Off the Wires

Leading U.S. universities are pushing back against a proposed State Department rule that would bar foreign students from more research projects and classes involving information seen as vital to national security.

The proposal by the administration of President Barack Obama reflects growing worries in Washington over a rise in intellectual property theft from foreign adversaries such as China.

Research related to defense technology such as munitions, nuclear engineering and satellite technology would be particularly affected by the rule, which is still in the proposal process and has not been widely reported.

Defense contractors such as Northrop Grumman (NOC.N), Boeing (BA.N) and Lockheed Martin (LMT.N) regularly sponsor university research, but did not respond to requests for comment.

The new rule, which largely applies to company-sponsored research, threatens to shrink the pool of research opportunities available for U.S. colleges, which have grown strongly in popularity among high-paying foreign students in recent years.

Some top U.S. schools do not accept any research grants that restrict participation by foreign citizens because it runs counter to their policies of academic freedom and non-discrimination.

In a letter to the State Department, Stanford University said it joined The Association of American Universities (AAU), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of Pennsylvania in criticizing the rule, citing "disastrous consequences." The AAU represents 62 leading research institutions, including Harvard, Duke University, and the University of Chicago.

The universities say the rule would tip the balance too far in favor of national security against academic freedom.

"We wouldn't be able to perform the same basic foundational research that we do," said Stanford's director of export compliance Steve Eisner. "Stanford has a policy of conducting research openly regardless of citizenship. We're not going to tell our Chinese students that they can't participate."

No current cases of industrial espionage involve university research, though government officials told Reuters they suspect university faculty are violating loosely defined research rules.

A 2011 FBI report said "foreign adversaries and competitors take advantage" of the openness of information on college campuses and a small percentage of students, researchers and foreign professors are "working at the behest of another government."

There were just under 1 million foreign students at U.S. colleges in the 2014-2015 school year, 31 percent of whom were Chinese, according to the Institute of International Education. That has grown from fewer than 100,000 in the 1960s when the United States began regulating their access to research.

In 2015, the number of intellectual property cases investigated by the FBI rose 53 percent from the previous year.

The FBI says China is the main culprit. It has accused Chinese nationals of attempting to export technology from the United States, including genetically modified corn seed and sensitive military information stored on Boeing computers.

The Department of Justice said in a statement that "we know that some foreign spies and criminals target students and faculty alike to steal valuable technology and intellectual property." It added it was working with universities and laboratories to raise awareness of the threat.

A spokesman for China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hong Lei, said the United States should be improving cooperation with China instead of adding restrictions on foreign students.

"China's scientific and technological developments have been achieved through the hard struggle of the Chinese people," Lei said at a ministry briefing on Thursday.

SHRINKING RESEARCH CHOICES The proposed rule comes as universities face shrinking federal funding for research, forcing many to rely more on industry-sponsored projects.

State Department officials told Reuters they are aware of universities' opposition to the rule, but have received no complaints or advice from companies that sponsor university research.

Experts in counterterrorism and counter nuclear proliferation told the State Department tighter restrictions on research access are necessary because universities are "a soft target," said Tony Dearth, director of defense trade controls licensing at the State Department.

In the first case of its kind, University of Tennessee electrical engineering professor John Reese Roth was convicted in 2008 of exporting "defense articles" without a license, and of wire fraud and conspiracy and sentenced to four years.

Roth used foreign students in research on plasma-based flight-control devices for drone aircraft under a U.S. Air Force contract. He let two foreign students illegally gain access to sensitive information and export it to China, said the FBI.

The proposed rule would expand the definition of research classified as "technical" to any project that undergoes a pre-publication review by a private sponsor.

Unlike less-sensitive "fundamental" research, technical research is regulated in a variety of ways including a requirement that foreign students must apply for a license. Students from China, Iran and North Korea are usually denied licenses, said university officials.

The State Department argues that if a company wants to take a second look at research because it may be sensitive to its economic interests, foreign student involvement should be regulated.

Stanford told the State Department in a public letter that the new rule would affect a broad portion of industry-backed research because universities "routinely" allow sponsors to review results for up to 90 days.

Colleges that object to the government's foreign-student restrictions have long avoided technical research and focused solely on projects classed as fundamental. The new rule would force them to either loosen their policies or give up defense-related research.

Schools with fundamental research-only policies are already in the minority. A Reuters survey of the top 35 research universities, ranked by R&D expenditures, found only 11 were still adhering to such a position.

Federal funding for research still dwarfs business funding, but the two are trending in opposite directions.

Over 2011-2014, federal funds for university research fell to $37.9 billion from $40.8 billion, according to the National Science Foundation. Over the same period, industry-sponsored university research grew to $5.9 billion from $4.9 billion.

"As federal funds have become scarcer and the competition has increased, I think we see a lot of universities expanding their partnerships with industry," said Bob Hardy, director of intellectual property management at the Council on Government Relations, an association of research universities.

“We’re aware that campaigns and related organizations and individuals are targeted by actors with a variety of motivations— from philosophical differences to espionage - and capabilities— from defacements to intrusions,” Clapper's spokesman Brian Hale said in a statement, deferring to the FBI for details on specific incidents.

(Reuters) - Tanzania has removed more than 10,000 "ghost workers" from its public sector payroll after a nationwide audit found their fraud cost the government over $2 million a month, the prime minister's office has said.

Government officials say the payroll audit is continuing and more non-existent workers are expected to be found.

"We will identify those behind this payroll fraud and take them to court ... the fight against corruption is top priority for the government," Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa was quoted as saying in the statement issued late on Sunday.

Purging the "ghost workers" from government payrolls would save more than 4.5 billion shillings ($2.06 million) a month, the statement said.

Reformist President John Magufuli ordered the national audit in March as part of a wider corruption crackdown.

Businesses have long said corruption and government inefficiency were major obstacles to investing in Tanzania, which ranked 117 out of 168 countries in Transparency International's 2015 index of least corrupt countries. No.1 is deemed the least corrupt.

Elected last October, Magufuli has already dismissed several senior officials, including the head of the government's anti-graft body, the country's top tax chief, a senior rail official and the head of the country's port authority.

Tanzania spends over $260 million per month to pay salaries of its civil servants, but the government believes the public wage bill is bloated by thousands of phantom staff.

The country has over 550,000 civil servants in central and local government authorities.

The Florida man who shot and killed black teenager Trayvon Martin in an incident that triggered nationwide civil rights protests will auction the gun he used on Thursday and spend some of the proceeds to challenge gun control policies, the auction website said.

The U.S. Department of Justice recently returned to George Zimmerman the Kel Tec 9mm pistol that he had used to kill the unarmed Martin on Feb. 26, 2012, according to Gunbroker.com, the website where the weapon is being sold.

Zimmerman described the gun as "a piece of American history," according to the site.

The one-day auction is scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. EST (1500 GMT) on Thursday, with bidding starting at $5,000.

The Trayvon Martin Foundation "has no comment on the actions of that person that murdered Trayvon," Martin's father, Tracy Martin, said in a statement.

Zimmerman, who was a neighborhood watch volunteer at the time, said the shooting was in self-defense. Martin's family said the teenager was simply passing through the residential area on his way home from a convenience store.

Zimmerman was acquitted of second-degree murder and manslaughter charges in the incident that sparked civil rights rallies and shone a spotlight on Florida's controversial "stand your ground" law.

President Barack Obama said after Zimmerman's acquittal that Martin "could have been me, 35 years ago" and urged Americans to understand the pain African Americans felt over the case.

'SOCIOPATH'

"George Zimmerman" quickly became the top trending term on Twitter in the United States, with many users on the social media site expressing shock and revulsion.

"The only people worse than George Zimmerman are the people who bid on that gun," tweeted the writer, Lyz Lenz.

National Review columnist Charles C. W. Cooke said Zimmerman "may have acted legally, but the man is a sociopath."

On the auction website, Zimmerman said he planned to use part of the proceeds to fight Black Lives Matter, a rights movement that grew out of the incident, as well as to counter "violence against law enforcement officers."

Proceeds would also go toward fighting Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton's "anti-firearm rhetoric," he said.

"I am honored and humbled to announce the sale of an American firearm icon. The firearm for sale is the firearm that was used to defend my life and end the brutal attack from Trayvon Martin," he said on the site.

The number from the Martin case is written on the pistol in silver permanent marker and "many have expressed interest in owning and displaying the firearm," he said in the description.

In a phone interview with a local broadcaster on Wednesday, Zimmerman brushed off those critical of the auction.

"They're not going to be bidding on it, so I couldn't care less about them," he told Orlando TV station WOFL.

Zimmerman, who has had brushes with law enforcement since his acquittal, was the target of an attempted murder by Matthew Apperson in a Florida road dispute in May 2015, according to prosecutors.

He told WOFL that he had received death threats while in hiding after killing Martin, and that he had received more threats to his life since the gun sale was announced.

"What I've decided to do is not cower," he said. "I'm a free American. And I can do what I like with my possessions"