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DAKAR, Senegal — At least 30 bodies were found on a boat drifting off the coast of Senegal’s capital, the military said Monday, as the number of migrants leaving West Africa increases.
The navy was informed of the vessel’s presence on Sunday evening and sent out a boat patrol to the area, 70 kilometers (38 nautical miles) from Dakar, Ibrahima Sow, spokesperson for Senegal’s military, said in a statement.
“So far, 30 bodies have been counted,” Sow said.
The advanced state of decomposition of the bodies is making the identification process very difficult, the military said, adding that investigations will provide more information on the death toll and the boat’s origin.
Earlier this month, a boat carrying 89 people on board capsized off the coast of Senegal. At least 37 people died, according to Senegalese authorities.
Many of the migrants leaving West Africa through Senegal flee conflict, poverty and a lack of jobs. Most head to the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago off the coast of West Africa, which is used as a stepping stone to continental Europe.
Since the beginning of the year, more than 22,300 people have landed on the Canary Islands, 126% more than the same period last year, according to statistics released by Spain’s Interior Ministry.
Last month, the Senegalese army said it had arrested 453 migrants and “members of smuggling networks” as part of a 12-day operation patrolling the coastline. More than half of those arrested were Senegalese nationals, the army said.
In July, a boat carrying 300 migrants, mostly from Gambia and Senegal, capsized off Mauritania. More than a dozen died and at least 150 others went missing.
The Atlantic route from West Africa to the Canary Islands is one of the deadliest in the world. While there is no accurate death toll because of the lack of information on departures from West Africa, the Spanish migrant rights group Walking Borders estimates the victims are in the thousands this year alone.
Migrant vessels that get lost or run into problems often vanish in the Atlantic, with some drifting across the ocean for months until they are found in the Caribbean and Latin America carrying only human remains.
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Islamabad — Pakistan has appointed Lieutenant-General Muhammad Asim Malik as the new head of the country’s top spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI.
The move comes amid persistent criticism of the powerful military-run agency for its alleged role in making or breaking elected governments in the South Asian nation.
A senior Pakistani security source confirmed to VOA on Monday that Malik will assume office as the agency’s next director general on September 30, replacing the current ISI chief, Nadeem Anjum.
The military’s media wing did not immediately comment on the high-profile appointment, but Pakistan’s state broadcaster reported it with a brief profile of the new ISI chief.
Malik graduated from Fort Leavenworth in the United States and the Royal College of Defence Studies in London and currently serves as an adjutant general at the military headquarters in Rawalpindi, adjacent to the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.
The ISI’s meddling in national politics has lately been the subject of intense debate in Pakistan’s national media and political circles.
Jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan accuses current ISI chief Anjum of playing a role at the behest of the military in ousting him from power in 2022 through an opposition parliamentary no-confidence vote, instituting frivolous lawsuits subsequently, and unleashing a crackdown on his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party to keep himfrom returning to power.
Several federal and provincial court judges, in a recent letter to the Supreme Court chief justice, have also alleged that the ISI was pressuring them to decide cases against Khan to ensure he remains in jail. The incarcerated former prime minister remains Pakistan’s most popular politician.
The military, in turn, has recently arrested Anjum’s predecessor, Faiz Hameed, and initiated his court marshal on various charges, including the use of his position as the ISI chief to enable Khan to suppress political opponents while in office.
It is widely believed that Khan’s decision not to let Anjum replace Hameed in October 2021 angered the military and eventually led to the prime minister’s removal from power several months later.
Subsequent governments and the military deny having any political role or pressuring judges, a claim critics dispute.
The army has ruled Pakistan for more than three decades since the country gained independence from Britain in 1947. Former Pakistani prime ministers, including Khan, and political parties say generals maintain control over foreign policy and national security issues.
Khan has persistently alleged in statements from his prison cell that the current coalition government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif “is merely a tout” of the military. He alleges that the army leadership used the ISI to massively rig the February 8 parliamentary elections this year to prevent his party from winning.
The allegations were supported by a detailed Supreme Court majority decision released on Monday, resolving a petition concerning pre- and post-election controversies. The judgment declared several actions of Pakistan’s election commission in the lead-up to the polls “unlawful,” saying they were meant to keep PTI-nominated candidates from winning.
The judgment stated that the commission “has failed to fulfill this role in the general elections of 2024.” It noted that election authorities’ actions “significantly infringe upon the rights of the electorate and corrode their own institutional legitimacy.”
The vote outcome has worsened the political turmoil triggered by Khan’s ouster, undermining Pakistan’s efforts to stabilize an already troubled economy. A spike in militant violence, particularly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan provinces, which border Afghanistan, has added to the challenges facing the military-backed Sharif administration.
“All this has familiar echoes of the past — a government unwilling to engage with the opposition, jailing opposition leaders, trying to steamroll legislation, and a desperate opposition in constant protest mode against a backdrop of economic gloom, weak governance, and ubiquitous establishment pulling the strings from behind the scenes,” Maleeha Lodhi, Pakistan’s former ambassador to the U.S. and the United Nations, wrote in an article published by Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper Monday.
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New York — The U.S. Commerce Department said Monday it’s seeking a ban on the sale of connected and autonomous vehicles in the U.S. that are equipped with Chinese and Russian software and hardware with the stated goal of protecting national security and U.S. drivers.
While there is minimal Chinese and Russian software deployed in the U.S, the issue is more complicated for hardware. That’s why Commerce officials said the prohibitions on the software would take effect for the 2027 model year and the prohibitions on hardware would take effect for the model year of 2030, or Jan. 1, 2029, for units without a model year.
The measure announced Monday is proactive but critical, the agency said, given that all the bells and whistles in cars like microphones, cameras, GPS tracking and Bluetooth technology could make Americans more vulnerable to bad actors and potentially expose personal information, from the home address of drivers, to where their children go to school.
In extreme situations, a foreign adversary could shut down or take simultaneous control of multiple vehicles operating in the United States, causing crashes and blocking roads, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo told reporters on a call Sunday.
“This is not about trade or economic advantage,” Raimondo said. “This is a strictly national security action. The good news is right now, we don’t have many Chinese or Russian cars on our road.”
But Raimondo said Europe and other regions in the world where Chinese vehicles have become commonplace very quickly should serve as “a cautionary tale” for the U.S.
Security concerns around the extensive software-driven functions in Chinese vehicles have arisen in Europe, where Chinese electric cars have rapidly gained market share.
“Who controls these data flows and software updates is a far from trivial question, the answers to which encroach on matters of national security, cybersecurity, and individual privacy,” Janka Oertel, director of the Asia program at the European Council on Foreign Relations, wrote on the council’s website.
Vehicles are now “mobility platforms” that monitor driver and passenger behavior and track their surroundings.
A senior administration official said that it is clear from terms of service contracts included with the technology that data from vehicles ends up in China.
Raimondo said that the U.S. won’t wait until its roads are populated with Chinese or Russian cars.
“We’re issuing a proposed rule to address these new national security threats before suppliers, automakers and car components linked to China or Russia become commonplace and widespread in the U.S. automotive sector,” Raimondo said.
It is difficult to know when China could reach that level of saturation, a senior administration official said, but the Commerce Department says China hopes to enter the U.S. market and several Chinese companies have already announced plans to enter the automotive software space.
The Commerce Department added Russia to the regulations since the country is trying to “breathe new life into its auto industry,” senior administration officials said on the call.
The proposed rule would prohibit the import and sale of vehicles with Russia and China-manufactured software and hardware that would allow the vehicle to communicate externally through Bluetooth, cellular, satellite or Wi-Fi modules. It would also prohibit the sale or import of software components made in Russia or the People’s Republic of China that collectively allow a highly autonomous vehicle to operate without a driver behind the wheel. The ban would include vehicles made in the U.S. using Chinese and Russian technology.
The proposed rule would apply to all vehicles, but would exclude those not used on public roads, such as agricultural or mining vehicles.
U.S. automakers said they share the government’s national security goal, but at present there is little connected vehicle hardware or software coming to the U.S. supply chain from China.
Yet the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a large industry group, said the new rules will make some automakers scramble for new parts suppliers. “You can’t just flip a switch and change the world’s most complex supply chain overnight,” John Bozzella, the alliance’s CEO, said in a statement.
The lead time in the new rules will be long enough for some automakers to make the changes, “but may be too short for others,” Bozzella said.
Commerce officials met with all the major auto companies around the world while it drafted the proposed rule to better understand supply chain networks, according to senior administration officials, and also met with a variety of industry associations.
The Commerce Department is inviting public comments, which are due 30 days after publication of a rule before it’s finalized. That should happen by the end of the Biden Administration.
The new rule follows steps taken earlier this month by the Biden administration to crack down on cheap products sold out of China, including electric vehicles, expanding a push to reduce U.S. dependence on Beijing and bolster homegrown industry.
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Washington — The U.S. Commerce Department on Monday proposed prohibiting key Chinese software and hardware in connected vehicles on American roads due to national security concerns — a move that would effectively bar nearly all Chinese cars from entering the U.S. market.
The planned regulation, first reported by Reuters, would also force American and other major automakers in the coming years to remove key Chinese software and hardware from vehicles in the United States.
The Biden administration has raised serious concerns about the collection of data by Chinese companies on U.S. drivers and infrastructure through connected vehicles as well as about potential foreign manipulation of vehicles connected to the internet and navigation systems. The White House ordered an investigation into the potential dangers in February.
The prohibitions would prevent testing of self-driving cars on U.S. roads by Chinese automakers and extend to vehicle software and hardware produced by other U.S. foreign adversaries including Russia.
“When foreign adversaries build software to make a vehicle that means it can be used for surveillance, can be remotely controlled, which threatens the privacy and safety of Americans on the road,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told a briefing.
“In an extreme situation, a foreign adversary could shut down or take control of all their vehicles operating in the United States all at the same time causing crashes, blocking roads.”
The move is a significant escalation in the United States’ ongoing restrictions on Chinese vehicles, software and components. Earlier this month, the Biden administration locked in steep tariff hikes on Chinese imports, including a 100% duty on electric vehicles as well as new hikes on EV batteries and key minerals.
There are relatively few Chinese-made cars or light-duty trucks imported into the United States. But Raimondo said the department is acting “before suppliers, automakers and car components linked to China or Russia become commonplace and widespread in the U.S. automotive sector… We’re not going to wait until our roads are filled with cars and the risk is extremely significant before we act.”
Nearly all newer cars and trucks are considered “connected” with onboard network hardware that allows internet access, allowing them to share data with devices both inside and outside the vehicle.
A senior administration official confirmed the proposal would effectively ban all existing Chinese light-duty cars and trucks from the U.S. market, but added it would allow Chinese automakers to seek “specific authorizations” for exemptions.
The United States has ample evidence of China prepositioning malware in critical American infrastructure, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told the same briefing.
“With potentially millions of vehicles on the road, each with 10- to 15-year lifespans the risk of disruption and sabotage increases dramatically,” Sullivan said.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington last month criticized planned action to limit Chinese vehicle exports to the United States: “China urges the U.S. to earnestly abide by market principles and international trade rules, and create a level playing field for companies from all countries. China will firmly defend its lawful rights and interests.”
The proposal calls for making software prohibitions effective in the 2027 model year while the hardware ban would take effect in the 2030 model year or January 2029.
The Commerce Department is giving the public 30 days to comment on the proposal and hopes to finalize it by Jan. 20. The rules would apply to all on-road vehicles but exclude agricultural or mining vehicles not used on public roads.
The Alliance For Automotive Innovation, a group representing major automakers including General Motors, Toyota, Volkswagen and Hyundai, has warned that changing hardware and software would take time.
The group noted connected vehicle hardware and software are developed around the world, including China, but could not detail to what extent Chinese-made components are prevalent in U.S. models.
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Moscow — A Soyuz capsule carrying two Russians and one American from the International Space Station landed Monday in Kazakhstan, ending a record-breaking stay for the Russian pair.
The capsule landed on the Kazakh steppe about 3 1/2 hours after undocking from the ISS in an apparently trouble-free descent. In the last stage of the landing, it descended under a red-and-white parachute at about 7.2 meters per second (16 mph), with small rockets fired in the final seconds to cushion the touchdown.
The astronauts were extracted from the capsule and placed in nearby chairs to help them adjust to gravity, then given medical examinations in a nearby tent.
Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub returned after 374 days aboard the space station; on Friday they broke the record for the longest continuous stay there. Also in the capsule was American Tracy Dyson, who was in the space station for six months.
Eight astronauts remain in the space station, including Americans Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who have remained long past their scheduled return to Earth.
They arrived in June as the first crew of Boeing’s new Starliner capsule. But their trip was marred by thruster troubles and helium leaks, and the U.S. space agency NASA decided it was too risky to return them on Starliner.
The two astronauts are to ride home with SpaceX next year.
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Cairo — Cholera is spreading in war-torn Sudan, killing at least 388 people and sickening about 13,000 others over the past two months, health authorities said, as more than 17 months of fighting between the military and a notorious paramilitary group shows no sign of abating.
The disease is spreading in areas devastated by recent heavy rainfall and floods especially in eastern Sudan where millions of war displaced people sheltered.
The casualties from cholera included six dead and about 400 sickened over the weekend, according to Sunday’s report by the Health Ministry. The disease was detected in 10 of the country’s 18 provinces with the eastern Kassala and al-Qadarif provinces the most hit, the ministry said.
Cholera is a fast-developing, highly contagious infection that causes diarrhea, leading to severe dehydration and possible death within hours when not treated, according to the World Health Organization. It is transmitted through the ingestion of contaminated food or water.
The disease is not uncommon in Sudan. A previous major outbreak left at least 700 dead and sickened about 22,000 in less than two months in 2017.
Sudan was plunged into chaos in April last year when simmering tensions between the military and a powerful paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces, exploded into open warfare across the country.
The fighting, which wrecked the capital, Khartoum, and other urban areas has been marked by atrocities including mass rape and ethnically motivated killings that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, especially in the western region of Darfur, according to the United Nations and international rights groups.
It has killed at least 20,000 people and wounded tens of thousands others, according to the U.N. However, rights groups and activists say the toll was much higher.
The war also has created the world’s largest displacement crisis. More than 13 million people have been forced to flee their homes since the fighting began, according to the International Organization for Migration. They include over 2.3 million who fled to neighboring countries.
Devastating seasonal floods and cholera have compounded the Sudanese misery. At least 225 people have been killed and about 900 others were injured in the floods, the Health Ministry said. Critical infrastructure has been washed away, and more than 76,000 houses have been destroyed or damaged, it said.
Famine was also confirmed in July in the Zamzam camp for displaced people, which is located about 15 kilometers (10 miles) from North Darfur’s embattled capital of al-Fasher, according to global experts from the Famine Review Committee. About 25.6 million people — more than half of Sudan’s population — will face acute hunger this year, they warned.
Fighting, meanwhile, rages in al-Fasher, the last major city in Darfur that is still held by the military. The RSF has been attempting to retake it since the start of the year.
Last week, the paramilitary force and its allied Arab militias launched a new attack on the city. The military said its forces, aided by rebel groups, managed to repel the attack and kill hundreds of RSF fighters, including two senior commanders.
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Brussels — The European Commission launched a challenge at the World Trade Organization (WTO) on Monday against China’s investigation into EU dairy products, initiated after the European Union placed import tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles.
This is the first time the European Union has taken such action at the start of an investigation, rather than wait for it to result in trade measures against the bloc.
“The EU’s action was prompted by an emerging pattern of China initiating trade defense measures, based on questionable allegations and insufficient evidence, within a short period of time,” the commission said.
Proceedings at the WTO start with a mandatory period of 60 days for the parties to consult each other. The Commission said it would ask the WTO to set up an adjudicating panel if the consultations did not lead to a satisfactory solution.
WTO panels usually take more than a year to reach conclusions.
China initiated its anti-subsidy investigation on Aug. 21, targeting EU liquid milk, cream with a fat content above 10% and various types of cheeses.
The Commission said it was confident that EU dairy subsidy schemes are fully in line with international rules and not causing injury to China’s dairy sector.
The EU imposed provisional duties in July on electric vehicles built in China and EU members are expected to vote soon on final tariffs, which would apply for five years.
China also has ongoing anti-dumping investigations into EU brandy and pork.
(Reuters reporting by Philip Blenkinsop and Bart Meijer; Editing by Alex Richardson and Tomasz Janowski)
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Dar es Salaam, Tanzania — Police arrested Tanzania’s top opposition figures on Monday, their party said, as the authorities moved to block a mass protest in the commercial capital Dar es Salaam.
Despite an official ban, the opposition Chadema party had vowed to go ahead with the rally over the alleged kidnapping and killing of its members by security forces.
Chadema said its chairman Freeman Mbowe and his deputy Tundu Lissu were both arrested on Monday, while riot police were stationed in key areas across the city to prevent gatherings.
“Demonstration is our constitutional right and we are surprised by the magnitude of force being used by the police to threaten people and suppress our freedom,” Mbowe told supporters before being led away by police, according to a video shared by the party online.
Chadema accuses President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s government of returning the country to the repressive tactics of her predecessor, John Magufuli.
Hassan took over following Magufuli’s sudden death in March 2021 and appeared to signal a more liberal approach, reversing restrictions on opposition rallies and the media.
But Chadema accuses the security forces of being behind the recent disappearance of several members and the killing of Ali Mohamed Kibao, of its national secretariat, who was found dead earlier this month.
Police also blocked a youth day rally by the party in August, arresting dozens of its leaders including Mbowe and Lissu.
Rights groups and Western governments, including the United States, have raised concerns about renewed repression ahead of local elections in November and a general election in late 2025.
Lissu, an opposition stalwart, has been arrested countless times and suffered multiple gunshot wounds in an assassination attempt in 2017.
He returned to Tanzania last year after Hassan lifted the ban on opposition rallies.
Police had alleged that the Chadema protests would be violent.
But in a speech broadcast on X on Sunday, Mbowe said: “I remind Tanzanians that we are going to hold peaceful protests. We are neither carrying any weapons nor planning to violate the peace as some people allege.
“In case some of us will be arrested, hurt or even killed, pray for us and never turn back. We are doing this to make our country a peaceful place to live,” he said.
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BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Authorities have reported no immediate arrests after a weekend mass shooting killed four people and left 17 others injured in what police described as a targeted “hit” by multiple shooters who opened fire outside a popular Alabama nightspot.
The shooting late Saturday night in the popular Five Points South entertainment district of Birmingham, rocking an area of restaurants and bars that is often bustling on weekend nights. The mass shooting, one of several this year in the major city, unnerved residents and left officials at home and beyond pleading for help to both solve the crime and address the broader problem of gun violence.
“The priority is to find these shooters and get them off our streets,” Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin said a day after the shooting.
The mayor planned a morning news conference Monday to provide updates on the case.
The shooting occurred on the sidewalk and street outside Hush, a lounge in the entertainment district, where blood stains were still visible on the sidewalk outside the venue on Sunday morning.
Birmingham Police Chief Scott Thurmond said authorities believe the shooting targeted one of the people who was killed, possibly in a murder-for-hire. A vehicle pulled up and “multiple shooters” got out and began firing, then fled the scene, he said.
“We believe that there was a ‘hit,’ if you will, on that particular person,” Thurmond said.
Police said approximately 100 shell casings were recovered. Thurmond said law enforcement was working to determine what weapons were used, but they believe some of the gunfire was “fully automatic.” Investigators also were trying to determine whether anyone fired back, creating a crossfire.
In a statement late Sunday, police said the shooters are believed to have used “machine gun conversion devices” that make semi-automatic weapons fire more rapidly.
Some surviving victims critically injured
Officers found two men and a woman on a sidewalk with gunshot wounds and they were pronounced dead there. An additional male gunshot victim was pronounced dead at a hospital, according to police.
Police identified the three victims found on the sidewalk as Anitra Holloman, 21, of the Birmingham suburb of Bessemer, Tahj Booker, 27, of Birmingham, and Carlos McCain, 27, of Birmingham. The fourth victim pronounced dead at the hospital was pending identification.
By the early hours of Sunday, victims began showing up at hospitals and police subsequently identified 17 people with injuries, some of them life-threatening. Four of the surviving victims, in conditions ranging from good to critical, were being treated at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital on Sunday afternoon, according to Alicia Rohan, a hospital spokeswoman.
Popular nightspot rocked by gunfire
The area of Birmingham where the gunfire erupted is popular with young adults because of its proximity to the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the plethora of nearby restaurants and bars.
The shooting was the 31st mass killing of 2024, of which 23 were shootings, according to James Alan Fox, a criminologist and professor at Northeastern University, who oversees a mass killings database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with the university.
Three of the nation’s 23 mass shootings this year were in Birmingham, including two earlier quadruple homicides.
Mayor pleads for a solution to gun violence
Woodfin expressed frustration at what he described as an epidemic of gun violence in America and the city.
“We find ourselves in 2024, where gun violence is at an epidemic level, an epidemic crisis in our country. And the city of Birmingham, unfortunately, finds itself at the tip of that spear,” he said.
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Joe Biden makes his final presidential address before the United Nations General Assembly this week. But hanging over his head as he takes to the green marble podium for the last time, and as he meets separately with other leaders in New York: conflict in the Middle East – and how his actions have shaped it. VOA White House correspondent Anita Powell reports from New York.
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Colombo, Sri Lanka — Sri Lanka’s first leftist president was sworn into office Monday vowing to restore public faith in politics after anger over the island nation’s unprecedented economic crisis propelled him to a landslide poll win.
Self-avowed Marxist Anura Kumara Dissanayaka of the People’s Liberation Front (JVP) took his oath at the colonial-era Presidential Secretariat in Colombo after trouncing his nearest rivals in Saturday’s vote.
The previously fringe politician, whose party led two failed uprisings that left tens of thousands dead, saw a surge of support after the country’s 2022 economic meltdown forced painful hardships on ordinary Sri Lankans.
Dissanayaka, 55, was sworn in by the chief justice in a ceremony attended by lawmakers, members of the Buddhist clergy and the military who sang the national anthem after the ceremony.
“I will do my best to fully restore the people’s confidence in politicians,” Dissanayaka said after taking the oath.
“I am not a conjurer, I am not a magician,” he added. “There are things I know and things I don’t know, but I will seek the best advice and do my best. For that, I need the support of everyone.”
Dissanayaka succeeds outgoing president Ranil Wickremesinghe, who took office at the peak of the financial crisis following the government’s first-ever foreign debt default and months of punishing food, fuel and medicine shortages.
Wickremesinghe, 75, imposed steep tax hikes and other austerity measures per the terms of an International Monetary Fund bailout.
His policies ended the shortages and returned the economy to growth but left millions struggling to make ends meet.
“I can confidently say that I did my best to stabilize the country during one of its darkest periods,” he said in a statement after placing a distant third in Saturday’s poll.
Shortly before the ceremony, Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena resigned, clearing the way for Dissanayaka to appoint his own cabinet.
Dissanayaka’s party has said he wants to have his own cabinet until a fresh parliament is elected later this year. His JVP party has only three members in the 225-member parliament.
He has vowed to press ahead with the IMF rescue package negotiated by his predecessor last year but modify its terms in order to deliver tax cuts.
“It is a binding document, but there is a provision to renegotiate,” Bimal Ratnayake, a senior member of Dissanayaka’s party, told AFP.
Legacy of violence
Dissanayaka’s party led two rebellions in the 1970s and 1980s that left more than 80,000 people dead before renouncing violence.
It had been a peripheral player in Sri Lankan politics in the decades since, winning less than four percent of the vote during the most recent parliamentary elections in 2020.
But Sri Lanka’s crisis proved an opportunity for Dissanayaka, who saw his popularity rise after pledging to change the island’s “corrupt” political culture.
The 55-year-old laborer’s son was a JVP student leader during the second insurrection and has described how one of his teachers sheltered him to save him from government-backed death squads that killed party activists.
He counts famous Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara among his heroes.
Since his rise to popularity, he has softened some policies, saying he believes in an open economy and is not totally opposed to privatization.
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BEIJING/TAIPEI — China’s national security ministry said on Monday a Taiwan military-backed hacking group called Anonymous 64 has been carrying out cyberattacks against targets in China, urging people to report “anti-propaganda sabotage.”
Taiwan’s defense ministry denied the allegations, saying China was the real disturber of the peace with its cyber attacks and military harassment.
Since the beginning of this year, Anonymous 64 – which China’s national security ministry said belonged to Taiwan’s cyber warfare wing – has sought to upload and broadcast “content that denigrates the mainland’s political system and major policies,” on websites, outdoor screens and network TV stations, it said in a blog post.
Taiwan frequently accuses Chinese groups of seeking to spread online disinformation or carry out cyberattacks across the democratically governed island. China claims sovereignty over Taiwan and has ramped up military and political pressure against over the past five years to assert its claims.
The Taiwan defense ministry’s Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command said China’s accusations were untrue.
“The current enemy situation and cyber threats are severe,” it said in a statement. “The Chinese communist military and forces that coordinate with it continue to use aircraft, ships and cyber attacks to harass Taiwan and are the originators of undermining regional peace.”
Taiwan’s government rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims.
The hacking group’s X account said it was set up in June 2023 and showed screenshots of efforts to broadcast videos likening Chinese President Xi Jinping to an emperor, marking the second anniversary of protests against Beijing’s strict COVID curbs and commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations.
One video was an address from an Anonymous 64 member wearing the Anonymous hacking group’s Guy Fawkes mask in the style of the graphic novel and film V for Vendetta.
Neither the X site nor the blog post from China’s national security ministry said whether Anonymous 64 had any affiliation with the international hacking group.
Reuters was not immediately able to verify where the group was based or whether they had actually carried out the hacking attacks they were accused of.
In the blog post published on its official WeChat account, the national security ministry said its investigation into the group had found many of the websites Anonymous 64 claimed to have accessed were fake or had little no traffic. Posts showing it having infiltrated numerous university and media websites had been photoshopped, the ministry added.
The security ministry published screenshots of the group’s X account with heavily redacted text. It also said it had opened a case against three members of Taiwan’s cyber warfare wing.
“We advocate that netizens should not believe in or spread rumors and should promptly report cyberattacks or cases of anti-propaganda activity to the national security authorities,” the blog post said.
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HANOI, VIETNAM — Vietnam aims to have at least one semiconductor fabrication plant and 10 packaging plants by 2030, and will launch a fund to help foreign investors mitigate the impacts of the global minimum business tax, the government said on the weekend.
The country’s semiconductor industry is targeting revenue of $25 billion by 2030, the government said in a statement after the release of its semiconductor industry development strategy on Saturday.
The Southeast Asian country, a regional manufacturing hub, is seeking to move to high-tech industries from labor-intensive ones. As part of its drive, the country aims to have 50,000 semiconductor engineers by 2030, the government said.
Several global electronics and semiconductor firms including Intel, Samsung, Amkor Technology, Qualcomm and Marvell Technology have facilities in the country.
Beyond the initial 2030 target, the government said it plans to have at least three semiconductor fabrication plants and 20 packaging plants, with annual revenues of $100 billion, by 2050.
In July, the Ministry of Planning and Investment said it was finalizing a draft plan to set up a fund to help attract foreign investment into high-tech industries and maintain the country’s competitiveness.
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ZHENGZHOU, China — On a film set that resembles the medieval castle of a Chinese lord, Zhu Jian is busy disrupting the world’s second-largest movie industry.
The 69-year-old actor is playing the patriarch of a wealthy family celebrating his birthday with a lavish banquet. But unbeknownst to either of them, the servant in the scene is his biological granddaughter.
A second twist: Zhu is not filming for cinema screens.
“Grandma’s Moon” is a micro drama, composed of vertically shot, minute-long episodes featuring frequent plot turns designed to keep millions of viewers hooked to their cellphone screens — and paying for more.
“They don’t go to the cinema anymore,” said Zhu of his audience, which he described as largely composed of middle-aged workers and pensioners. “It’s so convenient to hold a mobile phone and watch something anytime you want.”
China’s $5 billion a year micro drama industry is booming, according to Reuters’ interviews with 10 people in the sector and four scholars and media analysts.
The short-format videos are an increasingly potent competitor to China’s film industry, some experts say, which is second in size only to Hollywood and dominated by state-owned China Film Group. And the trend is already spreading to the United States, in a rare instance of Chinese cultural exports finding traction in the West.
Three major China-backed, micro-drama apps were downloaded 30 million times across both Apple’s App Store and Google Play in the first quarter of 2024, grossing $71 million internationally, according to analytics company Appfigures.
“The audience only has that much attention. So obviously, the more time they spend in short videos, the less time they have for TV or other longer-format shows,” said Ashley Dudarenok, founder of a Hong Kong-based marketing consultancy.
The leader in the space is Kuaishou, an app that accounted for 60% of the top 50 Chinese micro dramas last year, according to media analytics consultancy Endata.
Kuaishou vice president Chen Yiyi said at a media conference in January that the app featured 68 titles that notched more than 300 million views last year, with four of them watched over a billion times.
Some 94 million people — more than the population of Germany — watched more than 10 episodes a day on Kuaishou, she said. Reuters was not able to independently verify the data.
Initial episodes on such apps are often free, but to complete a micro drama like “Grandma’s Moon,” which has 64 clips, audiences may pay tens of yuan.
Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok that is owned by internet technology firm Bytedance, is also popular with micro drama fans.
Alongside other major Chinese social media apps like Instagram-like Xiaohongshu and YouTube competitor Bilibili, it has announced plans to make more.
In the United States, micro drama platform ReelShort, whose parent company is backed by Chinese tech giants Tencent and Baidu, has recently outranked Netflix in terms of downloads on Apple’s U.S. app store, according to market researcher Sensor Tower.
“China discovered this audience first,” said Layla Cao, a Chinese producer based in Los Angeles. “Hollywood hasn’t realized that yet, but all the China-based companies are already feeding the content.”
‘Low-brow and vulgar’
Many popular micro dramas, including “Grandma’s Moon,” have narratives that revolve around revenge or Cinderella-like rags-to-riches journeys.
Tales of how circumstances at birth are deterministic and can only be changed by near-miracles have struck a chord with viewers at a time when upward mobility in China is low and youth unemployment high.
The micro dramas often “show people who one day are lower class and the next day become upper class — you get so rich that you get to humiliate those who used to humiliate you,” said a 26-year-old screenwriter known by her pen name of Camille Rao.
Rao recently left her poorly paid job as a junior producer in the traditional film industry for what she described as the more dynamic and less hierarchical world of micro dramas. She now writes and adapts scripts for the U.S. market.
“Social mobility is actually very difficult now. Many people perceive this as a social reality,” said Xu Ting, associate professor of Chinese language and literature at Jiangnan University.
This has fueled interest in stories about billionaires and wealthy families, she added: “Everyone desires power and wealth, so it is normal for these type of stories to be popular.”
In the U.S. market, by contrast, fantasy stories about werewolves and vampires are particularly popular, several creators told Reuters.
The boom in micro dramas in China has brought scrutiny from the Communist Party.
Between late 2022 and early 2023, the National Radio and Television Administration regulator said it organized a “special rectification campaign” during which it removed 25,300 micro dramas, totaling close to 1.4 million episodes, due to their “pornographic, bloody, violent, low-brow and vulgar content.”
As Chinese leader Xi Jinping promotes values such as loyalty to the Communist Party and heteronormative marriages, the state-owned China Women’s News outlet in April complained that some micro dramas “portray unequal and twisted marriage and family relationships as a common phenomenon” and “deviate from mainstream social values.”
In June, the government began requiring some creators to register micro dramas with NRTA. The regulator didn’t respond to Reuters’ questions for this story.
Key to the commercial success of these films are plot twists that keep people paying as they scroll while commuting or in line at a grocery store. Episodes often end with a hook — such as a boyfriend walking in on his partner with another man — and viewers have to pay for the next episode to find out what happened.
“The plot of these micro dramas is exaggerated,” said Zhu, the actor. “It has plot reversals, it’s nonsensical, so it catches people’s attention and a large audience wants to see them.”
Zhu is a lover of cinema and an avid fan of Ingrid Bergman in “Casablanca.” Like many of his colleagues in micro dramas, he thinks the genre has limited artistic value. “I see it as fast food: a longer drama is a kind of sumptuous meal, and a micro drama is fast food.”
But its dedicated viewers disagree. Huang Siyi, a 28-year-old customer service agent, said she enjoyed watching romantic micro dramas because “the acting is good and the male and female leads are good-looking.”
“It’s easy to be obsessed with micro dramas,” she said.
Explosive growth
Vertical filming and distribution through social media apps mean micro dramas can be made with small overhead costs. Budgets for such films range from between $28,000 and $280,000, according to market researcher iResearch.
In the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou, “Grandma’s Moon” is being made with a compressed budget and timeline. When Reuters visited the set in July, the filming day stretched until 2 a.m. The crew then moved to a new location and began shooting again at 7 a.m.
The show was shot in just six days, and Zhu, a muscular man with a wide smile and boundless energy, says he plays table tennis after hours to keep up with the young crew on set.
“We’d need to take two to three years to distribute one traditional TV series of film, but we only need three months to distribute a micro drama, saving us a lot of time,” said Zhou Yi, a showrunner at Chinese gaming giant NetEase, which also makes micro dramas.
As micro dramas gain in popularity, actors’ salaries have also grown. Leading roles used to pay $280 a day, said Zhu, adding that main actors in big productions can now make more than double the rate, though extras earn as little as $17 daily.
A retired railway employee who started acting in the 1970s in a theater troupe attached to the unit where he worked, Zhu now lives off his pension and occasional acting gigs.
Many Chinese micro drama producers have their eye on Western markets, where cultural exports from China have often struggled. NetEase last year started making productions for the U.S. that it distributes via an app called LoveShots; the made-for-export films aren’t typically available in China.
Micro dramas designed for the West are often made by production and acting crews in Los Angeles and shot on location. The scripts, which are in English, may also revolve around themes of wealth, cheating partners and miracles.
One of the latest micro dramas on LoveShots is about a woman who, after years of being paralyzed, miraculously regains her ability to move — and walks in on her husband cheating on her.
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Sacramento, California — “Paper or plastic” will no longer be a choice at grocery store checkout lines in California under a new law signed Sunday by Gov. Gavin Newsom that bans all plastic shopping bags.
California had already banned thin plastic shopping bags at supermarkets and other stores, but shoppers could purchase bags made with a thicker plastic that purportedly made them reusable and recyclable.
The new measure, approved by state legislators last month, bans all plastic shopping bags starting in 2026. Consumers who don’t bring their own bags will now simply be asked if they want a paper bag.
State Sen. Catherine Blakespear, one of the bill’s supporters, said people were not reusing or recycling any plastic bags. She pointed to a state study that found that the amount of plastic shopping bags trashed per person grew from 3.6 kilograms per year in 2004 to 5 kilograms per year in 2021.
Blakespear, a Democrat from Encinitas, said the previous bag ban passed a decade ago didn’t reduce the overall use of plastic.
“We are literally choking our planet with plastic waste,” she said in February.
The environmental nonprofit Oceana applauded Newsom for signing the bill and “safeguarding California’s coastline, marine life, and communities from single-use plastic grocery bags.”
Christy Leavitt, Oceana’s plastics campaign director, said Sunday that the new ban on single-use plastic bags at grocery store checkouts “solidifies California as a leader in tackling the global plastic pollution crisis.”
Twelve states, including California, already have some type of statewide plastic bag ban in place, according to the environmental advocacy group Environment America Research & Policy Center. Hundreds of cities across 28 states also have their own plastic bag bans in place.
The California Legislature passed its statewide ban on plastic bags in 2014. The law was later affirmed by voters in a 2016 referendum.
The California Public Interest Research Group said Sunday that the new law finally meets the intent of the original bag ban.
“Plastic bags create pollution in our environment and break into microplastics that contaminate our drinking water and threaten our health,” said the group’s director Jenn Engstrom. “Californians voted to ban plastic grocery bags in our state almost a decade ago, but the law clearly needed a redo. With the governor’s signature, California has finally banned plastic bags in grocery checkout lanes once and for all.”
As San Francisco’s mayor in 2007, Newsom signed the nation’s first plastic bag ban.
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Washington — Congressional leaders announced an agreement Sunday on a short-term spending bill that will fund federal agencies for about three months, averting a possible partial government shutdown when the new budget year begins Oct. 1 and pushing final decisions until after the November election.
Lawmakers have struggled to get to this point as the current budget year winds to a close at month’s end. At the urging of the most conservative members of his conference, House Speaker Mike Johnson had linked temporary funding with a mandate that would have compelled states to require proof of citizenship when people register to vote.
But Johnson could not get all Republicans on board even as the party’s presidential nominee, Donald Trump, insisted on that package. Trump said Republican lawmakers should not support a stop-gap measure without the voting requirement, but the bill went down to defeat anyway, with 14 Republicans opposing it.
Bipartisan negotiations began in earnest shortly after that, with leadership agreeing to extend funding into mid-December. That gives the current Congress the ability to fashion a full-year spending bill after the Nov. 5 election, rather than push that responsibility to the next Congress and president.
In a letter to Republican colleagues, Johnson said the budget measure would be “very narrow, bare-bones” and include “only the extensions that are absolutely necessary.”
“While this is not the solution any of us prefer, it is the most prudent path forward under the present circumstances,” Johnson wrote. “As history has taught and current polling affirms, shutting the government down less than 40 days from a fateful election would be an act of political malpractice.”
Rep. Tom Cole, the House Appropriations Committee chairman, had said on Friday that talks were going well.
“So far, nothing has come up that we can’t deal with,” said Cole, R-Okla. “Most people don’t want a government shutdown and they don’t want that to interfere with the election. So nobody is like, ‘I’ve got to have this or we’re walking.’ It’s just not that way.”
Johnson’s earlier effort had no chance in the Democratic-controlled Senate and was opposed by the White House, but it did give the speaker a chance to show Trump and conservatives within his conference that he fought for their request.
The final result — government funding effectively on autopilot — was what many had predicted. With the election just weeks away, few lawmakers in either party had any appetite for the brinksmanship that often leads to a shutdown.
Now a bipartisan majority is expected to push the short-term measure over the finish line. Temporary spending bills generally fund agencies at current levels, but some additional money was included to bolster the Secret Service, replenish a disaster relief fund and aid with the presidential transition, among other things.
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Uniondale, New York — Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, continuing a multiday U.S. visit, addressed a cultural celebration on Long Island Sunday, where he praised the United States’ return of nearly 300 antiquities to India and relayed news of his country’s dual win at the Chess Olympiad in Budapest, Hungary, to an enthusiastic crowd.
“I just got some very good news,” Modi told an estimated 13,000 people inside Nassau Veterans Coliseum for an event billed as a celebration of cultural ties between India and the United States. “In the Chess Olympiad, in both the men’s and women’s tournament, India has won gold medals,” he said to applause in a speech that was translated into English for an online audience.
Modi was reelected in June following a marathon election in which more than 640 million votes were cast over a span of six weeks in the world’s largest democratic exercise.
“This year, 2024, is a very important one for the entire world,” he said. “On the one hand, there are conflicts raging between several countries in the world, there is tension. And on the other, democracy is being celebrated in several countries of the world. India and America are also together in this celebration of democracy.”
Modi’s appearance in New York came a day after he attended a summit hosted by President Joe Biden in Wilmington, Delaware, for leaders of the so-called Quad that also included Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia and Prime Minister Kishida Fumio of Japan.
Also Saturday, Modi accepted the return of 297 antiquities spanning thousands of years that had been stolen or trafficked from India. The U.S. has returned nearly 600 such cultural artifacts to India since 2016, according to India’s Ministry of External Affairs.
On Monday, the prime minister is expected to attend a United Nations summit in advance of this week’s General Assembly.
Sunday’s event was sponsored by the not-for-profit Indo American Community of USA.
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Washington — The U.S. Commerce Department is expected on Monday to propose prohibiting Chinese software and hardware in connected and autonomous vehicles on American roads due to national security concerns, two sources told Reuters.
The Biden administration has raised serious concerns about the collection of data by Chinese companies on U.S. drivers and infrastructure as well as the potential foreign manipulation of vehicles connected to the internet and navigation systems.
The proposed regulation would ban the import and sale of vehicles from China with key communications or automated driving system software or hardware, said the two sources, who declined to be identified because the decision had not been publicly disclosed.
The move is a significant escalation in the United States’ ongoing restrictions on Chinese vehicles, software and components. Last week, the Biden administration locked in steep tariff hikes on Chinese imports, including a 100% duty on electric vehicles as well as new hikes on EV batteries and key minerals.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said in May the risks of Chinese software or hardware in connected U.S. vehicles were significant.
“You can imagine the most catastrophic outcome theoretically if you had a couple million cars on the road and the software were disabled,” she said.
President Joe Biden in February ordered an investigation into whether Chinese vehicle imports pose national security risks over connected-car technology — and if that software and hardware should be banned in all vehicles on U.S. roads.
“China’s policies could flood our market with its vehicles, posing risks to our national security,” Biden said earlier. “I’m not going to let that happen on my watch.”
The Commerce Department plans to give the public 30 days to comment before any finalization of the rules, the sources said. Nearly all newer vehicles on U.S. roads are considered “connected.” Such vehicles have onboard network hardware that allows internet access, allowing them to share data with devices both inside and outside the vehicle.
The department also plans to propose making the prohibitions on software effective in the 2027 model year and the ban on hardware would take effect in January 2029 or the 2030 model year. The prohibitions in question would include vehicles with certain Bluetooth, satellite and wireless features as well as highly autonomous vehicles that could operate without a driver behind the wheel.
A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers in November raised alarm about Chinese auto and tech companies collecting and handling sensitive data while testing autonomous vehicles in the United States.
The prohibitions would extend to other foreign U.S. adversaries, including Russia, the sources said.
A trade group representing major automakers including General Motors, Toyota Motor, Volkswagen, Hyundai and others had warned that changing hardware and software would take time.
The carmakers noted their systems “undergo extensive pre-production engineering, testing, and validation processes and, in general, cannot be easily swapped with systems or components from a different supplier.”
The Commerce Department declined to comment on Saturday. Reuters first reported, in early August, details of a plan that would have the effect of barring the testing of autonomous vehicles by Chinese automakers on U.S. roads. There are relatively few Chinese-made light-duty vehicles imported into the United States.
The White House on Thursday signed off on the final proposal, according to a government website. The rule is aimed at ensuring the security of the supply chain for U.S. connected vehicles. It will apply to all vehicles on U.S. roads, but not for agriculture or mining vehicles, the sources said.
Biden noted that most cars are connected like smartphones on wheels, linked to phones, navigation systems, critical infrastructure and to the companies that made them.
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Cognac, France — Frustrated cognac producers in southwestern France are growing increasingly anxious over the looming threat of Chinese tariffs on European brandy, a move industry representatives worry could force French liquor from the Chinese market.
Some 800 protesters riding on tractors and carrying signs gathered in France’s southwestern town of Cognac this week demanding a delay to an upcoming European Union vote to impose duties on Chinese electric vehicles.
This protest — the first since 1998 — comes after Beijing refused to rule out future tariffs following an anti-dumping investigation into brandy imported from the European Union.
The probe was launched months after the EU undertook an investigation into Chinese electric vehicle (EV) subsidies.
And with the EU set to vote next week on introducing tariffs on Chinese EVs, France’s brandy makers are worried about the consequences that vote could have on their livelihood.
“The situation is urgent,” said Anthony Brun, the union head for Cognac’s brandy makers, adding that a decision to levy tariffs on Chinese EVs “will jeopardize the entire industry.”
Cognac’s interprofessional association BNIC said it was recently notified that China intends to impose tariffs of around 35% on European brandy, a move seen as targeting France.
This comes despite repeated assurances from Beijing it would not implement provisional tariffs after it found European brandy had been dumped into China, threatening the country’s domestic industry with “substantial damage.”
“For a year now, we have been warning French and European authorities about this risk and the need to stop this downward spiral,” wrote Brun in a letter addressed to new French Prime Minister Michel Barnier about the tariff threat.
“We are the victims without being in any way responsible. … We have not been listened to,” Brun said, writing on behalf of the cognac union.
In May, French President Emmanuel Macron thanked his Chinese counterpart for not imposing customs duties on French cognac amid the probe, presenting Xi Jinping with bottles of the expensive drink.
But cooperating with Chinese authorities has produced “no results” and incurred millions in costs, said Florent Morillon, head of BNIC.
Tariffs could force French brandy to “disappear from the Chinese market,” which accounts for a quarter of exports, added Morillon.
The threat of losing the Chinese market could be existential for some brandy makers, who count on overseas consumers for up to 60% of their profits.
China imported more brandy than any other spirit in 2022, with most of it coming from France, according to a report by research group Daxue Consulting.
Cognac producers are calling on the EU to postpone its September 25 vote on imposing tariffs on EVs imported from China, fearing China will respond with customs duties on European brandy.
“We have no way out,” said Rodolphe Texier, a member of a farmers’ union in France’s western Charente region.
“If Europe doesn’t follow us, we’re dead,” said Texier, adding he is concerned about widespread repercussions throughout the industry which could impact everyone from distillers to barrel makers to truck drivers.
With more than 4,400 farms and some 85,000 jobs, France’s cognac industry is already in trouble after it saw a 22% drop in sales in 2023 and dramatically reduced new vine planting zones.
France’s brandy makers are not the only ones under pressure, as Beijing launched a probe into EU subsidiaries on some dairy products in August.
Even though a meeting is set “in principle” between BNIC and the prime minister’s office, Florent Morillon told AFP there is a feeling of being “taken hostage” by Paris and Brussels.
“The French and European authorities have decided to sacrifice us,” wrote union head Anthony Brun.
“Never mind our jobs, our weight in the local economy, our contribution to trade, and to France’s image,” he added.
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Los Angeles — It’s a three-peat for “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.”
The Tim Burton legacy sequel to his 1988 horror comedy topped the North American box office charts for the third straight weekend with $26 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday.
It edged out the animated new release “Transformers: One,” which brought in $25 million. The Optimus Prime origin story from Paramount Pictures features the voices of Chris Hemsworth, Brian Tyree Henry and Scarlett Johansson.
“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” a Warner Bros. release with Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder returning as stars, has earned more than $226 million domestically in its three weeks after a monster opening of $110 million — the third best of the year — and a second weekend of $51.6 million.
Third place went to the James McAvoy horror “Speak No Evil,” which came in at $5.9 million in its second week for a total of $21.5 million.
On the whole, the box office was in a quiet phase that is expected to break when ” Joker: Folie à Deux ” dances its way onto the big screen on Oct. 4.
The year’s second-highest grosser ” Deadpool & Wolverine ” remained in the top 5 in its ninth weekend with another $3.9 million and a domestic total of $627 million. Only Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” has earned more.
The Demi Moore-starring, Coralie Fargeat-directed body horror “The Substance,” which made a splash at the Cannes Film Festival, brought in $3.1 million on limited screens in its first weekend for the sixth spot.
The Daily Wire movie “Am I Racist?” — in which conservative columnist Matt Walsh goes undercover as a “DEI trainee” — stayed in the top 10 after a fourth place finish last week, earning $2.9 million for seventh place and a two-week total of $9 million.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” $26 million.
“Transformers One,” $25 million.
“Speak No Evil,” $5.9 million.
“Never Let Go,” $4.5 million.
“Deadpool & Wolverine,” $3.9 million.
“The Substance,” $3.1 million.
“Am I Racist?” $2.5 million.
“Reagan,” $1.7 million.
“JUNG KOOK: I AM STILL,” $1.4 million.
“Alien Romulus,” $1.3 million.
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In Goma, a town in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a woman-led recycling company is tackling plastic pollution, and creating jobs for some of the country’s millions of internally displaced people. Zanem Nety Zaidi takes us inside this entrepreneur’s business.
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A business owner in Baltimore, Maryland, who was born in Kyiv has started a charity to help Ukrainian children affected by war. Andriy Borys has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. VOA footage by Viacheslav Filiushkin.
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