6 Charged With Smuggling Goose and Duck Intestines From China

Some were in crates marked as “pet nail clippers.” Others were hidden under packaged rattlesnakes, a complaint filed in Federal District Court in Brooklyn said. The crates concealed exotic delicacies that were illegal contraband, the complaint said: raw goose and duck intestines, sent from China and destined for New York City shops and restaurants. Federal agents arrested six people on Tuesday and charged them with smuggling the organs through Los Angeles between August 2022 and May 2023, though the complaint also mentions illicit shipments as recently as January. The defendants…

U.S. Drops Case Against Police Officer It Had Called an ‘Insider Threat’

In September 2020, when federal authorities charged Baimadajie Angwang, a Marine Corps veteran and New York Police Department officer, with acting as an illegal agent of China, the head of New York’s F.B.I. office called him “the definition of an insider threat.” The government has quietly changed its mind. On Thursday, in a brief and subdued hearing in a Brooklyn courtroom, a federal judge granted prosecutors’ request to dismiss the charges against Officer Angwang. The swift unraveling of the case — which had been hailed as a signature example of…

New to the American Melting Pot, and Finding Its Taste Bittersweet

Imagine you’re a kid, joining your mom for a day at work. This is no corporate-sponsored occasion where you’ll raid the supply closet and nibble cookies frosted with the company logo; it’s just a regular Saturday. Your mother, who was a math professor back in China, is now employed by a sushi processing plant near the Holland Tunnel. There you will stand for eight hours, clad in ill-fitting rubber boots and a hooded plastic onesie, while she guts and beheads an endless stream of salmon floating by on a metal…