Big Take Asia: China Is Building an Army of Hackers
Teams from China used to dominate international hacking competitions, until Beijing ordered them to stop attending and take part only in domestic tournaments. On today's Big Take Asia Podcast, host K. Oanh Ha talks to Bloomberg's Jamie Tarabay about how tournaments are helping boost China's cyber-espionage capabilities and what that means for the world.
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Yahoo
31 minutes ago
- Yahoo
6 Americans detained in South Korea for trying to send rice and Bibles to North Korea by sea
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Six Americans were detained Friday in South Korea for trying to send 1,600 plastic bottles filled with rice, miniature Bibles, $1 bills and USB sticks toward North Korea by sea, police said. The Americans were apprehended on front-line Gwanghwa Island before throwing the bottles into the sea so they could float toward North Korean shores on the tides, two Gwanghwa police officers said. They said the Americans are being investigated on allegations they violated the law on the management of safety and disasters. The officers, who requested anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak to media on the issue, refused to provide personal details of the Americans in line with privacy rules. Gwanghwa police said they haven't found what is on the USB sticks. The U.S. Embassy in South Korea had no immediate public comment. For years, activists have sought to float plastic bottles or fly balloons across the border carrying anti-North Korea propaganda leaflets and USB thumb drives carrying South Korean dramas and K-pop songs, a practice that was banned from 2021-2023 over concerns it could inflame tensions with the North. North Korea has responded to previous balloon campaigns with fiery rhetoric and other shows of anger, and last year the country launched its own balloons across the border, dumping rubbish on various South Korean sites including the presidential compound. In 2023, South Korea's Constitutional Court struck down a controversial law that criminalized the sending of leaflets and other items to North Korea, calling it an excessive restriction on free speech. But since taking office in early June, the new liberal government of President Lee Jae Myung is pushing to crack down on such civilian campaigns with other safety-related laws to avoid a flare-up tensions with North Korea and promote the safety of frontline South Korean residents. On June 14, police detained an activist for allegedly flying balloons toward North Korea from Gwanghwa Island. Lee took office with a promise to restart long-dormant talks with North Korea and establish peace on the Korean Peninsula. Lee's government halted frontline anti-Pyongyang propaganda loudspeaker broadcasts to try to ease military tensions. North Korean broadcasts have not been heard in South Korean front-line towns since then. But it's unclear if North Korea will respond to Lee's conciliatory gesture after vowing last year to sever relations with South Korea and abandon the goal of peaceful Korean reunification. Official talks between the Koreas have been stalled since 2019, when U.S.-led diplomacy on North Korean denuclearization derailed.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
US state department told to end nearly all its overseas pro-democracy programs
The US state department has been advised to terminate grants to nearly all remaining programs awarded under the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL), which would effectively end the department's role in funding pro-democracy programming in some of the world's most hostile totalitarian nations. The review could affect nearly $1.3bn in grants, three state department officials told the Guardian, citing briefings on the results of a Foreign Assistance Review produced by the office of management and budget (OMB). Of 391 active grants, only two were not recommended to be cut, the officials said. They concerned one program in China and one in Yemen. The recommendations would 'terminate about 80% of all US government foreign assistance at the state department', said a state department official briefed on the findings of the review. Related: State department ramps up Trump anti-immigration agenda with new 'remigration' office In a separate incident this week, a new senior adviser to DRL recommended that the bureau's leadership use funds earmarked by Congress for foreign assistance to cover pet projects for the administration including the resettlement of Afrikaners to the United States and to support the legal defense of the rightwing French politician Marine Le Pen. According to the state department officials, Samuel Samson, a recent college graduate appointed as senior adviser to the bureau under the new administration, made the recommendations on a DRL white paper being drafted to program hundreds of millions of dollars in congressional funding before they expire later this year. Samson, one of a number of young conservatives to rise under the Trump administration, reflects the White House's changing priorities for foreign assistance. He recently wrote a controversial post on the state department's Substack page titled The Need for Civilizational Allies in Europe in which he also criticised the labeling of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party as an 'extremist' organisation, saying that this 'environment also restricts Europe's elections'. It is not clear whether his recommendations were adopted by DRL's leadership in the white paper. Samson led a state department delegation that met with senior officials from Le Pen's party National Rally in late May, but the US offer to publicly support Le Pen was rebuffed by her allies, Reuters reported. Samson did not meet with Le Pen personally, the agency reported. Most of DRL programs facing termination are not listed publicly because they support vulnerable individuals or minorities in nations with authoritarian governments that could retaliate against recipients of US aid. But the secretary of state, Marco Rubio – along with staffers from the so-called 'department of government efficiency' – named some programs cut in previous reviews of foreign assistance, an act that state department officials have said could put the recipients of that aid at risk. Some of the programs targeted under the OMB review would include a rapid response team meant to support pro-democracy activists abroad who may require urgent relocation or other protection if their lives are deemed to be in danger. The programs 'provide a lifeline to organizers and civil society doing the work to try to bring democratic values to these countries', one source said, adding that they referred to places like Cuba and Venezuela. Other programs focus on internet censorship, media literacy, human rights and atrocity prevention programs, election assistance programs, and efforts to combat transnational repression by countries such as China. In response to a request for comment, a senior state department official said: 'The provision of any foreign assistance, including for democracy programming, will be guided by whether it makes America safer, stronger, and more prosperous.' Termination orders for the grants recommended to be cut by the OMB could be sent imminently, but may be delayed if contested by Rubio. Rubio in the past was a passionate defender of foreign assistance but has helped cut the bureau's programming since joining the Trump administration. The sources said that DRL's leadership and the state department's office of foreign assistance, informally called 'F', were in 'shock' over the results of the OMB review. The fight reflects the divisions within the Trump administration between foreign policy hawks like Rubio, who have tailored their views on foreign assistance to the new administration, and hardline conservatives like the OMB director, Russell Vought, who have sought to use the 'power of the purse' to rein in and slash government spending. 'It's a fight between Rubio and Vought,' one person said. The results of the review were delivered to DRL only after Vought gave testimony before a Senate subcommittee on Wednesday, during which he claimed that the state department grants for foreign assistance remained active. The results of the OMB foreign assistance review arrived just days before the state department is set to lay off as many as 3,400 employees and eliminate or consolidate about 300 offices under a major reorganisation ordered by Rubio that he said would bring the department into line with Donald Trump's 'America First' agenda. Under the reorganization, DRL is expected to be gutted. The sources said that eliminating the aid programs could make it easier to process layoffs (called reductions in force, or RIFs) for DRL employees by relieving them of budgets for the programs that they administer. 'If you cut all the programs in DRL, then, why would you need to keep the staff if they're not doing any work,' one person said. It would also make it difficult for the bureau to appeal terminated awards because the employees responsible for that would have been laid off and no longer have access to their state department emails. Ten Democratic senators earlier this month called on Rubio to preserve the state department's human rights bureau. They criticised Rubio for proposing the reorganization that would shutter most offices in DRL and for abandoning his past support for pro-democracy programming around the world. 'The proposed reorganization would result in a structural and substantive demotion of human rights promotion that runs counter to the spirit of the law and your personal legacy working on these issues,' they wrote. 'As you stated in the subcommittee hearing previously mentioned, 'millions of people around the world who live in societies dominated by fear and oppression look to the United States of America to champion their cause to fully exercise their God-given rights,'' they wrote. 'There are no greater champions more capable of advancing this noble cause than the dedicated staff in DRL.'
CNN
2 hours ago
- CNN
Is Chinese history repeating itself in the US?
Scholars and commentators in both the US and China are drawing comparisons between the early months of President Donald Trump's second term and communist dictator Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution. But some believe the way of Mao is unlikely to take root in America. CNN's Kristie Lu Stout explores the similarities and differences between the two leaders.
