NEW YORK (AP) — The plain, glass-clad building stands six stories between a hotel, a spa and a coffee shop in the heart of Manhattan’s Chinatown neighborhood.
U.S. prosecutors say it was a secret Chinese spy outpost, with orders from Beijing to silence, harass and intimidate pro-democracy dissidents in the U.S., and a banner inside that said: “Fuzhou Police Overseas Service Station, New York USA."
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Lu Jianwang waits to enter a federal courthouse in New York, Wednesday, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Supporters of Lu Jianwang, also known as Harry Lu, stand outside a federal courthouse before the opening of his trial in New York, Wednesday, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Supporters of Lu Jianwang, also known as Harry Lu, stand outside a federal courthouse before the opening of his trial in New York, Wednesday, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Supporters of Lu Jianwang, also known as Harry Lu, stand outside a federal courthouse before the opening of his trial in New York, Wednesday, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Lu Jianwang waits to enter a federal courthouse in New York, Wednesday, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Lawyers for the man accused of running it, Lu Jianwang, contend it was a community center — and nothing more — where members of the Chinese diaspora could remotely renew their Chinese driver’s licenses amid COVID-19 pandemic-era travel restrictions and meet to play ping-pong and mahjong.
Lu, 64, went on trial Wednesday in Brooklyn federal court, more than three years after U.S. authorities arrested him at his Bronx home on charges he conspired to act as a foreign agent and destroyed evidence, including WeChat messages with his purported Chinese government handler.
Lu, a U.S. citizen for decades, “was living in New York City but he was working for the Chinese government," prosecutor Lindsey Oken said in an opening statement.
Lu and a co-defendant who has pleaded guilty, Chen Jinping, established the Chinatown outpost in 2022 after Lu attended a ceremony in his native Fujian province where China's Ministry of Public Security announced it was opening 30 such secret police stations around the world, Oken said.
China's communist government uses the outposts to monitor people it “views as enemies of its interests,” Oken told jurors. Among the witnesses set to testify against Lu, she said, is a dissident who was targeted by his outpost.
The Manhattan outpost shared offices with the America ChangLe Association, a community organization that Lu and his brother, Jimmy, helped run and that described itself on tax forms as a “social gathering place for Fujianese people." ChangLe means “eternal joy," a defense lawyer said.
Oken acknowledged the organization was open about its driver's license service — but even doing that was illegal under U.S. law, she said.
Lu worked for China “without asking or telling the U.S. government," violating the federal Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires people acting as agents of a foreign government or entity to register with the Justice Department, Oken said.
Lu's lawyer, John Carman portrayed the case as a mundane bureaucratic blip, not an international spy thriller.
“Lu was arrested for essentially failing to file a form," he told jurors.
Evidence will show that Lu is “not a spy, not a part of Chinese intelligence services, not a part of the Chinese Communist Party, the CCP, and he's not an agent of the Chinese government,” Carman said in his opening statement. He said the case brought two phrases to mind: “No good deed goes unpunished” and “Guilt by association.”
The FBI, spurred by a report from an organization that monitors Chinese transnational repression, raided the alleged New York City outpost on Oct. 3, 2022, rifling through drawers and paperwork, busting into locked cabinets and a safe, and seizing a computer and cellphones, Carman said.
“They turned the place upside down,” Carman told jurors.
The next day, Oken said, Lu admitted to FBI agents that he established the Manhattan outpost, that he kept in touch with his handler via WeChat and that he had deleted those messages. Carman said neither of Lu's two-hour FBI interviews were recorded. Lu was arrested in April 2023.
Lu's co-defendant, Chen, pleaded guilty in December 2024 to a charge of conspiracy to act as a foreign agent. He remains free on bond and will be sentenced after Lu's trial.
Lu, who also goes by Harry Lu, sat at the defense table Wednesday alongside Baimadajie Angwang, a former NYPD officer who was cleared three years ago of charges accusing him of being an “intelligence asset” for the Chinese government. Angwang, who is suing to rejoin the police force, is working as an investigator for Lu's defense team.
Lu, wearing a dark suit, pale blue tie and glasses, speaks limited English and listened through an earpiece as an interpreter translated Oken and Carman's words into Fujianese. He and Angwang both had American flag pins affixed to their lapels.
Several dozen supporters, including members of Lu’s church, rallied outside of the courthouse, holding signs with slogans like “Justice for Harry Lu” and “Chinese Americans Are Americans!” and waving small American flags, as Lu and his legal team arrived.
“No one controls him," Carman told jurors. “If Harry Lu is an agent of anyone, he is an agent for his community — the local people in his community.”
“You have the life of an innocent man in your hands,” the lawyer concluded.
Lu Jianwang waits to enter a federal courthouse in New York, Wednesday, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Supporters of Lu Jianwang, also known as Harry Lu, stand outside a federal courthouse before the opening of his trial in New York, Wednesday, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Supporters of Lu Jianwang, also known as Harry Lu, stand outside a federal courthouse before the opening of his trial in New York, Wednesday, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Supporters of Lu Jianwang, also known as Harry Lu, stand outside a federal courthouse before the opening of his trial in New York, Wednesday, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Lu Jianwang waits to enter a federal courthouse in New York, Wednesday, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
PRAIA, Cape Verde (AP) — Two patients with hantavirus and one suspected of infection were evacuated Wednesday from a cruise ship at the center of a deadly outbreak, the U.N. health agency said. The ship then departed Cape Verde with nearly 150 people on board — isolated in their cabins — and headed to Spain’s Canary Islands.
Associated Press footage showed health workers in protective gear evacuating three patients, including the ship's British doctor. Two of the patients arrived at Amsterdam's airport Wednesday evening and were taken to separate hospitals.
Three people have died, and one body remained on the ship, the World Health Organization said. Of eight recorded cases, five were confirmed by laboratory testing.
Hantavirus usually spreads by inhaling contaminated rodent droppings and can spread person-to-person, though that is rare, according to the WHO, whose top epidemic expert said the risk to the public is low.
Health officials in Europe and Africa are trying to identify people who may have had contact with people who earlier left the ship, which departed April 1 from South America for stops in Antarctica and several remote Atlantic islands.
Two Argentine officials investigating the origins of the outbreak said the government's leading hypothesis is that a Dutch couple contracted the virus while bird-watching in the city of Ushuaia before boarding.
They said the couple visited a landfill during the tour and may have been exposed to rodents. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media, with the investigation ongoing.
The Dutch foreign ministry said the three people evacuated were a 41-year-old Dutch national, a 56-year-old British national and a 65-year-old German national who would be transferred to specialized hospitals in Europe. WHO said Wednesday that testing in Senegal confirmed that two of the evacuees were infected with hantavirus.
Two of the evacuees remain in "serious condition," Dutch ship operator Oceanwide Expeditions said, and the third had no symptoms but was “closely associated” with a German passenger who died on the MV Hondius ship on May 2.
Upon arriving in the Amsterdam, one of the evacuated patients was taken to a specialized hospital in Dusseldorf, Germany; the other was taken to a hospital in Leiden, the Netherlands.
Health officials said passengers and crew members still on the ship were without symptoms. Their journey to the Canary Islands will take three or four days, Spain’s health ministry said, adding that the arrival “won´t represent any risk for the public."
Still, the Canary Islands regional president, Fernando Clavijo, said he worried about the risk to the population and demanded a meeting with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.
Authorities said passengers tested positive for the Andes virus, a species of hantavirus found in South America, primarily in Argentina and Chile. The virus can spread between people, though that’s rare and only through close contact, according to the WHO. The health agency has never seen a hantavirus outbreak on a ship.
“This is not the next COVID, but it is a serious infectious disease,” the WHO's top epidemic expert, Maria Van Kerkhove, said. “Most people will never be exposed to this.”
Two Dutch infectious diseases experts were joining the ship, Van Kerkhove said. Access to clinical care is important, she said, because infected people can develop severe acute respiratory distress and need oxygen or mechanical ventilation. There is no specific treatment or cure, but early medical attention can increase the chance of survival.
The hantavirus incubation period can be one to six weeks, or more, she said.
The ship's itinerary included stops across the South Atlantic, including mainland Antarctica and the remote islands of South Georgia, Nightingale Island, Tristan da Cunha, St. Helena and Ascension.
Authorities in Switzerland said a former passenger who tested positive was being treated at a Zurich hospital. South African authorities earlier said two passengers who were transferred there tested positive. One, a British man, was in intensive care; the other collapsed and died in South Africa.
Swiss health office spokesperson Simon Ming said the patient there had left the ship during its St. Helena stop. It was not clear when or how he traveled to Switzerland and how many other countries he might have passed through.
The patient’s wife hasn’t shown symptoms but is self-isolating as a precaution, a statement by the office said.
“There is currently no risk to the Swiss public," the office said.
At St. Helena, the body of the Dutch man suspected to be the first hantavirus case on board was taken off the ship. His wife flew to South Africa, where she collapsed at the Johannesburg airport and died.
Later, a British man was evacuated at Ascension Island and taken to South Africa.
The ship's operator has not said if other people left at those or other locations.
The South African health ministry says officials have traced 42 out of 62 people, including health workers, they believe had contact with the two infected passengers who traveled there. The 42 tested negative for hantavirus.
But 20 people still need to be traced, including five people who may have been on flights to South Africa with some of the passengers as well as flight crew members.
Some may have now traveled overseas, the ministry said.
DeBre reported from Buenos Aires and Furtula from Amsterdam. Chinedu Asadu in Abuja, Nigeria; Jamey Keaten in Geneva; Mark Banchereau in Dakar, Senegal; Joseph Wilson in Barcelona; Geir Moulson in Berlin; Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands, and Michelle Gumede and Mogomotsi Magome in Johannesburg, contributed to this report.
This version corrects to say the evacuated doctor is British.
An air ambulance takes off with evacuated patients from the MV Hondius cruise ship from the airport in Praia, Cape Verde, Wednesday, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)
An air ambulance takes off with evacuated patients from the MV Hondius cruise ship from the airport in Praia, Cape Verde, Wednesday, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)
The MV Hondius cruise ship is anchored at a port in Praia, Cape Verde, Wednesday, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)
Health workers in protective gear evacuate patients from the MV Hondius cruise ship into an ambulance at a port in Praia, Cape Verde, Wednesday, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)
Health workers in protective gear arrive to evacuate patients from the MV Hondius cruise ship at a port in Praia, Cape Verde, Wednesday, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)
Health workers in protective gear evacuate patients from the MV Hondius cruise ship at a port in Praia, Cape Verde, Wednesday, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)
Health workers in protective gear evacuate patients from the MV Hondius cruise ship at a port in Praia, Cape Verde, Wednesday, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)
Health workers in protective gear evacuate patients from the MV Hondius cruise ship at a port in Praia, Cape Verde, Wednesday, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)
Health workers in protective gear evacuate patients from the MV Hondius cruise ship at a port in Praia, Cape Verde, Wednesday, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)
A night view of the MV Hondius cruise ship anchored at a port in Praia, Cape Verde, Tuesday, May 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)
An aerial view of the MV Hondius Dutch cruise ship anchored in the Atlantic off Cape Verde, Tuesday, May 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Arilson Almeida)
An aerial view of the MV Hondius Dutch cruise ship anchored in the Atlantic off Cape Verde, Tuesday, May 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Arilson Almeida)
