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China: Japan diplomats were spies / Court links reporters to espionage The Yomiuri Shimbun A final ruling handed down by the Higher People's Court of Beijing Municipality in September 2006 concluded that two Japanese diplomats were spies for the Intelligence and Analysis Service of Japan's Foreign Ministry, which it ruled was an espionage organization, sources in Tokyo said Monday. According to the sources, the ruling said that a current high-ranking ministry official, who had worked at the organization, and the then first secretary of the Japanese Embassy in Beijing were spies. The ruling was part of the Beijing higher court's...

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia — A U.S. Foreign Service officer stationed in Brazil and Congo used his status to pressure female visa applicants for sex, according to federal charges. Gons G. Nachman, 42, is charged in U.S. District Court with misuse of his diplomatic passport, making false statements and possessing child pornography. The charges were unsealed Friday. Nachman was ordered jailed pending a detention hearing scheduled for Tuesday. Court records reflect that a defense lawyer has not yet been appointed. According to the affidavit, Nachman made a habit of pressuring and pursuing sexual relationships with attractive female visa applicants while stationed in...

Khartoum (4 January) - A hitherto unknown Sudanese Islamist group has claimed responsibility for the murder of an United States diplomat and his driver. They were shot dead in Khartoum on New Year's Day. The group, Ansar al-Tawhid, made the claim on the internet, saying the men were killed because the Americans were trying to establish Christianity in Sudan. The chauffeur was said to have bartered away his religion.

KHARTOUM, Sudan - An American diplomat and his driver were shot to death Tuesday in the Sudanese capital, the U.S. Embassy said, a day after a joint African Union-United Nations force took over peacekeeping in Sudan's Darfur region. It was not immediately known if the motive for the attack was political or a random crime. "This afternoon, the American officer succumbed to his injuries and passed away," said Walter Braunohler, the spokesman at the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum. Braunohler said the diplomat, whose name was not released, worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development. The Sudanese Foreign Ministry identified...

Hundreds of US diplomats have protested against a government move to force them to accept postings in war-torn Iraq. About 300 angry diplomats attended a meeting at the state department, at which one labelled the decision a "potential death sentence". If too few volunteer, some will be forced to go to Iraq - or risk dismissal, except those exempted for medical or personal hardship reasons. Iraq postings have previously been filled on a voluntary basis. 'Prime candidates' The meeting was called to explain the "forced assignments" order made by state department human resources director Harry Thomas. Last Friday, he notified...

Wrong drug combination may be behind S. Korean diplomat's death (Kyodo) _ A mistake in the administration of intravenous drugs by a Beijing clinic may have been behind last week's death of a senior diplomat at the South Korean Embassy in the Chinese capital, a source informed about the incident said Monday. Whang Joung Il, 52-year-old minister for political affairs, died July 29 after receiving intravenous solutions at the clinic he visited for treatment of abdominal pain. As part of his treatment, Whang received Ringer's solution and an antibiotic that should not be administered simultaneously with calcium-containing solutions, according to...

BAGHDAD - The top U.S. general and diplomat in Iraq warned on Thursday against cutting short the American troop buildup and suggested they would urge Congress in September to give President Bush's strategy more time. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Gen. David Petraeus, in separate Associated Press interviews at their offices in the U.S. Embassy on the banks of the Tigris, were careful not to define a timeframe for continuing the counterinsurgency strategy — and the higher U.S. troop levels — that began six months ago. Still, Petraeus' comments signaled that he would like to see a substantial U.S. combat force...

Lt. Col. Thomas Mooney, a Cranston native and the U.S. defense attaché in Cyprus, was found dead in a remote rural area of the Mediterranean island Monday, four days after he disappeared with his diplomatic car, according to wire reports and a statement from U.S. Ambassador Ronald L. Schlicher.

The US embassy's defence attache in Cyprus was found dead on Monday on a hilltop in a remote part of the Mediterranean island after apparently stabbing himself in the neck, officials said. Thomas Mooney "died as a result of haemorrhaging after the infliction of an injury to the neck," an official involved in the post-mortem told AFP on condition of anonymity. "The injury was compatible with self-infliction. There was no evidence of foul play whatsover," the official said, adding that the wound was caused by a sharp instrument and that the body was in a state of decomposition.

NICOSIA (Reuters) - A senior U.S. diplomat stationed in Cyprus has gone missing, the United States embassy said on Saturday. "U.S. embassy employee Thomas Mooney has been missing for the past 48 hours," a U.S. embassy spokesman told Reuters, adding that police had been informed.

N. Korea retracts order to being back offspring of diplomats abroad: sources SEOUL, June 17 (Yonhap) -- North Korea recently retracted its order that all offspring accompanying its diplomats stationed abroad return home in the face of strong resistance from them, sources here said Sunday. It is rare for North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to reverse a decision amid reports of loosening discipline in the isolated, impoverished communist state with the influx of capitalism and Western culture after the inter-Korean rapprochement following the unprecedented inter-Korean summit in 2000.

Diplomacy: Not content with coddling Syria's terrorist regime, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has made a fool of herself pretending to be a messenger for Israel's prime minister. But the Israelis were quick to expose the charade.

Report: North Korea Diplomats Defy Orders to Send Children Home Tuesday , April 03, 2007 SEOUL, South Korea — North Korean diplomats and officials stationed overseas have refused a recent government order to send their children home, a news report said Tuesday, marking an unprecedented backlash against the communist leadership. About 4,000 children were supposed to return home by the end of last month, South Korea 's Yonhap news agency reported, citing an unnamed person well-versed in North Korean affairs. The North has delayed the deadline by a month. Each official was allowed to keep one child at their overseas...

WASHINGTON, March 14, 2007 – The Iraqi people have a “renewed sense of hope,” a senior U.S. diplomat said in Baghdad today. At a news conference, Daniel Speckhardt, charge d’affaires for the U.S. Embassy in Iraq, said he has been assigned in Iraq for almost two years, and that part of the sense of hope is due to increasing confidence in the Baghdad security plan. Speckhardt added that this sense of hope goes beyond Baghdad, noting that people in Anbar province are getting this sense from local tribal sheikhs who are joining Iraqi security forces and banding with coalition...

An illegal immigrant from Ghana was driving a tractor-trailer that rear-ended a car on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Westmoreland County on Thursday, killing a Honduran diplomat. Trade specialist Nuria Ortiz Navarro, 31, a passenger in the back seat of a 1996 Volkswagen Jetta driven by her brother-in-law, was pronounced dead at the scene by Deputy Coroner F. Christopher O'Leath, according to state police in New Stanton... The truck driver, Sam P. Thompson, 32, of Gaithersburg, Md., an employee of Transcare Systems Inc., of Bowie, Md., was arraigned on multiple criminal charges, including homicide by vehicle, following vehicles too closely, driving...

BAGHDAD, Feb 6 (Reuters) - Gunmen in Iraqi army uniforms kidnapped a senior Iranian diplomat in Baghdad on Sunday, an Iraqi government official said on Tuesday. "We are dealing with this as a kidnapping," the official told Reuters. The official said the diplomat, the second secretary at the Iranian embassy in Baghdad, was snatched in the central Karrada district by 30 gunmen in Iraqi army uniforms.

A former high-level State Department official was sentenced to a year in prison yesterday for keeping more than 3,500 classified documents at his Fairfax County home and concealing his relationship with a Taiwanese intelligence agent. Prosecutors said Donald W. Keyser possessed far more unauthorized classified documents than any government employee ever prosecuted by the Justice Department. Keyser, 63, is one of the nation's leading experts on China and was a top adviser to Colin L. Powell, former secretary of state. "What I was doing was to further U.S. interests," Donald Keyser said. "It was not to further Taiwan's."

BAGHDAD, Oct 22 (Reuters) - A senior U.S. diplomat who said the United States has shown "arrogance" and "stupidity" in Iraq said he "seriously misspoke" in an interview aired on Sunday after U.S. President George W. Bush said he was flexible on tactics, if not strategy. In an attack that highlights the problems Washington faces in recruiting and training Iraqi security forces, 13 police recruits were killed and 25 wounded in an ambush on a convoy of buses near the town of Baquba on Sunday. U.S. military deaths in Iraq in October have reached 83, making it the most deadly...

NEW YORK - (KRT) - A prominent Yemeni cleric is suspected of raising money for terrorists at a Muslim charity and several mosques in Brooklyn, it was disclosed yesterday. An FBI agent pulled back the veil on a secret investigation of Sheikh Abdullah Satar at the trial of an associate who is charged with lying about the cleric's activities. The agent, Brian Murphy, said in Brooklyn Federal Court that Satar was under surveillance during a fund-raising swing through Brooklyn in early 2000. At the time, the feds were conducting an investigation into the financing of terrorist groups. After Satar -...

CARACAS, Venezuela -- Authorities seized several U.S. diplomatic bags at Venezuela's main airport on Thursday, prompting protest from embassy officials and a probe into the Americans' actions by prosecutors. Attorney General Isaias Rodriguez said prosecutors would investigate U.S. officials for allegedly sidestepping official regulations and checkpoints when bringing the diplomatic bags into the South American country. Rodriguez made the announcement after Venezuelan National Guard troops seized the bags earlier Thursday from four U.S. embassy vehicles stopped outside Caracas' Simon Bolivar International Airport. The vehicles had just picked up the bags from a U.S. military aircraft on the tarmac, he said.