China, International Spies | featured news

The Chinese national taken into custody on an airplane waiting to take off for home had pornography and illegally downloaded movies on his NASA computer, not government secrets, reports say. He is now set to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of violating NASA computer rules. A felony charge of allegedly lying to FBI agents has been resolved, reports say, but it is not immediately clear if it is being dropped outright. Reports do indicate the lying charge is not going forward.

The murder of the British businessman, Neil Heywood, is still seen as stemming from a financial dispute, but the intelligence links add an enticing subplot to his death.

A Chinese state security official has been arrested on suspicion of spying for the United States, sources said, a case both countries have kept quiet for several months as they strive to prevent a fresh crisis in relations.

The Pentagon said on Friday it believes China spent up to $180 billion on its military buildup last year, a far higher figure than acknowledged by Beijing, and it accused "Chinese actors" of being the world's biggest perpetrators of economic espionage.

A businessman whose murder sparked political upheaval in China was not a British spy, Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Thursday, trying to quell speculation that has swirled around the man's mysterious death.

A prosecutor says a Taiwanese political science professor has been detained for providing data on visiting Chinese activists to Beijing. Huang Mou-hsin says Wu Chang-yu of Central Police University was detained Friday pending filing of formal charges.

China hijacked 15 per cent of the world's internet traffic for 18 minutes earlier this year, including highly sensitive email exchanges between senior US government and military figures, a report to the US Congress said.

A Detroit man on Friday pleaded guilty to trying to get a job with the Central Intelligence Agency in order to spy for China and to hiding contacts and money he got from Chinese intelligence agents.

A former engineer for Rockwell International and Boeing was convicted Thursday of economic espionage and acting as an agent of China, authorities said.

The government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has been walking a political tightrope since the detention last week of an Australian mining executive who is accused of stealing state secrets.