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Moonies leader banned from leaving country amid luxury gift bribery probe

Moonies leader banned from leaving country amid luxury gift bribery probe

Times23-05-2025

Prosecutors in South Korea have banned the leader of the 'Moonies' church from leaving the country as they investigate a bribery scandal involving the wife of the former president, Yoon Suk-yeol.
Han Hak-ja Moon, 82, the widow of the founder of the controversial Unification Church, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, faces allegations of links to a shamanic figure who delivered luxury goods to the former first lady, Kim Keon-hee.
Items given to Kim in the summer of 2022, shortly after her husband's inauguration, are alleged to include a Graff diamond necklace and Chanel handbag worth a total of 60 million won (£32,500).
Investigators earlier this month questioned Jeon Seong-bae, a shaman who goes by Geonjin, over whether he presented the gifts to the then

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Family & friends of 3 Brits facing death penalty in £300k Bali coke smuggling plot reveal horror as trio's fate awaits
Family & friends of 3 Brits facing death penalty in £300k Bali coke smuggling plot reveal horror as trio's fate awaits

The Sun

timean hour ago

  • The Sun

Family & friends of 3 Brits facing death penalty in £300k Bali coke smuggling plot reveal horror as trio's fate awaits

THE family and friends of three Brits facing the death penalty after being accused of a £300,000 coke smuggling plot have revealed they are in "deep shock". Jon Collyer, 37, and Lisa Stocker, 39, both of Gillingham, Kent, are charged with attempting to smuggle 1kg of cocaine into Bali on February 1. 6 6 6 A third Brit, Phineas Float, 31, who was allegedly due to receive the pair, was arrested a few days later. The three Brits face death by firing squad if they are found guilty of the offence under Indonesia's tough anti-drug laws. Members of their families and friends have now spoken of their horror over the drug arrests. Julian Collyer, dad of Jon, said: "I'm in deep shock, to be honest. "I'm very, very worried as any father or parent would be. I'm concerned about the court case and just very worried." Speaking to the DailyMail, the East Sussex dad revealed he spoke to his son for the first time in three weeks. A family member of mum Lisa Stocker, who wished to remain anonymous, said her kids "are desperate without her". She added: "She's just a mum. Her kids are going to be desperate without her. "It doesn't bear thinking about. I'm so shocked and I can't sleep at night thinking about what might happen to her." Stocker and Collyer allegedly brought the drugs into Bali's Ngurah Rai International Airport via Doha airport in Qatar. Brit woman, 21, rotting in Dubai hellhole jail without a shower for a month after being arrested on drugs charges The pair was arrested at the airport when security officials discovered suspicious items in their suitcase during a random X-ray check. Police claim airport security seized 994.56g of cocaine in sealed blue plastic Angel Delight packets in Collyer's suitcase. Cops allege more cocaine was found in Stocker's bag. It's claimed Float was expected to meet Collyer and Stocker at the airport. Collyer and Stocker are being tried together and Float separately, although the trio appeared together in Denpasar earlier this week. The trio's fate will be decided by three judges, since Indonesia does not have a jury system. Float was all smiles as he faced the court in Bal earlier this week. He told journalists to 'f**k off' as he was led to face drug trafficking charges. 6 6 6 He arrived in a prison van at Bali's Denpasar Central Court with his wrists shackled and wearing a red prison vest over a white shirt. The Brit hurled abuse at the press while being walked to a holding cell. Article 113 of Indonesia narcotics law states that anyone who imports or distributes drugs is subject to the death penalty. The three have been held in Bali's notorious Kerobokan prison and it has been reported that Float has gotten into fights with other inmates. Prison authorities threatened him with being thrown into the feared 'rat cell' isolation over an alleged recent brawl with another inmate. Around 530 people, including 96 foreigners, are on death row in Indonesia, mostly for drug-related offences, according to the country's Ministry of Immigration and Corrections.

China surpasses German engineering with world's tallest wind turbine
China surpasses German engineering with world's tallest wind turbine

Times

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  • Times

China surpasses German engineering with world's tallest wind turbine

Other countries compete to build the tallest skyscraper, or the biggest Ferris wheel. China and Germany are more serious about their engineering: they compete for the prize of having the biggest wind turbine. One of China's two leading wind turbine companies, Dongfang Electric, announced on Friday it had completed a key test on the latest machine that, when it goes into service shortly, will break that record. Standing 340 metres from its base in the Pacific, off the coast of the country's Fujian province, to the tip of its blades when they rotate to their highest points, it will be the first wind turbine to be taller than the Eiffel Tower. Dongfang — meaning the East — said it had finished load testing a prototype blade for the turbine, itself 150 metres long. 'We're harnessing the power of tech to plant the seeds of a greener future,' it said in celebration. 'Every blade carries a low-carbon dream, ready to catch the wind and grow strong.' China under President Xi has put huge economic weight on not only an ever-expanding industrial base but also being at the forefront of green technologies. With no room for political opposition, and a heavy continuing reliance nationally on coal and other fossil fuels at the same time, there is little of the public debate around wind power that western European companies have faced. China already makes more than 80 per cent of the world's solar panels. Its low cost base — unfairly subsidised, according to western rivals — is also undercutting and starting to dominate American and European production in wind power too. A worker at the Dongfang factory operates a robotic arm At present the wind turbine claimed to be the world's highest was constructed by another Chinese company, Mingyang, and operates off the southern Chinese island of Hainan. Its hub is at the same height as Dongfang's — 185 metres off the ground — but its blades are a few metres shorter. A similarly sized turbine is already operating at the site to which the Dongfang blades are believed to be heading, the Fujian Fuzhou Offshore Wind Power Industrial Park. Its maximum capacity is 18MW of electricity, and the Hainan turbine is 20MW, which the new turbine will surpass by 6MW. According to estimates, that will be enough at average 10 metres per second windspeeds to power 55,000 homes on its own. Britain's tallest wind turbines — at the Longhill Burn Wind Farm in West Lothian, Scotland — stand up to 150m tall. The blades reach as high as 200m. How long any of these three monsters maintain their dominance is unclear. As Germany tries to reclaim its traditional global leadership in engineering — and tries to stave off Chinese competition — its companies are also building higher. A turbine being designed and built by Gicon, a German conglomerate, will stand at 363 metres from toe to the tip of the vertical blade. It, however, is based on a novel design, in which smaller blades rotate from a 300-metre high lattice structure itself influenced by the design of the Eiffel Tower. It will, however, be the second highest man-made object in Germany, after the Berlin TV Tower.

Exclusive: US suspends licenses to ship nuclear plant parts to China, sources say
Exclusive: US suspends licenses to ship nuclear plant parts to China, sources say

Reuters

time8 hours ago

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Exclusive: US suspends licenses to ship nuclear plant parts to China, sources say

June 6 (Reuters) - The U.S. in recent days suspended licenses for nuclear equipment suppliers to sell to China's power plants, according to four people familiar with the matter, as the two countries engage in a damaging trade war. The suspensions were issued by the U.S. Department of Commerce, the people said, and affect export licenses for parts and equipment used with nuclear power plants. Nuclear equipment suppliers are among a wide range of companies whose sales have been restricted over the past two weeks as the U.S.-China trade war shifted from negotiating tariffs to throttling each other's supply chains. It is unclear whether a Thursday call between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping would affect the suspensions. The U.S. and China agreed on May 12 to roll back triple digit, tit-for-tat tariffs for 90 days, but the truce between the two biggest economies quickly went south, with the U.S. claiming China reneged on terms related to rare earth elements, and China accusing the U.S. of "abusing export control measures" by warning that using Huawei Ascend AI chips anywhere in the world violated U.S. export controls. After Thursday's call, further talks on key issues were expected. The U.S. Department of Commerce did not respond to a request for comment on the nuclear equipment restrictions. On May 28, a spokesperson said the department was reviewing exports of strategic significance to China. "In some cases, Commerce has suspended existing export licenses or imposed additional license requirements while the review is pending," the spokesperson said in a statement. The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. U.S. nuclear equipment suppliers include Westinghouse and Emerson (EMR.N), opens new tab. Westinghouse, whose technology is used in over 400 nuclear reactors around the world, and Emerson, which provides measurement and other tools for the nuclear industry, did not respond to requests for comment. The suspensions affect business worth hundreds of millions of dollars, two of the sources said. They also coincide with Chinese restrictions on critical metals threatening supply chains for manufacturers worldwide, especially America's Big Three automakers. Reuters could not determine whether the new restrictions were tied to the trade war, or if and how quickly they might be reinstated. Department of Commerce export licenses typically run for four years and include authorized quantities and values. But many new restrictions on exports to China have been imposed in the last two weeks, according to sources, and include license requirements for a hydraulic fluids supplier for sales to China. Other license suspensions went to GE Aerospace for jet engines for China's COMAC aircraft, sources said. The U.S. also now requires licenses to ship ethane to China, as Reuters reported first last week. Houston-based Enterprise Product Partners (EPD.N), opens new tab said Wednesday that its emergency requests to complete three proposed cargoes of ethane to China, totaling some 2.2 million barrels, had not been granted. Enterprise said a May 23 requirement for a license to sell butane to China, in addition to the ethane, was subsequently withdrawn. Dallas-based Energy Transfer said it was notified on Tuesday about the new ethane licensing requirement, and planned to apply and file for an emergency authorization. Other sectors that have been hit with new restrictions include companies that sell electronic design automation software such as Cadence Design Systems (CDNS.O), opens new tab.

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