U.S. seeks China's help against North Korean cyberattacks

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• NEW: U.S. has asked China to help combat North Korean hacking, official says
• Guardians of Peace mocks the FBI
• U.S. says it's confident North Korea is behind cyberattack
• North Korea warns of "serious consequences" if the U.S. keeps tying it to the attack

 (CNN) -- The United States has asked China for help battling North Korean hacking of American information systems, such as the Sony Pictures incident, a senior administration official told CNN on Saturday.

"We have discussed this issue with the Chinese to share information, express our concerns about this attack, and to ask for their cooperation," the official said. "In our cybersecurity discussions, both China and the United States have expressed the view that conducting destructive attacks in cyberspace is outside the norms of appropriate cyber behavior."

North Korea's Internet traffic goes through China. President Barack Obama said Friday, "We've got no indication that North Korea was acting in conjunction with another country."

The New York Times first reported that the United States had approached China.

On Saturday, the Guardians of Peace, a group of hackers accused of performing the cyberattack on Sony Pictures, mocked the FBI in a new statement.

"The result of investigation by FBI is so excellent that you might have seen what we were doing with your own eye," said the statement posted on the file-sharing website pastebin. "We congratulate you (sic) success. FBI is the BEST in the world. You will find the gift for FBI at the following address. Enjoy!"

The link provided in the message leads to a YouTube video titled "You Are An Idiot."

The FBI declined comment on the message.

FBI says North Korea responsible

The FBI said that North Korea is responsible for the cyberattack on Sony Pictures. An FBI investigation linked the malware, infrastructure and techniques used by the Guardians of Peace in the Sony attack to previous North Korean cyberattacks.

The hackers broke into Sony's servers, published private emails and information, and threatened to attack movie theaters screening "The Interview," a comedy film about an assassination plot on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Earlier Saturday, North Korea slammed U.S. claims that the regime is responsible for a cyberattack on Sony Pictures -- and then proposed the two countries work together.

"Whoever is going to frame our country for a crime should present concrete evidence," the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported.

"America's childish investigation result and its attempt to frame us for this crime shows their hostile tendency towards us."

But in a rare move, the North Korean regime said both countries should work together.

"While America has been criticized by its own public and continues to point the finger at us, we suggest mutual investigation with America on this case," KCNA said.

"If America refuses our proposal of mutual investigation, continues to link us to this case, and talk about actions in response, they (America) will be met with serious consequences."

U.S. replies to North Korea

National Security Council spokesman Mark Stroh replied to the North Korean statement:

"As the FBI made clear, we are confident the North Korean government is responsible for this destructive attack. We stand by this conclusion. The government of North Korea has a long history of denying responsibility for destructive and provocative actions. If the North Korean government wants to help, they can admit their culpability and compensate Sony for the damages this attack caused."

Obama said that Sony Pictures made a mistake in canceling the release of the movie.

"I am sympathetic to the concerns that they face," Obama said. "Having said all that, yes, I think they made a mistake. Let's not get into that way of doing business."

North Korea rejected the notion that it would attack "innocent moviegoers."

"We will not tolerate the people who are willing to insult our supreme leader, but even when we retaliate, we will not conduct terror against innocent moviegoers," KCNA said.

"The retaliation will target the ones who are responsible and the originators of the insults. Our army has the intention and ability to do (so)."

Analyst: We underestimated North Korea

The show may go on

Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton rebuffed Obama's criticism in an interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria, saying his company did not make a mistake.
Sony CEO: We did not make a mistake

He said the decision to pull back from the planned December 25 release was based on major movie theater companies telling Sony that they would not screen the film.

"We have not caved. We have not given in," Lynton said. "We have persevered, and we have not backed down. We have always had the desire to have the American public see this movie."

And despite enduring what he called "the worst cyberattack in American history," Lynton said his studios would make the movie again. But in retrospect, he may have "done some things slightly differently."

A defiant Sony scrambles to find a way out for 'The Interview'

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China bans singing of its National Anthem at weddings & funerals

According to a statement by Chinese Xinhua News Agency, China’s national anthem can no longer be performed at weddings, funerals, balls or other non-political functions. They can now only be performed at certain dignified events.

The anthem, known as the March of the Volunteers' may be played at the start of important celebrations or public political gatherings, formal diplomatic occasions or significant international gatherings.

The anthem can also be performed when Chinese athletes win medals and “at arenas where national dignity should be fought for and safeguarded".

The Chinese government said the reason is to “standardize proper etiquette for the national anthem, which reflects national independence and liberation, a prosperous, strong country and the affluence of the people”

People who break the rules will be “criticized and corrected“, Xinhua added.

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U.S. sends new submarine-hunting jets to Japan amid East Asia tension

By Tim Kelly
TOKYO (Reuters) - The U.S. Navy's first advanced P-8 Poseidon patrol aircraft has arrived in Japan, the start of a deployment that will upgrade America's ability to hunt submarines and other vessels in seas close to China as tension in the region mounts.
The deployment, planned before China last month established an air defense zone covering islands controlled by Japan and claimed by Beijing, includes six aircraft to be delivered to Kadena air base on Okinawa this month.
The first arrived on Sunday, a spokesman for the U.S. Navy told Reuters. The mission in the waters west of Japan's main islands will be the new aircraft's first anywhere.
The jet, built by Boeing Co based on its 737 passenger plane, has been built to replace the aging propeller-powered Lockheed Martin P-3 Orion patrol aircraft, which has been in service for 50 years.
Packed with the latest radar equipment and armed with torpedoes and anti-ship missiles, the P-8 is able to fly further and stay out on mission longer than the P-3.
The arrival of the P-8 came a day before U.S. Vice President Joe Biden is due to arrive in Tokyo, a visit that is being overshadowed by the territorial spat in the East China Sea between Japan and China.
While taking no position on the sovereignty of the islands known to the Japanese as the Senkakus and to the Chinese as the Daioyu, it does recognize Japanese control and therefore part of territory it would defend under a security pact with Japan.

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A jail by another name: China labor camps now drug detox centers

KUNMING, China (Reuters) - Li Zhongying was freed from a Chinese labor camp ahead of schedule in September because, guards told her, the government was scrapping 're-education through labor', a heavily criticized penal system created in the 1950s.
Several hundred other inmates were not so lucky, she said. Like Li, they were held without trial and forced to do factory work under what she called "cruel" conditions. They remained because they were drug offenders, she told Reuters.
Many of China's re-education through labor camps, instead of being abolished in line with a ruling Communist Party announcement this month, are being turned into compulsory drug rehabilitation centers where inmates can be incarcerated for two years or more without trial.
Human rights activists and freed inmates said drug offenders were still being forced to do factory work, as has been the practice under the re-education through labor system, colloquially known as 'laojiao'.
New York-based Human Rights Watch estimates more than 60 percent of the 160,000 people in labor camps at the start of the year were there for drug offenses. Those people were unlikely to see any change in their treatment, it said.
"The drug detox people are doing exactly the same work," said Li, who spent 19 months in a labor camp in Kunming, the capital of southern Yunnan province.
Police caught Li in Beijing early last year trying to petition the government over a grievance that dated back to the mid-1990s. They sent her home to Yunnan, where she was sentenced without trial to 21 months.
Li, speaking from Beijing, said she worked at a biscuit factory inside the camp for up to 15 hours a day.
A production line manager, speaking to Reuters outside the facility on a dusty road near Kunming airport late last week, said the inmates left inside were undergoing drug rehab. Among the items they made were handicrafts, including embroidered items, said the manager, declining to be identified.
SURPRISE ANNOUNCEMENT

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People walk outside a labour camp in Kunming, Yunnan province, November 22, 2013. Many of China's re …

China's re-education through labor law, in place since 1957, empowered police to detain petty criminals for up to four years without trial.
Many of the camps have housed drug rehab centers since mid-2008, when a new Anti-Drug Law came into force. Police can sentence drug offenders without trial to two years or more of compulsory rehabilitation, which can include forced labor, according to the law.
Labor camps across China began changing their names to drug centers earlier this year, after a surprise announcement in January from Public Security Minister Meng Jianzhu that the network of 350 camps would be scrapped.
They also took it as a cue to start releasing some people who were there for non-drug offences. The camps also hold petty criminals, prostitutes, petitioners and members of the banned spiritual group Falun Gong, rights activists say.
Government websites and state media have reported steps to change the names of camps to drug rehab centers or to re-train staff this year in provinces including Guangdong, Hainan, Henan, Jiangsu, Jilin, Liaoning, Sichuan, Yunnan and Zhejiang, as well as in Shanghai and Beijing.
The Communist Party's policymaking Central Committee announced the formal abolition of the re-education through labor camp system this month as part of a series of sweeping societal and economic reforms.
Nicholas Bequelin, senior Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch, said he believed the "great majority" of forced labor camps would keep functioning as drug rehab centers.
The shift did not represent a change of "direction or principles" on the part of the party, added Jiang Tianyong, a human rights lawyer in Beijing.
"It's wrong to say it has no meaning, but it's too optimistic to think it will change a lot," he said.
"This is how power in this country operates ... They can't use re-education through labor camps to control people, so they just change the name and control people."

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Iron wire fencing is seen outside a labour camp in Kunming, Yunnan province, November 22, 2013. Many …

Rights groups have said conditions in labor camps are terrible and that detainees frequently had to do hard labor with minimal health and safety precautions.
Despite long-standing international criticism of the camps, many Chinese are largely oblivious to them because many of those who are locked up are poor and on the fringes of society.
The party this month said it saw the scrapping of the re-education through labor regime as an improvement to the justice system that would help it regain credibility with the populace and better protect human rights.
Neither the Public Security Ministry nor the Justice Ministry responded to questions from Reuters about the transformation of the camps into drug rehab centers.
DRUG ADDICTS STAY BEHIND
In Shanghai, shiny metal characters saying "Shanghai No.4 Re-education Through Labor Facility" still adorn the gate, but the last inmates were released months ago and the compound is now a drug rehab centre, said a guard at the facility.
"The official documents, everything, has already been changed," said the guard, who did not give his name.
On September 14, Su Yuhong left the Masanjia forced labor camp in northern Liaoning province.
Masanjia made international headlines last year when a woman in the U.S. state of Oregon found a note in a Halloween decoration kit from Kmart that was supposedly written by a camp inmate who claimed to have played a part in making the product.
"Only the drug addicts were left," Su said by telephone from the city of Shenyang, where she now lives.
By mid-June, the 21st Century Business Herald newspaper quoted Justice Ministry researcher Wang Gongyi as saying there were only 50,000 labor camp inmates left in the country, compared with hundreds of thousands in compulsory drug rehab centers.
Beyond drug centers, Chinese authorities still have many ways to detain people without trial, rights activists said.
Police can detain sex workers, for example, under a mechanism known as "custody and education".
The terminology even appears to be interchangeable.
An article in July on the Public Security Ministry website said prostitutes in Zhejiang province had been sentenced to "re-education through labor at a custody and education facility".
Jiang, the lawyer, said police had used other means to curtail the freedom of some, including Falun Gong adherents and repeat petitioners.
The number of court convictions of such people was on the rise, as was the use of 'rule of law study classes', which amounted to unlawful detention, he said.
"So long as (the authorities) feel a need to maintain stability, simply abolishing laojiao will not solve the problem," he said.

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Japan's yakuza mobsters becoming 'Goldman Sachs with guns'

Tokyo (AFP) - Japanese mobsters driving flash cars purchased with bank loans. Executives bowing in apology for loaning millions to those underworld figures. And high-level officials vowing to squash the crime syndicates, known as yakuza.

Japan Inc. is engulfed in its worst mob scandal in years and it's shining a rare light on the links between big business and shadowy organised crime groups usually known for low-brow ventures like extortion and loan sharking.
But with membership falling as police ratchet up a crackdown, experts say the yakuza are branching far outside their traditional business into everything from insider trading to funding business startups.
"Insider trading has become huge -- you can make much more money manipulating stocks" than extorting businesses, says Jake Adelstein, a crime writer whose bestselling memoir "Tokyo Vice" is set to become a Hollywood movie.
Adelstein, a former reporter at Japan's top-selling Yomiuri daily, likens the Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan's biggest organised crime group, to "Goldman Sachs with guns".
Tattoos and missing pinkies

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Yasuhiro Sato, president of Mizuho Financial Group, bows his head at a press conference in Tokyo on  …

Many mobsters -- forever associated with full-body tattoos and lopped-off pinky fingers -- have now ditched that tough guy persona in favour of tailored suits and clean-cut look that could pass in any boardroom, Adelstein said.
"They're savvy investors," he said added. "They like to gamble."
The yakuza occupy a grey area in Japan's usually law-abiding society.
They are both feared and loathed as social outcasts, while they're revered in equal measure through film, fanzines and manga cartoons.
Like the Italian mafia or Chinese triads, the yakuza engage in activities ranging from gambling, drugs, and prostitution to loan sharking, protection rackets and other illegal ventures often run through front companies.

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A 53-year-old former yakuza gangster shows off his silicone-made finger on May 27, 2013 during a vis …

But unlike their foreign counterparts, yakuza are legal groups with offices in major Japanese cities, and they have historically been tolerated by authorities, although there are periodic clampdowns on some of their less savoury activities.
In fact, the Yamaguchi-gumi helped dole out food after a major quake in the western city of Kobe in 1995.
'Sophisticated methods'
But Tokyo is now under intense pressure from abroad to clamp down on yakuza and their money laundering, as the US Treasury Department works to freeze the overseas assets of top Japanese crime groups which it says make "billions of dollars annually in illicit proceeds".
The crackdown at home has intensified after Mizuho Bank said in September that it had loaned money to organised crime members, an admission subsequently repeated by at least four other major lenders including Japan's biggest bank, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group.

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A retired Japanese yakuza crime boss shows the tattoo on his back featuring a carp swimming up a wat …

Sometimes loans were legitimately used by gangsters to buy foreign sports cars or other expensive items, while in other cases the vehicle was quickly sold on the black market with the loan never paid back.
The scandal at Mizuho worsened after it initially said top executives knew nothing about the loans, only to backtrack on that claim as a company-commissioned report blasted its laissez-faire compliance.
Mizuho later said more than 50 executives would be punished with its chief executive foregoing pay for six months.
But the latest admissions are not a first for the country's banks, a big source of concern among police wary of sharing details of investigations with mob-linked firms, experts say.
"It is baffling that Mizuho board members failed to act," said Toshihiko Kubo, professor of financial law at Ritsumeikan University.

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Kenichi Shinoda, boss of Japan's largest yakuza gang, the Yamaguchi-gumi, gets into a car on April 9 …

"Once they learned that loan recipients were related to the mob, they should have taken immediate action."
Major lenders are routinely approached by those with links to organised crime looking to raise money, said an anti-yakuza campaigner in Tokyo, echoing calls from Finance Minister Taro Aso, among others, to tighten banking rules.
"Crime syndicates...are out to make money, and they'll use whatever means available," said the campaigner, who asked not to be identified.
"Many companies are trying not to deal with organised crime...But It's difficult to filter everything because their methods are also becoming sophisticated."
Earlier this year, the Japan Securities Dealers Association launched a database to help keep those with mob links out of the country's now-sizzling stock market.
The pressure on Tokyo to clean up the problem is set to intensify as Japan looks to host the 2020 Summer Olympics.
On paper, the police crackdown appears headed in the right direction with yakuza membership down by about 28 percent to 63,000 in 2012 from a decade ago, according to police data.
Mob links run deep
Still, yakuza links run deep in Japan and some credit their tough presence for keeping street crime low.
Their place is so deeply rooted that senior politicians are sometimes found to have mob ties, including ex-Justice Minister Keishu Tanaka who resigned last year following reports of his association with mobsters.
"There are lots of politicians that, in some sense, owe their positions to yakuza support back in old days, so clearly their influence is not non-existent," Adelstein says.
"It's still a bizarre system because Japan's organised crime groups are legal entities. They are regulated but not banned."

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Thai protesters step up action, PM forced to leave building

About 30,000 protesters launched a "people's coup" on Thailand's government on Sunday, swarming multiple state agencies in violent clashes, taking control of a broadcaster and forcing the prime minister to flee a police compound.
Police fired teargas on protesters who hurled stones and petrol bombs in demonstrations that paralyzed parts of Bangkok and followed a night of gun and knife battles in which two people were killed and at least 54 wounded.
A group of protesters forced Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra to evacuate to an undisclosed location from a building where she had planned to give media interviews, while hundreds seized control of state broadcaster Thai PBS, waving flags and tooting whistles.
Declaring Sunday "V-Day" in a week-long bid to topple Yingluck and end her family's more than decade-long influence over Thai politics, protest leaders urged supporters to seize 10 government offices, six television stations, police headquarters and the prime minister's offices in what they are calling a "people's coup".
Police said the protesters had gathered in at least eight locations. In at least three of them, police used teargas and water canons.

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An anti-government protester throws back a teargas canister during clashes with police near governme …

National police spokesman Piya Utayo said troops were being sent to a government complex occupied by protesters since Thursday and the Finance Ministry, occupied since Monday. "We have sent forces to these places to take back government property," he said on national television.
It is the latest dramatic turn in a conflict pitting Bangkok's urban middle class and royalist elite against the mostly rural poor supporters of Yingluck and her billionaire brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, a former prime minister ousted in a 2006 military coup.
Reuters journalists waiting to interview Yingluck inside the police Narcotics Suppression Bureau were told by Natthriya Thaweevong, an aide for the prime minister, that she had left after protesters made it inside the outer part of the compound, the Police Sports Club, where the bureau is located.
In the early afternoon, protesters massed in front of a police barricade outside Wat Benjamabhopit, also known as the Marble Temple. Police fired teargas as some protesters tried to heave aside the heavy concrete barriers.
The deep detonation of stun grenades, followed by the jeers of protesters, echoed across the historic quarter.

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An anti-government protester uses a plastic bag to protect herself from tear gas as they attack Thai …

"I just want the people named Shinawatra to get on a plane and go somewhere - and please, don't come back to our country again," said Chatuporn Tirawongkusol, 33, whose family runs a Bangkok restaurant.
PETROL BOMBS
Outside the Metropolitan Police Bureau, about 3,000 protesters rallied, accusing riot-clad police of being manipulated by Thaksin, a former policeman who rose to become a telecommunications magnate before entering politics and winning back-to-back elections in 2001 and 2005.
Chamai Maruchet Bridge, north of Government House, the prime minister's offices, was a scene of nearly non-sop skirmishes, as police repeatedly fired teargas into the stone-throwing crowd, Reuters witnesses said. Protesters gathered near barricades spray-painted with the words "Failed State".
A Reuters photographer saw protesters hurl at least a dozen petrol bombs into police positions from a college campus across a canal from Government House.

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An anti-government protester throws a molotov cocktail at Thai riot police as they attack Government …

In one of the most dramatic events, state broadcaster Thai PBS was taken over by protesters, according to PBS and police. More than 250 mostly black-shirted protesters gathered in the parking lot, as others streamed in.
The executive producer at Thai PBS, Surachai Pannoi, told Reuters the management of the station would share its broadcast line with Blue Sky, a broadcaster controlled by the opposition Democrat Party, starting this afternoon.
STREET BATTLES
Yingluck, who won a 2011 election by a landslide to become Thailand's first female prime minister, has called for talks with the protesters, saying the economy was at risk after demonstrators occupied the Finance Ministry on Monday.
Protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban, a deputy prime minister under the previous Democrat-led government that Yingluck's party routed 2011, has ignored her and told demonstrators that laws must be broken to achieve their goals.

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Anti-government protesters throw rocks at Thai riot police as they attack Government House in Bangko …

The Democrats, Thailand's oldest political party, have not won an election in more than two decades and have lost every national vote for the past 13 years to Thaksin or his allies.
Suthep has called for a "people's council", which would select "good people" to lead, effectively suspending Thailand's democratic system. Yingluck has rejected that step as unconstitutional and has ruled out a snap election.
Thailand faces its worst political crisis since April-May 2010, a period of unrest that ended with a military crackdown. In all, 91 people were killed then, mostly Thaksin's supporters trying to oust the then-Democrat government.
Suthep faces murder charges for his alleged role in the ordering crackdown.
Police tightened security after clashes on Saturday between supporters and opponents of Yingluck near a sports stadium where about 70,000 red-shirted government supporters had gathered. Five big shopping malls closed their doors in Bangkok, underscoring the economic impact of the protests.

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Anti-government protesters take cover as they throw rocks at Thai riot police as they attack Governm …

One "red shirt" government supporter was shot and killed outside the stadium early on Sunday, after a 21-year-old student was fatally shot several hours earlier.
A red-shirt leader, Jatuporn Promphan, said four red shirts had been killed but Reuters only confirmed one, 43-year-old Viroj Kemnak. Fifty-four people were wounded, according to the government's Erawan emergency center.
Thousands of government supporters began to disperse, returning on buses to their homes in the north after their rally was called off in a bid to defuse tensions.
Seventeen battalions of 150 soldiers each, along with 180 military police, all unarmed, were called in to boost security ahead of the demonstrators' Sunday deadline for ousting the government.
Thaksin, who won over poor rural and urban voters with populist policies, was convicted of graft in 2008. He dismisses the charges as politically motivated and remains in close touch with the government from his self-imposed exile, sometimes holding meetings with Yingluck's cabinet by webcam.

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China readies to launch first moon rover mission

Beijing (AFP) - China will launch its first ever moon rover mission on Monday, state media said, as Beijing embarks on the latest stage in its ambitious space programme.
A rocket carrying the vehicle, named "Jade Rabbit" in a nod to Chinese folklore, will blast off at 1:30 am local time (Sunday 1730 GMT).
"The Chang'e 3 is set to be launched for its moon mission from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center on Dec. 2," state broadcaster CCTV said on its verified Twitter account on Saturday.
Official news agency Xinhua also confirmed the launch date, citing officials at the satellite launch centre in Sichuan province.
If successful, the launch will mark a major milestone in China's space exploration programme, which aims to create a permanent space station by 2020 and eventually send someone to the moon.
"Apart from launching astronauts into space, this is probably the most complex space mission attempted by China," Australian space analyst Morris Jones told AFP.

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This file photo shows a rocket being blasted off from the launch centre in Xichang, China's southwes …

"It will also make China only the third nation to soft-land a spacecraft on the moon."
Beijing sees its military-run space programme as a marker of its rising global stature and growing technological might, as well as the ruling Communist Party's success in turning around the fortunes of the once poverty-stricken nation.
China has previously sent two probes to orbit the moon, with controllers sending the first of them crashing into the lunar surface at the end of its mission.
Early in November, Beijing offered a rare glimpse into its secretive space programme when it put a model of its six-wheeled moon rover on public display.
The rover was later named "Yutu", or jade rabbit, following an online poll in which more than three million people voted.

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Chinese astrounaut, mission commander Nie Haisheng, speaks to students via video link, gathered at a …

The name derives from an ancient Chinese myth about a white rabbit that lives on the moon as the pet of Chang'e, a lunar goddess who swallowed an immortality pill.
Ouyang Ziyuan, head of the moon rover project, told Xinhua earlier this week that the ancient beliefs had their origins in the marks left by impacts on the lunar landscape.
"There are several black spots on the moon's surface. Our ancient people imagined they were a moon palace, osmanthus trees, and a jade rabbit," he said.
The rover's designer, Shanghai Aerospace Systems Engineering Research Institute, claims several technological breakthroughs with the vehicle.
The Shanghai-based institute, a unit of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp., which is linked to the military, says the advances include its "autonomous" navigation system and the way the wheels are able to grip the powdery surface of the moon.
It can climb inclines of up to 30 degrees and travel up to 200 metres (yards) per hour, according to the institute.
The showcasing of the rover came on the same day that India was due to launch its first mission to Mars, aiming to become the only Asian nation to reach the Red Planet.
China's space programme has advanced significantly in the last decade. In October China marked the 10th anniversary of its first manned space flight.
When Yang Liwei orbited the Earth 14 times during his 21-hour flight aboard the Shenzhou 5 in 2003 Beijing was so concerned about the viability of the mission that it cancelled a nationwide live television broadcast of the launch at the last minute.
But since then, China has sent a total of 10 astronauts -- eight men and two women -- into space on five separate missions, and launched an orbiting space module, Tiangong-1.
The rapid, purposeful development of China's space programme is in sharp contrast with the US, which launched its final space shuttle flight in 2011 and whose next step remains uncertain amid waning domestic support for spending federal dollars on space exploration.
Nonetheless, China is still behind the achievements of the US and Russia -- both of which it has learned from.

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