Since 1997 Hong Kong’s highest court has included British judges. But with China changing the laws in the city, they are being urged to resign. Amy Hawkins reports

Since 1997, British and Commonwealth judges have sat in the highest court in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong legal system is derived from English common law and foreign judges, including those from the UK, have been said to add expertise and prestige to its court system.

But in 2020 Beijing imposed a strict national security law to clamp down on pro-democracy protests. Since then the number of foreign judges has fallen as fears grow that the judges are lending credibility to a system where basic rights and freedoms are not being respected.

Pyongyang’s trade in wigs and false eyelashes is booming, offering a vital revenue stream to help it pursue its nuclear ambitions

They almost certainly don’t know it, but western owners of shiny new wigs and false eyelashes could owe their look to North Korean slave labour.

In recent years, a booming trade in human hair has helped to sustain North Korea’s isolated economy, softening the impact of international sanctions and providing Pyongyang with vital revenue to pursue its nuclear ambitions.

Jens Stoltenberg accused of ‘escalation of tension’ as he warns of growing threat from Russia and China

The Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has indicated that the military alliance is considering whether to increase the number of available nuclear weapons, triggering warnings from experts about the possibility of a new arms race.

Stoltenberg said Nato could, for the first time, face a significant nuclear threat from two fronts – Russia and China – and that it may be necessary to increase the number of deployable warheads as a deterrent.

States are on course to spend $100bn a year, driven by a sharp increase in US defence budgets

Global spending on nuclear weapons is estimated to have increased by 13% to a record $91.4bn during 2023, according to calculations from the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (Ican) pressure group.

The new total, which is up $10.7bn from the previous year, is driven largely by sharply increased defence budgets in the US, at a time of wider geopolitical uncertainty caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war.

Britain may be chilly, but from Greece to India, people are dying due to record temperatures. The death toll will grow without urgent action

While Britons don jumpers and complain about the unseasonable cold, much of the world has been reeling due to excessive temperatures. India has been in the grip of its longest heatwave in recorded history, with thermometers hitting 50C in some places. Greece closed the Acropolis in the afternoon last week as temperatures hit 43C; never has it seen a heatwave so early in the year. Soaring temperatures in the Sahel and western Africa saw mortuaries in Mali reportedly running short of space this spring, while swathes of Asia suffered in May.

Mexico and the south-west of the US have also endured blistering conditions; it was particularly shocking to hear Donald Trump pledge again to “drill, baby, drill” at a rally that saw supporters taken to hospital with heat exhaustion. These bouts of extreme weather are increasing as the climate crisis worsens. Although the El Niño weather pattern contributed to heatwaves over the last 12 months, they are becoming more frequent, extreme and prolonged thanks to global heating. By 2040, almost half the world’s inhabitants are likely to experience major heatwaves, 12 times more than the historic average.

Exclusive: Revelation of emails to Imperial College scientists comes amid growing concerns about security risk posed by academic tie-ups with China

A Chinese state-owned company sought to use a partnership with a leading British university in order to access AI technology for potential use in “smart military bases”, the Guardian has learned.

Emails show that China’s Jiangsu Automation Research Institute (Jari) discussed deploying software developed by scientists at Imperial College London for military use.

Coalition blunders have left countries locked in ‘permanent contest’ over Pacific, minister says

• What is on the agenda for Chinese premier’s visit to Australia?
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China’s second-most powerful leader has announced that the “twists and turns” in Australia-China relations are over – and invited Australian officials to pick a new pair of pandas for Adelaide’s zoo.

But Penny Wong chose to highlight the tensions that remain in the relationship before a series of talks with Premier Li Qiang, who arrived in Australia on Saturday evening and was met by protesters outside the zoo on Sunday.

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• "members of Parliament who worked to influence their colleagues on India's behalf and proactively provided confidential information to Indian officials." (p.24)
• a PRC "network had some contact with at least 11 candidates and 13 campaign staffers, some of whom appeared to be wittingly working for the PRC" (p. 26)
• "Member of Parliament wittingly provided information *** to a foreign state . . . a particularly concerning case of a then-member of Parliament maintaining a relationship with a foreign intelligence officer" (p.26)
• "an example of the PRC using intermediaries to provide funds likely to support candidates in the 2019 federal election, including two transfers of funds approximating $250,000 through a prominent community leader, a political staffer and then an Ontario member of Provincial Parliament. CSIS could not confirm that the funds reached any candidate." (pp.28-29).

Li’s four-day visit, the first by a Chinese premier since 2017, is expected to feature panda diplomacy, Indo-Pacific security discussions and trade talks

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China’s premier, Li Qiang, will arrive in Australia on Saturday for a four-day visit that will include stops in Adelaide, Canberra and Perth.

It is the first visit to Australia by a Chinese premier since 2017, and marks the latest step in “stabilising” a relationship that hit rock bottom in 2020.

Concerns set out over supply of materials with military applications, and impact of subsidies on global market

China’s role in providing assistance to Russia in its war against Ukraine, and its “harmful overcapacity” in the production of cheap goods, have been targeted by G7 leaders despite misgivings from Germany.

On the second day of the annual summit, being held in Puglia under the Italian chair, the US drove home a 36-page communique that condemned Chinese subsidies for products such as solar panels and electric cars which it said were leading to “global spillovers, market distortions and harmful overcapacity … undermining our workers, industries, and economic resilience and security”.

Understanding the CUHK Data Breach

Investigation Status of CUHK Data Breach

CUHK Data Breach: Institutions in Hong Kong Under Scanner

The rise in U.S.-politics-themed scams indicates that adversarial nation states understand the significance of election years.

The post Chinese Threats Aim for Government Sector  appeared first on Security Boulevard.

• Hassan Sunny denied Thailand to aid China in World Cup
• Sunny’s food stall receives business in person and online

Singapore national team goalkeeper Hassan Sunny has urged Chinese football fans to stop sending him money after his saves in Singapore’s 3-1 defeat to Thailand helped China reach the next round of World Cup qualifiers.

The 40-year-old made 11 saves on Tuesday as Thailand fell agonisingly short of a spot in the draw for the next round on 27 June, despite their 3-1 victory.

Enlarge / Brad Smith, vice chairman and president of Microsoft, is sworn in before testifying about Microsoft's cybersecurity work during a House Committee on Homeland Security hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on June 13, 2024. (credit: SAUL LOEB / Contributor | AFP)

Microsoft is pivoting its company culture to make security a top priority, President Brad Smith testified to Congress on Thursday, promising that security will be "more important even than the company’s work on artificial intelligence."

Satya Nadella, Microsoft's CEO, "has taken on the responsibility personally to serve as the senior executive with overall accountability for Microsoft’s security," Smith told Congress.

His testimony comes after Microsoft admitted that it could have taken steps to prevent two aggressive nation-state cyberattacks from China and Russia.

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Sophia Huang Xueqin, who reported on #MeToo movement and Hong Kong pro-democracy protests, sentenced along with labour activist Wang Jianbing

A Chinese court has sentenced the prominent #MeToo journalist Sophia Huang Xueqin to five years in jail and the labour activist Wang Jianbing to three and a half years, almost 1,000 days after they were detained on allegations of inciting state subversion, according to supporters.

On Friday, supporters of the pair said the court had found them guilty and given Huang the maximum sentence. The jail terms would take into account the time they had already spent in detention. A copy of the verdict said Huang was also deprived of political rights for four years and fined $100,000 RMB (£10,800). Wang faced three years of deprivation of political rights and was fined $50,000 RMB.

The owner of Vauxhall, Jeep and Fiat says it opposes EU measures against Chinese EVs and wants to compete ‘as a global company’

The owner of the Jeep, Fiat and Vauxhall brands has said it will not take a defensive stance in the battle for electric car sales, amid signs of an escalating trade war in the market between Europe and China.

Stellantis’s chief executive, Carlos Tavares, has criticised the EU tariffs on imported Chinese cars announced on Wednesday and said the world’s fourth biggest carmaker preferred to “fight to stay competitive”.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

They look like simple fishing boats but are capable of swarming in huge numbers to help Beijing stake its territorial claims in the South China Sea

Chinese fishing boats started swarming the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea in mid May. Some had already been drifting around the picturesque reef in the Philippines exclusive economic zone for some time.

However, the Chinese boats were not regular fishing vessels, and they weren’t there to fish. They were there to counter a Philippine aid flotilla aiming to deliver supplies to fishers near the disputed shoal. In the end, the aid flotilla turned back before it reached the shoal.

The tariffs are aimed at countering the alleged state support handed to China’s car manufacturing industry

• EU to put tariffs of up to 38% on Chinese EVs as trade war looms

The EU has told Beijing that it plans to impose new tariffs on imports of Chinese electric vehicles into the trading bloc, potentially triggering a trade war.

So what are the details, how will it affect the industry and will the price of cars on the dealership forecourt be affected?

Move, to be applied provisionally from July, would trigger duties of more than €2bn a year

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The EU has notified Beijing that it intends to impose tariffs of up to 38% on imports of Chinese electric vehicles, triggering duties of more than €2bn (£1.7bn) a year and a likely trade war with China.

The tariffs will be applied provisionally from next month in line with World Trade Organization rules, which give China four weeks to challenge any evidence the EU provides to justify the levies on imported EVs.

The industry that has traditionally powered about a quarter of GDP has been in a downward spiral that policymakers have struggled to halt

All across China, from Beijing in the north, to Shenzhen in the south, millions of newly built homes stand empty and unwanted. There were nearly 391m sq metres of unsold residential property in China as of April, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. That is the equivalent of Manchester and Birmingham combined – and then some – sitting as vacant, unwanted property.

This glut of idle property has caused a headache for the government, shaken the world’s second largest economy and raised tensions over the purpose of housebuilding in a nation where property investment had been viewed as a safe bet.

The conviction of peaceful pro-democracy activists is another shameful moment in the ongoing crackdown

Seven years ago, Lord Neuberger, a judge of the Hong Kong court of final appeal – and formerly president of the UK’s supreme court – described the Chinese region’s foreign judges as “canaries in the mine”. Their willingness to serve was a sign that judicial independence remained healthy, “but if they start to leave in droves, that would represent a serious alarm call”.

That was before the extraordinary uprising in 2019 to defend Hong Kong’s autonomy, and the crackdown that followed. The draconian national security law of 2020 prompted the resignation of an Australian judge, and two British judges quit in 2022. Last week, two more birds flew: Lord Sumption and Lord Collins of Mapesbury. Lord Sumption (with other judges) had said that continued participation was in the interests of the people of Hong Kong. Now he says that those hopes of sustaining the rule of law are “no longer realistic” and that “a [once] vibrant and politically diverse community is slowly becoming a totalitarian state”. He cited illiberal legislation, Beijing’s ability to reverse decisions by Hong Kong courts and an oppressive political environment where judges are urged to demonstrate “patriotism”.

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​L​ord Sumption, who last week quit territory’s top court​, speaks out on ‘paranoid atmosphere’ under Chinese rule

A British judge has described the “paranoid atmosphere” in Hong Kong as he explained his decision to step down from the territory’s top court.

Jonathan Sumption, along with another British judge, Lawrence Collins, last week resigned from Hong Kong’s court of final appeal (CFA).

Group from Cornell College and a Chinese person who tried to help have non life-threatening injuries after attack in Jilin province

Four US college instructors teaching in China have been stabbed while visiting a public park, US officials have said.

The tutors from Cornell College in Iowa were at the park in Jilin province, north-eastern China, with a faculty member from Beihua University on Monday when the attack occurred, the college president Jonathan Brand said in a statement. The private college in Iowa partners with the university near Jilin City.

A Zambian court has sentenced 22 Chinese nationals to long prison terms for cybercrimes that included internet fraud and online scams targeting Zambians and other people.

The post 22 Chinese Nationals Sentenced to Long Prison Terms in Zambia for Multinational Cybercrimes appeared first on SecurityWeek.

Potential Implications of Cyberattack on SGCC

Global Context of Cyberattacks in the Energy Sector

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Enlarge (credit: FT montage/Getty Images)

The resurrection of a car plant in Brazil’s poor northeast stands as a symbol of China’s global advance—and the West’s retreat.

BYD, the Shenzhen-based conglomerate, has taken over an old Ford factory in Camaçari, which was abandoned by the American automaker nearly a century after Henry Ford first set up operations in Brazil.

When Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president, visited China last year, he met BYD’s billionaire founder and chair, Wang Chuanfu. After that meeting, BYD picked the country for its first carmaking hub outside of Asia.

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“The threat from China [to Canadian organizations] is very likely the most significant by volume, capability, and assessed intent. China-sponsored cyber threat actors will very likely continue targeting industries and technologies in Canada that contribute to the state’s strategic priorities.”

China Increasingly Targeting Canadians through Cyberespionage

• Government entities at all levels, including federal, provincial, territorial, municipal, and Indigenous.
• Organizations or individuals in close partnership with government entities.
• Universities, labs, and technology companies involved in research and development of PRC-prioritized technologies.
• Individuals or organizations perceived as threats by the PRC, especially those advocating for Taiwan and Hong Kong independence and Chinese democracy.

Elections, Critical Infrastructure Targeted

“Canada’s strong democratic institutions, advanced economy, innovative research sectors, and leading academic institutions make Canada an attractive target for cyber-enabled espionage, sabotage, and foreign influenced activities, all of which pose significant threats to Canada’s national security,” the report said.

"The Cyber Centre assesses that the direct threat to Canada’s critical infrastructure from PRC state-sponsored actors is likely lower than that to U.S. infrastructure, but should U.S. infrastructure be disrupted, Canada would likely be affected as well due to interoperability and interdependence in the sectors of greatest concern."

Threat Tactics Detailed

• Co-opting compromised small office and home office (SOHO) routers to conduct activity and avoid detection.
• Using built-in network administration tools for malicious activity, blending into normal system traffic.
• Compromising trusted service providers to access client information or networks.
• Rapidly weaponizing and proliferating exploits for newly revealed vulnerabilities, posing a continuous risk.

Mitigating the Chinese Threat

1. Isolate Critical Infrastructure: Isolate critical components and services from the Internet and internal networks and test manual controls for operational continuity.
2. Increase Vigilance: Monitor networks for tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) reported by the Cyber Centre and partners. Focus on identifying and assessing unusual network behavior.
3. Restrict Movement: Pay attention to vulnerable entry points, such as third-party systems. Disable remote access from third-party systems during incidents.
4. Enhance Security Posture: Patch systems focusing on vulnerabilities identified by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Enable logging, deploy network and endpoint monitoring, and implement multi-factor authentication. Create and test offline backups.
5. Incident Response Plan: Have a cyber incident response plan and continuity of operations and communications plans ready and tested.

Enlarge / A Long March 5 rocket carrying the Chang'e 6 lunar probe blasts off from the Wenchang Space Launch Center on May 3, 2024, in Wenchang, China. (credit: Li Zhenzhou/VCG via Getty Images)

China landed a spacecraft on the Moon this weekend for the fourth time, successfully placing its Chang’e 6 lander in the South Pole-Aitken Basin on the far side of the Moon.

After the landing on Saturday evening (United States time), the autonomous spacecraft will spend about 48 hours collecting samples. It will do so by two different means, drilling to collect material from beneath the ground, as well as using a robotic arm to gather regolith from the surface.

Then a part of the spacecraft is due to blast off from the surface of the Moon—likely on Monday evening, US time—before making a return flight to China. If successful, this would be the first time samples have been returned to Earth from the far side of the Moon.

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Enlarge / OpenAI said it was committed to uncovering disinformation campaigns and was building its own AI-powered tools to make detection and analysis "more effective." (credit: FT montage/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

OpenAI has revealed operations linked to Russia, China, Iran and Israel have been using its artificial intelligence tools to create and spread disinformation, as technology becomes a powerful weapon in information warfare in an election-heavy year.

The San Francisco-based maker of the ChatGPT chatbot said in a report on Thursday that five covert influence operations had used its AI models to generate text and images at a high volume, with fewer language errors than previously, as well as to generate comments or replies to their own posts. OpenAI’s policies prohibit the use of its models to deceive or mislead others.

The content focused on issues “including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the conflict in Gaza, the Indian elections, politics in Europe and the United States, and criticisms of the Chinese government by Chinese dissidents and foreign governments,” OpenAI said in the report.

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Enlarge / A sea-borne variant of the commercial Ceres 1 rocket lifts off near the coast of Rizhao, a city of 3 million in China's Shandong province. (credit: VCG via Getty Images)

Welcome to Edition 6.46 of the Rocket Report! It looks like we will be covering the crew test flight of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft and the fourth test flight of SpaceX's giant Starship rocket over the next week. All of this is happening as SpaceX keeps up its cadence of flying multiple Starlink missions per week. The real stars are the Ars copy editors helping make sure our stories don't use the wrong names.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Another North Korean launch failure. North Korea's latest attempt to launch a rocket with a military reconnaissance satellite ended in failure due to the midair explosion of the rocket during the first-stage flight this week, South Korea's Yonhap News Agency reports. Video captured by the Japanese news organization NHK appears to show the North Korean rocket disappearing in a fireball shortly after liftoff Monday night from a launch pad on the country's northwest coast. North Korean officials acknowledged the launch failure and said the rocket was carrying a small reconnaissance satellite named Malligyong-1-1.

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The US government has announced sanctions against three Chinese nationals accused of creating and operating the 911 S5 proxy botnet.

The post US Sanctions Three Chinese Men for Operating 911 S5 Botnet appeared first on SecurityWeek.

Islamabad's Safe City Authority Breach and Initial Response

Controversy Over Islamabad's Safe City Authority

Kuo Chiu, known as KC to his friends, teaches urban design at Tunghai University in Taiwan. He’s also one of many of the country's citizens who practises rifle skills in his spare time, in case of a Chinese invasion.

The population of Taiwan has long grown familiar with Beijing’s pledge to one day ‘unify’ what it claims is a breakaway province. But recently, there has been a significant increase in aggressive and intimidatory acts.

Taiwan’s 160,000 active military personnel are vastly outnumbered by China’s 2 million-member armed forces, leading many civilians to turn to voluntary medical and combat training to protect themselves.

The Guardian's video team spent time with KC to see how he is preparing