A Chinese business giant pleaded guilty Monday to federal charges that he paid more than $10,000 in straw donor contributions to political candidates — including, a person familiar with the matter said, to a New York congressman and Mayor Eric Adams.

Hui Qin, 56, of Old Westbury, NY, who was once on Forbes magazine’s list of billionaires, led a now defunct entertainment company called SMI Culture. But he has been in federal custody since the fall, when he was arrested at an apartment he had at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan on charges of using fake IDs.

Mr. Qin asked others to contribute to political campaigns of his choice, and he agreed to pay them back in 2021 and 2022, prosecutors said. The other figures who received donations were Rep. Andrew Garbarino of Long Island and Allan Fung, a former mayor of Cranston, R.I., who was running for Congress, the person familiar with the matter said. Both are Republicans, while Mr. Adams is a Democrat.

Mr. Qin hid his activities from the officials for whom he raised money, according to a criminal complaint filed in the case. As a result, they unknowingly filed false reports.

Breon S. Peace, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement that Mr. Qin had admitted that he “participated in a brazen web of deceit” that spread lies to authorities overseeing the election.

“Ensuring election integrity and rooting out campaign contribution fraud are Department of Justice priorities,” Peace said in a statement. “No one is above the law, regardless of their wealth or position in society.”

Vito Pitta, Mr. Adams’ attorney for his 2021 campaign, said: “As the federal government made clear today, the campaign had no knowledge of a straw donor program — and no member of the campaign has been accused of any wrongdoing. ”

Mr. Fung and Rep. Garbarino did not respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Qin’s legal troubles go far beyond the charges to which he pleaded guilty Monday in federal court in Central Islip, N.Y. In September, Mr. Qin was arrested by police in Nassau County, who accused him of trying to attack his ex-wife, with whom he was still living, before she was scheduled to testify in a civil case against him in federal court of Manhattan. .

He had tried to smash open a locked door with an ax in the September episode, which came months after another attack in which he tried to strangle her, prosecutors said.

Mr. Qin was sued in Manhattan by a Chinese investment management group to enforce a $450 million foreign arbitration award against him. He allegedly transferred ownership of his Long Island home to his ex-wife and ex-mother-in-law for just $10 after arbitration began in China.

He also pleaded guilty Monday to immigration fraud and providing false identification. He also used the name Muk Lam Li for years, but omitted that information when applying for a green card, prosecutors said.

As part of a deal with prosecutors, he agreed to leave the United States after serving his sentence. His sentencing is set for May 14; Prosecutors said they would ask the judge for no more than six months if Mr. Qin complied with the terms of the settlement.

A lawyer for Mr Qin, Henry Mazurek, said his client was happy the case had been resolved.

“After years of investigation, the government’s case resulted in a plea deal in which they recommended no more than six months in prison,” he said. “Mr. Qin is pleased that this matter is behind him and looks forward to resuming his business career outside the United States.”

The campaigns of Mr. Adams and his government have become the focus of several investigations.

In September, prosecutors from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office indicted Eric Ulrich, Mr. Adams’s former senior adviser and then buildings commissioner, on charges of taking bribes. In November, FBI agents searched the home of the mayor’s inexperienced chief fundraiser, Brianna Suggs, as well as the homes of Rana Abbasova, an assistant in Mr. Adams’ international affairs office, and Cenk Öcal, a former Turkish Airlines executive who was employed by the mayor’s transition team.

Days later, officers stopped Mr. Adams on the street, asked his security detail to step aside and seized his electronic devices, part of a criminal investigation into whether his 2021 campaign conspired to funnel illegal foreign donations into his coffers.

Straw donors are a recurring theme for researchers.

In February, Dwayne Montgomery, a retired police inspector who had been friends with the mayor, pleaded guilty to conspiring to steer straw donors to the mayor’s campaign. Two other donors named in the same indictment, brothers Shahid Mushtaq and Yahya Mushtaq, pleaded guilty in October.

Two opposition party politicians were released from prison in Senegal on Thursday evening, just ten days before national elections in which one of them will run for president.

Hundreds of supporters celebrated in the streets of Dakar after Ousmane Sonko, Senegal’s main opposition leader, was released along with Bassirou Diomaye Faye, his party’s candidate in the March 24 elections.

“You never gave up, even when we were away. You kept fighting.” Mr Faye told this to supporters in Dakar on Thursday evening. “Today we are ready to fight the same battle with you.”

The release is the latest in a series of unexpected moves by the incumbent president, Macky Sall, who cited corruption allegations when he announced last month that he was canceling the election. Facing a backlash, he reversed course and set the election for Sunday, March 24 – just nine days before his term ends.

After hinting for years that he might run again, Mr. Sall finally confirmed last July that he would step down after his two terms expired.

Senegal, a coastal West African state of 17 million people, is seen as a bastion of democracy compared to some of its West African neighbors, which are ruled by military juntas after a wave of coups in recent years.

Mr. Sonko was ineligible to contest the upcoming elections because he was convicted of corrupting a minor last June and sentenced to two years in prison. Mr Faye was on the run from prison, where he was awaiting trial for defamation and contempt of court, after accusing magistrates in a social media post last year of prosecuting Mr Sonko to protect the interests of Mr Sall to serve.

Campaigns have been started prior to the elections. Mr Sall’s chosen successor, former Prime Minister Amadou Ba, has held meetings that were poorly attended and received little attention.

Alioune Tine, an expert on human rights in West Africa, said the capture of Mr Sonko and Mr Faye had increased their cachet, especially for Mr Faye, who was a little-known figure before being named as Mr Sonko’s replacement. the election.

“If you throw leaders in jail, you turn them into heroes,” said Mr. Tine, the founder of the AfrikaJom Center, a Dakar-based research organization.

As Mr Sonko and Mr Faye paraded through central Dakar on Thursday evening, it was Mr Sonko’s name that supporters chanted. But Mr. Sonko kept a low profile as Mr. Faye addressed the crowd through a microphone, standing in a car, a scarf in the colors of the Senegalese flag around his neck.

“Sonko will play a central role in the campaign, but the main challenge for him will be not to overshadow Faye too much so that Faye can win,” Mr Tine added.

A total of nineteen candidates are on the ballot for the elections in Senegal, one of the few countries in the region that has never undergone military rule. In recent years, however, Mr. Sall’s government had repeatedly cut off access to the Internet and banned demonstrations as Mr. Sonko rose to fame.

There have been dozens of demonstrators killed during anti-government riotsmany with live ammunition human rights groups said was dismissed by the country’s security forces.

Mr. Sonko is a charismatic but divisive figure who was tried on charges of raping a massage parlor employee. He was acquitted of rape, but sentenced last year to two years in prison for “corruption of the youth” because the employee was under 21 years old.

Mr. Sall signed an amnesty bill earlier this month, which ultimately led to the release of Mr. Faye and Mr. Sonko. But Mr Sonko’s role in both the upcoming elections and the country’s political future remains unclear.

Mr Sonko, a former tax inspector and currently mayor of the southern city of Ziguinchor, has vowed to rid Senegal of corruption, appealing to young Senegalese voters – although he has not made clear how he plans to deliver on his promises of sweeping change to be carried out.

“Sonko is the person Senegal needs,” said Serge Goudiaby Atepa, a well-known Senegalese architect and head of the main lobby of business leaders in Senegal.

Mr Atepa also praised Mr Sall for releasing Mr Sonko, who was his main political enemy for years. “The crowds we saw on the streets last night prove that this was the right thing to do.”

Mady Camara contributed reporting from Dakar.

Even in the darkest of times, Sri Lankans held on to their sense of humor.

In 2022, as the island’s economy collapsed and the government announced a QR code system to ration gasoline, a meme spread online: “Scanning the QR code for fuel makes you forget the past three months.”

And as public anger forced the strongman president to flee his palace, while protesters ventured in to fry snacks in his kitchen and jump into his pool, another meme captured the mood of their departure: “We’re leaving. The key is under the flower pot.”

It is this type of online speech, which has fueled Sri Lanka’s largest grassroots movement in decades, that activists and rights groups fear are now in jeopardy.

They are concerned about a new law, the Online Safety Act, which gives the government extensive powers to consider statements on social media as ‘prohibited statements’. Under the law, a commission appointed by the president will decide what is prohibited, and violations can lead to penalties ranging from fines of hundreds of dollars to years in prison.

Public Security Minister Tiran Alles told Parliament the legislation would protect against online fraud, the spread of false information and the abuse of women and children. But he also made clear its potential political applications, saying it could be used against those who insult MPs on social media.

Sri Lanka is taking a cue from other countries in the region that are increasingly monitoring what people say online, most notably Bangladesh, where a 2018 law known as the Digital Security Act has led to the jailing of activists and opposition leaders.

The Sri Lankan law “is the latest weapon in the government’s arsenal of tools that can be used to undermine freedom of expression and suppress dissent,” said Thyagi Ruwanpathirana, a South Asia regional researcher at Amnesty International, adding that the act “was ripe.” for abuse.”

Ms Ruwanpathirana said the Sri Lankan government must “demonstrate the political will to uphold international human rights obligations” as the country will hold its first elections since the 2022 crash this year.

The main impetus for the new law, according to analysts, is the protest movement that toppled the government in 2022.

Political leaders want to ensure there is no repeat, the analysts say, a concern that persists as the movement’s goals remain largely unfulfilled. While the powerful president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, was forced out of office in 2022, little else changed at the top. The political elite has merely reshuffled its seats, and Mr Rajapaksa’s political party has backed a new president, Ranil Wickremesinghe, until elections later this year.

Mr Wickremesinghe, a veteran politician, is trying to turn the economy around, making difficult budget changes to improve the government’s balance sheet. But activists and rights groups say he has also gone after civil society leaders who have played key roles in the civil movement.

“We saw many using social media to criticize, challenge and push back on various state initiatives, so social media played a big role in popular mobilization,” said Bhavani Fonseka, a senior researcher at the Center for Policy Alternatives, in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo. “That provides a new incentive for the government to introduce restrictions.”

Nalaka Gunawardena, a Colombo-based analyst, said the political intentions of the new legislation were made clear by officials’ refusal to amend it to better balance freedom of expression with the government’s concerns about online abuse.

By rushing through the legislation, Mr. Gunawardena said, the government rejected suggestions from media experts and rights activists who pushed for an exception for those engaged in satire and parody.

Historically, satirists in Sri Lanka have faced trouble and even exile for targeting the majority Sinhalese community or the powerful Buddhist monks. During the decades of the country’s bloody civil war, which ended in 2009, military leaders — especially Mr. Rajapaksa, who served as defense minister — were increasingly off limits.

When a coalition government briefly broke the Rajapaksa family’s hold on the country in 2015, political satire began to flourish online: the new president, Maithripala Sirisena, was a favorite of meme makers.

The elevation of the feared Rajapaksa to the presidency in 2019 initially caused some hesitation, but as his management of the economy sent the country into a tailspin, cartoonists and satirists saw little to lose.

The administrator of a popular, anonymously run meme page called NewsCurry, which has about 50,000 followers on social media platforms, said such efforts had drawn attention to anti-democratic behavior and lies by politicians, making the local news media docile. The new law, said the administrator, who asked not to be named for fear of clashing with authorities, should be renamed the Security for Politicians Law.

Hamza Haniffa, who is part of a group that runs meme pages, said the law has made many of his friends reluctant to continue making jokes. Messages have become less frequent.

“During the protest movement, we expressed our opinions without being afraid,” he said. “But now we are concerned.”

Around a long wooden table in San Francisco City Hall, nine people battling drug addiction exchanged news last Friday.

One woman got a new job at a tax preparation company and said she hoped being busy would distract her from her craving for alcohol. A man said his mother was dying and he was glad he could be there for her with clear eyes. Another was effusive about a promising first date.

A middle-aged man, in a nicely tailored blue suit with a pocket square, then took his turn.

“I’m Matt,” he said. “I work in the building.”

It was Matt Dorsey, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and a regular participant in the weekly recovery meetings on the second floor. Mr. Dorsey, 59, has struggled with an addiction to crystal meth for a quarter of a century and has been sober for more than three years.

In previous generations, prominent leaders with addiction problems rarely opened up about their substance abuse and sometimes went to great lengths to hide their personal problems. But Mr. Dorsey and other politicians have increasingly embraced candor as a key part of the fight against the fentanyl and methamphetamine epidemics that have ravaged their cities.

Mr. Dorsey called the recovery movement “a sleeping giant” politically and said it has mobilized in San Francisco because of the drug crisis that has killed nearly 3,000 people in the city since 2020 — far more than Covid-19, murders and car accidents together. . Others say society has become more tolerant of people with personal problems, making it easier to open up about drug addiction and mental health issues.

“It is important that people in the early stages of recovery see that there is a better life on the other side,” Mr Dorsey said. “The fact that we are talking about our journeys is empowering.”

In Washington state, state Rep. Debra Lekanoff reported her addiction to opioids and alcohol in January and introduced a package of bills called Heal One Washington, which would fund substance abuse counseling and treatment facilities, including for Native American tribes .

In Portland, Oregon, another city struggling with a drug overdose crisis, three men in recovery are running for city council seats in November. They are calling for more funding for sobering centers where people can safely emerge from their peak, as well as more residential treatment facilities and abstinence-based housing.

Mike Marshall, one of the candidates from Portland, has battled addictions to methamphetamine and alcohol. He said the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous governed the recovery community for years — especially the organization’s emphasis on privacy. But that is changing, partly because more people feel they need to speak out to address the severity of the current drug crisis, and partly because it has become increasingly common for people to speak out openly about their mental health issues.

“The recovery community is on the rise. We are new,” said Mr. Marshall, the director of Oregon Recovers, a statewide group that aims to improve treatment options. “But there is an idea you can be proud of when it comes to recovery.”

If that language sounds familiar, it’s because some people in the recovery movement have adopted concepts that were successful for the LGBTQ community decades ago. Mr. Dorsey, a gay man, sits at the same desk in the San Francisco boardrooms where gay rights leader Harvey Milk lived in the late 1970s before he was assassinated by a colleague at City Hall.

Mr Dorsey was inspired by a call from Mr Milk for every gay person to come out. “I’m not quite done with recovery yet,” Mr. Dorsey said, “but I do think that if people are ready, it can really be meaningful.”

San Francisco’s leaders agree they must tackle the city’s devastating drug crisis, which kills an average of two people a day, but they haven’t found much consensus. Some favor harm reduction strategies that accept that people will use drugs and seek to protect them through the widespread distribution of Narcan to reverse overdoses and the cleanup of drug paraphernalia to prevent the spread of hepatitis C and HIV.

Others say the city needs to be more forceful in steering people to treatment and enforcing laws. Mr Dorsey supports harm reduction programs but says the city should emphasize recovery and increase police numbers to prevent public drug use and trafficking.

He supports a measure on Tuesday’s ballot, Proposition F, that would require welfare recipients suspected of drug use to be screened through a questionnaire and interview process. Those deemed by a professional to have a drug addiction would have to undergo treatment to continue receiving benefits.

Mr. Dorsey, a moderate Democrat who is among the most conservative leaders in liberal San Francisco, said fentanyl is so addictive that it is rare for someone to recover without some form of intervention.

However, people in recovery are divided about the measure. Opponents include Gary McCoy, who worked as a political aide to a host of San Francisco politicians, including Representative Nancy Pelosi. He revealed in 2021 that he almost died from a meth addiction, was homeless and cycled in and out of prison. He has been sober for 13 years.

Like Mr. Dorsey, Mr. McCoy believes it is important for politicians to disclose their addictions if they feel comfortable doing so (he has been mentioned as a possible candidate for the Board of Supervisors in 2026, although he would not confirm this). But he takes a more liberal stance than Mr. Dorsey on how the city should combat the drug crisis, and he works for a nonprofit that advocates for a harm reduction approach. Showing people how to use drugs more safely or guiding them to use less can also be important, he said.

“If we pursue recovery first, an abstinence-only approach only works for a small number of people,” Mr. McCoy said, adding that many drug users have tried treatment programs numerous times and relapsed. Forcing them to try again probably won’t work, he said.

Mr. Dorsey said his addiction began when he was a 14-year-old growing up in a happy middle-class family in western Massachusetts. His family members were able to drink socially without struggling with addiction.

On the other hand, he became a compulsive drinker of beer, wine, bourbon – whatever he could get his hands on. He described himself as an alcoholic and was able to get sober on his own in his 20s, but he said that in his 30s he began experimenting with party drugs that were popular in San Francisco’s gay community.

“Crystal meth, GHB, ecstasy, Xanax are coming,” he said, noting that he tried to be a “weekend warrior” who could get sober on Monday morning, but that didn’t work.

When he was a spokesman for San Francisco’s city attorney and political consultant for many years, he was open about his gay and HIV-positive behavior, but did not disclose his drug addiction.

When he applied to become a spokesman for the San Francisco Police Department in early 2020, he told Police Chief Bill Scott about his addiction to crystal meth. Mr. Dorsey was hired anyway.

But he relapsed during the pandemic lockdown, explaining that he turned to drugs to ease his feelings of boredom and loneliness while isolated. He remembers his brain feeling foggy during his relapse and seeing work emails in his Sent folder that he didn’t remember writing. He re-entered treatment and missed two months of work. So far it has stuck.

Every day he looks at a yellow widget on his iPhone that counts his time in sobriety. Three years. Four months. Twenty-four days.

When a seat on the Board of Supervisors in his district became available in 2022, he asked Mayor London Breed to appoint him. He told her that he had only been sober for 18 months, but that he had rare insight into how to combat San Francisco’s drug crisis. She agreed, calling him “uniquely positioned” to understand San Francisco’s challenges and the impact of city decisions on residents addicted to drugs.

As a supervisor, Mr. Dorsey has proposed more oversight outside of treatment centers so that people seeking recovery don’t have to go through drug dealers. He has also proposed making it easier to deport undocumented immigrants accused of dealing fentanyl. Neither idea emerged in the face of progressive opponents who accused him of perpetuating the “war on drugs.”

Mr. Dorsey has many town hall meetings, but none are more important to him than the Friday afternoon session of LifeRing, a secular, abstinence-based recovery group.

When it was his turn to share his news of the week, he sighed. He told the group that his partner, a 39-year-old man from Brazil, had also had a crystal meth addiction – and had relapsed.

His partner now lives in an assisted living facility 30 miles south of the city and can only communicate with Mr Dorsey through handwritten letters.

“My God, I miss him,” Mr. Dorsey told the group.

But he said others in recovery gave him the support he needed. Whatever happened, he said, he would be fine.

“It helps me stay healthy,” he said. “I am grateful.”

The farmers' protests in Europe are a harbinger of the next major political challenge in global climate action: how to grow food without further damaging the planet's climate and biodiversity.

On Tuesday, after weeks of intense protests in several cities across the continent, the most explicit sign of that difficulty came. The European Union's top official, Ursula von der Leyen, abandoned an ambitious bill to curb the use of chemical pesticides and softened the European Commission's demands. next set of recommendations on reducing agricultural pollution.

“We want to ensure that farmers remain in the driver's seat in this process,” she said in the European Parliament. “Only if we achieve our climate and environmental goals together can farmers continue to earn a living.”

The farmers claim they are being hit from all sides: high fuel costs, green regulations, unfair competition from producers in countries with fewer environmental restrictions.

Nevertheless, agriculture is responsible for 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and it is impossible for the European Union to achieve its ambitious climate targets, which are enshrined in law, without making dramatic changes to the agricultural system, including the way on which farmers use chemical pesticides and fertilizers, as well as the huge livestock industry.

It is also politically important. Changing European agricultural practices is proving extremely difficult, especially as June's parliamentary elections approach. Peasants are a powerful political force, and food and agriculture are powerful features of European identity.

Agriculture accounts for just over 1 percent of the European economy and employs 4 percent of the population. But it receives a third of the EU budget, largely in subsidies.

Why are farmers protesting?

For weeks, a series of farmers' groups have taken to the streets across Europe, blocking highways with tractors, throwing fireworks at police and setting up barricades that have caused major transport problems in Berlin, Brussels and Paris.

They are angry about many things. Some frustration is directed at national leaders and proposals to reduce agricultural diesel subsidies in France and Germany. Some of it focuses on EU-wide proposals, such as cuts in the use of nitrogen fertilizers (which are made from fossil fuels).

Farmers are also angry at trade agreements that allow the import of agricultural products from countries that do not have the same environmental protections. And some farmers want more government support as they reel from the effects of extreme weather, exacerbated by climate change.

The protests epitomize the failure to convince farmers towards more sustainable agriculture, said Tim Benton, head of the environment program at Chatham House, a research institution based in London. “This is a broader example of how, if we want to make the transition to sustainability, we need to invest more in 'just transitions' to bring people along and make them feel better off, not punished,” he said .

How have leaders responded?

In Germany, the government has backtracked on a number of key policy measures, including: postponing a reduction in diesel subsidies for agricultural vehicles.

In France, the government has offered livestock farmers a 150 million euro (or $163 million) aid package, temporarily halted a national plan to reduce pesticide use and banned the import of foreign products treated with a pesticide banned in France is.

But on Tuesday, Ms von der Leyen announced the scrapping of an EU-wide bill to reduce pesticide use because, she said, it had become “a symbol of polarisation”.

Later in the day, the Commission published its recommended 2040 climate targets. Although they will not be formally proposed or voted on until a new Parliament is elected this summer, they send a clear signal about the political priorities of the incumbent European People's Party from Mrs von der Leyen. The targets aim to reduce overall emissions by 90 percent by 2040. But they do not recommend anything specific on reducing agricultural methane emissions, a potent greenhouse gas that comes mainly from livestock, nor on curtailing nitrogen fertilizers.

Both methane and nitrogen need to be significantly reduced to meet the bloc's climate targets, scientists advising the European Union said.

Following Tuesday's announcements, a European farmers' lobby group known as COPA-COGECA declared victory. “The European Commission finally acknowledges that its approach was not the right one,” the group said said on X.

Why is it politically risky?

The centre-right European People's Party, the largest group in the European Parliament, has long enjoyed the support of rural voters. Lately, some environmental and trade policies have angered that voting bloc. Far-right groups, which are on the rise in several countries on the continent, have seized on that discontent.

“The upcoming elections create opportunities for populist parties, who use them against Europe's green agenda,” said Simone Tagliapietra, a senior fellow at Bruegel, a Brussels-based research institute that studies European energy and environmental policy. “We all have someone in our family tree who was a farmer, and food is an important part of European identity.”