HONG KONG (AP) — The father of a U.S.-based activist wanted by Hong Kong authorities was convicted Wednesday for attempting to deal with his daughter's financial assets in the city, in the first court case of its kind brought under a homegrown national security law.
Kwok Yin-sang's daughter Anna is the executive director of the Washington-based Hong Kong Democracy Council. Authorities in 2023 offered 1 million Hong Kong dollars (about $127,900) for information leading to her arrest and later banned anyone from handling any funds for her — widely seen as part of a yearslong crackdown on challenges against Beijing's rule following the massive, anti-government protests in 2019.
Kwok, 69, was arrested in April 2025 under the security law, locally known as Article 23 legislation, enacted a year before. He was accused of having attempted to obtain funds from an insurance policy under his daughter's name. He pleaded not guilty.
Acting principal magistrate Cheng Lim-chi found him guilty on Wednesday, saying Kwok must have known his daughter was an absconder and he was attempting to handle her assets.
According to previous hearings, Kwok bought the insurance policy for Anna when she was a toddler and she gained control of it when she reached 18 years old. The father in 2025 wanted to cancel the policy and get funds from it, the court heard.
Kwok’s lawyer, Steven Kwan, pleaded for a lesser sentence for his client, saying there was no evidence to show his client was trying to get the money to send to his daughter. He suggested the judge consider a 14-day prison term.
While the maximum sentence for his charge is seven years of imprisonment, but his case was heard at the magistrates’ courts, which normally hands down a maximum sentence of two years.
His sentencing is scheduled for Feb. 26.
Authorities have accused Anna Kwok of demanding for foreign sanctions, blockade and engaging in other hostile activities against China and Hong Kong through meeting foreign politicians and government officials.
“Today, my father was convicted simply for being my father,” said the younger Kwok on X. “This is transnational repression.”
She said his charge was founded on “incoherent fiction” and she had not received or sought funds from her father or anyone in Hong Kong. She added that the moves from the city's government will not discourage her from carrying on her activism.
Amnesty International Hong Kong Overseas spokesperson Joey Siu said the conviction was apparently politically motivated.
Commissioner of Police Joe Chow said at a news conference that he's sure that the father was well aware of the situation.
“Breaking the law is breaking law," he said.
The police’s bounties targeting overseas-based Hong Kong activists, including Siu and pro-democracy former lawmakers Nathan Law and Ted Hui, have drawn criticism from the U.S. and the U.K. governments.
In 2025, Washington sanctioned six Chinese and Hong Kong officials who it alleged were involved in “transnational repression” and acts that threaten to further erode the city’s autonomy. It said Beijing and Hong Kong officials have used Hong Kong's national security laws extraterritorially to intimidate, silence and harass some activists who were forced to flee overseas.
Weeks after that, China said it would sanction U.S. officials, lawmakers and leaders of nongovernmental organizations who it said have “performed poorly” on Hong Kong issues.
After Beijing imposed a 2020 national security law on the city, many leading activists were arrested or silenced. Others fled abroad and continued their advocacy for Hong Kong, a British colony that returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
Both China and Hong Kong governments insist the security laws were crucial for the city's stability.
This story was corrected in an earlier version to reflect that Kwok Yin-sang was arrested in April 2025, not May.
Anna Kwok, second right, speaks to Sen. Jeff Merkley at an event outside of the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C., on March 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Didi Tang)
Anna Kwok speaks during an event commemorating China's June 4, 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy movement in Washington D.C., on June 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Didi Tang)
LONDON (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will meet Monday at a naval base in England with Prime Minister Andy Burnham, a visit the British leader said is intended to signal the country's “unwavering” support for Kyiv.
Zelenskyy's trip is the first by a foreign leader since Burnham took office a week ago. His predecessor, Keir Starmer, was in Kyiv less than two weeks ago in his last overseas trip before leaving office.
Burnham will be the fifth British prime minister to deal with Zelenskyy since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
“Russia should be in no doubt of our resolve, and we will not back down until we achieve long lasting and just peace for Ukraine,” said Burnham, who has spent the past nine years as mayor of Greater Manchester and has little foreign policy experience.
The U.K. trip comes a day before Zelenskyy is expected to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington.
During the visit to Portsmouth on England's south coast, Zelenskyy and Burnham will meet more than 200 Ukrainian military personnel who have spent the past three weeks in Britain. They have been taking part in an exercise aimed at strengthening their fighting capabilities and measures to counter mines in the Black Sea, the U.K. government said.
The U.K. will give Ukraine the intellectual property behind its new “Stone Cloak” electronic warfare system, which is capable of jamming Russian air defenses to stop drones from being detected, Burnham’s office said.
Ukraine has expanded its campaign of frequent drone attacks deep inside Russia that have targeted oil facilities, military factories and, most recently, logistical centers, bringing the war home to millions of Russians and raising pressure on President Vladimir Putin.
The raids have shattered Putin’s narrative of the conflict as something that doesn’t affect the lives of ordinary people in his country. But he has remained undeterred and Russia has ramped up its aerial campaign, regularly bombarding Ukraine with missiles and drones.
Russia again attacked Ukraine overnight with 147 long-range drones, according to the Ukrainian air force, which said it intercepted or jammed 123 of them.
In Zaporizhzhia, one person was killed and two injured in attacks on the city that damaged a high-rise residential building and several private residences overnight, according to regional administration head Ivan Fedorov.
A Russian strike on the town of Balakliia in the Kharkiv region killed one person and wounded eight, according to Vitalii Karabanov, head of the city military administration.
In the Nikopol district of the Dnipropetrovsk region, Russian strikes damaged a kindergarten, residential buildings and infrastructure, injuring a woman and a 6-year-old boy, according to administration head Oleksandr Hanzha.
In the eastern Kharkiv region, a regional council member said Russian forces destroyed every gas station along the highway between Kharkiv and Poltava, a distance of about 150 kilometers (93 miles). Oleksandr Skoryk said the situation is becoming more critical daily, but the region is not facing a fuel or food crisis.
The highway is a key supply route linking Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city and a regional hub close to the Russian border, with central Ukraine. Russia has intensified strikes on gas stations, power facilities and other infrastructure this year as part of a broader campaign to strain Ukraine’s logistics and energy networks.
Romania’s Ministry of National Defense said a drone briefly entered its airspace before crossing the river border into Ukraine, where explosions were subsequently reported. It said two F-16 fighter jets were deployed to monitor airspace.
The drone’s incursion into Romanian airspace marked the fourth such incident in as many days. The three previous drones were all shot down by the NATO member.
In Moscow, Russia’s Defense Ministry said air defenses downed 276 Ukrainian drones overnight.
Rostov regional Gov. Yuri Slyusar said five people, including a child, were killed when a Ukrainian drone hit an apartment building in Rostov-on-Don. Ukraine’s military General Staff said Ukrainian forces struck an export terminal in Rostov-on-Don, setting it ablaze.
The Ukrainian military said other strikes in the Moscow-held part of the Kherson region targeted a ground relay station used to control drones and a bridge over the Henichesk Strait that Russia uses for military logistics. Russian fuel and supply depots were also hit.
In the city of Belgorod in southwestern Russia near the border with Ukraine, a Ukrainian drone attack injured 12, including two children, according to regional emergency officials.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Ukraine struck an Iranian vessel in the Caspian Sea, killing a sailor.
In a statement on X on Sunday, Araghchi denounced the attack as a “blatant U.N. Charter violation done at Israel’s behest to drag Europe into its war.” He said he made it clear in calls with the European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that the attack “can't go unanswered.”
Zelenskyy said Ukrainian long-range strikes in the Caspian Sea over the weekend achieved “very good results,” adding that the targets included “vessels involved in transporting military cargo linked to Iran, as well as a warship.”
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha rejected Iran’s threats of retaliation as unjustified and groundless, saying Tehran's weapons supplies to Russia have made it a direct accomplice to Moscow's aggression. “Iran has no standing to pretend to be a victim," he posted on X, and called its references to the U.N. Charter “absurd.”
Sybiha said Iran’s statements were an attempt to divert attention from Russia’s attacks on civilian shipping in the Black Sea, which would be a focus of an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting Monday.
Hanna Arhirova and Illia Novikov in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Stephen McGrath in Bucharest, Romania, contributed.
In this photo taken Saturday, July 25, 2026 Ukrainian soldiers of Khartia brigade prepare a ground drone for a mission in Kharkiv region, Ukraine. (AP Photo/Andrii Marienko)
In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, firefighters put out a fire in a supermarket following a Russian drone attack in Chernihiv, Ukraine, Sunday, July 26, 2026. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)
This photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service shows a damaged supermarket after Russian drone strikes in Chernihiv, Ukraine, Sunday, July 26, 2026. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)
FILE - Britain's Prime Minister Andy Burnham speaks to staff and media at 10 Downing Street in London, Monday, July 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth, File)
FILE - Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy looks od during his meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, on July 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
