OSLO, Norway (AP) — Authorities in Norway arrested a Chinese citizen on espionage allegations Thursday in connection with a purported effort to set up a receiver to collect sensitive satellite data, the country’s domestic intelligence service said.
Norwegian security officials also searched two premises in connection with the arrest, including one on an island in northern Norway that’s home to Andøya Spaceport, which is part of Europe’s efforts to expand its presence in space. The other search took place in Innlandet, in southern Norway.
Police launched their operation on the suspicion that a Norwegian-registered company was operating as a front for a Chinese state actor, the Police Security Service, or PST, said.
The suspect, who was identified only as a Chinese woman, allegedly tried “to establish a receiver for satellite downloads from satellites in polar orbits suitable for collecting data that could harm fundamental Norwegian interests if it becomes known to a foreign state,” PST police attorney Thomas Blom said in a statement.
Police said that the satellite receiver in question had been seized and that the alleged plans to install and operate it had been halted.
The incident “involves complicity in an attempt at serious espionage against state secrets,” the statement said.
The police statement also said several other people had been charged in the same case, without giving any further details, including the nationalities of those people and whether they had also been arrested.
Andøya Space's CEO, Ketil Olsen, said in a statement Thursday that the company had no connection “to the individual involved,” and had “not observed any activity related to our operations in this matter.”
FILE - Police prosecutor Thomas Blom arrives in the court room before the detention hearing for a person suspected of spying for China, in Oslo, Tuesday July 2, 2024. A Norwegian citizen has been arrested on suspicion of attempting to spy for China. (Terje Bendiksby/NTB Scanpix via AP, File)
LONDON (AP) — A man has been arrested on suspicion of possessing an offensive weapon after reports that the former Prince Andrew was threatened by a masked man while walking dogs near his home.
Norfolk Constabulary said that the arrest came Wednesday evening after a man was reported “behaving in an intimidating manner” near the home of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor in eastern England.
“Officers attended, and the man was arrested on suspicion of a public order offense and possession of an offensive weapon,” the force said Thursday.
The suspect is being held for questioning at a nearby police station. The term offensive weapons covers knives, truncheons and other items used to cause injury. Police didn’t specify what type of weapon was involved.
The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported that a man wearing a ski mask ran toward the former royal while shouting abuse. It said the incident occurred near the Sandringham Estate while the former prince was out walking his dogs, and that Andrew and his protection officer got in their car and sped away.
Mountbatten-Windsor, the younger brother of King Charles III, moved to the king’s private Sandringham Estate, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) north of London, after he was evicted from his longtime home near Windsor Castle following revelations about his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.
Andrew, 66, now lives at Marsh Farm, a property on the Sandringham Estate, after leaving Royal Lodge last year.
He was stripped of all his honors and titles and banished from public view by the royal family after years of scandal over his money woes and links to questionable characters, including Epstein.
One of Epstein’s accusers. Virginia Roberts Giuffre, alleged that she was forced to have sex with the then-prince three times starting when she was 17. He denied it, but eventually settled the case for an undisclosed sum and acknowledged Giuffre’s suffering as a victim of sex trafficking. Giuffre died by suicide in April 2025, aged 41.
In February, he became the first senior British royal in almost 400 years to be arrested when he was held for hours by British police on suspicion of misconduct in public office in a case related to his links to Epstein. It was an extraordinary move in a country where authorities once sought to shield the royal family from embarrassment.
Police previously said they were “assessing” reports that Mountbatten-Windsor sent trade information to Epstein, a wealthy investor and convicted sex offender, in 2010, when the former prince was the United Kingdom’s special envoy for international trade.
Correspondence between the two men was released by the U.S. Justice Department along with millions of pages of documents from the American investigation into Epstein.
FILE - Britain's Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, looks round as he leaves after attending the Easter Matins Service at St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, England, April 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth, File)
