Most Recent Posts

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States wants to restart a cybersecurity working group that China shut down after the U.S. indicted five Chinese military officers on charges of hacking into American companies' computers to steal trade secrets.

Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Russel told The Associated Press the U.S. is ready to resume those discussions, which he described as "useful and important," if China is. Russel said officials would raise it at the annual U.S.-China Security and Economic Dialogue in Beijing in two weeks. The dialogue will be attended by Secretary of State John Kerry and Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew.

After the indictments against the five officers were unsealed in May, Beijing pulled the plug on the group. It had been set up a year ago in what Washington viewed at the time as a diplomatic coup after President Barack Obama and China's President Xi Jinping held a summit in California aiming to set relations between the two global powers on a positive track.

Those ties have also come under growing strain because of China's assertive actions in the disputed South and East China seas. Russel, the top U.S. diplomat for East Asia, reiterated those concerns in an interview Thursday, saying the U.S. views it as essential that China show greater restraint and use diplomacy to manage its differences on territorial issues.

Asian nations, particularly treaty allies like Japan and the Philippines, look to the U.S. to counter China's increasingly muscular actions, but some in the region have voiced doubts about whether the second-term Obama administration can follow through on its commitment to focus on the Asia-Pacific because of its preoccupation with the chaos in the Middle East.

Russel said Asia remains a strategic U.S. priority, even as Washington considers some form of military action to combat the rapid advances of Sunni militants in Iraq who now straddle the border with Syria.

"The fact that events conspired to demand high-level U.S. attention in the Middle East or elsewhere is simply a fact of life," Russel said. "It's always been thus. The strategic imperative, though, that's made the Asia-Pacific region a priority for us in security, economic and political terms is unaffected by the short-term demands of crises here and there."

"I have no trouble in enlisting Secretary Kerry's efforts on our agenda in the region," Russel added, "and that applies to the president and vice president as well."

Kerry and Lew will lead the U.S. delegation at the talks in Beijing, which are an annual fixture and viewed as important in forging a more cooperative relationship with Beijing, notwithstanding current frictions and China's growing challenge to America's post-World War II military predominance in the Asia-Pacific.

The two sides will discuss issues including turmoil in the Middle East, North Korea's nuclear program and cooperation on climate change, and the U.S. will raise the issue of human rights. They'll also address a slew of economic and trade issues, including progress on a bilateral investment treaty that China agreed to negotiate in earnest at last year's talks.

While the cyber working group remains on hold, Russel said the U.S. side will raise concerns over cyber-enabled theft of U.S. corporate data and intellectual property that the U.S. contends is shared with Chinese state-owned enterprises for commercial gain.

"That's an economic problem as well as a bilateral problem, and that kind of behavior risks undermining the support for the U.S.-China relationship among the U.S. and international business community," Russel said. "It's a problem we believe the Chinese must and can address."

Although the revelations from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden on U.S. surveillance tactics have embarrassed Washington — leaving it open to accusations of hypocrisy when it accuses others of cyber espionage — the Obama administration has taken an increasingly trenchant stance on intrusions from China.

The indictment accuses the Chinese officers of targeting U.S. makers of nuclear and solar technology and stealing confidential business information, sensitive trade secrets and internal communications for competitive advantage. But after the indictments were unsealed, the five men were not placed on a public, international list of wanted criminals. There is no evidence that China would even entertain a formal request by the U.S. to extradite the five officers. It has rejected the charges and demanded they be withdrawn.

Saying that it wants to join an international treaty banning anti-personnel landmines, the U.S. announced today that it will no longer make "or otherwise acquire" anti-personnel landmines. The new policy was announced at a conference on the Ottawa Convention, a 1999 treaty that outlaws the mines.

The country's stronger stance on mines is part of a push "to end the use of all non-detectable mines and all persistent mines, which can remain active for years after the end of a conflict," according to a White House news release issued this morning.

The new policy was announced to coincide with the conference that's taking place this week in Mozambique.

"The old argument is that the U.S. needs land mines to stave off the North Koreans," The Chicago Sun-Times writes about the U.S. reluctance to join the pact. "But in a world of fast deployment forces, that's not a convincing reason, and military experts have claimed that mines constrict defense more than help."

Worldwide, 161 countries have signed the Ottawa accord. While the U.S. isn't one of them, in the early 1990's, the country established an aid program that it says has doled out some $2.3 billion in aid to eliminate landmines and to help their victims.

It's not known how long it might take the U.S. to deplete its arsenal of the mines. Today's announcement didn't include a potential deadline for joining the mine treaty.

"The United States has not disclosed precise details about the size of its stockpile," reports The New York Times. "Arms control experts have estimated it to be between 10 million and 13 million."

The White House says the U.S. is conducting tests and simulations that can help it "mitigate the risks associated with the loss" of the anti-personnel mines.

LONDON (AP) — An unannounced set by Kaiser Chiefs has kicked off Glastonbury, Britain's leading summer music festival.

The British rockers played a surprise morning gig Friday, the first full day of the event. Dolly Parton, Arcade Fire, Blondie and Metallica are among the other headliners playing a festival famed for music — and mud.

More than 150,000 ticketholders have descended on Worthy Farm in southwestern England for the music extravaganza, which ends Sunday. Many sported the Glastonbury fashion staple — rubber Wellington boots — as rain began to turn the 900-acre (364-hectare) site into a mudbath.

Police said a 26-year-old man died on Friday after having a bad reaction to ketamine, and a 67-year-old woman died at the site of natural causes.

ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — Nigeria's intelligence agency said it has been warning shopping complexes in Abuja for two weeks that Islamic extremists might attack them in the capital, where a blast at a mall killed 22 people this week.

The increased security may have prevented even more carnage as witnesses said a security guard stopped a car bomber from entering the mall moments before the massive explosion on Wednesday.

Survivor Donald Chikason told ThisDay newspaper that a security guard argued with the driver of a car who wanted to enter Emab Plaza through the exit gate. When the guard refused, the man bent down and moments later the car exploded, Friday's edition of the newspaper quoted him as saying.

"The man started arguing, behaving as if he was drunk," it quoted him as saying.

Chikason, who works at a bank in the mall, was knocked unconscious by the blast and regained consciousness in the hospital.

The explosion was heard miles (kilometers) away. It set 17 vehicles ablaze and shattered windows throughout the four-story complex.

Body parts lay around the exit gate, other witnesses told The Associated Press. Dozens of wounded survivors were recovering in the hospitals Friday, most suffering burn wounds like Chikason, but at least one victim's leg was amputated, doctors said.

Nigerian intelligence received information that Boko Haram extremists were planning such an attack, said spokeswoman Marilyn Ogar of the Department of State Security.

"About two weeks ago we heard information that they were planning an attack at a busy shopping mall or market ... and so we had to go from one shopping complex to another trying to tell people to be more aware," she told The Associated Press.

Emab Plaza is the biggest and busiest in Abuja, the nation's capital in central Nigeria. The explosion occurred around rush hour as many residents were hurrying to view Nigeria's Super Eagles match against Argentina at the World Cup in Brazil. It was unclear if the bomb was timed to coincide with that, although Boko Haram has bombed several football viewing venues this year, prompting two northeastern states to ban public events to watch the football spectacular.

The state security department did not publish the intelligence about the threat to shopping malls, apparently to avoid a panic. Last week the government warned it had information that Boko Haram planned to hijack petrol tankers in the capital and booby trap them with explosives.

Two separate bombs in Abuja in April killed about 120 people and wounded more than 200 at a busy bus station.

President Goodluck Jonathan returned home Thursday night, cutting short his participation at an African Union summit in Equatorial Guinea.

The capital is in mourning, with speedy burials for Muslims among the victims. They included artist Abba Kura. His friend, Muhammad Khalifa Garba wept at his funeral Thursday, where mourners carried his works. He said Kura told him earlier this week that he no longer wanted to paint on canvas and had started a new work, a landscape on paper.

A relative of another victim, Mohammed Maina Bissala, railed against Boko Haram's indiscriminate tactics: "Allah says you should not take the life of a single person, so why should you claim that you are Boko Haram and you are killing everybody, both Muslims and Christians, everybody. What have they done? They have not done anything, these are innocent souls," he told The Associated Press.

Boko Haram's attacks have been concentrated in its stronghold in the northeast of the country but it has spread its attacks to the capital this year and increased the tempo and deadliness of attacks concentrated around bombings in cities and a scorched-earth policy in rural villages in the northeast.

Boko Haram attracted international condemnation for the April mass abductions of more than 200 schoolgirls who remain captive, and is blamed for this week's kidnappings of another 90 people.

___

Faul reported from Lagos, Nigeria.