U.S. government worker pleads guilty in plot to steal rice for Chinese

A geneticist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture pleaded guilty on Monday to making false statements to the Federal Bureau of Investigation when questioned about plans to send U.S. rice samples to China, the Justice Department said Wednesday. Wengui Yan, 61, of Arkansas admitted that a group of Chinese tourists in 2013 told him of their plans to steal engineered U.S. rice samples, but he first told investigators he had no knowledge of the plan. The number of international economic espionage ca