[JURIST] A judge in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia [official website] on Friday sentenced [DOJ press release] Tai Shen Kuo, a naturalized US citizen and Louisiana businessman, to 188 months in prison for his part in a conspiracy to deliver national defense information to China [JURIST news archive]. Judge Leonie Brinkema [official profile] also required Kuo to forfeit $40,000 after he pleaded guilty to the espionage charges on May 13. According to the Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website], between March 2007 and February 2008 Gregg William Bergersen, an analyst at the Defense Security Cooperation Agency [official website], a group within the Department of Defense (DOD) [official website], gave Kuo classified information on US military sales to Taiwan [JURIST news archive] and US military communications security. The DOJ also stated that Kuo gave gifts to Bergersen and promised to give him a position in his company. BBC News has more.

Bergersen was charged [affidavit, PDF] and arrested [JURIST report] in February and later pleaded guilty [DOJ press release; JURIST report] to conspiracy for disclosing national defense information. Last month he was sentenced [JURIST report] to five years in prison. In another Chinese espionage case, Dongfan "Greg" Chung, a former Chinese-American engineer at Boeing [corporate website], was arrested in February and charged with stealing corporate trade secrets [PDF indictment] related to aerospace programs and turning them over to China. Chung's and Bergersen's activities were allegedly linked by Chi Mak [CI Centre backgrounder; JURIST report], a Chinese-American engineer sentenced [JURIST report] in March for conspiring to smuggle sensitive naval intelligence data to China.

[JURIST] The Bank of New York Mellon Corp. [corporate website] disclosed Friday in its quarterly report [text; materials] that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) [official website] is investigating possible breaches of procedure by one of the bank's subsidiaries in auction-rate securities sales and purchases. Auction-rate securities [New York Times report] are long-term bonds with varying interest rates that change based on weekly or monthly auctions. In the report, bank officials wrote:

The Company self-disclosed to the SEC that Mellon Financial Markets LLC ("MFM") placed orders on behalf of issuers to purchase their own Auction Rate Securities. The SEC is conducting an investigation of those transactions. MFM is cooperating fully with the SEC in its investigation.

[JURIST] The UN observed its fourteenth International Day of the World’s Indigenous People [official website] Saturday, marking the first observance since the September 2007 adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples [text, PDF; FAQ, PDF]. In 1994, the General Assembly declared [A/RES/49/214 text, PDF] that the day would be observed every August 9 in an effort to "promote the enjoyment of the rights of indigenous people and the full development of their distinct cultures and communities." The Assembly reaffirmed that declaration [A/RES/59/174 text, PDF; official website] in 2004. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said [statement] of the UN's continued observance of the day in 2008:

The fundamental motivation was the Assembly’s recognition of the need to place the United Nations clearly and strongly behind the promotion and protection of the rights of indigenous peoples, in order to put an end to their marginalization, their extreme poverty, the expropriation of their traditional lands and the other grave human rights abuses they have faced and continue to encounter. Indeed, the suffering of indigenous peoples includes some of the darkest episodes in human history.

[JURIST] International human rights groups on Saturday condemned any violence Russian or Georgian forces might commit against civilians in the separatist region of South Ossetia [BBC backgrounder], warning that those actions may amount to war crimes. After a period of smaller conflicts, on Friday the Republic of Georgia [official backgrounder; JURIST news archive] announced that to restore constitutional order, it was launching a large scale military offensive [NY Times report] in the region, which broke away from Georgia following a 1991-1992 war. On Saturday, Russia sent troops [BBC report] into South Ossetia in what it called a mission to protect civilians. Human Rights Watch (HRW) [official website] Europe and Central Asia Director Holly Cartner stated [press release]:

All sides must remember that attacks on civilians, or acts intended to terrorize civilians, clearly violate international humanitarian law, and may constitute war crimes. This would be true even if they are carried out in reprisal for indiscriminate attacks by the adversary.