标签： North America

On Thursday, the first day of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s official visit to China, Beijing rolled out a warm ceremonial welcome for the visiting American delegation. The opening moments of the trip featured smiling, cheering Chinese children who gathered to greet Trump, alongside a formal military parade organized to honor the high-profile diplomatic visit.

Following the opening ceremonial events, Trump held an extended nearly two-hour closed-door meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The kickoff of the visit marked a key moment in bilateral diplomatic engagement between the world’s two largest economies, setting the stage for further discussions on trade, security, and cross-border issues that shape the U.S.-China relationship.

In a high-stakes federal trial that underscores growing tensions over cross-border law enforcement activities on US soil, a 64-year-old US resident has been found guilty of running what federal prosecutors describe as the first proven secret Chinese police station operating on American territory.

Following a seven-day jury trial in New York’s Southern District Federal Court, Lu Jianwang, also known by the name Harry Lu, was convicted on two core charges: conspiring to act as an unregistered illegal agent for China’s Ministry of Public Security (MPS), and obstruction of justice for destroying evidence related to the operation once an investigation was launched. Prosecutors confirmed that Lu now faces a maximum sentence of 30 years behind bars when he is sentenced at a later date.

Court documents and trial testimony laid out that Lu launched the outpost in early 2022, taking over an entire floor above a ramen shop in Manhattan’s bustling Chinatown neighborhood to house the operation. His co-defendant, Chen Jinping, already pleaded guilty to the same conspiracy charge in December 2024 and is currently awaiting his own sentencing. When the Federal Bureau of Investigation launched a formal probe into the station in 2022, Lu and Chen deliberately deleted text communications exchanged with a senior MPS official to cover up their activities, according to prosecution arguments. The Chinatown station was ultimately shut down later that same year after the investigation became public.

Lu’s conviction arrives the same week that a California municipal mayor resigned from office after being hit with separate charges of acting as an unregistered illegal agent for the Chinese government, marking two high-profile legal actions connected to alleged Chinese influence operations in the US within days of one another.

James C. Barnacle Jr., assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York field office, said in a statement following the verdict that Lu deliberately used the New York station to target Chinese dissidents living in the United States to advance the Chinese government’s political priorities.

Rights groups have documented more than 100 similar unauthorised outposts linked to Chinese authorities across 53 countries around the world. These organizations allege that the stations are used to monitor, threaten, and intimidate Chinese nationals living overseas, including pro-democracy activists who have relocated to the United States to escape political persecution.

Chinese government officials have repeatedly pushed back against these accusations, insisting that the facilities are innocuous “service stations” created to provide routine administrative support to Chinese citizens living abroad. Beijing says the services offered include pandemic-related support and processing driver’s license renewals, rather than political surveillance or harassment.

A congressional investigation into the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has made public sworn interview transcripts from two high-profile figures: U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Gateway Computers co-founder billionaire Ted Waitt. As of the release, neither man has faced any accusations of misconduct related to Epstein’s alleged criminal network from victims or investigative bodies.

In his transcribed voluntary testimony before the House Oversight Committee on May 6, Lutnick outlined three brief encounters with Epstein, who was once his next-door neighbor in New York City. The commerce secretary, widely known as the key architect of the Trump administration’s global tariffs policy, told investigators that his first introduction to Epstein came in 2005, when he and his wife were invited to coffee at Epstein’s Manhattan home. During a tour of the residence, the couple was shown a room fitted with only a massage table and surrounded by candles. When Lutnick asked how often Epstein received massages there, the disgraced financier responded with a suggestive remark: “Every day and the right kind of massage.”

Lutnick told the panel he found the comment deeply off-putting, and he and his wife left the property immediately after the exchange. He added that he made an explicit decision right then to cut off all personal and professional ties with Epstein, a statement he had previously given to congressional investigators. But newly released court documents from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Epstein investigation earlier this year revealed a previously undisclosed visit Lutnick made to Epstein’s private Caribbean island in 2012, years after he claimed to have severed all contact. The revelation sparked bipartisan demands for Lutnick’s resignation from the Trump Cabinet.

During his recent testimony, Lutnick offered an explanation for the 2012 visit. He told the committee that Epstein’s staff reached out to his group unexpectedly while he was on a family vacation in St. Thomas, located just a short distance from Epstein’s private island. Lutnick said the unprompted contact left him unnerved, noting: “Without any communication for years, [how] would he inexplicably know where I’m going? It’s unsettling, actually.” The commerce secretary confirmed that he, his family, another couple and their children, plus accompanying staff, accepted the invitation for lunch. He emphasized that the group only dined outdoors on the island’s grounds and never entered any of the property’s buildings, describing the visit as unremarkable: “We sat outside, had lunch. It was boring. We left.” Lutnick also acknowledged one additional brief, casual interaction with Epstein in 2011 focused on construction scaffolding, which he described as completely meaningless and inconsequential.

Alongside Lutnick’s transcript, the committee also released the record of its April 30 interview with Waitt, the billionaire tech entrepreneur. Waitt detailed his six-year romantic relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s convicted co-conspirator, which ran from 2004 to 2010. Waitt told investigators he had very limited direct contact with Epstein and never witnessed any illegal or harmful activity during his relationship with Maxwell.

Waitt told the panel he understood Maxwell’s role with Epstein to be that of an estate manager, responsible for overseeing the financier’s multiple properties and staff. He added that he always felt uncomfortable with the dynamic between the pair, noting that Epstein held clear sway over Maxwell, who consistently deferred to him: “He did seem to have significant influence over her, she always kind of look[ed] up to him and I was not comfortable with that.” Waitt also confirmed that their relationship overlapped with Epstein’s 2008 guilty plea in Florida to charges related to the prostitution of a minor. He said Maxwell was subpoenaed to testify in the case during that time, and that she was visibly stressed by the legal proceedings but repeatedly denied any personal involvement in Epstein’s crimes.

Waitt stated that he and Maxwell never cohabitated, as he maintained a primary residence in California while she lived mostly in New York. He denied having any knowledge of abuse or misconduct by either Epstein or Maxwell, and said he had no awareness of Maxwell ever traveling to Epstein’s private island during their relationship. He added that Maxwell was not publicly identified as a co-conspirator in Epstein’s crimes until after their relationship ended, and he did not learn of the formal charges against her until she was arrested by federal authorities.

Just three weeks ago, the outlook for Republican control of the U.S. House of Representatives after November’s midterm elections looked far from promising. In the two months following the outbreak of the Iran War, former President Donald Trump’s approval ratings had slid steadily, with voters particularly sour on his management of the economy and persistent inflation. At the same time, Republican efforts to gain a partisan upper hand through congressional redistricting in conservative-led states like Texas had been effectively neutralized by countermoves from Democratic lawmakers in blue-leaning California and Virginia. Writing off the race entirely if it had been held that spring, former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich told The New York Times in April that the party would need to resolve voter anger over the ongoing conflict, rising cost of living, and soaring gas prices to have any shot at holding their majority. That gloomy political landscape has been upended entirely by two consequential court decisions that have dramatically reshaped the electoral map ahead of November’s vote. Last week, the Virginia Supreme Court struck down a voter-approved new congressional districting plan that had been on track to flip four seats currently held by Republicans to Democratic candidates. Following the ruling, House Republican Campaign Committee chair Congressman Richard Hudson declared in a public statement that the GOP was now gaining momentum ahead of the midterms, saying, “We’re on offence, and we’re going to win.” The ruling that set this entire shift in motion came one week earlier from the U.S. Supreme Court. The court’s conservative majority overturned decades of legal precedent, ruling that the landmark 1960s Voting Rights Act does not require states to draw congressional districts that give minority communities proportional representation to their share of the state’s overall population. The majority held that only overt, intentional racial discrimination qualifies as legal grounds to throw out a state’s districting plan, ruling that partisan gerrymandering — the practice of drawing district lines to benefit one political party — is fully constitutional, even when it weakens the voting power of racial minority groups. The ruling opened the door for Republican-controlled legislatures across the American South to rapidly dismantle court-ordered majority-minority districts, which have historically sent Black Democratic candidates to Congress due to consistent voting patterns. Since the ruling, GOP-led states have rushed to redraw their maps to lock in more Republican-held seats. Tennessee became the first state to act, approving a new map that gives the GOP a competitive advantage in all nine of the state’s congressional districts. In the early hours of Tuesday, the Louisiana Senate passed a revised map that is expected to flip one of the state’s two currently Democratic-held seats to Republican control. To accommodate the last-minute map change, the state’s Republican governor pushed back the congressional primary, originally scheduled for this past Saturday. Alabama is currently advancing similar map changes, and while a small group of Republican lawmakers in South Carolina joined Democrats to block a GOP-led redraw so far, the state’s Republican governor has threatened to call a special legislative session to force the plan through. When combined with a new Republican-friendly districting plan approved in Florida on the same day as the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, what had previously looked like a stalemate in the national redistricting fight is now projected to hand Republicans a competitive advantage in at least eight additional House seats. Currently, Republicans hold a narrow 218-212 majority in the chamber, with three Democratic and two Republican seats currently vacant. That narrow existing majority means the new map changes have made Democrats’ path to flipping control of the House far more challenging than it was just a month ago. “These recent changes have left Democrats with less room for error,” explained Geoffrey Skelley, an election analyst for nonpartisan election tracking site Decision Desk HQ. Even with the new pro-GOP electoral map, the race could still swing back to Democrats if Trump’s unpopularity with general voters persists through November. Current polling gives Trump lower favorability ratings than he had in 2018, when a blue wave handed Democrats a net gain of 40 House seats and control of the chamber. In a memo sent to House Democrats this week, Democratic House Leader Hakeem Jeffries argued that the GOP’s gerrymandering efforts would not be enough to offset the deeply unfavorable political environment Republicans face this November. “Given the highly unfavourable political environment confronting House Republicans, the extremists will not meaningfully benefit from their scandalous gerrymandering scheme,” Jeffries wrote. Still, the long-term impact of the new maps extends beyond 2026. Because every House seat is up for election every two years, the newly drawn districts will lock in a Republican advantage for future cycles when political conditions may be more favorable for conservatives. That long-term threat is why Democrats have pledged a fierce, all-out effort to block the new maps and re-level the electoral playing field before November. “Our effort to forcefully push back against the Republican redistricting scheme will not slow down,” Jeffries wrote. “We are just getting started.”

In a landmark ruling that underscores the centrality of Indigenous land rights in Canadian constitutional politics, an Alberta judge has dismissed a bid to hold a province-wide referendum on Alberta’s separation from Canada. The decision came after several Indigenous First Nations groups argued that proceeding with the independence vote without meaningful consultation would directly violate their inherent territorial rights.

According to Canadian public broadcaster CBC, Justice Shaina Leonard delivered the ruling Wednesday at an Edmonton courthouse, bringing an end to the latest push by separatist organizers to advance their long-held goal of breaking away from the Canadian federation. The petition was led by Stay Free Alberta, a grassroots separatist group that claimed to have collected more than 300,000 signatures – a threshold that would have legally required the province to schedule a binding referendum on independence. Leonard had already paused the official signature verification process while she reviewed the First Nations’ legal challenge, ahead of Wednesday’s final ruling.

In her dual rulings released this week, Leonard found that the Alberta provincial government failed in its legal duty to consult four affected Indigenous nations: the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, Blood Tribe, Piikani Nation, and Siksika Nation. Indigenous advocates have long argued that any separation initiative would redraw territorial boundaries and reconfigure land governance without the free, prior, and informed consent of the First Nations who have inhabited and governed those lands since time immemorial.

The push for Alberta separation is rooted in decades of growing resentment toward the federal government in Ottawa, particularly among segments of the province’s population. Frustration has centered most sharply on disputes over natural resource development: many Albertans argue that successive federal Liberal governments have prioritized national climate policy at the expense of the province’s lucrative oil and gas sector, blocking critical pipeline projects and imposing regulations that have stunted industry growth.

Separatist sentiment has also been fueled by a widespread belief among Albertans that the province, which holds vast fossil fuel and mineral wealth, contributes far more to federal tax revenues than it receives back in national transfers and public investment. Many residents also argue that eastern Canadian political elites consistently disregard western priorities, deepening a cultural and political rift that has widened in recent years.

What was once a marginal fringe movement only a decade ago has grown steadily in traction over the last 12 months, pushing the threat of a national unity crisis higher on Canada’s political agenda. While the Alberta separatist movement remains fragmented, with no single unified leadership or platform, most supporters agree that the province needs far greater autonomy over its natural resource management and domestic policy agenda, regardless of whether full separation is achieved.

Wednesday’s ruling marks a major legal setback for the separatist movement, prioritizing Indigenous rights over a popular grassroots push for political self-determination and setting a new precedent for future separation initiatives in the country.

Ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup co-hosted by the United States, Canada, and Mexico, the Trump administration has issued a key policy adjustment: it will waive the mandatory $15,000 visa deposit requirement for football fans traveling from 50 restricted countries, as long as they hold valid match tickets for the tournament. Among the 50 countries included in this exemption, five national squads – Algeria, Cabo Verde, Ivory Coast, Senegal, and Tunisia – have already qualified for the global tournament kicking off on June 11. “We are waiving visa bonds for qualified fans who bought World Cup tickets,” Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Mora Namdar confirmed in an official statement provided to the BBC. The $15,000 visa bond mandate was first rolled out last August as part of a 12-month pilot program, a key component of the administration’s broader immigration enforcement push. U.S. State Department documentation notes the policy was designed to address the problem of visa overstays and cases where applicant screening and vetting materials are deemed insufficient. The full deposit would be returned to visitors once their authorized stay in the U.S. comes to an end. Prior to this new announcement, only participating players and coaches had been granted exemptions from the bond requirement, leaving ordinary ticket-holding fans subject to the fee until this week. While the bond suspension applies to fans from 50 countries, the exemption does not extend to fans traveling from Iran and Haiti, who remain barred from entering the U.S. under existing restrictions. Even for these two nations, however, World Cup-bound players and coaches are still exempt from the entry ban for tournament-related travel. Additional travel restrictions remain in place for fans from Ivory Coast and Senegal – both World Cup-qualified nations – under the administration’s expanded travel ban framework. This latest policy change comes as the U.S. maintains another controversial immigration rule that could impact World Cup visitors: late last year, the government announced that tourists from dozens of countries could be required to hand over five years of their social media history as a condition of entry. Human and civil rights organizations have repeatedly raised alarms about this policy, warning travelers that such extensive screening creates multiple risks, including heightened chances of entry denial, potential arrest, broader travel restrictions, targeted racial profiling, and increased government surveillance of visitors. The 2026 World Cup, the first to be expanded to 48 teams, will mark the first time the tournament has been co-hosted across three North American nations, with matches scheduled across multiple U.S. cities from the tournament’s opening round through the final. This policy adjustment reflects the administration’s effort to balance its strict immigration agenda with the logistical and diplomatic demands of hosting one of the world’s largest international sporting events.