Free Republic

The Australian Home Affairs Minister, Peter Dutton, has written to the chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS), Andrew Hastie, to ask that the Committee investigate “the nature and extent to which foreign actors are interfering in Australian universities, including staff and student bodies, publicly funded research agencies and competitive research grant agencies.” Hastie last week said that Australian research was being “plundered” by the CCP. The move came after a report by an Australian think-tank into the workings of one of China’s “talent-recruitment programmes”, and an investigation by The Australian newspaper that found that dozens...

Another U.S. professor "with strong ties to China" has been arrested and charged with allegedly lying about his ties to the communist country. Song Guo Zheng, who the Justice Department described as a "rheumatology professor and researcher," allegedly used more than $4.1 million in federal research funding to help advance China's capabilities with regard to rheumatology and immunology. The Justice Department alleges he then failed to disclose to the U.S. government that he held employment in China while conducting U.S. taxpayer-funded research as a researcher at multiple universities in the U.S., including Ohio State University. A Google Scholars profile with...

<p>This is the full text of a very curious story (The April Witch) by Ray Bradbury. It is presented here under Article 22 of China’s Copyright Law. Enjoy.</p> <p>Into the air, over the valleys, under the stars, above a river, a pond, a road, flew Cecy. Invisible as new spring winds, fresh as the breath of clover rising from twilight fields, she flew. She soared in doves as soft as white ermine, stopped in trees and lived in blossoms, showering away in petals when the breeze blew. She perched in a limegreen frog, cool as mint by a shining pool. She trotted in a brambly dog and barked to hear echoes from the sides of distant barns. She lived in new April grasses, in sweet clear liquids rising from the musky earth.</p>

India on Wednesday ruled out joining the US in developing the F-35 Lightning II fifth generation stealth fighter aircraft. “We have already entered into a partnership with Russia in developing our own fifth generation fighter aircraft (FGFA),” Defence Minister A K Antony said. “No other country has previously offered such technology to us… There is no question of going back now,” the Defence Minister told reporters during the Aero India 2011 which began in Bangalore on Wednesday. Washington had recently offered New Delhi to join its Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) programme that would have ultimately led India to purchase the...

Images of a Chinese stealth fighter prototype in flight suggest that China has moved to the next stage of testing an aircraft that appears designed to rival the American F-22 and challenge U.S. air superiority in the Asia-Pacific region, aviation experts say. Tuesday's flight means China is likely now testing the J-20's flight software, engines and aerodynamics, following weeks of runway tests at the Chengdu Aircraft Design Institute. The aviation experts say there is a limit to what more they can tell about the J-20's capabilities—especially its radar-evading technology—from the low-resolution images, which mostly appear to have been shot from...