New Customs integrity measures unveiled

The Customs and Border Protection Service announced new integrity measures to fight corruption. Source: AAP

THE time is up for corrupt Customs officers hoping to escape detection, the border patrol authority says after announcing a new suite of integrity measures.

The Australian Customs and Border Protection Service (ACBPS) made the announcement following the release of an Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity report into the activities of four corrupt officers arrested between August last year and February.

ACBPS CEO Michael Pezzullo said the behaviour of those officers undermined the community's trust in the service to protect Australia's borders.

Since September, the ACBPS had significantly strengthened integrity processes and hardened against infiltration and corruption, he said.

"For those few officers who continue to make the wrong choices or who might think that by keeping their heads down they might ride out the clean-up, here is the bottom line: there is no escape form the new integrity approach and your time is up," Mr Pezzullo said in a statement.

Customs officers will from Saturday undergo random drug and alcohol testing, will legally be required to report corruption and serious misconduct, and can now access an integrity support and referral network.

In Australian airports, a range of reforms have been introduced from this weekend, including a ban on personal mobile phones in sensitive operational areas and new rules for the processing of passengers known to officers.

There will also be tighter control over access to staff rosters to reduce the potential for corrupt officers to plan activities, and increased monitoring of unscheduled and unauthorised absences and attendance of officers in the workplace when not rostered to work.

Mr Pezzullo said the actions of a few had undermined and tarnished the work of the diligent majority.

"This is a difficult time, but we are committed to combating corruption and determined to remove anyone who does not share the highest standards of personal and professional integrity," he said.

"The service will not ease up and drift back to the (previous) state of affairs."

Minister for Justice Jason Clare said the report follows the arrest of 20 people, including four employees of the ACBPS, one officer from the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, one baggage handler, and 14 others.

Further arrests are possible, he said.

Fifty-four kilograms of pseudoephedrine have also been seized, and cash and assets to the value of approximately $237,000 have been confiscated.

"An enduring lesson is that corruption risk will follow opportunity for illicit profit," the report states.

"Those responsible for governance of high-risk operating environments must expect this situation to be the case and plan accordingly."

Mr Clare has also established the Customs Reform Board made up of James Wood QC, who headed the royal commission into the NSW police service, former NSW Police Commissioner Ken Moroney, and David Mortimer, former CEO of TNT and former Chairman of Australia Post and Leighton Holdings.

The board will advise the minister on further major structural and cultural reforms to Customs.

The federal government has systematically dismantled the capabilities of the ACBPS and increased their vulnerability to infiltration from organised crime, opposition border protection spokesman Michael Keenan said.

He said the agency has had its funding and personnel cut in every budget since Labor came to office in 2007, with $125.5 million and 870 staff cut since then.

Mr Keenan also said the government has cut funding to the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity in the last budget, "the very agency tasked with the enormous job of investigating the systemic corruption allegations within Customs".

He accused the minister of trying to avoid scrutiny of the report's findings by releasing it on a weekend.

"You cannot systematically dismantle our border protection agency, load them up with significant extra responsibilities and then expect that this won't expose vulnerabilities that organised crime can exploit," Mr Keenan said in a statement.

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Abbott backs ongoing Afghan mission

Tony Abbott has backed an ongoing deployment of Australian special forces troops to Afghanistan. Source: AAP

OPPOSITION Leader Tony Abbott has confirmed coalition backing for a continuing commitment of Australian special forces soldiers in Afghanistan.

Mr Abbott said what Australia had achieved in more than a decade in Afghanistan had been important for the war-torn nation, for Australia and for the peace and security of the western world.

Under current plans, Australia will withdraw most of the 1650 troops in Afghanistan by the end of the year.

But the government has left open the prospect of an ongoing commitment of special forces in a training or counter-terrorist role, subject to negotiation of an appropriate status of forces agreement with the US and Afghan governments.

"My understanding is that the current government stands ready to extend the special forces commitment to Afghanistan should that be agreed upon by the western alliance and the Afghan government," Mr Abbott told reporters in Cairns.

"The coalition certainly would back an ongoing special forces commitment to Afghanistan provided there is the appropriate agreement in place."

He said recent reports of bad behaviour by defence personnel did not diminish what had been achieved in Afghanistan.

"Everyone deplores bad behaviour," he said.

"We particularly deplore bad behaviour from those we look up to but nothing can detract from the sacrifice of the 39 Australians who have given their lives in Afghanistan and nothing can detract from the magnificent effort of our armed forces in that country."

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Snowdon makes surprise Afghanistan visit

VETERANS' Affairs Minister Warren Snowdon has concluded a surprise visit to Afghanistan, declaring Australian troops close to completing their mission.

Mr Snowdon met senior Australian commanders at the main base at Tarin Kowt, as well as Afghan government officials.

He said there were clear indications of the growing capability of Afghan forces who would take full responsibility for security in Oruzgan province at the end of this year.

"Although Australia is close to completing a successful mission in Afghanistan, we remember that 39 young Australians made the ultimate sacrifice and many more have been wounded or otherwise injured. Their sacrifice will never be forgotten," he said in a statement.

Mr Snowdon said he saw for himself the progress in remediating the base at Tarin Kowt and preparing for redeployment of ADF personnel and equipment back to Australia.

"This is a crucial component of Australia successfully concluding its mission in Oruzgan at the end of this year," he said.

During the visit, Mr Snowdon told Australian soldiers they had made a tangible and meaningful contribution to the security and future of Afghanistan.

"All Australians should be rightfully proud of the outstanding work done by our servicemen and women on this mission of such importance," he said.

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Ban doesn't halt Feds' Qld school campaign

Treasurer Wayne Swan campaigned on funding reforms during a visit to a Queensland Catholic school. Source: AAP

A CRACKDOWN on politicking in Queensland's state schools hasn't stopped federal Treasurer Wayne Swan increasing pressure on Premier Campbell Newman to sign up to the Commonwealth's education reforms.

Mr Swan has sidestepped the state school ban to spruik his government's Gonski reforms at Catholic school Padua College in Brisbane's north.

It comes less than two weeks after federal Education Minister Peter Garrett was banned from campaigning in Brisbane public schools.

The next day, Mr Newman and his education minister John-Paul Langbroek refused to answer questions about Gonski while making a policy announcement in a public school, instead taking questions once he got outside the school gate.

Mr Swan says the premier needed to follow the lead of his interstate counterparts and sign up to the reforms before the June 30 deadline.

"We saw Mr Newman's Benny Hill routine a week or two ago in and out the front gate playing a silly game to divert attention away from the fact he's playing politics," he told reporters.

"It's time for Mr Newman to put those games away, to get on or sign up to this important agreement, which will lift the quality of education in our schools."

Mr Swan says new figures prove every single Queensland school will be better off under the reforms.

State schools would get a boost of about $3.3 billion under the reforms, while non-government schools will benefit from more than $500 million over the next six years, he said.

But the state's acting Education Minister Ian Walker insisted the deal was a dud that would leave hundreds of Queensland schools in a worse position.

"What Queensland is getting from Gonski is almost 300 schools worse off than they are under the current funding arrangement, kindergartens and universities stripped of their funding and an extra layer of bureaucracy and red tape for teachers," he said in a statement.

Queensland's independent schools say the government should have engaged with the sector instead of releasing the figures to the media.

"This equates to just $370 each year per student including indexation of funding over the six-year period," Independent Schools Queensland Executive Director David Robertson said in a statement.

"The independent sector currently educates 15 per cent of Queensland students, but under the allocation announced today will receive only 7 per cent of the additional future funding."

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Singapore haze hits critical 400 level

SINGAPORE'S smog index has hit the critical 400 level, making it potentially life-threatening to the ill and elderly people, according to a government monitoring site.

The level was reached at 11am (1300 AEST) on Friday, after a rapid rise in the Pollutant Standards Index, which measures the haze crisis caused by Indonesian forest fires.

Indonesian and Singaporean officials have been holding emergency talks on how to extinguish the fires on farms and plantations on Sumatra island, which are also affecting Malaysia.

According to Singapore government guidelines, sustained PSI average levels above 400 on a 24-hour basis "may be life-threatening to ill and elderly persons".

General practitioner Philip Koh said he had seen a 20 per cent spike in consultations in the past week, and estimated that about 80 per cent of all his patients are suffering from haze-related ailments.

"My patients are telling me they are worried about how long this is going to last and how much higher this is going to go. It is already high at 400 now, how much higher will it go?" he told AFP.

Koh also said many were turning to his clinic to buy protective masks, as supplies are low at retailers.

"Our supplies are running low here too," he said.

If the 400 index average is sustained over a 24-hour period, the government advises all children, elderly people and persons with existing diseases to stay indoors, keep windows closed and avoid physical exertion as much as possible.

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A million Brazilians protest in cities

About 300,000 have rallied in Rio de Janeiro, bemoaning massive spending to stage the World Cup. Source: AAP

BRAZILIAN President Dilma Rousseff has called an emergency cabinet meeting after at least a million people rallied for better public services and against the high cost of staging the World Cup.

Sources quoted by the daily O Estado de Sao Paulo said authorities were "frightened" by protesters' attempts to break into the foreign ministry building in Brasilia. The presidential office would not comment on the reports.

The mounting pressure on Rousseff's government in the face of the biggest street protests the South American country has seen in 20 years prompted her to cancel a trip to Japan planned for next week and call the emergency meeting for Friday.

Late on Thursday, security forces struggled to maintain order in several cities, firing tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse groups of rowdy protesters who hurled stones and lit fires.

Police fired tear gas in Rio de Janeiro, scene of the biggest protest where 300,000 people demonstrated near City Hall, while in the capital Brasilia, security forces blocked protesters trying to break into the foreign ministry and throwing burning objects.

Police and experts quoted by Brazilian media said at least one million marched in more than 100 cities across the country of 194 million people, an intensification of a movement sparked two weeks ago by public anger about a hike in public transport fares.

The protests have spiralled into a wider call for an end to government corruption in the world's seventh largest economy, a call fuelled by resentment over the $US15 billion ($A16.36 billion) cost of hosting the Confederations Cup and the World Cup.

In Rio, police fired tear gas to disperse a small group of stone-throwing protesters. At least one person was hurt in the clashes, which sparked panic in the crowd.

Demonstrators also set ablaze a vehicle owned by the SBT television station.

A protester died after a motorist hit him and two other demonstrators in the southeastern city of Ribeirao Preto, police said.

In the northeastern city of Salvador, one of the host cities for the Confederations Cup, police fired tear gas against some of the 20,000 protesters massed two kilometres from the stadium where Uruguay defeated Nigeria 2-1.

Vehicles used by world football's governing body FIFA were stoned in the Bahia state capital and riot police had to intervene.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, meanwhile, called for an investigation into the possible use of "excessive force" on demonstrators and journalists during protests last week.

On Wednesday, protesters had scored a major victory when authorities in Rio and Sao Paulo, Brazil's two biggest cities, cancelled the controversial transit fare hikes, but that was not enough to placate the demonstrators.

In Sao Paulo, an estimated 110,000 people flooded the main Paulista Avenue to celebrate the fare rollback and keep the pressure on Rousseff's leftist government to increase social spending.

Several protesters called for Rousseff, Sao Paulo State Governor Geraldo Alckmin and Sao Paulo Mayor Fernando Haddad to be impeached.

The protest was largely peaceful except for clashes between a group of ultra-leftists marching behind their red banners and a majority of demonstrators who objected to the presence of political parties.

"This is a social movement, not a political movement. This has nothing to do with ideology," 28-year-old protester Maria Vidal told AFP. "We don't want parties in the demonstration."

Protesters say they want higher funding for education, health and housing. They are also railing against what they view as rampant corruption within the political class.

Social media networks have been key to the organisation of the mass protests, with demonstrators using the slogan "It's more than just 20 cents" - a reference to the bus fare hikes - to rally people to their cause.

The movement has no political colouration and no clearly identified leadership.

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China manufacturing shrinks

A SURVEY shows manufacturing in China contracted this month on weakening demand, adding to fears about the strength of the recovery in the world's second-biggest economy.

HSBC on Thursday said the preliminary version of its monthly purchasing managers index fell to a nine-month low of 48.3 in June. That's down from 49.6 in May. Numbers below 50 indicate a contraction.

June factory output decreased, a reversal from gains in the month before. New export orders decreased at a faster rate.

HSBC said manufacturing sectors are being weighed down by deteriorating external demand and moderating domestic demand.

The preliminary PMI is based on responses from 85 to 90 per cent of 420 manufacturing companies polled each month.

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PM dividing Australia like Hanson: Abbott

OPPOSITION Leader Tony Abbott has likened Julia Gillard to Pauline Hanson, the anti-immigrant founder of One Nation.

Mr Abbott on Thursday told parliament the prime minister of Australia should be a leader for all Australians.

But he said Ms Gillard would use class, gender, and now country of birth, to score political points.

Speaking in the increasingly rancorous debate on Labor's plan to tighten up 457 visas for temporary foreign workers, Mr Abbott referred to a former member of parliament who set out to divide Australia about 15 years ago.

"We saw a member of this parliament set out to make perfectly decent Australians feel like strangers in their own country," he said.

Mr Abbott said he never thought he would see the day when it was not just be an independent member of parliament but the prime minister setting out to deliberately divide Australian from Australian to serve a political purpose.

"It is an embarrassment," he said.

In her first speech to parliament in 1998, Ms Hanson, a disendorsed Liberal candidate, warned that Australia risked being swamped with Asian immigrants.

The government claims there has been widespread rorting of the 457 visa scheme.

Its legislation will require employers to conduct market testing and only hire foreign workers if no Australian is available.

Mr Abbott said the government should be tackling the real problem of illegal boat arrivals.

"Instead they have decided to raise a false problem," he said.

"They can't get tough on illegal arrivals by boat, so they have decided to get tough on legal arrivals by plane."

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Qld hospital concealed fatal death: union

THE Queensland Nurses Union is calling for an independent investigation into the Wesley Hospital manager who did not disclose a previous legionnaires' disease death at the facility.

The Brisbane hospital is dealing with a deadly outbreak of legionnaires', which killed one patient and put another in intensive care this month.

Its management has previously told reporters there were no past cases.

However, Queensland Health this week told reporters it is now including a 2011 legionnaires' death at the private hospital in its investigation.

UnitingCare Health executive director Richard Royle on Wednesday admitted he knew of the 2011 death; a fortnight ago he denied any knowledge of past cases.

The Queensland Nurses Union's acting secretary, Des Elder, says withholding information and making false statements are serious offences.

"There absolutely has been a cover-up," Mr Elder said.

"I don't think there's any question that the hospital management has tried to conceal that there had in fact been a previous occurrence of legionella previous years ago when they made statements to the press quite openly that there had not been."

He said had the Wesley been a public hospital, Mr Royle would be held accountable for making false statements.

"It would be a breach of the code of conduct in Queensland Health for a CEO to lie," he said.

Mr Elder suggested a public hospital chief executive would face disciplinary action under the same circumstances, but declined to say whether he believed Mr Royle should be sacked.

However, he called for an independent investigation into the false statement and the delay in passing relevant information to Queensland Health.

"For too long the private sector has been treated with kid gloves by both the state and federal governments, and this crosses party political lines," he said.

"There's a reluctance to take strong action to ensure that accountability that everyone requires of a public health system is there in the private health system."

Premier Campbell Newman told reporters earlier on Thursday he was disturbed to hear the 2011 death was never made public.

"I believe the hospital had the duty back then to reveal what went on, but of course Queensland Health had a duty to reveal," he said.

"It's not clear to me why the previous government failed to tell Queenslanders what was going on."

He said private hospitals were required to comply with the same accountability standards as the public sector.

The Wesley withheld information about the 2011 death from media, but it was reported to health authorities at the time.

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NSW kitchen fires spark warning

AN elderly woman whose arms were burnt and a man who suffered severe hand burns are among the victims of more than 200 kitchen fires in NSW in just six weeks.

Fire and Rescue NSW says the increase in kitchen fires has had firefighters putting out five blazes a day.

The figures also included a spike of 98 kitchen fires over five days.

More than 90 per cent of kitchen fires started with food catching alight while cooking.

Fire Commissioner Greg Mullins said many of these fires were the result of too much multi-tasking and not enough concentration on the task at hand.

"We know that most of these happen when cooking is left unattended because residents are juggling other tasks," he said on Wednesday.

"Don't leave you and your family's fire safety to chance this winter."

Last month a Coogee man suffered severe burns to his hands after a fire on a stove in his unit.

On Monday, an elderly woman suffered burns to her arms after food caught alight in her oven at West Hoxton.

"Keep a watchful eye on your cooking," Commissioner Mullins said in a statement.

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WorleyParsons shares rise on Nigeria deal

SHARES in mining engineer WorleyParsons are up three per cent after a South Korean shipbuilding giant awarded it a $US100 million ($A105.97 million) offshore oil and gas contract in Nigeria.

The news comes a month after a profit downgrade saw its shares plunge to a four-year low.

Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) awarded WorleyParsons a design and engineering contract for a floating production, storage and offloading vessel, which will operate at an offshore deepwater oil field in Nigeria.

WorleyParsons chief executive Andrew Wood said the contract to design topside process modules for the floating vessel was significant and represented "a strong development of our ability to locally support the offshore oil and gas business in West Africa".

WorleyParsons shares rose by 3.2 per cent, or 62 cents, to $19.92 on Tuesday.

They hit a four-year low of $19.50 on May 17, after the company blamed a slowdown in the West Australian mining industry for a profit downgrade.

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Freed Ohio mum, daughter 'doing well'

A MENTALLY disabled woman and her daughter are doing well after they were freed in October following two years in captivity and after police investigated an abuse allegation one of the suspects made against her, authorities say.

"The victim in this case is slowly recovering," US Attorney Steve Dettelbach said.

Jordie Callahan, 26, Jessica Hunt, 31, and Daniel J. "DJ" Brown, 33, were charged with forced labour. Callahan also was charged with tampering with a witness in the investigation.

The suspects had an initial appearance in US District Court in Cleveland and were ordered jailed until a bond hearing on Monday.

Callahan's mother, Becky Callahan of Ashland, said in a phone interview that the allegations were "all lies".

She said the alleged victim was friends with her son and Hunt, her son's girlfriend, and that they tried to help the woman out by offering her a place to live because she didn't have a home.

Andrew Hyde, who represented Callahan on related state kidnapping charges that were dismissed on Tuesday as the federal case was announced, called the charges ludicrous and said the woman at the centre of the alleged forced-labour plot moved in and out as she pleased.

"There was never any forced labour, any forced cohabitation. She was never forced to do anything. She used this story to get out of trouble she was in" with regard to a child-abuse allegation, Hyde said.

Hyde said county social service workers placed the girl with her mother when the woman was living with the three suspects.

A federal court lawyer for Callahan declined to comment. A second defence lawyer, Ed Bryan, said Hunt will plead not guilty and said there are credibility issues with the mother.

There was no immediate response to phone and email messages left for the lawyer representing Brown.

Police first got involved when the woman was charged with shoplifting a chocolate bar and asked to be jailed because the three suspects "had been mean to her".

Police checking into her "mean" claim went to the apartment after one of the suspects said it was the woman who was abusive. Authorities said the allegation was a ruse complete with a video staged by the suspects. They said the suspects forced the woman to act as if she were mistreating her child.

Defence lawyer Hyde said police told the woman they would help if she felt she had been framed with an incriminating video. According to Hyde, she bought that argument and made up the enslavement allegation.

"I think the feds just failed to fully investigate this before they jumped to some conclusions," Hyde said.

A woman in the Ashland neighbourhood said Tuesday she was surprised by the allegations, saying that Callahan sometimes helped her husband with yard work and other chores and that she never saw signs someone was being held captive in the house.

Tara Williams, 51, said she occasionally saw Callahan walking down an alley with a large yellow-and-white snake draped around his neck, but never saw him threaten anyone with it. She said three pit bulls also lived in the apartment, along with a pot-bellied pig that once got loose.

The white, two-storey house of three apartments, including the defendants' apartment, is set back from the road with a "no trespassing" sign near the front.

Williams said she occasionally saw the presumed victim walking by quickly and sometimes underdressed for cold weather. The woman never spoke or looked at others, Williams said. Williams never saw a child, she said.

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Lynas drops case against Malaysia greens

AUSTRALIAN rare earths miner Lynas Corporation has dropped defamation action against a Malaysian green group.

In April last year, Lynas initiated legal proceedings against Save Malaysia Stop Lynas.

Two months later, independent media website Free Malaysia Today apologised for running stories sympathetic to the activists, who opposed plans for a processing plant.

Lynas Corporation chief executive Eric Noyrez on Tuesday said solicitors had been instructed to discontinue legal action against the activist group.

"There is no value in continuing disputes with members of our local community," he said in a statement.

"Therefore, Lynas intends to instruct its solicitors to discontinue its defamation claim against the Save Malaysia Stop Lynas group."

Still, Mr Noyrez said the green group's comments had created fear, ahead of the plant starting operations in November 2012.

"There were many statements and claims ... which caused anxiety for the community," he said.

The company says its plant, at Kuantan on Malaysia's east coast, produced significantly lower emissions than environmental and radiological impact assessment limits had stipulated.

"They prove to everyone that our products and processes are safe for people and safe for the environment," Mr Noyrez said.

Lynas shares fell 1.25 cents, or 2.84 per cent, to 42.75 cents following the statement's release.

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China warned on cyber-hacking: Obama

US President Barack Obama says China has understood his "blunt" warnings against cyber-hacking as he credited new leader Xi Jinping with accepting more global responsibility for Beijing.

"We've had very blunt conversations about this. They understand, I think, that this can adversely affect the fundamentals of the US-China relationship," Obama told The Charlie Rose Show on Monday.

Obama raised charges of a vast Chinese cyber-hacking campaign when he met Xi on June 7-8 at a desert resort in California. Xi insisted that the Asian power was also a victim of cyber theft.

"I don't think you ever expect a Chinese leader to say, 'You know what, you're right, you've caught us red-handed. We're stealing all your stuff, and every day we figure out how we can get into Apple," Obama said.

Obama, who has faced criticism at home for disclosures of US surveillance, said that every nation gathered intelligence but that China went beyond "standard fare" such as trying to "find out what my talking points are when I'm meeting the Japanese."

"There's a big difference between that and a hacker directly connected with the Chinese government or the Chinese military breaking into Apple's software systems to see if they can obtain the designs for the latest Apple product.

"That's theft. And we can't tolerate that," Obama said.

Obama, calling the United States "the world's innovator" of products, said: "If countries like China are stealing that, that affects our long-term prosperity in a serious way."

A private US report earlier this year said that hacking by China cost the US economy hundreds of billions of dollars per year through the theft of intellectual property.

The Pentagon has charged that Chinese hackers have broken into both US companies and government agencies, including secret designs for sophisticated weapons systems.

But Obama had favourable words for Xi, the 60-year-old son of a founding revolutionary who assumed the presidency in March.

"My impression of President Xi is that he has consolidated his position fairly rapidly inside of China, that he is younger and more forceful and more robust and more confident, perhaps, than some leaders in the past," Obama said.

Xi's ascent offers a second chance for Obama to shape his relationship with a rising China after he grew frustrated during his first term by what US officials saw as a stilted, formal style by then president Hu Jintao.

After initial outreach, the Obama administration took a harder tone on China following concerns by Southeast Asian nations and Japan over Beijing's claims to territories in the South China Sea and East China Sea.

"We've got to get this relationship right and China does need to be a stakeholder. And I think that they recognise that," Obama said.

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Chinese supercomputer world's fastest

A CHINESE university has built the world's fastest supercomputer, almost doubling the speed of the US machine that previously claimed the top spot and underlining China's rise as a science and technology powerhouse.

The semiannual TOP500 listing of the world's fastest supercomputers released on Monday says the Tianhe-2 developed by the National University of Defence Technology in central China's Changsha city is capable of sustained computing of 33.86 petaflops per second. That's the equivalent of 33,860 trillion calculations per second.

The Tianhe-2, which means Milky Way-2, knocks the US Energy Department's Titan machine off the No. 1 spot. It achieved 17.59 petaflops per second.

Supercomputers are used for complex work such as modelling weather systems, simulating nuclear explosions and designing jetliners.

It's the second time a Chinese computer has been named the world's fastest. In November 2010, the Tianhe-2's predecessor, Tianhe-1A, had that honour before Japan's K computer overtook it a few months later on the TOP500 list, a ranking curated by three computer scientists at universities in the US and Germany.

The Tianhe-2 shows how China is leveraging rapid economic growth and sharp increases in research spending to join the United States, Europe and Japan in the global technology elite.

"Most of the features of the system were developed in China, and they are only using Intel for the main compute part," TOP500 editor Jack Dongarra, who toured the Tianhe-2 facility in May, said in a news release.

"That is, the interconnect, operating system, front-end processors and software are mainly Chinese."

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