LOS ANGELES — The U.S. charged a government-controlled company in China with stealing trade secrets from an American semiconductor company, the Justice Department said Thursday as it outlined an initiative focused on what officials said was the growing threat of Chinese economic espionage.

The prosecution comes amid heightened trade tensions between China and the U.S. and as the Trump administration raises alarms that Beijing remains intent on stealing technology and inventions.

The case involves trade secrets worth up to $8.75 billion and allegedly stolen from Idaho-based Micron Technology Inc.

The charges name two companies and three Taiwanese defendants.

One of the charged individuals had been president of a company that Micron acquired in 2013 and then went to work for the Taiwan semiconductor company, United Microelectronics Corp.

That man, identified by prosecutors as Chen Zhengkun, recruited his co-defendants to join him at UMC. One, according to the Justice Department, downloaded more than 900 confidential and proprietary Micron files before he left and stored them in ways that he could access them at his new job.

That company partnered with a Chinese-controlled business, Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co., to mass-produce technology memory storage products used in electronics.

The technology at issue, known as dynamic random-access memory, is something the Chinese government viewed as a priority because its companies could not develop such advanced capabilities.

Officials: Homelessness among U.S. veterans decreases by 5%

SAN DIEGO — The number of homeless veterans in the U.S. declined more than 5 percent over the past year after a slight rise in 2017, the departments of Housing and Urban Development and Veterans Affairs announced Thursday.

The decrease shows the federal government is making progress in its nearly decadelong efforts, but the problem poses a challenge in areas such as California where the cost of housing is high.

The number of homeless vets dropped to about 38,000 — about half of those counted in 2010, according to an overall count of the homeless taken in January.

Officials largely credit the progress to an approach started under the Obama administration. It gives homeless veterans permanent housing while also providing them a case manager and clinical care services.

Lawsuit alleges that Weinstein sexually assaulted girl, 16

NEW YORK — Harvey Weinstein was accused in a civil court filing Wednesday of forcing a 16-year-old Polish model to touch his penis, subjecting her to years of harassment and emotional abuse and blocking her from a successful acting career as payback for refusing his advances.

The accuser, identified as Jane Doe, alleges that Weinstein assaulted her at his New York City apartment in 2002, just days after they met at an event by her modeling agency.

Doe alleges the movie mogul promised to take her to lunch to discuss her career, but instead took her to his apartment and “aggressively and threateningly” demanded sex.

Weinstein’s lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, called the allegations “preposterous.” Weinstein denies all allegations of nonconsensual sex.

U.S. charges Malaysian financier in money laundering scheme

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department on Thursday charged a fugitive Malaysian financier in a money laundering and bribery scheme that pilfered billions of dollars from a Malaysian investment fund created to promote economic development projects in that country.

The three-count indictment charges Low Taek Jho with misappropriating money from the state-owned fund and using it for bribes and kickbacks to foreign officials, to pay for luxury real estate, art and jewelry in the United States and to fund Hollywood movies, including “The Wolf of Wall Street.”

Also charged was a former Goldman Sachs banker, Tim Leissner, who pleaded guilty to money laundering conspiracy and to conspiring to violate foreign bribery laws.

Police: Fire consumes hundreds of shops in Kabul

KABUL, Afghanistan — An apparent electrical fire late Thursday in the Afghan capital, Kabul, incinerated hundreds of shops, most of them selling electronics and household appliances, police official Rahmat Amini said.

Flames leapt skyward rapidly engulfing entire markets in the center of the city destroying upward of 500 stores, said Amini, adding the city’s firefighters struggled for hours to contain the blaze.

There were no immediate reports of injuries because the fire broke out after most of the stores had closed.

Basir Mujahed, spokesman for the Kabul police chief, said the fire was contained more than five hours after it began.

Officials from the Interior Ministry were on the scene investigating the blaze in an effort to determine its exact cause and origination.

Russia blames rocket failure on mistake in final assembly

MOSCOW — A Russian space investigation has found that a sensor that was damaged during assembly forced a Russian rocket to abort its trip two minutes after it was launched, a top Russian official said Thursday.

The Soyuz-FG rocket carrying NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexei Ovchinin failed shortly into the Oct. 11 flight, sending their capsule into a sharp fall back to Earth. The two men landed safely on the steppes of Kazakhstan despite the failed launch, the first of its kind for Russia’s manned program in over three decades.

Oleg Skorobogatov, the head of the Russian space agency who led the probe of the accident, said Thursday that the investigation found that the sensor was damaged during the final assembly at the launch pad in Kazakhstan.

In Ethiopia: Lawmakers on Thursday approved the country’s first female Supreme Court president.

Meaza Ashenafi, a lawyer and women’s rights activist, assumed the top job at the Supreme Court after she was unanimously approved by lawmakers for the post following her appointment by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.

Oil output: The United States is pumping record amounts of oil, vaulting over Russia to become the world’s biggest producer of crude. The Energy Information Administration said Thursday that the U.S. produced more than 11.3 million barrels a day in August, a 4 percent increase over the record set in July.