World News Roundup

INTERNATIONALARAB TIMES, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2018

9

Espionage

Ex-NSA employee jailed

‘Army Reservist’ agentof Beijing: Justice DeptWASHINGTON, Sept 26, (Agencies): A Chi-nese citizen was arrested in Chicago on Tuesday on charges that he covertly worked for a high-ranking Chinese intelligence offi cial to help try to recruit engineers and scientists, including some who worked as US defense contractors, the Justice Department said.

Ji Chaoqun, 27, fi rst came to the United States in 2013 to study electrical engineering at the Illi-nois Institute of Technology, and in 2016 enlisted in the US Army Reserves.

He appeared in a federal court in Chicago on one count of acting as an agent for the Chinese government. Laura Hoey, who is representing Ji in the case, could not immediately be reached for comment.

Speaking in Beijing on Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang he had “no understanding” of the situation. He did not elaborate.

According to the criminal complaint, Ji arrived in the United States from Beijing in August 2013 on a student visa, and went on to earn a Master’s

Degree in electrical engi-neering in 2015.

Text messages reviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation showed that in November 2013, Ji was introduced to an intelligence offi cer from the Jiangsu Province Ministry of State Security, referred to in the complaint as “Intelligence Offi cer A,” by another per-son only identifi ed as “Intel-

ligence Offi cer B.”They later met on several occasions in China,

and initially the intelligence offi cial told Ji he was a college professor, according to the complaint and affi davit fi led by the FBI.

❑ ❑ ❑

Ex-NSA employee jailed: A former US National Security Agency employee was sentenced in a fed-eral court in Baltimore on Tuesday to 5-1/2 years in prison, after pleading guilty last December to illegally taking classifi ed information outside the spy agency, the US Justice Department said.

Nghia Hoang Pho, 68, of Ellicott City, Mary-land, removed documents that contained classifi ed national defense information and kept them at his home without authorization, the department said in a statement.

Pho will also be required to undergo three years of supervised release after completing his prison sentence. Pho worked in the NSA’s elite hacking unit and he removed what prosecutors described as “massive troves” of highly classifi ed documents containing top-secret national defense information between 2010 and March 2015.

A US intelligence offi cial previously has said on the condition of anonymity that Pho was the same NSA employee who had been identifi ed in media reports for using Kaspersky Lab antivirus software on his home computer.

Some US offi cials have said software from the Moscow-based company allowed Russian intelli-gence agencies to pilfer sensitive secrets from the United States through Pho’s computer.

“As a result of his actions, Pho compromised some of our country’s most closely held types of intelligence, and forced NSA to abandon impor-tant initiatives to protect itself and its operational capabilities, at great economic and operational cost, said Robert Hur, the US Attorney for the District of Maryland, in a statement.

Chaoqun

This photo provided by DigitalGlobe shows a satellite view of the Roosevelt Fire burning southeast of Jackson, Wyoming, on Sept 24. (Inset): Firefi ghters with California’s Eldorado Hotshots crew watch as timber catches fi re during a controlled burnout operation along Highway 191 near the Rim, south of Bondurant, Wyo. The operation was an effort to ‘fi ght fi re with fi re’ and contain the spread of the Roosevelt Fire, which had grown to nearly

50,000 acres as of Tuesday. (AP)

Could be a big Democratic year

Congress control, Trump agenda in balanceWASHINGTON, Sept 26, (AFP): Do Americans support the Republicans shepherding Donald Trump’s policies through Congress? Or do they want Democrats to reclaim the House and Senate and block the controversial president’s agenda?

These are the main political ques-tions to be answered in just six weeks, when US voters pick the representa-tives to send to Washington and to state legislatures, as well as the gover-nors of three dozen states.

With polls consistently showing a Democratic advantage, Senate Major-ity Leader Mitch McConnell has lik-ened his Republican party’s efforts to hold on its majority to a “knife fi ght in an alley.”

Several political experts are talking about a possible “wave election,” a term used to describe a party making major gains in either the House or Sen-ate, or both.

History suggests it could be a big Democratic year, as the party control-ling the White House often loses seats in Congress two years after a president takes offi ce.

OccurUS midterm elections occur halfway

through a president’s four-year term, when the president himself is not on the ballot.

Election Day this year is November 6, although nearly all 50 US states al-low some form of early voting.

All 435 seats in the House of Rep-resentatives are up for grabs every two years. In the 100-member Senate terms last six years, and 35 seats are up in November.

Republicans currently hold a 236-193 advantage in the House, and a 51-49 Senate edge.

Democrats would need to gain an additional 25 seats to reclaim the House.

A two-seat Senate gain would give

Democrats lead in Rust Belt states that Trump won: pollNEW YORK, Sept 26, (RTRS): An Indiana US senator seen as one of the chamber’s most vulnerable Democrats has a slight edge while four of his Rust Belt Democratic col-leagues have solid leads in states President Donald Trump won in 2016, a Reuters poll found.

A Reuters/Ipsos/UVA Center for Politics Poll released on Wednesday found that a majority of likely voters in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan and Indiana disapprove of the Republican president and more than one-third were “very motivated” to back someone who would oppose his policies.

The poll found that Senator Joe Donnelly of Indiana has a 3 percent-age point lead among likely voters over Republican businessman Mike Braun. Braun, a former state repre-sentative, has positioned himself as a Trump-like candidate who would bring an outsider’s perspective to politics in Vice President Mike Pence’s home state.

Democrats are aiming to win two more Senate seats in the Nov 6 con-gressional election to take a major-

ity in that chamber and serve as a check on Trump’s agenda. They can ill afford to lose any of the fi ve seats covered by the poll.

Trump won the fi ve states after pitching himself as a business-savvy pragmatist who would improve the lives of working class Americans. Two years later, more than half of likely voters in those states think the country is now on the “wrong track,” the poll found. “There are lots of places in this region where eco-nomic opportunity has been stifl ed,” said Kyle Kondik, a political analyst at the Center for Politics.

Kondik said the Rust Belt fre-quently shifts its support between parties, in some cases because voters who are frustrated with the lack of economic progress come to the ballot box intent on checking the party in power.

This year Democrats have the added advantage of being able to at-tack an unpopular president as well as Republicans’ defi cit-increasing tax plan and their failed effort to dis-mantle the Affordable Care Act, bet-ter known as Obamacare, he said.

Democrats control in that chamber, but this year’s Senate electoral map is particularly challenging, as Democrats are defending 26 seats compared to just nine for Republicans.

The election’s impact could be mon-umental, beyond just whether Con-gress will support or impede Trump’s agenda.

Should Democrats fl ip the House, the likelihood of impeachment pro-ceedings against Trump would in-crease dramatically.

Investigations into Trump’s admin-istration, including the probe about his campaign possibly colluding with Rus-sia, would intensify.

Committee chairmanships shifting to the Democrats could result in a new round of subpoenas.

And Democratic control of the Sen-ate, which votes on the president’s nominees, would make it harder for Trump to get any new picks onto the Supreme Court should a vacancy oc-cur.

Midterms

In this Sept 24, 2018 photo, homes are under water along the fl ood wa-ters of the Black River after Hurricane

Florence in Currie, NC. (AP)

Melania Trump

‘China attempting to interfere’: President Donald Trump on Wednesday accused China of attempting to interfere with the upcoming United States congres-sional elections, and claimed its efforts are motivated by opposition to his tough trade policy.

Trump, speaking in front of world leaders while chairing the United Nations Security Council for the fi rst time, did not present evidence for his claim, which came amid an ongoing special counsel investigation into Russia’s attempts to interfere in the 2016 US election and concerns that the November elections could also be vulnerable.

“Regrettably, we found that China has been attempting to interfere in our upcom-ing 2018 election,” Trump said “They do not want me or us to win because I am the fi rst president ever to challenge China on trade.”

US offi cials did not immediately respond to requests for comment. With the elections less than two months away, US intelligence offi cials have said they are not now seeing the intensity of Russian intervention regis-tered in 2016 but are particularly concerned about activity by Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. (AP)

❑ ❑ ❑

First Lady to visit Africa: Melania Trump says she’ll promote child welfare in Ghana, Malawi, Kenya and Egypt in October on her fi rst extended solo interna-tional mission.

The First Lady detailed her plans Wednesday at a reception on the sidelines of the annual UN General Assembly.

Mrs Trump says she looks forward to spreading the message of her domestic child-welfare initiative throughout Africa.

She’s traveling without President Donald Trump, who raised ire across Africa this year after his private complaint about the continent’s “s-hole countries” was leaked to journalists. Trump will also be in midst of campaigning for the November elec-tions. He said Wednesday that he and his wife “love Africa.” (AP)

❑ ❑ ❑

Texas set to execute 2: Texas is plan-

America

US First Lady Melania Trump hosts a reception for spouses of visiting heads of State and others at the US Mission to the United Nations in New York on Sept

26. (AFP)

nings to conduct two executions this week, it is set to put to death a man convicted of drowning a woman in a bathtub 20 years ago and dumping her cement-encased body in a remote area. Troy Clark, 51, was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at the state’s death chamber in Huntsville at 6 pm (2300 GMT). On Thursday, Texas

plans to execute Daniel Acker, 46, who was convicted of kidnapping and murder-ing a woman in 2000.

Both men have maintained they are innocent. If the executions go ahead, they would be the 17th and 18th this year in the United States. Texas has already executed eight inmates this year and has put more

prisoners to death than any state since the US Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.

Clark was convicted of killing Christina Muse in 1998. Clark lived with his then-girlfriend, Tory Bush, and the two used and sold methamphetamine, according to docu-ments fi led in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. (AP)

❑ ❑ ❑

Flooding envelops homes: A week ago, fi refi ghters in Conway went to a neighborhood and told surprised residents their houses would fl ood from Hurricane Florence even though they had never had water in them before.

On Monday and Tuesday, those same fi refi ghters checked on those same neigh-borhoods with maps that detailed each of the nearly 1,000 homes that could expect to be inundated. “It’s kind of playing out exactly like we forecast,” Conway Fire Chief Le Hendrick said.

Twelve days after the once-fi erce hur-ricane arrived on the coast, and more than a week after it blew north and dissipated, rivers swollen by its relentless rains are still fl ooding homes and businesses in their paths as they make their way to the sea.

The slow-moving disaster has allowed forecasters to pinpoint exactly who will fl ood. There have been few rescues or surprises in South Carolina - just black, reeking water slowly seeping in and even more slowly receding. (AP)