessing saying "hasta la vista" to socialism really can be - not to mention future prospects! Ask the people who live in the hottest city of Europe - and they don't speak "cockney" or french with a Paris accent. The fall of Communism in Russia and China in combination with the orientation towards pro-capitalism of Scandinavia has already lead to a explosion of trade between the world's 14th biggest economy, Russia, the world's 4th biggest economy, China and the 8th biggest one, the Scandinavian countries (Source: IMF...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a prison overcrowding emergency Wednesday in California, paving the way for inmate transfers to out-of-state institutions within a month. Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Secretary James Tilton said that the state is on the verge of signing no-bid, sole-source contracts with three private prison companies and that he expects to begin sending inmates to Indiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Arizona at a rate of 100 to 200 a month within 30 days. In a recent survey, Tilton said, 19,000 inmates expressed interest in doing their time in other states. He said his immediate goal is to get...

Fake smokes called big North cash cow August 18, 2006 ¤Ñ North Korea is believed to earn $500-700 million per year by making and selling fake American and Japanese cigarettes, a U.S. radio station reported Wednesday, quoting a former U.S. official. "Counterfeit tobacco is one of the largest, probably the largest, single source of income for the North Korean regime," David Asher said in an interview with the Washington-based Radio Free Asia. Mr. Asher, who until July 2005 worked for James Kelly, then the assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific affairs at the State Department, said the...

A former U.S. Navy intelligence officer who illegally exported military aircraft parts, including nozzles for the engine that powers the "Chinook" helicopter, was sentenced today to a year in federal prison. .....

WASHINGTON, DC - 07/13/06 - California remained the nation's top agricultural exporting state in fiscal 2005, far surpassing all others as its $10.2 billion of agricultural exports is up 7% or $680 million, from 2004. According to the US Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) of the US Departnment of Agriculture, California accounts for a full 16% of the total value of all US agricultural exports. The state leads the country in exports of vegetables and preparations, fruits and preparations, tree nuts, dairy products, planting seeds, and "other products," the agency said. California's exports of each of those commodities are 2-3 times...

Pyongyang's Missile Launch 'Was Sales Pitch' North Korea’s test-launch of several types of missile Wednesday was an export blitz, some experts say. Missile exports are one of Pyongyang’s few sources of hard currency since the heavily militarized nation has precious few other export industries. North Korea has been exporting Scud missiles to the Middle East and Africa for up to US$4 million a pop. There is speculation that Iranian officials, who have been in the North since early this month according to press reports, were observing the launches on the spot to see whether they want to buy. According to...

JALLOWAL, India Within days, the monsoon will arrive in India. If generous, it will lend another year of survival to hundreds of millions of villagers. ...But now a country that long struggled to feed itself is making preparations to feed the world. Multinational companies from Wal-Mart to Rothschild Group to PepsiCo are wagering that India could parlay its tropical climate and the latent energies of hundreds of millions of farm dwellers into a position as an agribusiness powerhouse, exporting fruits and vegetables, spices, flowers, wine, ice cream, poultry, shrimp, fish and even pasta. "To my mind, this opportunity of agriculture...

(GRD Photos) Base Camp Adder (Ali Base) Iraq – Al-Basrah’s offshore oil terminal in Umm Qasr has increased its loading capacity due to the recent completion of repairs to six damaged loading arms on Platform B, Berths 3 and 4. Extensive repairs included total refurbishment of the hydraulic systems, vacuums and power lines. The loading arm repairs provide safer, more efficient equipment and contribute greatly to restoring the terminal to full capacity. The repairs will also accommodate a larger number of vessels which means more oil and other goods can be exported from the terminal. This tasking was one of...

ST. PETER, Minn. (AP) - A rapist who broke out of a state treatment center here along with three other men remained on the lam Sunday, authorities said. Michael Dale Benson, 42, squeezed through a broken window Saturday night with the three others, who were later caught. Police scaled back their ground search efforts in the city after 3 p.m. Sunday, believing Benson may have left the area in a stolen car, said police Chief Matt Peters. "We feel that we've run out of our leads in all that regards," he said. Authorities had contacted other law enforcement agencies in...

JAKARTA - The illicit movement of shoes, shrimp and garments that have been repackaged, re-labeled and re-exported after being shipped to Indonesia has established the country as a new regional hub for such activities involving Asian goods - particularly from China - destined for US shores. Historically Hong Kong's domain, with the ease that Asian exporters can obtain fake certificates of origin and an apparent official willingness to look the other way, Indonesian laxity has encouraged a massive tide of such illegal transshipments to the US. Those growing illegal trade flows, also known as re-exporting, are undermining the protectionist quotas...

MOSCOW, March 21 (RIA Novosti) - Russian natural gas supplies to China will help Russia end its dependence on European markets, several prominent political scientists said Tuesday after the two countries' energy giants signed a memorandum. Alexei Miller, the chief executive of Russian energy giant Gazprom, and China National Petroleum Corporation head Chen Gang put pen to paper in Beijing, where President Vladimir Putin had earlier arrived on a two-day visit. Gas exports to China will come from West Siberia during the first stage of the project to build a gas pipeline system to meet the energy-consuming giant's needs and...

The Dubai Ports World deal is waking Americans up to a painful reality [...] we've abandoned the principles of tariff-based trade that built American industry and kept us strong for over 200 years. The old concept was that if there was a dollar's worth of labor in a pair of shoes made in the USA, and somebody wanted to import shoes from China where there may only be ten cents worth of labor in those shoes, we'd level the playing field for labor by putting a 90-cent import tariff on each pair of shoes. Companies could choose to make their...

Last update - 09:38 27/02/2006 U.S. demands Israel change defense export practices By Ze'ev Schiff, Haaretz Correspondent Israel will institute a number of comprehensive changes to its defense export arrangements at the insistence of the United States, following the crisis over Israel's export of attack drones to China. The status of several central divisions in the Defense Ministry will be changed, including that of the head of security and the division for assistance and export. A new division will be established in the Defense Ministry, and Foreign Ministry representatives will sit on a supreme advisory council for defense exports. The...