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Iran denies link to group arrested for spying in Saudi Arabia
DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran denied on Wednesday any link to members of a spying ring detained by its Sunni Muslim regional rival Saudi Arabia, according to Iranian media.
Saudi state media reported on Tuesday that officials had detained 10 people accused of spying for Iran after arresting 18 people in the same case in March.
Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter, accuses the Islamic Republic of stirring up unrest among minority Saudi Shi'ites. Tehran rejects that charge and has repeatedly denied any involvement in espionage in Saudi Arabia.
Iran Foreign Ministry Spokesman Abbas Araqchi repeated that denial on Wednesday, in comments to the ISNA news agency.
"We expect the Saudi government to pursue the issue through correct channels rather than creating an atmosphere through the media," Araqchi said, according to ISNA.
Saudi officials said the 10 most recently arrested included eight Saudis, a Turk and a Lebanese citizen. Those arrested in March included 16 Saudis and an Iranian.
Araqchi said Iran had requested consular access to the Iranian for the past two months but that "unfortunately there has been no response" from Saudi officials.
Saudi Arabia also accuses Iran of fomenting unrest in Sunni-ruled Bahrain, where majority Shi'ites have led pro-democracy protests. Iran denies this.
(Reporting by Yeganeh Torbati; Editing by Jon Hemming)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/iran-denies-group-arrested-spying-saudi-arabia-120441156.html
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Chinese premier visits India, talks up trade and trust
Premier Li Keqiang arrived this weekend in New Delhi on his first foreign trip. India has become China's biggest?market?for infrastructure contracts, but the two countries remain wary neighbors.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, right, and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang pose for photographers before a meeting New Delhi, India, Monday, May 20, 2013.
Saurabh Das/AP
EnlargeChina?s leaders never tire of saying it: Asian giants India and China, the two most populous nations in the world, have so much in common that neighborly relations should be natural and fruitful.
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But if Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has this week chosen New Delhi as his first foreign destination since taking office in March, it is because such neighborly relations are proving stubbornly difficult to establish.
?India is a very, very significant country for China,? says Hu Shisheng, head of South Asian studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations in Beijing. ?But we suffer from a strategic trust deficit.?
Mr. Li arrived in Delhi on Sunday at the start of a three day trip designed to rectify that shortfall. ?I want this visit to show the whole world that the mutual political trust between China and India is rising, practical cooperation is expanding, and there are more common interests than differences,? he told Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
What China wants
China is keen to improve its relations with India at the moment?for a couple of reasons. First, Beijing does not want to see India align itself more closely with the US and China's other Pacific rivals like Japan. And India represents a major new market for Chinese infrastructure companies.
The trip has been shadowed, though, by a recent three week standoff between Indian and Chinese troops on their disputed Himalayan border, in an incident that underlined the two countries? traditional rivalry.
Home to more than one third of humanity, China and India are more than just neighbors; both are rising global powers that are still developing countries and which have become strategic partners on many international issues.
Delhi and Beijing find themselves on the same side in global arguments over such questions as climate change, for example, or the reform of the international financial system.
The two sides have also found there is a lot of room to boost their trade, which last year stood at a rather lackluster $66 billion. They have set themselves the target of increasing that to $100 billion by 2015, and of encouraging more cross-border investment. India wants to trade China more pharmaceuticals and information technology. China, meanwhile, has seen?India emerge as its biggest market?for infrastructure contracts ? already worth $35 billion and with $16 billion of deals in the pipeline.?With warmer bilateral ties, Beijing hopes, that figure could rise significantly.
But their good intentions are persistently dogged by worries on both sides over security questions.
Before Li left Beijing, the ruling Communist Party?s official mouthpiece, the People?s Daily, published a commentary in its overseas edition saying China and India had agreed to ?separate the boundary issue from overall China-India relations and ensure the relevant differences do not affect the development of bilateral ties.?
Future of flare-ups?
But that is easier said than done, suggests Lora Saalman, an expert on Sino-Indian relations at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Beijing. ?Putting strategic issues aside to focus only on economic ties means that such flare-ups will continue to erupt,? she warns.
India and China fought a brief border war in 1962; China?s victory still smarts in India and the two sides have never been able to agree where the nearly 2,500 mile border actually lies. The frontier has remained generally quiet ? no shots have been fired for more than half a century ? but tense standoffs occasionally blow up and sour bilateral relations.
No resolution of the dispute seems in sight. As both nations rise on the international scene, so do nationalist sentiments in each country. Neither government will find it easy to make the sort of concessions required for a deal.
?The territorial issue is politically highly risky,? says Professor Hu. ?Neither party has the guts to find a solution.?
Beijing and Delhi have also yet to overcome historical differences born of the cold war, when India was friendly with the Soviet Union while her bitter enemy, Pakistan, found arms and diplomatic aid in China.
That history complicates current geopolitical frictions, as China and India discover they have overlapping interests.
India today is increasingly close to Washington, a posture that alarms Beijing, and India is rubbing up against China in the South China Sea, where a state owned Indian oil company has signed an exploration deal with Vietnam in waters that China claims as hers.
The Indian navy, an admiral warned late last year, is prepared to deploy to the area to defend Indian interests.
China, meanwhile, has unnerved some Indian strategists with its activities in the Indian Ocean. A Chinese company now operates the Chinese-built port at Gwadar, in Pakistan?s Balochistan Province; the Chinese navy has re-fueling rights in the Seychelles, and a Chinese-built port in Hambantota, Sri Lanka, is due to open next month.
As China courts India with visions of an economic partnership that could strengthen Asia?s sway over the world economy, Beijing must be careful not to upset Pakistan, to whom it has always been an ?all weather friend? in the two allies? diplomatic parlance.
Li will travel to Pakistan after his Indian visit, dancing a delicate diplomatic minuet as he seeks to strike a better balance between China?s relationships with its two southern neighbors without alarming old friends.
While it is important for China to reassure Pakistan that their ?time tested strategic partnership? is not at risk, says Zhang Li, a South Asian specialist at Sichuan University in the southwestern city of Chengdu, ?we have to make Pakistan understand that it is a strategic necessity for China to have balanced relations in South Asia.
?We need credible working relations with India,? Professor Zhang adds. ?For that we need to give substance to our partnership, and the first task is to promote mutual trust and confidence.?
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Gay Fla. teen charged for underage girlfriend
In this photo made available by the Hunt family, Kaitlyn Hunt and her father Steve in Vero Beach, Fla., Monday May 20, 2013. Kaitlyn, 18, was expelled from school for dating and having sex with her 14-year-old girlfriend, who was a fellow player on her basketball team. Hunt was arrested and charged with two felony counts of lewd and lascivious battery on a child 12 to 16 years. (AP Photo/Hunt Family, HO)
In this photo made available by the Hunt family, Kaitlyn Hunt and her father Steve in Vero Beach, Fla., Monday May 20, 2013. Kaitlyn, 18, was expelled from school for dating and having sex with her 14-year-old girlfriend, who was a fellow player on her basketball team. Hunt was arrested and charged with two felony counts of lewd and lascivious battery on a child 12 to 16 years. (AP Photo/Hunt Family, HO)
MIAMI (AP) ? An 18-year-old Florida cheerleader is facing felony charges that she had sexual contact with her underage, 14-year-old girlfriend, leading gay rights advocates to say the teen is being unfairly targeted for a common high school romance because she's gay.
The criminal case against Kaitlyn Hunt is unusual because it involves two females, not an older male and a younger female. But advocates say older high schoolers dating their younger counterparts is an innocuous, everyday occurrence that is not prosecuted ? regardless of sexual orientation ? and not a crime on par with predatory sex offenses.
Hunt played on the basketball team with her younger girlfriend and shared the same circle of friends, said Hunt's mother, Kelley Hunt Smith. The two had a consenting relationship that began soon after Kaitlyn Hunt turned 18, and Hunt Smith said she assumed the younger girl's parents knew that.
But Hunt was kicked off the basketball team near the end of last year after the coach learned of the relationship because players were not allowed to date each other, her parents said. Then, in February, she was charged with lewd and lascivious battery on a child 12 to 16. The day before she was arrested, police and the younger girl's parents secretly recorded a phone conversation in which the two girls discussed kissing in the school bathroom, said Hunt's father, Steve Hunt.
"It's horrible. For my daughter's sexual preferences, she's getting two felony charges. It could possibly ruin her future," Steve Hunt told The Associated Press in a phone interview Tuesday.
The alleged victim is identified only by her initials in court documents, and her parents have not been publicly identified. The AP does not identify alleged victims of sex crimes.
Kaitlyn Hunt, who hopes to become a nurse, declined to be interviewed and is scared, her father said. However, the family has received support from all over the world, with messages coming from as far away as New Zealand, the Netherlands and Canada, Steve Hunt said. He said he reads them to her to keep her spirits up, but she feels like she has let everyone down, he said through tears.
Prosecutors have offered a plea deal to Kaitlyn Hunt that would allow her to avoid registering as a sex offender if she pleads guilty to lesser charges of child abuse. State Attorney Bruce Colton said he would recommend two years of house arrest followed by one year probation if she takes the deal.
If she is found guilty, it's also possible that Hunt could apply to not have to register as a sex offender under a "Romeo and Juliet" law because the girls were no more than four years apart in age, Colton said.
Colton said the victim's family is not pushing for prison but wants Kaitlyn Hunt to be held responsible in some way. However, the Hunt family said they would accept a plea deal only if the charges are dropped to a misdemeanor.
"One of the reasons this case has gotten people's attention is because it's being publicized as a person being persecuted because she's gay, and that has nothing to do with the case, nothing to do with the law, nothing to do with the sheriff's office filing the charges," Colton said. He said the law is designed to protect younger children from older children who might be more aggressive in starting a relationship.
"The law doesn't make any differentiation. It doesn't matter if it's two girls or two boys, or an older boy and a younger girl or an older girl and a younger boy. Whatever the combination, it doesn't matter."
However, gay rights advocates aren't buying that. The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida said Kaitlyn Hunt is being criminalized for behavior that "occurs every day in tens of thousands of high schools across the country, yet those other students are not facing felony convictions ... and potential lifelong branding as sex offenders."
Her support extends beyond the ACLU. A "Free Kate" Facebook page has generated more than 30,000 followers so far, and an online petition urging that the charges be dropped crashed at one point because it got so much traffic. It now has more than 100,000 signatures. And during a press conference Monday, dozens of supporters showed up outside of the Indian River Sheriff's Department, many wearing T-Shirts that read "Stop the Hate, Free Kate" with rainbow hearts.
"It's very difficult under these circumstances when the defendant and the victim do not see what they're doing as a crime, but understandably the law is very clear that when someone is more than four years older than the victim and the victim is under the age of 16, then they cannot give legal consent," said New Jersey defense attorney Gregory Gianforcaro, who has represented victims and defendants on both sides of this issue.
Gianforcaro said that Hunt's case is clearly not a predatory situation and that prosecutors should consider that when they look at sentencing and plea bargains.
"This is a very uncommon situation because of the fact there are two women. However, if it were a man and a woman and there was more than four years of an age difference, it's very possible that that kind of situation would be pursued criminally as well," Gianforcaro said.
The family said Kaitlyn Hunt had been demonized by some, and they disabled her personal Facebook account to protect her from negative comments. At school in February, her 17-year-old sister spent a half-hour cleaning a mirror where someone had written a slur against women and other words including "rapist" and "disgusting," Steve Hunt said.
In the meantime, Kaitlyn Hunt has been attending an alternative school since her expulsion and will be allowed to walk with her class at graduation in June. Her mother said she was expelled by the school board even though a judge ruled she could stay.
Sebastian River High School's principal and assistant principal did not immediately respond to emails sent Tuesday.
Associated PressSteve Mariotti: The Best and the Brightest -- My Favorite Book
Everyone has a favorite book. I read The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam over and over again, at least once a year. Sometimes, I will pick it up to touch and feel it, reading just a page or two, knowing by heart whole sections.
It took three years for David to research and another two years to write. Finally published in 1972, it tells the tale of the Vietnam tragedy of how the United States went from 15,000 troops in 1962 to over 500,000 soldiers by 1968, spending trillions of dollars in the process and losing over 50,000 American lives.
Arguably, Vietnam was the biggest tragedy for the U.S. since the Civil War. Halberstam was fascinated by Vietnam having won a Pulitzer for his writings on the war early on in '62. So irritated with his questioning of our policy, President Kennedy called Sulzberger, the owner of the New York Times, to ask that the young David be reassigned.
David began his masterpiece with a trip to Saigon in 1967 to cover the escalating war for Harper's. Given the opportunity to write as much as he wanted with an unlimited time limit, he eventually turned the article into a 652 page book -- perhaps the greatest non-fiction political analysis ever written. In my opinion, David Halberstam is the greatest journalist of the last 100 years.
Writing and researching 10 hours a day, David finally finished and the book became an instant best seller with awesome critical reviews as well. I first read the book in 1977 when I had just fulfilled a lifelong dream and became a part of Ford Finance Staff, the legendary group that ran Ford Motor Company and had been created by Bob McNamara, the main character in Halberstam's book. Ford Finance was located on the 10th and 11th floors of Ford World Headquarters located in Dearborn, Michigan, and my office was on the 10th floor in Room 1036, the area of international finance.
Ford Finance staff produced more CEOs of Fortune 500 firms than any other organization other than Harvard Business School. It was clearly the greatest finance department in American business and had done so much to build modern management techniques. It had been developed by the Whiz Kids -- a group of elite Air Force officers who were brought to Ford by Henry Ford in 1946 to help save the company by bringing in advance management techniques.
I highly recommend the book The Whiz Kids for background on this interesting story. The Whiz Kids were spectacularly successful in turning around Ford and much of their success was because of Bob McNamara and my own boss, Edward J. Lundy, the Senior Vice President of Finance.
Bob had become president of Ford in 1960 before being named by President Kennedy to head up the Department of Defense -- becoming the foolish protagonist in Halberstams book.
Halberstam had written over 10 pages on Ford Finance Staff, capturing our culture brilliantly; and in my second year firmly entranced as the treasury analyst of Ford South Africa and Ford Aerospace, Ford Venezuala and Ford Mexico, I made 40 copies of the 10 pages and distributed them to senior finance staff members.
Everyone was quite pleased as Halberstam had brilliantly captured how we felt about ourselves -- The Best and the Brightest. The legendary Lundy called me himself -- by then, I was called "Stevie Wonder" -- to say: "Awesome job, Steve. Great for morale. Although, I felt Bob got a bad rap on Vietnam. It was those generals that gave him bad advice." Not wanting to express my own opinion, I said, "Yes sir, Mr. Lundy, there was a lot of blame to go around."
At Ford, we used tape recordings in our personal meetings. We taped and then listened to people talk in what was called 'face offs.' It was part of our culture and we were proud of it. Finance staff faceoffs were daily through out world headquarters -- like massive therapy sessions, everyone voice was heard literally. Not only was listening and analyzing conversations part of our culture, but we made a lot of the equipment for suvailance at our division, Ford Aerospace, for which I was the financial analyst in the Treasurers Department.
As I was the analyst for both Ford Aroespace and Ford South Africa, I would review the agreement to sell surveillance equipment to places like the South African government.
I though that it was immoral to be helping a totalitarian racist regime and began under the tutelage of Reverend Sullivan, a legendary African-American political activist, to change Ford policy, coming up with guidelines on who we could sell to, prohibiting us from selling to corrupt governments. But that is a story for later so back to my tale of meeting Halberstam...
After I left Ford, I moved to New York City seeking fame and fortune. My plan was to call all the people I had read about in Michigan and go see them. My first call was to Halberstam.
"I think your book is brilliant. I was at Ford and we loved it." I said eagerly.
"Thank you Steve. Any feedback?" he asked. I could not resist." I was curious as to why you never mentioned anything about the use of surveillance at the company. We made all the equipment and sold it around the world, but it was always first tested at Ford world headquarters by Henry himself."
I could see him through the phone, aghast. He thought I was a kook. Feeling uncomfortable, he quickly got off the phone, and I was deeply hurt and embarrassed.
But time and truth were on my side. In 1982, Lee Iacocca published his book, Iacocca. Brilliantly written, it became a bestseller, and everyone was reading it. Sure enough, on page 117, Lee wrote about what I had seen, took part in and told David Halberstam about -- the use of surveillance equipment at Ford.
Lee wrote openly that we made the equipment and Henry Ford himself would test it by seeing if he could hear what was going on in Lee Iacocca's office when he went out to lunch about a mile a way.
Vindicated, I got a copy of the book, marked page 117, and sent a note on top to Mr. Halberstam saying, "here is some investigative research on the issue of surveillance at Ford motor company which we discussed." Probably not one of my finer moments, but it made me feel better to set the history straight. Soon after my phone rang and I picked up.
"Steve Mariotti, it is David Halberstam. You were right about the tapes and I wish I had written about it. How about lunch?"
The very next day in 1982, we feasted at his favorite place, the Harvard Club, and he told me in great detail about writing the first draft of The Best and the Brightest. It was the funniest lunch I have ever had.
We stayed friends for the next 15 years until his tragic auto accident in California.
David Halberstam truly was one of The Best and the Brightest.
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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-mariotti/the-best-and-the-brightes_1_b_3309299.html
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U.S. charges 3 NYU researchers in Chinese bribery case
By Nate Raymond and Jonathan Stempel
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. authorities brought criminal charges against three New York University researchers on Monday, alleging they conspired to take bribes from Chinese medical and research outfits for details about NYU research into magnetic resonance imaging technology.
A criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan charged Yudong Zhu, 44, Xing Yang, 31, and Ye Li, 31, with commercial bribery conspiracy in connection with NYU research financed by the U.S. government.
Federal prosecutors and the FBI said the three conspired to receive payments from a Chinese medical imaging company, United Imaging Healthcare, and a research institution supported by the Chinese government.
In exchange, prosecutors said, the defendants turned over confidential information about NYU research into MRI technology, which provides detailed views of the human body.
"As alleged, this is a case of inviting and paying for foxes in the henhouse," Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement. The alleged theft of research "is a serious crime and will not be tolerated by this office."
In addition to the bribery conspiracy count, Zhu was also charged with falsifying records in connection with a grant from the National Institutes of Health that a prosecutor said was worth $4 million.
Prosecutors said Zhu and Yang were arrested at their homes in New York on Sunday, while they said Li is believed to have flown to China on May 10 before charges were brought. Li could not immediately be located for comment.
NYU was not named in the complaint, which says the three individuals worked at a New York-based university research medical center. But a spokeswoman for the university confirmed the three defendants worked at the NYU Langone Medical Center.
"NYULMC is deeply disappointed by the news of the alleged conduct by its employees," Kathy Lewis, a university spokeswoman, said in a statement.
All three individuals have been suspended from NYU, Lewis said. The university is cooperating with the investigation, she said.
CHINESE CASES
The case comes amid heightened concern of Chinese theft of U.S. trade secrets. Prosecutors have brought several criminal cases against defendants accused of stealing trade secrets from the likes of Motorola Inc, General Motors Co and Dow Chemical Co and then providing them to Chinese companies.
Zhu, a Chinese citizen, was an associate professor in radiology at NYU; he was hired to teach about innovations in the MRI field in 2008, according to the complaint.
Richard Baum, a lawyer for Zhu, said at a hearing on Monday that by the time he joined NYU from General Electric Co, he was already "one of the world's renowned experts in MRI technology."
In 2010, Zhu applied for a grant from the National Institutes of Health. After starting research under the multimillion-dollar grant, prosecutors said Zhu recruited Yang and Li to work with him.
At that time, Zhu also arranged to receive financial benefits from an unnamed executive with United Imaging Healthcare, the complaint said.
The executive agreed to pay for Yang's graduate school tuition and Li's rent for his apartment, the complaint said. The executive also agreed to pay for their travel between China and New York, the complaint said.
Prosecutors said Yang also shared research results of his work with individuals at United Imaging.
Zhu, meanwhile, had been working with the United Imaging executive leading a similar MRI research project funded by the Chinese government, the complaint said.
Some of the defendants also had undisclosed connections to Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SAIT), a Chinese government-backed research institute also studying MRI technology, according to the complaint.
As part of an internal investigation NYU launched in connection with the case, Li allegedly told the university he had as of January 2013 been a research associate professor at SAIT.
Zhu, meanwhile, had worked with the unidentified United Imaging executive as part of the same MRI research team at the institute, the complaint said.
At a hearing to determine the defendants' bail, a U.S. prosecutor said the government had also since learned even more details about the crime not described in the complaint.
Zachary Feingold, an assistant U.S. attorney, said Zhu had told investigators that he received at least $400,000 from the Chinese company. The money was deposited in a bank account in the name of a company owned by his mother, Feingold said.
A call to United Imaging after business hours in China was not answered, nor was an email to the company. SAIT did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
PATENT AT ISSUE
Beyond the money from the Chinese company, the complaint also accused Zhu of intentionally failing to disclose an October 2008 patent application he filed for technology related to radio frequency coils used in MRI scanners.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued the patent in November 2012. Prosecutors said the patent's value would be affected by the NIH grant research.
At Monday's hearing, Baum, Zhu's lawyer, disputed that NYU didn't know about the patent, which he applied for before joining the university. He already had several other patents at the time, Baum said.
"Whether it's a conflict instead of a crime is a different issue," he said.
Zhu was released on $200,000 bond to be secured by $20,000 cash. Yang was released on $100,000 bond to be secured by $5,000 cash and will be subject to home confinement.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond and Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Martha Graybow, David Gregorio and Jan Paschal)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/u-charges-three-nyu-researchers-chinese-bribery-case-201316267.html
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