U.S. prosecutors on Friday charged a China-based executive at Zoom Video Communications with disrupting video meetings commemorating the 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown at the request of the Chinese government. From a report: Xinjiang Jin, 39, faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of conspiring since January 2019 to use his company’s systems to censor speech, the…
Tag: Chinese government
Australia Demands Apology From China After Fake Image of Soldier Posted On Social Media
hackingbear writes: Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison demanded an apology after a senior Chinese official posted a “fake image” of an Australian soldier holding a knife with blood on it to the throat of an Afghan child, calling it “truly repugnant” and demanding it be taken down. The Australian government has asked Twitter to remove the image, posted on Monday by…
How Powerful Forces Collaborated to Peddle Misinformation about the Origins of the Coronavirus
There’s “an overwhelming body of evidence” for scientists’ belief that the coronavirus originated in an animal before making the leap to humans, reports the New York Times. (Alternate URL here.) They add that U.S. intelligence agencies also “have not found any proof” for a fringe theory it somehow leaked from a lab. Yet as recently as September, a Hong Kong researcher…
Apple is Lobbying Against a Bill Aimed at Stopping Forced Labor in China
Apple lobbyists are trying to weaken a new law aimed at preventing forced labor in China, the Washington Post reported Friday, citing two congressional staffers familiar with the matter, highlighting the clash between its business imperatives and its official stance on human rights. From the report: The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act would require U.S. companies to guarantee they do not…
Why It’s a Big Deal If the First COVID-19 Vaccine Is ‘Genetic’
An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from Wired: On Monday morning, when representatives from the drug company Pfizer said that its Covid-19 vaccine appears to be more than 90 percent effective, stocks soared, White House officials rushed to (falsely) claim credit, and sighs of relief went up all around the internet. […] The arrival of an effective vaccine to fight SARS-CoV-2…
Apple Suspends Supplier For Using Illegal Student Labor In China
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Apple has reprimanded one of its largest manufacturers after a Financial Times investigation found that thousands of student interns had worked overtime to assemble iPhones, in breach of Chinese law. After being contacted by the FT, Apple said it had stopped giving “new business” to Pegatron, its second-largest iPhone assembler after Foxconn….
US Appeals Injunction Against TikTok Ban
The federal government on Thursday appealed a judge’s ruling that prevented the Trump administration from imposing a ban on TikTok, the viral video app owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. The New York Times reports: In a filing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, the Justice Department argued that a preliminary injunction issued last month by Judge…
Former Chinese Diplomat Worked on TikTok Content Policy
A former Chinese government official decided what content should be allowed on TikTok, the Financial Times reported, citing two people close to the short-video app company. From a report: Cai Zheng ran ByteDance’s global content policy team in Beijing until early this year. He’d previously worked at China’s embassy in Tehran, the FT said, citing a deleted LinkedIn profile. Cai joined…
Some Coronavirus Vaccine Trials Resort To Pen and Paper After Ransomware Hits Software
A software company supporting hundreds of clinical trials — including coronavirus vaccine trials — has been hit by a ransomware attack that “has slowed some of those trials over the past two weeks,” reports the New York Times. Employees “discovered that they were locked out of their data by ransomware…” eResearchTechnology (ERT) said clinical trial patients were never at risk, but…
US Spy Plane Impersonates A Malaysian Aircraft
Popular Mechanics reports:
A U.S. Air Force aircraft electronically impersonated a Malaysian plane while flying over the South China Sea this week. The RC-135W Rivet Joint reconnaissance aircraft flew off China’s Hainan island on Tuesday, coming within 55 miles of the Chinese mainland. The caper was outed on Twitter by a think tank operated by the Chinese government, which provided enough details…