Member of N.M. border group arrested
LAS CRUCES, N.M. -- A New Mexico man belonging to an armed group that has detained Central American families near the U.S.-Mexico border was arrested Saturday in a border community on a criminal complaint accusing him of being a felon in possession of firearms and ammunition, authorities said.
The FBI said in a statement it arrested Larry Mitchell Hopkins, 69, in Sunland Park with the assistance of the police. New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas said in a separate statement that Hopkins was a member of the group that had stopped migrants.
The FBI statement did not provide information on Hopkins' background, and FBI spokesman Frank Fisher said no additional information would be released until after Hopkins has an initial appearance Monday in federal court in Las Cruces.
The FBI said Hopkins is from Flora Vista, a rural community in northern New Mexico and approximately 353 miles north of Sunland Park, which is a suburb of El Paso, Texas.
Virus thwarter guilty of writing malware
MILWAUKEE -- A British cybersecurity researcher credited with stopping a worldwide computer virus has pleaded guilty to developing malware to steal banking information.
Federal prosecutors in Wisconsin and Marcus Hutchins' attorneys said in a joint court filing Friday that the 24-year-old agreed to plead guilty to developing malware called Kronos and conspiring to distribute it from 2012 to 2015. In exchange for his plea to those charges, prosecutors dismissed eight more.
"As you may be aware, I've pleaded guilty to two charges related to writing malware in the years prior to my career in security," Hutchins said in a statement on his website. "I regret these actions and accept full responsibility for my mistakes. Having grown up, I've since been using the same skills that I misused several years ago for constructive purposes. I will continue to devote my time to keeping people safe from malware attacks."
Hutchins faces up 10 years in prison but could receive a more lenient sentence for accepting responsibility, the court filing said. Attorneys said Hutchins understands he could be deported.
Sentencing has not been scheduled.
Hutchins' arrest in Las Vegas in August 2017, as he was about to board a flight to England, came as a shock; just months earlier he was hailed a hero for finding a "kill switch" to the WannaCry virus that crippled computers worldwide.
Cancer center boots Chinese scientists
HOUSTON -- A prominent cancer center in Houston has ousted three of five scientists whom federal authorities identified as being involved in Chinese efforts to steal American research.
Peter Pisters, the president of MD Anderson Cancer Center, said the National Institutes of Health wrote to the cancer center last year detailing conflicts of interest and unreported foreign income by five faculty members, and gave it 30 days to respond.
MD Anderson received $148 million in National Institutes of Health grants last year.
The Houston Chronicle said all three scientists are ethnically Chinese. It's not clear if any of them face federal charges or deportation.
The dismissals come as concern heightens in Washington that foreign governments including China have been using students and visiting scholars to pilfer intellectual property from confidential grant applications.
A 2017 FBI report found that intellectual-property theft by China costs the U.S. as much as $600 billion annually.
Hidden camera draws Navy investigation
The U.S. Navy has opened an investigation into the discovery last month of a hidden camera in the women's bathroom aboard the USS Arlington, three military officials said.
The Naval Criminal Investigative Service is conducting the inquiry, a Navy spokesman confirmed to NBC, which broke the story Friday. A female Marine discovered the recording device in March, an official told the news organization, though the official did not specify if the camera took stills or videos.
The USS Arlington is a transport dock ship based in Norfolk, Va. It deployed in December with the Kearsarge Amphibious Ready Group and currently is in Greece, reported the Stars and Stripes. It is on a seven-month deployment to Europe and the Middle East.
-- Compiled by Democrat-Gazette staff from wire reports
A Section on 04/21/2019