Tag: Region Asias

BEIJING — Chinese leader Xi Jinping said Wednesday that Beijing will send an envoy to Ukraine to discuss a possible “political settlement” to Russia’s war with the country.

Beijing has previously avoided involvement in conflicts between other countries but appears to be trying to assert itself as a global diplomatic force after arranging talks between Saudi Arabia and Iran in March that led them to restore diplomatic relations after a seven-year break.

Xi told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a phone call that a Chinese envoy, a former Chinese ambassador to Russia, would visit Ukraine and “other countries” to discuss a possible political settlement, according to a government statement.

It made no mention of Russia or last year’s invasion of Ukraine and didn’t indicate whether the Chinese envoy might visit Moscow.

The Xi-Zelenskyy phone call was long anticipated after Beijing said it wanted to serve as a mediator in the war.

BEIJING — China’s military has dispatched a pair of navy ships to take part in joint drills with Singapore’s navy and join in a regional maritime security exhibition.

The exercises starting Friday in the Southeast Asian city state come amid China’s growing presence in the South China Sea, which it claims sovereignty over virtually in its entirety.

Concerns are especially pronounced in the U.S., which on Wednesday joined with forces from the Philippines in major exercises in Philippine waters facing the South China Sea that are likely to anger China. Beijing’s more assertive stance comes as its relations with the U.S. and its allies have hit historic lows.

State television’s military channel identified the ships being sent as the guided missile frigate Yulin and the minesweeper hunter Chibi. They will also be present for the May 3-5 IMDEX Asia National Defense and Maritime Security Show, which will feature 25 warships and attendees from 62 countries.

KYIV, Ukraine — NATO allies and partner countries have delivered more than 98% of the combat vehicles promised to Ukraine during Russia’s invasion and war, the military alliance’s chief said Thursday, giving Kyiv a bigger punch as contemplates launching a counteroffensive.

Along with more than 1,550 armored vehicles, 230 tanks and other equipment, Ukraine’s allies have sent “vast amounts of ammunition” and also trained and equipped more than nine new Ukrainian brigades, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said.

More than 30,000 troops are estimated to make up the new brigades. Some NATO partner countries, such as Sweden and Australia, have also provided armored vehicles.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have held talks by telephone, their offices said, before the two countries marked the inauguration of Turkey’s first nuclear power reactor.

The Akkuyu nuclear power plant in Turkey’s southern Mersin province has been built by Russia’s state nuclear energy company Rosatom.

Erdogan thanked Putin on Thursday during their call for his help on the power plant, the Turkish leader’s office said. They also discussed the Black Sea grain initiative and the situation in Ukraine, it said.

Putin said they agreed to deepen economic, trade and agricultural cooperation. He said the two countries were working on an initiative by Erdogan to send flour made from Russian grain to countries that needed it.

Both presidents took part virtually in a ceremony marking the loading of nuclear fuel into the first power unit at Akkuyu.

More than three years after his arrest, Charles Lieber, the former chair of Harvard University’s chemistry department, has avoided prison for failing to disclose funding from China. For hiding his affiliation with a Chinese university, as well as income tax and foreign bank account reporting violations, Lieber was sentenced yesterday to time served, two years of supervised release with six…

The 14th National People’s Congress (NPC) Standing Committee passed an amendment to the Counter-Espionage Law on Wednesday. The revised law refines the definition of espionage activities, explicitly categorizing “collaborating with spy organizations and their agents” and “conducting cyber-attacks against state organs, confidential-related units, or critical information infrastructure and etc.” as espionage activities.

The revised law will come into effect on July 1.

The Kremlin warned on Wednesday that Russia could widen the list of foreign companies subject to temporary asset seizures in case of the “expropriation” of Russian assets abroad.

The comments came after Putin signed a presidential decree approving the takeover of operations of two Western energy groups in Russia — Finland’s Fortum and Germany’s Uniper — and threatened to do the same with others.

“If necessary, the list of companies could be expanded,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, a day after President Vladimir Putin signed a decree allowing asset seizures.

The wave of U.S. comprehensive state privacy legislation that few ever thought would materialize in a calendar year has revealed itself. Comprehensive bills in Montana and Tennessee cleared their respective state legislatures 21 April — the first same-day passage for two state privacy bills — to join Indiana and Iowa among states to reach the finish line this year.

Both bills, which now await enactment pending governor’s signature, carry likeness to existing state privacy laws with some originality.

Montana Senate Bill 384 aligns exclusively with the Connecticut Data Privacy Act after surprise amendments during the cross-chamber process. Tennessee’s bill brings the most unique provisions, including enforcement that hinges on adoption of the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Privacy Framework.

Various treaties and multi-national proposals to combat cybercrime have been around for years. I’m not exaggerating. These have been floating around for more than a decade. (Do you want to feel old? This cybercrime treaty proposal would be old enough to legally obtain a social media account in the United States if it were still viable.)

The UN has been pushing its own version. But its idea of “crime” seems off-base, especially when it’s dealing with a conglomerate of countries with varying free speech protections. The “Cybercrime Treaty” proposed by the UN focuses on things many would consider ugly, distasteful, abhorrent, or even enraging. But it’s not things most people consider to be the sort of “crimes” a unified world front should be addressing — not when there’s plenty of financially or personally damaging cybercrime being performed on the regular.

Prague, April 12 (CTK) – Accusations were levelled against some other people, including former deputy Marek Snajdr (Civic Democratic Party, ODS), in the Dosimeter corruption case, the servers Seznam Zpravy and Denik N write today, referring to unnamed sources close to the investigation. The new accusations relate to the part of the scandal regarding the General Health Insurance Company (VZP)….

When Member of Parliament Kenny Chiu was contacted by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) ahead of Canada’s federal election in 2021, he was puzzled. He had never expected to be part of a CSIS investigation, let alone one that required an in-person talk at the height of Canada’s COVID-19 pandemic. “At that time, everything had moved online, so it was…

There’s growing evidence that passing a comprehensive privacy law at the state level is a multiyear endeavor. There are anomalies among existing laws on the books, but most legislatures take two years or more to pass a bill.

Indiana is the latest example of how the process plays out, as it’s on the verge of adding to the pile of comprehensive state privacy laws. The Indiana House took a unanimous 98-0 vote to grant final passage to Senate Bill 5 on consumer data protection a year after the bill stalled in the same chamber.

The Indiana Senate, which already voted 49-0 to approve SB 5 on 9 Feb., will vote on concurrence, a perceived formality before the bill heads to Gov. Eric Holcomb, R-Ind., for a final signature. Holcomb has seven days upon transmission to act on the bill, with a definitive veto the only way it will not become a law.

Western media seems to be actively trying to create an “information tsunami” about the topic, according to Pushilin, who suggested it could mean the leaks may have been deliberate.

“Who knows, this could be the preparation of the global community for a possible reduction in support for Ukraine on the eve of the highly publicized counteroffensive by the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” Pushilin wrote. He also said, however, that regardless of the content of the leaked documents or the true intentions of the West, Russia’s task is to continue working and not respond to provocations.

SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea’s antitrust regulator has fined Alphabet Inc’s Google 42.1 billion won ($31.88 million) for blocking the release of mobile video games on a competitor’s platform.

The Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) said on Tuesday that Google bolstered its market dominance, and hurt local app market One Store’s revenue and value as a platform, by requiring video game makers to exclusively release their titles on Google Play in exchange for providing in-app exposure between June 2016 and April 2018.

The KFTC said the move against the U.S. technology giant is part of efforts by the government to ensure fair markets.

Game makers affected by Google’s action include Netmarble, Nexon and NCSOFT, as well as other smaller companies, the antitrust regulator added.

In 2021, Google was fined more than 200 billion won by the KFTC for blocking customised versions of its Android operating system.

A senior South Korean security official said on Tuesday that information contained in purportedly leaked US confidential documents that appeared to be based on internal discussions among top South Korean officials is “untrue” and “altered.”

Deputy National Security Adviser Kim Tae-hyo made the remark as he departed for Washington ahead of President Yoon Suk Yeol’s state visit to the U.S. on April 26, stressing that the two countries’ alliance remained strong. Several documents have recently been posted on social media offering a partial, month-old snapshot of the war in Ukraine, including one that gives details of internal discussions among South Korean officials about US pressure on Seoul to help supply weapons to Ukraine.

“The two countries have a same assessment that much of the information disclosed is altered,” Kim told reporters, adding that the report on South Korea is “untrue.” He did not elaborate which part of the document was untrue.