Emergency officials respond to a small plane crash in Texas, Four of the people aboard were Navy officers and four were civilians, including a child, Mexico’s Navy said in a statement to The Associated Press. It was not immediately clear which of them were confirmed dead by U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Luke Baker.

Two of the people aboard were members from the Michou and Mau Foundation, a nonprofit that provides aid to Mexican children with severe burns.

The crash took place Monday afternoon near the base of a causeway, a raised roadway typically built over water, near Galveston, along the Texas coast about 50 miles (80.5 kilometers) southeast of Houston. The cause is under investigation.

Mexico’s Navy said in a statement that the plane was helping with a medical mission and had an “accident.” It promised to investigate the cause and is helping local authorities with the search and rescue operation.

Teams from the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board have arrived at the scene of the crash, the Texas Department of Public Safety said on the social platform X.

The killing of a general in Moscow follows a series of assassinations Russia blames on #Ukraine.



Russia has accused Ukraine of carrying out a number of high-profile attacks against prominent Russians since Moscow invaded its neighbour nearly four years ago.

While Kyiv has hinted at its involvement in some cases, Ukrainian officials have often stopped short of publicly claiming responsibility. In other cases, they have denied all involvement.

On Monday, a Russian general was killed by a car bomb in Moscow, and investigators say they are looking into whether Ukraine was behind the attack. Ukraine has not yet commented on the death of Lt. Gen. Fanil Sarvarov.

Other attacks that Russia has blamed on Ukraine include:
Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov

Kirillov, head of the military’s nuclear, biological and chemical protection forces, was killed alongside his assistant, Ilya Polikarpov, when a bomb planted on a scooter exploded outside an apartment building in Moscow in December 2024.

Kirillov had been charged in absentia a day earlier by Ukraine’s Security Service, the SBU, with ”ordering the use of banned chemical weapons against Ukraine’s Defense Forces.” The SBU later claimed responsibility for the attack. An Uzbek man was quickly arrested and charged with killing Kirillov on the security service’s behalf.
Lt. Gen. Yaroslav Moskalik

Moskalik, a deputy head of the main operational department of the General Staff, was killed in April 2025. A bomb had been placed underneath his car, which was parked near his apartment building just outside Moscow.

Several days after the attack, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a statement that the country’s Foreign Intelligence Service had informed him of the “elimination of senior command personnel of Russia’s armed forces,” but gave no further details.

A Russian man who previously lived in Ukraine pleaded guilty to carrying out the attack and said that he had been paid by Ukraine’s security services.
Stanislav Rzhitsky

Rzhitsky, a former submarine commander, was gunned down in July 2023 while jogging in Krasnodar, Russia.

Ukrainian media reported that Rzhitsky was one of six submarine commanders able to launch the long-range missiles that hit Vinnytsia, Ukraine, a year earlier, killing 23 people and wounding over 100.

When he died, Rzhitsky was deputy head of a military mobilization office in Krasnodar.

Kyrylo Budanov, head of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s main intelligence directorate, denied Kyiv’s involvement in the death. However, the agency also released details about the killing, including the time of the attack and the number of shots fired. A dual Russian-Ukrainian citizen was convicted in the killing in October 2024.
Zakhar Prilepin

Prilepin, a nationalist Russian writer, narrowly avoided death in a car bombing in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region in May 2023. His driver was killed, while Prilepin was hospitalized with broken bones, bruised lungs and other injuries.

Prilepin, known for his support of the war, was sanctioned by the European Union.

A Ukrainian was found guilty of the attack in a Russian court and sentenced to life imprisonment. Russia’s Investigative Committee accused him of working on orders from Kyiv.

In an interview with Ukrainian journalists in March 2024, SBU chief Lt. Gen. Vasyl Maliuk declined to take responsibility for the attack, but said he could provide some details, such as Prilepin’s injuries.
Vladlen Tatarsky

Tatarsky, a military blogger, was killed in April 2023 when a bomb tore through a cafe in central St Petersburg where he had been speaking.

Tatarsky supported the war in Ukraine and filed regular reports from the front for his Telegram followers.

Darya Trepova was convicted of the bombing and sentenced to 27 years in prison after she was seen on camera presenting a small statue to Tatarsky that exploded shortly afterward. Trepova testified she didn’t know the gift contained a bomb.

In the March 2024 interview, SBU chief Maliuk also declined to take responsibility for Tatarsky’s death, but describing the blogger as a mouthpiece for Russia who had “paid a karmic price before the Ukrainian people.” He also provided details on the bomb that killed Tatarsky.
Illia Kyva

Kyva, a Ukrainian lawmaker who fled to Russia shortly after the full-scale invasion, was found dead near Moscow in December 2023 with a gunshot wound to the head.

A controversial political figure in Ukraine before the war, Kyva often appeared on pro-Kremlin TV talk shows. A month before his death, a Ukrainian court found him guilty in absentia of treason and sentenced him to 14 years in prison.

Russia’s state Investigative Committee accused an Armenian-born businessman of passing on details about Kyva’s movements to the SBU, state news agency Tass said. However, no charges have been brought directly related to the killing.

Andriy Yusov, a spokesman for Ukraine’s military intelligence, said after Kyva’s death that “the same fate will befall other traitors of Ukraine,” but did not say who was behind the killing.
Darya Dugina

Dugina was killed in August 2022 when a remote-controlled bomb planted in her SUV blew up as she drove on Moscow’s outskirts.

Her father, Alexander Dugin, was widely believed to be the intended target. The philosopher, writer and political theorist is an ardent supporter of the war.

Ukraine denied responsibility for the attack, with Zelenskyy saying Dugina was “not our responsibility” and Kyiv was ”not interested in her.”

Russia’s Federal Security Agency, the FSB, publicly identified two Ukrainian citizens as suspects, but said they had escaped abroad.

___

Katie Marie Davies, The Associated Press

#Israeli government approves controversial closure of Army Radio after 75 years

Epstein file release fuels frustration as redactions, deletions raise transparency concerns.

What is inherent contempt?

Inherent contempt is a rare constitutional power that allows Congress itself - rather than the courts - to enforce compliance with its orders.

Unlike criminal contempt, which requires referral to the U.S. Justice Department, inherent contempt will allow the House to impose penalties directly including fines until an official complies.

“Members of Congress can tell the House or Senate sergeant at arms to detain or imprison the person in contempt until he or she honours congressional demands,” CNN reported in 2019.

No sense of transparency

Postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto’s department of political science Lewis Krashinsky told CTV’s Your Morning Monday that “there has been so much momentum built up around the idea that these files would finally bring clarity.”

“They’re still far away off from providing any sense of justice to people who’ve been following the story and to the many victims of Jeffrey Epstein,” he added.

Referring to the release deadline, Krashinsky said the U.S. Justice Department is already “in violation of what the letter of the law said which it had to be in 30 days.”

According to Krashinsky, while some newly released photos showed celebrities like Mick Jagger, Chris Tucker and Michael Jackson, he said they did not fundamentally alter the public’s understanding of Epstein’s activities.

Epstein who died in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges maintained relationships with politicians, business leaders and celebrities for decades.

The latest document dump has also raised political questions around Trump who spoke repeatedly during his election campaign against releasing Epstein-related files but later reversed his stance. Since the documents were made public, Trump has remained silent declining to address the release.

Krashinsky said the muted response from Trump is not a surprise."

“There’s maybe a communication strategy here of them wanting this story to die. But the fear is that this story really has legs. It’s been months and months and the slow drip of information, I think, makes it all the worse,” he said.

Krashinsky explained that one of the core beliefs among Trump supporters is that the government hides the truth.

“Here (Trump) is personally caught up in one of the most explosive scandals that the country has dealt with in many years, and hasn’t been completely transparent or forthright about what his involvement has been.”

It’s unclear when more file disclosures are expected, Krashinsky said.

“The longer this goes, the closer we get to the November midterms in 2026 ... Donald Trump gets closer and closer to being in a lame duck status,” he said.

“We might see more people in his party be willing to publicly break with him and use this story as maybe a justification of fears about his low polling numbers,” he explained.

# Ukrainian drone attack damages two piers, two vessels in Krasnodar Region
According to the regional operational headquarters, specialists are extinguishing fires that broke out at the piers and are covering an area of 1,000 to 1,500 square meters.


# KRASNODAR, December 22. A Ukrainian drone attack has damaged two piers and two vessels in the village of Volna in Russia’s Krasnodar Region, the operational headquarters reported.

"Two piers and two vessels were damaged in the village of Volna due to a drone attack. Everyone on board the vessels was evacuated. There were no casualties among the crew or shore personnel," the statement said.

According to the regional operational headquarters, specialists are extinguishing fires that broke out at the piers and are covering an area of 1,000 to 1,500 square meters.

It seemed like the solution to Elaine Traverse’s financial problems, and a dog desperately needing a potty break led her to it.

“I saw this trail, so I went up there and parked, and he took off running,” Traverse said.

Traverse, who is disabled and can’t walk long distances, says she called her adult son to come and see what had upset her pet in a secluded area of Canada’s Heart’s Content, Newfoundland.

They had found the remains of Amelia Earhart. Or at least, the remains of a statue that had been the talk of the small neighboring town of Harbour Grace for months.

“Oh my God,” Traverse said to herself.

The statue of Earhart – the Kansas native who disappeared without a trace while flying over the Pacific Ocean in 1937 – had a mysterious disappearance of its own.

It had been standing proudly in a Harbour Grace park since 2007, built with a private donation from a prominent local family as a monument to Earhart’s first solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean 75 years earlier, which began right there in one of Canada’s easternmost communities.

When the bronze figure disappeared on the morning of April 24, town officials thought someone most likely stole it to sell the metal for scrap, and they put together private donations for a $25,000 reward to find it.

Traverse, who said she had fallen on hard times, saw an opportunity in August as she found herself standing several miles away from Harbour Grace and looking over Earhart’s figure cut into five pieces, still intact.

“I called … the mayor at that time, and I said, ‘I was wondering if the reward was still being offered,’” Traverse told CNN.

It was, but Traverse said the mayor declined her offer to deliver the statue’s pieces herself. Several days later, she was referred to an investigator with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who made it clear she shouldn’t expect a fast cheque.

“First thing she said was, ‘Do you want to speak to a lawyer? Because you could be arrested for this,’” Traverse said, still shocked by the implication.
Earhart is part of town’s much larger aviation history

The statue of the famous aviator – wearing a leather flight jacket and thigh-high laced boots – stood proudly in the Spirit of Harbour Grace Park, a roadside pull off overlooking the bay. The park also features a retired World War II-era DC-3 passenger plane named after the town.

The park is a visible sign of the community’s pride in its unique place in aviation history. Earhart’s voyage was one of 20 transatlantic flights attempted from the town’s bucolic airstrip.

The disappearance of the statue was a shock for locals and aviation buffs from around the world.

“It’s heartbreaking to share that someone, under the cover of darkness, has stolen the statue of Amelia Earhart and one of the plaques commemorating her achievement,” The Ninety-Nines, an international organization of women pilots, wrote in a Facebook post. “Who would do such a thing?”

The only evidence of the theft that has been made public is surveillance video from a gas station next to the park.

In the footage, distant headlights can be seen pulling up to the statue’s location, followed moments later by screeching tires and a metallic clang. A minute later, the vehicle hurriedly pulls away. Although muffled voices can be heard, the video is too dark to identify people.
Statue’s return turns into suspicion

The discovery of the statue was a relief to town officials who had been trying to figure out if they could even afford to replace it.

“We are thrilled to welcome Amelia home to Harbour Grace, and appreciate the public’s assistance in finding this iconic statue,” said then-mayor Don Coombs in a news release from the RCMP.

But Traverse herself has not been mentioned in multiple announcements about the statue. In news releases since the discovery, the town and RCMP have referred only to “a tip from the public” that led Mounties to the statue.

When Traverse called to report the statue, she was advised not to move it and wait for law enforcement, a process she says took several days.

“I used to go back twice a day to make sure she was still there,” said Traverse, adding she was worried someone else might discover Earhart’s statue and either take it or try to claim the reward.

“So, when I got the call on August 8 to go to the RCMP building – yes, I had a big relief when the officers took her,” she said.

That relief didn’t last long once it was suggested she might be a suspect. Traverse was shocked, but thinks she knows the reason for the suspicion.

Her son, who she said was previously convicted of stealing copper, was with her when they spotted the statue. He has denied any involvement in the theft and declined to be interviewed or named by CNN.

“But he had nothing to do with (the statue’s disappearance). He’s innocent, and I’m innocent,” said Traverse.

“We both passed a lie detector test saying we had nothing to do with stealing the statue or knew anything about it, and I’m still no further ahead,” Traverse said.

Ironically, Traverse says her son’s record should prove he didn’t take the statue.

“He was in jail at the time,” Traverse said. “They’re just saying that he may have gotten somebody else to do it.”

The photos they took when they first found Earhart’s statue showed the pieces surrounded in thick vegetation growth and around trees, a fact she argues should dissipate the theory that they were planted there to be “found” for the reward.

Representatives of the RCMP and the town of Harbour Grace have declined to comment on the specifics of Traverse’s account of what happened.

“To protect both the privacy of all parties and the integrity of this active police investigation, we are not able to provide any additional details at this time,” a spokesperson for the RCMP of Newfoundland and Labrador told CNN.
Without arrests, the mystery goes on

In the four months since the statue was recovered, the community along the province’s narrow Conception Bay has celebrated its return. And a local artist has been commissioned to reassemble and reinforce it before a rededication ceremony planned for next spring.

“Fortunately, the Town’s insurer covered the statue and base restoration costs, excluding the deductible,” the local government said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Traverse has neither received a reward, nor faced criminal charges. Instead, she was left with a damaged reputation as rumors spread in the community.

“A lot of people are blaming me for stuff that I’m not doing, and they’re posting all kinds of stuff about myself and my family, and it’s not right,” she said.

For now, Harbour Grace officials have said little about how they think the statue was stolen in the first place, ensuring updates on the matter will be shared “as appropriate” while the investigation continues.

“At this time, the identity of the person or persons responsible for the theft remains unknown,” the RCMP said.

Noting the allocation of the reward is not the town’s call, Harbour Grace Councilor Christina Hearn told CNN there was an “expectation” from those who donated funds for it that it would lead to an arrest or conviction.

But Traverse disputes that, pointing to statements on the original reward announcement.

“There was two options,” she said, “Information leading to either the arrest and conviction of the perpetrators or the return of the statue. So, I can’t get no further. I can’t get no answers.”

Like the answers to Earhart’s mysterious final flight, Traverse’s story remains in limbo. At least until someone else is found and charged.

By Andy Rose, CNN

U.S. tech enabled #China’s surveillance empire. Now Tibetan refugees in Nepal are paying the price.


Those eyes have served as a symbol of sanctuary for generations of Tibetans fleeing the Chinese crackdown in their homeland. But today, Tibetan refugees are also watched by far more malevolent eyes: Thousands of CCTV cameras from China, perched on street corners and rooftops to monitor every movement below. This intense surveillance has stifled the once-vibrant Free Tibet movement that had resonated around the world.

Nepal is just one of at least 150 countries to which Chinese companies are supplying surveillance technology, from cameras in Vietnam to censorship firewalls in Pakistan to citywide monitoring systems in Kenya. This technology is now a key part of China’s push for global influence, as it provides cash-strapped governments cost-effective, if invasive, forms of policing — turning algorithms and data into a force multiplier for control.

The irony at the heart of this digital authoritarianism is that the surveillance tools China exports are based on technology developed in its greatest rival, the United States, despite warnings that Chinese firms would buy, copy or outright steal American designs, an investigation by The Associated Press has found.

For decades, Silicon Valley firms often yielded to Beijing’s demands: Give us your technology and we will give you access to our market. Although tensions fester between Washington and Beijing, the links between American tech and Chinese surveillance continue today.

For example, Amazon Web Services offers cloud services to Chinese tech giants like Hikvision and Dahua, assisting them in their overseas push. Both are on the U.S. Commerce Department’s Entity List for national security and human-rights concerns, which means transactions with them are not illegal but subject to strict restrictions.

AWS told AP it adheres to ethical codes of conduct, complies with U.S. law, and does not itself offer surveillance infrastructure. Dahua said they conduct due diligence to prevent abuse of their products. Hikvision said the same, and that they “categorically reject any suggestion that the company is involved in or complicit in repression.”

Chinese technology firms now offer a complete suite of telecommunications, surveillance, and digital infrastructure, with few restrictions on who they sell to or how they’re used.

China pitches itself as a global security model with low crime rates, contrasting its record with the United States, said Sheena Greitens, a political scientist at the University of Texas at Austin.

“It’s got a set of solutions that it’s happy to share with the world that nobody else can offer,” she said. “(But) they’re certainly exporting the tools and techniques that are very important to authoritarian rule.”

The AP investigation was based on thousands of Nepali government procurement documents, corporate marketing material, leaked government and corporate documents, and interviews with more than 40 people, including Tibetan refugees and Nepali, American and Chinese engineers, executives, experts and officials.

While thousands of Tibetans once fled to Nepal every year, the number is now down to the single digits, according to Tibetan officials in Nepal. In a statement to AP, the Tibetan government in exile cited tight border controls, Nepal’s warming ties with China and “unprecedented surveillance” as reasons for the drastic plunge.

A 2021 internal Nepali government report, obtained by AP, revealed that China has even built surveillance systems within Nepal and in some areas of the border buffer zone where construction is banned by bilateral agreements. In a statement to AP, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs denied coercing Western companies to hand over technology or working with Nepal to surveil Tibetans, calling it a “sheer fabrication driven by ulterior motives.”

“Attempts to use Tibet-related issues to interfere in China’s internal affairs, smear China’s image, and poison the atmosphere of China-Nepal cooperation will never succeed,” the statement said.

The Nepali government and the Chinese-controlled Tibetan authorities did not respond to requests for comment.

Under pressure, many Tibetans are responding the only way they can: Leaving. The Tibetan population in Nepal has plunged from over 20,000 to half that or less today.

Former activist Sonam Tashi gave up protesting years ago. Now 49, today he’s just a father trying to get his 10-year-old son out — before the net pulls tighter. The boy was born in Nepal but has no document proving he is either a refugee or a citizen, a result of Chinese pressure.

Tashi described how those considered likely to protest are picked up in advance around key dates — like March 10, which marks the 1959 Tibetan uprising, or July 6, the Dalai Lama’s birthday. In 2018, Nepal’s police magazine confirmed that it was building predictive policing, which allows officers to watch people’s movements, identify in advance who they think will protest and arrest them preemptively.

“There are cameras everywhere,” Tashi said, sitting on a bus winding toward the Indian border. “There is no future.”
‘They gave us all the hardware’

After China crushed a Tibetan uprising in 1959, thousands fled across the Himalayas to Nepal, carrying only what they could: Religious paintings, prayer wheels and the weight of families left behind.

Their exodus, led by the charismatic Dalai Lama, captured the American imagination, with Hollywood films and actor Richard Gere’s congressional appeals putting Tibet in the spotlight. Washington trod a careful line, defending the rights and religious freedom of Tibetans without recognizing independence.

Today, the future of the Free Tibet movement is in question. Without refugee cards that grant basic rights, Tibetans in Nepal can no longer open bank accounts, work legally or leave the country.

Cameras are now everywhere in Kathmandu, perched on traffic lights and swiveling from temple eaves. Most link back to a four-story brick building just a few blocks down from the Chinese embassy, where officers watch the country in real time.

The building hums with the low breath of cooling fans. Inside, a wall of monitors blinks with feeds from border towns, busy markets and clogged traffic crossings.

Officers in crisp blue uniforms and red caps sit in the glow, scanning scenes. Beneath the screens, a photo published in a Nepali daily shows, a sign in English and Chinese reads: “With the compliments of the Ministry of Public Security of China.”

Their reach is vast.

Operators can track a motorbike weaving through the capital, follow a protest as it forms, or patch an alert directly to patrol radios. Many cameras are equipped with night vision facial recognition and AI tracking — able to pick a single face out of a festival crowd or lock onto a figure until it disappears indoors. The system not only sees but is learning to remember, storing patterns of movement, building a record of lives lived under its gaze.

A 34-year-old Tibetan cafe owner in the city watched the city change in quiet horror. “Now you can only be Tibetan in private,” he said. He and other Tibetans in Nepal spoke to AP anonymously, fearing retaliation.

The first cameras in Boudhanath were installed in 2012, officially to deter crime. But after a Tibetan monk doused himself in petrol and set himself ablaze in front of the stupa in 2013, police added 35 night vision cameras around it.

The Chinese embassy in Kathmandu worked closely with the police, said Rupak Shrestha, a professor at Simon Fraser University in Canada who studied surveillance in Nepal. He said the police received special training to use the new cameras, identify potential symbols associated with the Free Tibet movement and anticipate dissent.

In 2013, a team of Nepal Police officers crossed the northern border into Tibet for a seemingly straightforward mission: Collect police radios from Chinese authorities in Zhangmu, a remote border town, about 120 kilometres (75 miles) from Kathmandu. A truck was loaded with equipment and a few handshakes later, they were driving back to Kathmandu.

The radios — made by the partly state-owned Chinese firm Hytera — looked like walkie-talkies but ran on a digital trunking system, a scaled-down mobile network for police use. Officers could talk privately, coordinate across districts, even patch into public phone lines. The entire system — radios, relay towers, software — was a $5.5 million gift from China.

“They didn’t give us the money,” recalled a retired Nepali officer who made the trip. “They gave all the hardware. All Chinese.”

He remembered not the border guards but the tech — sleek, reliable, and far ahead of anything they’d used before. He spoke on condition of anonymity to describe sensitive internal discussions.

He said Nepal had initially considered buying the technology from the U.S. and only wanted to deploy the system in its two biggest cities. Hytera was a fraction of the cost and performed comparably, but China also wanted coverage near the border with Tibet. Nepal acquiesced.

They installed the technology in Sindhupalchowk, a border district with a key road to China used by Tibetan refugees. “We understood their mindset,” the retired officer said. “A secure border.”

A police envoy from the Chinese embassy began making regular visits to the Nepal Police headquarters. He’d chat over coffee, flip through brochures from Chinese companies. “He’d say, ‘You want anything?’” the retired officer recalled.

China began donating tens of millions in police aid and surveillance equipment, including a new school for Nepal’s Armed Police Force. Hundreds of Nepali police traveled to China for training on policing and border control, according to Chinese government posts.

Ahead of a summit of South Asian leaders in 2014, among the goods on offer were ones from Uniview, China’s pitch for an all-seeing eye.

The company was the Chinese surveillance business of what was then Hewlett Packard, or HP, before it was spun off in a 2011 deal. Since 2012, Uniview has been selling mass surveillance solutions to the Tibetan police, such as a command center, and developed cameras that track ethnicities such as Uyghurs and Tibetans.

Uniview installed cameras in Kathmandu for Nepal’s first “safe city” project in 2016. It started with the city’s roads, then went up across the capital — in tourist areas, religious sites, high-security zones like Parliament and the prime minister’s home.

The cameras didn’t just record. Some could follow people automatically as they moved. Others were designed to use less data, making it easier to store and review footage.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise, or HPE, a successor company to HP that sells security solutions, has no ownership in Uniview and declined to comment. Hytera and Uniview did not respond to requests for comment.

Nearly all the cameras installed in Nepal are now made by Chinese companies like Hikvision, Dahua and Uniview, and many come bundled with facial recognition and AI tracking software.

Hikvision’s website and marketing materials advertise camera systems in Nepal linked via Hik-Connect and HikCentral Connect, cloud products that rely on Amazon Web Services. Hikvision sells to the Nepali police and government, and a template for Nepali tenders indicates CCTV cameras procured for the government are required to support Hik-Connect.

In return for Beijing’s support, top Nepali officials have thanked China repeatedly over the years, promising never to allow “anti-China activities” on Nepali territory.

The Nepali police head offices aren’t far from the now-forlorn Tibetan reception center, which used to shelter tired, hungry Tibetans fleeing across the border.

The building is nearly empty. The gates are locked. Those who do escape, like Namkyi, arrested at 15 for protesting Chinese rule, often have to wait for weeks confined indoors until they’re smuggled out again to the Tibetan capital in exile in India.

Silence has become survival.

“They know they are being watched,” she said. “Even though we are free, the surveillance cameras mean we’re actually living in a big prison.”
From clients to competitors

From the start, U.S. companies eager for China’s vast markets exchanged technology for entry.

Many were required to start joint ventures and research operations in China as a precondition for being allowed in. Dozens, if not hundreds, complied, transferring valuable know-how and expertise — even in sensitive areas like encryption or policing.

Little by little, Chinese companies chipped away at the lead of American tech companies by luring talent, obtaining research, and sometimes plain copying their hardware and software. The flow of technology continued, even as U.S. officials openly accused China of economic espionage and pressuring American companies for their technology.

“China is by far the most egregious actor when it comes to forced technology transfer,” Robert D. Atkinson, then-president of a think tank focused on innovation, warned Congress in a 2012 hearing.

American tech resistance came to a final, definitive end later that year with Edward Snowden’s revelations that U.S. intelligence was exploiting American technology to spy on Beijing. Spooked, the Chinese government told Western firms they risked being kicked out unless they handed over their technology and provided security guarantees.

After companies like HP and IBM agreed, their former partners became their fiercest global competitors — and unlike American firms, they faced few questions about the way their technology was being used. Companies like Huawei, Hikvision and Dahua have now become global behemoths that sell surveillance systems and gear all over the world.

American technology was key to this:

- Uniview, the Chinese AI-powered CCTV camera supplier, supplied the first phase of Nepal’s safe city project in 2016, installing cameras in Kathmandu. Uniview was carved out of California-based HP’s China surveillance video business.

- Hytera provided data infrastructure for the Nepali police, such as walkie-talkies and digital trunking technology, which enables real-time communication. Earlier this year, Hytera acknowledged stealing technology from U.S. company Motorola in a plea agreement, and had acquired German, British, Spanish, and American tech businesses in their growth phase.

- Hikvision and Dahua, China’s two largest surveillance camera suppliers, sell many of the cameras now in Nepal. They partnered with Intel and Nvidia to add AI capabilities to surveillance cameras. Those ties ended after U.S. sanctions in 2019, but AWS continues to sell cloud services to both companies, which remains legal under what some lawmakers call a loophole. AWS has advertised to Chinese companies expanding overseas, including at a policing expo in 2023.

- Chinese tech giant Huawei has become one of the world’s leading sellers of surveillance systems, wiring more than 200 cities with sensors. In Nepal, they supplied telecom gear and high-capacity servers at an international airport. Over the years, the company benefited from partnerships with American companies like IBM, and has been dogged by allegations of theft — including copying code from Cisco routers wholesale, a case which Huawei settled out of court in 2004.

Huawei said it provides “general-purpose” products “based on recognized industry standards.” Intel has said it adheres to all laws and regulations where it operates, and cannot control end use of its products. Nvidia has said it does not make surveillance systems or work with police in China at present.

IBM and Cisco declined comment. Policing gear maker Motorola Solutions, a successor company to Motorola after it split, did not respond to requests for comment.

U.S. technology transfer to Chinese firms has mostly stopped after growing controversy and a slew of sanctions in the past decade. But industry insiders say it’s too late: China, once a tech backwater, is now among the biggest exporters of surveillance technologies on earth.

Few realized “the U.S. shouldn’t be selling the software to China because they might copy it, they might use it for these types of surveillance and bad stuff,” said Charles Mok, a Hong Kong IT entrepreneur and former lawmaker now living in exile as a research scholar at Stanford. “Nobody was quick enough to realize this could happen.”
‘The great big eye in the sky’

Inside a 15th-century monastery in Lo Manthang in Nepal’s Mustang district, light slants through wooden slats, catching motes of dust and the faded faces of bodhisattvas.

Crumpled notes of Chinese currency lie at the feet of deities in the walled city along the Tibetan border. Here, shops stock Chinese instant noodles and cars with Chinese plates rumble down mountain roads.

A gleaming white observation dome just inside Chinese territory looms over the city. Visible from 15 kilometres (9 miles) away, it’s trained on the district that has long been a refuge for Tibetans, including a guerrilla base in the 1960s.

The dome is just one node in China’s vast 1,389-kilometre (863-mile) border network with Nepal — a “Great Wall of Steel” of fences, sensors and AI-powered drones.

Chinese forces have barred ethnic Tibetans from accessing traditional pastures and performing sacred rites. They have pressured residents of Lo Manthang to remove photos of the Dalai Lama from shops. And a “China-Nepal joint command mechanism” meets several times a month on border patrols and repatriations, according to a post by the Chinese-run Tibetan government.

The result is that the once-porous frontier is now effectively sealed, and China’s digital dragnet reaches deep into the lives of those who live near it.

In April 2024, Rapke Lama was chatting with a friend across the border on WeChat when he received an invitation to meet. He set out from his village and crossed into Tibet — only to be arrested almost immediately.

Lama believes his WeChat exchange was monitored; Chinese police appeared with unsettling precision, as if they knew where to look. After accusing him — wrongly, he maintains — of helping Tibetans flee into Nepal, the police seized his phone, which had photos of the Dalai Lama and Tibetan music. Then came months in a Lhasa prison, where isolation and inadequate medical care hollowed him out.

Lama did not return to Nepal until May 2025, gaunt and shaken. He later said he entered Tibet to harvest caterpillar fungus, valued in traditional Chinese medicine. Another friend who crossed the border remains in custody.

“Even now, I’m scared,” Lama says. He wears masks when wandering the streets, he says, “because of that lingering fear.”

The Chinese observation dome is a giant symbol of the same fear, towering over the border.

“It’s the great big eye in the sky,” said a 73-year-old Tibetan hotel owner in Nepal, who spotted the installation during a trip near the border last year. “For Tibetan refugees, Nepal has become a second China.”

Aniruddha Ghosal And Dake Kang, The Associated Press

Associated Press journalists Niranjan Shrestha and Binaj Gurubacharya in Kathmandu, Manish Swarup and Rishi Lekhi in New Delhi, Ashwini Bhatia in Dharamshala, India, and David Goldman in Washington contributed to this report.

U.S. interdicting, seizing vessel off Venezuelan coast, officials say:
The United States is interdicting and seizing a vessel off the coast of Venezuela in international waters, three U.S. officials told Reuters on Saturday, a move which comes just days after U.S. President Donald Trump announced a “blockade” of all sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela.

This would mark the second time in recent weeks that the United States has seized a tanker near Venezuela and comes amid a large U.S. military build-up in the region.

The officials, who were speaking on the condition of anonymity, did not say where the operation was taking place but added the Coast Guard was in the lead.

The Coast Guard and Pentagon referred questions to the White House, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Venezuela’s oil ministry and state oil company PDVSA did not immediately reply to requests for comment.

“I am ordering A TOTAL AND COMPLETE BLOCKADE OF ALL SANCTIONED OIL TANKERS going into, and out of, Venezuela,” Trump said on Tuesday.

In the days since U.S. forces seized a sanctioned oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela last week, there has been an effective embargo in place, with loaded vessels carrying millions of barrels of oil staying in Venezuelan waters rather than risk seizure.

Since the first seizure, Venezuelan crude exports have fallen sharply.

3 killed in Taiwan knife attack, with the suspect later falling to his death from a department store.


TAIPEI, Taiwan — A man with at least one knife and smoke grenades attacked crowds indiscriminately in Taiwan’s capital on Friday evening, killing at least three people and injuring nine others, according to the national news agency and the city government. The suspect later fell to his death from a department store building.

Police said that the suspect was declared dead at a hospital after jumping from the building’s sixth floor, the Central News Agency reported.

The suspect, identified as a 27-year-old man named Chang Wen, threw smoke grenades near an underground exit of the Taipei Main metro station, close to the city’s main train station, and randomly attacked people with a “sharp object,” sending pedestrians running, according to media reports.

He then headed north to a popular shopping district, where he threw smoke grenades and stabbed multiple people on the first and fourth floors of the Eslite Spectrum Nanxi department store, primarily in the neck, the news agency said, citing police.

Police later revealed that the suspect, between the two scenes, took an underground path to a hotel, where he fetched some “lethal weapon” -- or some kind of edged weapon -- before showing up at a road outside the Zhongshan metro station, near the department store, according to the news agency.

Police said they were yet to find any accomplice and were investigating possible motives. Police said they recovered some “lethal weapons” in both the suspect’s rental home in Taipei and the hotel room where he had stayed for three nights near Zhongshan.

Video footage aired on local television networks showed the suspect, who was wearing a gas mask and clad in black, dropping at least two smoke grenades at the Taipei Main metro station. He was later seen near Eslite and entering the department store while attacking passersby.

Local hospitals reported three deaths from the attacks. The city government said nine others were hospitalized, including one with serious injuries.

Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an told local media that a 57-year-old man immediately tried to stop the suspect at the metro station’s exit, but was fatally wounded. National Taiwan University Hospital told the news agency that the fatal wound was “a penetrating injury about five centimeters in length caused by a sharp object that reached from the right lung to the left atrium.”

Taipei Metro said that a staffer was hospitalized after he inhaled excessive smoke while responding to the attack.

Another man died after he was attacked near the department store, according to EBC News.

A female victim told EBC that she was hit by the suspect outside the department store when she was waiting for her daughter for a dinner appointment.

“It did not feel like a slash -- it felt more like being hit,” she said. “Then it really hurt.”

When she turned around, she said she saw “people lying on the ground and needing first aid because they were bleeding.”

Chang failed to report for reserve military training in November 2024, and he was wanted for violating the law on mandatory military service, the news agency reported. He apparently didn’t report a change in household registration, resulting in nondelivery of his reserve military service summons, the news agency reported, citing a district prosecutors’ office.

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