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US says Russia helping China develop military technologies

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US says Russia helping China develop military technologies

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The US has warned that Russia is helping China develop submarine, aeronautic and missile technologies in exchange for Beijing’s support for Moscow’s war against Ukraine.

Russia’s deepening sharing of military knowhow in areas such as stealth and surveillance would have a “negative and concerning impact” on the security of the US and its allies, Kurt Campbell, US deputy secretary of state, said on Tuesday.

“These new areas of collaboration between Russia and China are in the areas of design and . . . application. They are significant,” Campbell told reporters during a visit to Brussels to meet EU, Nato and Belgian officials.

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The collaboration could have a “very significant impact on Chinese capabilities and deployments in the western Pacific”, he added.

Russia has historically been cautious about co-operating with China on military technology out of concern about giving too much assistance to the development of the large and highly capable forces in its neighbouring country and a desire to protect its intellectual property.

But Campbell said Russian support, provided in exchange for Chinese supplies of items such as parts used to build Russian weapons, was “orchestrated at the highest levels” in Moscow and Beijing.

The co-operation was “not a tactical alliance, this is a fundamental alignment”, he said.

The Chinese embassy to the EU in Brussels did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Campbell’s comments. Beijing has previously denounced accusations it is supporting Russia’s war effort as “biased, slanderous, and provocative”, insisting it has taken a “constructive role” on the war in Ukraine and has not provided lethal weapons to either side.

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Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, said Moscow had become more willing to collaborate with Beijing on military technology after its annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the process had accelerated since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

“Russia realised that China is pumping tens of billions of dollars into defence research and production, annually,” Gabuev said.

“Russia realised that . . . in certain limited areas, where Russia still has superiority, it has a window of opportunity right now to grow into the Chinese market, earn money, and in the best-case scenario, create a joint value chain.”

Russia on Tuesday announced the start of naval exercise that it said would be joined by four Chinese warships © Russian Defense Ministry/AP

Several Russian scientists working in areas related to weapons development have been given long prison sentences in the past decade for allegedly passing state secrets to China.

Last week, Alexander Shiplyuk, a physicist from a renowned Siberian institute working on scientific research related to the development of Russian hypersonic missiles, received a 15-year sentence for treason. Reuters reported that his arrest followed a trip to a conference in China.

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However, western sanctions have made Moscow increasingly dependent on China for access to dual-use goods needed to produce weapons for deployment in Ukraine and to refurbish its military-industrial production facilities.

Russian President Vladimir Putin himself confirmed in 2019 that Moscow was helping Beijing develop a missile-defence early-warning system.

China’s new Type 096 nuclear ballistic missile submarine was also developed with support from Russian technology for making its propulsion system more silent, according to US naval researchers.

Until relatively recently, Russia had resisted sharing advanced submarine technology with China. In 2021, the Rubin Central Design Bureau, one of Russia’s key submarine research centres, was hacked in an intrusion that cyber security experts attributed to Chinese actors.

China and Russia have also been deepening military co-operation by holding large joint naval and air exercises.

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On Tuesday, Russia announced the start of a week-long naval exercise involving over 400 vessels and submarines in the Pacific and Arctic oceans and the Mediterranean, Caspian and Baltic seas. Four Chinese warships would join the exercise in the Sea of Japan, it said.

Announcing the start of the drills, Putin accused the US of “trying to maintain its global military and political dominance at any cost”.

“Under the pretext of countering the alleged Russian threat and containing the People’s Republic of China, the US and its satellites are increasing their military presence near Russia’s western borders, in the Arctic and in the Asia-Pacific region,” he said.

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Trump Again Hints at Jan. 6 Pardons, Including for Attacks on Police

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Trump Again Hints at Jan. 6 Pardons, Including for Attacks on Police

President-elect Donald J. Trump on Tuesday once again left open the possibility of offering pardons to some of his supporters who are serving prison time for assaulting police officers during the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Mr. Trump, who campaigned on a pledge to restore “law and order,” said that the pardons he intended to offer could cover people charged and convicted of violent crimes.

“Well, we’re looking at it,” Mr. Trump told reporters at a news conference at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate, when asked whether he was considering pardoning people charged with violent offenses. “We’ll be looking at the whole thing, but I’ll be making major pardons, yes.”

When a reporter pressed Mr. Trump on whether he would pardon anyone who attacked a police officer, Mr. Trump deflected and suggested that his supporters were the true victims of Jan. 6.

“Well, you know, the only one that was killed was a beautiful young lady named Ashli Babbitt,” he said, adding that she was “shot for no reason whatsoever.” In fact, three other pro-Trump protesters also died during the riot.

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Ms. Babbitt, an Air Force veteran, was shot and killed by a police officer while she was part of a group trying to break through a door to the House floor, where lawmakers were seeking shelter from the mob. Her death has become a cause célèbre on the right.

Mr. Trump did not mention the more than 140 police officers who were injured during the attack by people wielding baseball bats, flagpoles, metal batons, broken table legs, crutches and even a hockey stick. He also said nothing about four officers who later died by suicide or another who died shortly after Jan. 6 of a stroke that a medical examiner determined was caused in part by “all that transpired” on that day.

At Tuesday’s news conference, Mr. Trump sought to blame the F.B.I. for the riot, echoing a conspiracy theory that is widespread on the right and that was contradicted by a recent report from the Justice Department’s internal watchdog.

Moreover, he seemed to suggest, without evidence, that the Iranian-backed terrorist organization Hezbollah was somehow involved in the attack — an allegation that has never come up in the multiple criminal and congressional investigations into Jan. 6.

Representatives for Mr. Trump did not respond to questions about these comments.

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Even though he repeatedly promised during his campaign and after the election to issue pardons to potentially hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters, Mr. Trump has never described specific criteria for who will get clemency.

Sometimes, he has said that he will pardon rioters charged only with nonviolent crimes — of which there are about 1,000. At other times, including during an interview with the National Association of Black Journalists, Mr. Trump left open the possibility that he would pardon people who attacked the police.

When Mr. Trump won the election, there was jubilation among the Jan. 6 defendants and their families who have been urging him to issue a blanket amnesty to all of the nearly 1,600 who have been charged over the past four years in connection with the Capitol attack.

But if Mr. Trump decides to do that, it will mean granting some form of clemency to people, say, who hit officers with two-by-fours or members of far-right groups like the Proud Boys who were convicted and imprisoned on charges of seditious conspiracy.

After initially condemning the riot as “a heinous attack” and vowing that those who broke the law that day “will pay,” Mr. Trump and his allies quickly pivoted into a campaign to rebrand and launder Jan. 6 as a day of patriotism by Trump supporters. Mr. Trump continued that rewriting of history at Tuesday’s news conference.

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He portrayed the imprisoned supporters as nonviolent victims of unfair prosecutors. He falsely claimed that his supporters brought “not one gun” to the Capitol. And he implied, without evidence, that the riot was instead a plot by either the F.B.I. or shadowy foreign actors.

“They had people in some form related to the F.B.I.,” Mr. Trump said of the riot, referring to the false-flag conspiracy theory prevalent on the right.

The baseless claim that Jan. 6 was instigated by “deep state” actors rather than the hundreds of Trump supporters who were trying to block the peaceful transfer of power in his name has been rejected by defense lawyers working on Capitol riot cases, the Justice Department’s inspector general and even some of the F.B.I.’s own informants who were at the Capitol that day.

“We have to find out about Hezbollah,” Mr. Trump said. “We have to find out about who exactly was in that whole thing, because people that did some bad things were not prosecuted.”

It is unclear why Mr. Trump mentioned Hezbollah in connection with Jan. 6.

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UK minister accuses Musk of endangering her life

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UK minister accuses Musk of endangering her life

Home Office minister Jess Phillips has said that “disinformation” spread by Elon Musk about grooming gangs in the UK and the government’s response is “endangering” her life.

Phillips has come under sustained attack from the technology billionaire, who has labelled her an “evil witch” and “rape genocide apologist”, while calling for her to be jailed.

Britain has been convulsed in recent days by a dispute over the handling of historic grooming cases involving sexual exploitation of girls by gangs of mainly British-Pakistani men after Musk called for a new national inquiry into the scandal.

Musk’s outbursts against Phillips, who holds the safeguarding brief in the UK government, began after it emerged she had rejected a request by Oldham council for the Home Office to hold a Whitehall-led inquiry into the grooming scandal in the Greater Manchester town.

The Home Office has instead urged the local authority to undertake its own review, citing precedents for probes in other towns afflicted by rape gangs, including Telford and Rotherham, while highlighting a national inquiry into child sexual exploitation that concluded in 2022.

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On Tuesday Phillips told the BBC that threats to her own life had increased since Musk’s salvos against her on his social media platform X, describing the situation as “very tiring”, but adding: “I’m no stranger to people who don’t know what they’re talking about trying to silence women like me.”

However, she added that her treatment at the hands of Musk was “nothing” in comparison to the experience of abuse victims.

Phillips told Sky News that SpaceX-owner Musk should “crack on with getting to Mars” and expressed her anger at political opponents, including Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, who have pushed for a national inquiry into grooming gangs after Musk made the same demand.

Musk has been approached for comment.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer issued a staunch defence of Phillips on Monday, paying tribute to her record defending female victims of violence and abuse.

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Phillips’ comments came after shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick conceded the Conservatives could have “done more” to crack down on sex abuse gangs while in government.

Jenrick defended the previous Tory administration’s record, but he told the BBC: “Could we have done more, should we do more now? Yes, absolutely — we have to root this out.”

He said a review by Professor Alexis Jay, who chaired a seven-year national inquiry into child sexual abuse in England and Wales that reported in 2022, only looked at rape gangs in six towns, but added they may have operated in up to 50.

Jenrick also defended his party’s criticism of the Labour government’s decision not to launch a Whitehall-led inquiry into the scandal in Oldham. 

Challenged over the refusal of the last Tory government to launch an inquiry into rape gangs in Oldham, he said the previous request came from a “small number of councillors”, while the recent one was by the local authority itself. 

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Jenrick, who stood unsuccessfully for the Tory leadership last year, defended his controversial comments last week that mass migration of people to the UK from “alien cultures” with “medieval attitudes towards women” had contributed to the scandal. 

He said he would not “disguise” or “sanitise” his language to avoid causing offence, pointing to evidence that fear of being labelled racist had contributed to authorities failing to take action against gangs that mainly involved men of Pakistani heritage.

Starmer has accused Conservative politicians of “amplifying what the far right is saying” on child sexual exploitation, after failing to act “for 14 long years”.

Jay on Tuesday said there had been “politicisation” of the issue and warned that a fresh probe could delay the implementation of her review’s recommendations.

She criticised people for having “waded into the argument” over the issue “in a very uninformed way”. 

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Jay has previously criticised the former Conservative government for failing to implement the main 20 recommendations in her 2022 report, which warned of “endemic” abuse across society. 

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Florida judge blocks release of special counsel report on Trump cases

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Florida judge blocks release of special counsel report on Trump cases

Special Counsel Jack Smith arrives to give remarks on an indictment against Trump in 2023 in Washington, D.C.

Drew Angerer/Getty Images


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Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Florida Judge Aileen Cannon on Tuesday temporarily blocked the Justice Department from releasing a final report by special counsel Jack Smith, in the latest setback for federal criminal charges against Donald Trump.

Prosecutors dropped two criminal cases against Trump after he won the 2024 election, and the final report by Smith may be the last chance for prosecutors to explain their decisions.

Trump was charged with election interference in Washington, D.C., and with hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort and refusing to return them to the FBI. Smith dropped the cases after the November election, following a longstanding Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president.

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But special counsels are also obligated to file a report on their actions with the attorney general when they finish their work. The current attorney general, Merrick Garland, has pledged to make most of those reports public.

Smith had been set to file his report to Garland on Tuesday, with an eye to releasing it to the public as soon as this week.

But Cannon — who was appointed to the bench by Trump and had earlier dismissed the documents case — ordered the DOJ not to share Jack Smith’s final report until a federal appeals court resolves the legal fight.

Cannon had thrown out the prosecution of Trump and two codefendants, longtime aides Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, on the ground that Smith had been appointed in an unconstitutional manner. After Trump won the 2024 election, the Justice Department dropped him from its appeal. But it continued the appellate case for the other two defendants, who raised concern that they would be prejudiced if Smith’s final report is published while they still face the threat of a trial.

Trump has also argued the special counsel was appointed unlawfully and that any public report would be legally invalid and hurt his transition into the White House.

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He personally attacked Smith at a press conference on Tuesday, calling him “a mean, nasty guy” and praising Cannon’s decision to throw out the documents case.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit is set to rule on the emergency motion to block the report’s release.

Rep. Gerald Connolly, Va., the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, criticized Cannon’s decision on Tuesday.

“DOJ must release its report on Trump’s mishandling of classified documents by January 20 so that the American people can understand the full extent of the President-elect’s unlawful possession of hundreds of the government’s most sensitive documents,” he said in a statement. “The public’s right to know is paramount.”

Appeal of sentencing fails

However, another case against the president-elect is moving ahead: the only one of his multiple criminal cases to go to trial.

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A New York state appeals court on Tuesday denied the request from Trump’s legal team for a delay in his sentencing in his hush-money conviction, which is scheduled for Friday, just 10 days before his inauguration.

A state jury convicted Trump for 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal a payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Trump’s legal team had sought to delay or scrap the entire case, arguing the president-elect was immune from prosecution.

New York Judge Juan Merchan had previously delayed the sentencing multiple times, but recently said Trump’s lawyers failed to prove the president-elect was immune from the charges.

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