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Death
in Singapore
Raymond Bonner and
Christine Spolar • FT Magazine
An American engineer's mysterious death after working on a project involving a Chinese telecom giant.
Security and technology experts consulted by the FT reviewed the project plan and all noted its civilian and potential military applications. Robert York, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara - a world leader in GaN research and where Shane earned a doctorate in silicon devices - said it would be "unnerving but not surprising" if Huawei were to be trying to advance its GaN technology. The high-powered amplifier has civilian use but "could be used for a number of military applications: high-powered radar, electronic warfare including signal jamming and even potentially some weapons", Professor York added.
Shane, it turns out, had deep misgivings about the project he was working on and feared he was compromising US national security. His family wants to know whether that project sent him to his grave.
ROSLAN RAHMAN/AFP/Getty Images
L'Étranger
Lauren Collins • New
Yorker
France, wealth, and the
saga of tax exile Gérard Depardieu.
Nouns get all the good parts-potato, macaca, the Appalachian Trail-but this winter, in Paris, a jobbing three-syllable adjective set off a political scandal. Minable, meaning "pathetic" or "shabby," débuted on the breakfast show "Télématin" on December 12th. The host asked the French Prime Minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, what he thought of Gérard Depardieu's decision to establish residency in Néchin, a Belgian village of two thousand souls, and nearly as many beet fields, in order to escape a seventy-five-per-cent tax that the French government had promised to impose on income exceeding a million euros. The normally urbane Ayrault replied, "Je trouve ça assez minable."
Sean Gallup/Getty Images
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