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An American journalist has been sentenced to two years in federal prison for acting as an agent of a foreign government within the United States, the US Justice Department said. Thomas Weir Pauken II, 51, pleaded guilty earlier this year and is not planning to appeal, according to his defence lawyer, Charles Burnham. Pauken also was sentenced to 36 months of supervised release with no overseas travel, the department said in a news release on Tuesday. He was arrested in February. The case is the latest in a series of federal prosecutions involving people accused of working for the Chinese government without proper disclosure, as tensions between Washington and Beijing remain high. "Pauken betrayed his country for money" for supporting "Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) operations, recruiting, and gathering of sensitive information from potential assets," said Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A Eisenberg in the news release. Pauken worked as a journalist f
President Donald Trump is moving toward levying a new tariff on China that would penalise the world's second-largest economy for flooding the global market with underpriced goods, according to three people familiar with the matter. Two of the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations still being finalised, said Trump is considering setting the new tariff at 7.5 per cent. It's a level administration officials believe would not endanger the one-year trade truce between Washington and Beijing or a planned White House meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping expected to take place in late September. The move, if finalised, appears to be a calibrated effort by the White House to work around a Supreme Court decision earlier this year that struck down Trump's plan to implement a sweeping, high-tariff scheme not seen since the 1930s. After that decision, the Trump administration announced in March it was launching formal investigations ...
The Federal Communications Commission in the US said on Tuesday it would ban the import of foreign-made humanoid robots in a move that targets China, arguing they pose a national security risk. The decision could strain bilateral relations as the technology race between the two world leaders advances. China makes substantially more humanoid robots than the US and other competitors, and analysts estimate that Chinese humanoid robots' global market share has reached roughly 85 per cent. The FCC's ban includes new imports of humanoid robots, quadrupeds -- often referred to as four-legged robot dogs -- as well as foreign-made power inverters. In making the decision, the FCC said these advanced robots produced in foreign countries pose supply chain vulnerabilities to the US as well as cybersecurity and national security risks. FCC chairperson Brendan Carr said in a statement that the move was to "secure America's critical supply chains." The United States has been taking steps to keep