To inspire the most trust in those you interact with during video meetings, ensure you have plants or books strategically positioned behind you. That’s according to new research, which looks at how people’s choice of Zoom background could be helping or hindering them.

Researchers from the United Kingdom’s Durham University set out to see how the way we interact online impacts first impressions and the judgments we form. Their findings were published Wednesday in the journal Plos One.

The team used 72 photos of 36 adults from a photo database – each one was pictured with both a happy and a neutral expression. These were then superimposed on various virtual backgrounds and framed with a Zoom border “to simulate the experience of a video conference call.”

The six backgrounds selected for the study were categorized as: home (living room), blurred home, bookcase, plants, blank wall and novelty – in this case a walrus in front of an iceberg.

A cohort of 167 participants, aged between 19 and 68, were then asked to complete an online questionnaire about how trustworthy and how competent the people in each image appeared to be.

“Faces presented on the plants and bookcase background were consistently rated as the most trustworthy and most competent, contrasting the home and novelty backgrounds which received lower trustworthiness and competence ratings,” the authors of the study said.

“We tested over 160 people and we found that the background of plants and bookcases led to higher trust and competency responses. And we found that the living room and novelty backgrounds were the worst,” he said.

‘The new business suit’

Analyzing the findings, he said: “I think people know that’s how other people work. Not everyone has a home office but yet there’s something that still seems a little unserious [about a home or novelty background].

“It’s like you haven’t put any thought into how you are presenting yourself and so this seems less competent than someone… who seems able to keep plants alive, or someone with a bookcase who looks like they are trying to better themselves.”

Ross said that a carefully selected video call background “seems to be the new business suit.”

“Whereas for a job interview you used to have to think about what you were wearing and how you would look,” he said, adding that the focus is now on the environment of your backdrop.

Another important factor, however, was the person’s demeanor in each shot.

“We found that generally smiling makes you look more trustworthy and competent, no matter what the background,” he said.

Overall, women inspired more trust, the study found.

“Female faces were also rated as more trustworthy and more competent, regardless of the background they were using,” the researchers wrote.

The team now plans to carry out further research using actual simulated video calls, rather than still images.

Ross added: “We are creating actual recorded Zoom videos of people at the start of a job interview and what we’re planning to do is change the background and ask people not just about first impressions, but bigger decisions too.

“If it makes a difference to people’s hiring decisions then we could really help people to give themselves the best chance of getting a job.”

Four army officers were arrested in Burkina Faso, a military prosecutor said, a day after the country’s ruling military junta announced it had thwarted a coup attempt.

Two other officers were “on the run,” according to a statement from the public prosecutor’s office at the military court in Ouagadougou, the capital city.

Burkina Faso’s military junta said in an earlier statement that intelligence and security services had foiled a “proven coup attempt” on Wednesday.

“A number of officers and other alleged actors involved in this destabilization attempt have been arrested, while others are being actively sought,” the statement said.

Junta leader Captain Ibrahim Traore later said on X, previously known as Twitter, that he was “committed to the liberation” of the country.

“I assure you of my determination to bring the Transition to a successful conclusion, despite adversity and the various manoeuvres designed to halt our inexorable march towards sovereignty,” his post added.

Traore seized power in the West African nation in a coup on September 30 last year in a day marked by gunfire and confusion in Ouagadougou. The coup was the second in eight months – with the leaders of both vowing to restore security after years of violence in the country.

Earlier this month, Burkina Faso’s military leaders signed a mutual defense pact with the juntas in Mali and Niger.

The tri-border region has become the epicenter of the violence that began in neighboring Mali in 2012 but has since spread across the arid expanse of the Sahel region south of the Sahara Desert.

A couple of dozen people pile into a van meant for 13. They’ve crossed a river on a makeshift raft and hope to ride 20 or so miles to get to their next stop. But after a short while, the van stops and everyone has to get out.

The passengers – children and their parents, older couples and single adults – have paid to get from Ciudad Hidalgo in Mexico, a small town on the border with Guatemala, to Tapachula, the nearest city.

But they entered Mexico without permission or papers so the van driver tells them to duck around a checkpoint and get picked up on the other side by him or another vehicle.

The families grab their belongings and head along a tarmacked path as we join them, long grass mostly hiding them from the view of the highway and Mexican officials.

It’s no secret that this is happening, just as everyone knows about the rafts bringing people across the Suchiate River and the international border.

Occasionally, Mexican officials shout out across the grass to the walkers and tell them to come back to the main road.

No one pays the officials any notice. The migrants just keep marching, at times signaling to each other to crouch lower to keep out of view.

We saw no officials bothering to chase them as they walked the unofficial migrant route, just yards from National Route 200 that heads from the border northward.

This static game of cat and mouse will play out several times past several checkpoints on the route. Each stop leads to a trek of 20 or 30 minutes and nerves about whether the promised transport will be there on the other side.

In Tapachula, they said they planned to request asylum or permission to transit Mexico legally in hope of reaching the United States.

Two families from Venezuela said it would be their first contact with officials since fleeing their troubled country. They say they have traveled through Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala.

By sunset, they reach Tapachula, their stop for the night. They may be in the city several days, but none expect to stay forever.

Their eyes are set on the US – “el pais de oportunidades,” the land of opportunity, they say.

Tears well up in one woman as she sits back in a van after one checkpoint is skirted successfully. A fellow traveler tells her to perk up. “Didn’t you want the American Dream?” he calls out. “Hold onto that.”

The formation of a new “supercontinent” could wipe out humans and all other mammals still alive in 250 million years, researchers have predicted.

Using the first-ever supercomputer climate models of the distant future, scientists from the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom predicted how climate extremes would intensify after the world’s continents merge to form one supercontinent, Pangea Ultima, in around 250 million years.

They found it would be extremely hot, dry and virtually uninhabitable for humans and mammals, who are not evolved to cope with prolonged exposure to excessive heat.

Researchers simulated temperature, wind, rain and humidity trends for the supercontinent and used models of tectonic plate movement, ocean chemistry and biology to calculate carbon dioxide levels.

They found that not only would the formation of Pangea Ultima lead to more regular volcanic eruptions, spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and warming the planet, but the sun would also become brighter, emitting more energy and warming the Earth further, experts noted in the paper, published Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience.

“The newly-emerged supercontinent would effectively create a triple whammy comprising the continentality effect, hotter sun and more CO2 in the atmosphere,” Alexander Farnsworth, senior research associate at the University of Bristol and lead author of the paper, said in a release Monday.

“Widespread temperatures of between 40 to 50 degrees Celsius (104 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit) and even greater daily extremes, compounded by high levels of humidity would ultimately seal our fate. Humans – along with many other species – would expire due to their inability to shed this heat through sweat, cooling their bodies,” Farnsworth added.

The increased heat, Farnsworth noted, would create an environment without food or water sources for mammals.

While there are large uncertainties when making predictions so far into the future, the scientists said that the picture appears “very bleak,” with only around 8% to 16% of land on the supercontinent habitable for mammals.

Carbon dioxide could be double current levels, according to the report, although that calculation was made on the assumption that humans stop burning fossil fuels now, “otherwise we will see those numbers much, much sooner,” Benjamin Mills, a professor of Earth system evolution at the University of Leeds and a report co-author, said in the release.

This grim outlook is no excuse for complacency when it comes to tackling today’s climate crisis, the report authors warned. Human-caused climate change is already resulting in millions of deaths around the world every year.

“It is vitally important not to lose sight of our current climate crisis, which is a result of human emissions of greenhouse gases,” co-author Eunice Lo, research fellow in climate change and health at the University of Bristol, said in the release.

“While we are predicting an uninhabitable planet in 250 million years, today we are already experiencing extreme heat that is detrimental to human health. This is why it is crucial to reach net-zero emissions as soon as possible,” Lo added.

Climate change is on course to transform life on Earth, with billions of people and other species due to reach points where they can no longer adapt unless global warming is dramatically slowed, according to a major UN-backed report published last year.

Scientists have warned for decades warming needs to stay below 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, with the window to cut our reliance on fossil fuels and avoid catastrophic changes that would transform life as we know it rapidly closing.

The last mass extinction occurred some 66 million years ago, when an asteroid slammed into Earth and killed off the dinosaurs and most life on the planet.

A 32-year-old student has been arrested after a “targeted” shooting rampage in the Dutch city of Rotterdam left three people dead on Thursday, according to local authorities.

According to police spokesman Fred Westerbeke, the shooting first erupted in a private home on the city’s Heiman Dullaert square, where the suspected gunman fatally shot a 39-year-old woman and “seriously injured” her 14-year-old daughter, then set fire to the house.

The teenager was hospitalized but died of her injuries.

The suspect later went into a classroom at the prestigious Erasmus University Medical Center nearby, where he fatally shot a 46-year-old doctor, Westerbeke said.

The alleged gunman – who studied at Erasmus University – was ultimately arrested under the hospital’s helipad, Westerbeke said.

“After this, the shooter went to another part of the EMC. He also set a fire there. The suspect was then arrested under the helicopter deck of the EMC by the arrest team, the special interventions service,” Westerbeke said.

Authorities say they believe he acted alone.

“We see his act as a targeted action, but it requires further research to gain clarity about how and why,” Westerbeke said.

Posts on social media by local police described the suspect as tall with black hair, wearing “combat-style” clothes and carrying a backpack. He had a gun in his pocket and was wearing a bullet-proof vest when he was detained, according to Westerbeke.

Netherlands’ Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Thursday afternoon expressed his “great dismay” after the two shootings.

“My thoughts are with the victims of the violence, their loved ones and all those who have been in great fear. Many thanks to the people of the services for their actions and assistance at the scene,” the Prime Minister wrote in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Round discs of barren dirt known as “fairy circles” look like rows of polka dots that can spread for miles over the ground. The phenomenon’s mysterious origins have intrigued scientists for decades — and they may be far more widespread than once thought.

Fairy circles were previously spotted only in the arid lands of Southern Africa’s Namib Desert and the outback of Western Australia. But a new study has used artificial intelligence to identify vegetation patterns resembling fairy circles in hundreds of new locations across 15 countries on three continents. This could help scientists understand fairy circles and their formation on a global scale.

For the new survey, published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers analyzed datasets containing high-resolution satellite images of drylands, or arid ecosystems with scant rainfall, from around the world. The search for patterns resembling fairy circles used a neural network — a type of AI that processes information in a manner similar to that of a brain.

“The use of artificial intelligence based models on satellite imagery is the first time it has been done on a large scale to detect fairy-circle like patterns,” said lead study author Dr. Emilio Guirado, a data scientist with the Multidisciplinary Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Alicante in Spain, in an email.

Hundreds of potential fairy circle sites

First, the study authors trained the neural network to recognize fairy circles by inputting more than 15,000 satellite images taken over Namibia and Australia. Half of the images showed fairy circles, and half did not. The scientists then fed their AI a dataset with satellite views of nearly 575,000 plots of land around the world, each measuring about 2.5 acres (1 hectare). The neural network scanned vegetation in those images and identified repeating circular patterns that resembled patterns of known fairy circles, evaluating the circles’ sizes and shapes as well as their locations, pattern densities and distribution.

Output of this analysis then required a human review, Guirado said. “We had to manually discard some artificial and natural structures that were not fairy circles based on photo-interpretation and the context of the area,” he explained.

The results showed 263 dryland locations where there were circular patterns similar to fairy circles in Namibia and Australia. These arid spots were distributed across Africa (the Sahel, Western Sahara and the Horn of Africa) and were also clustered in Madagascar and Midwestern Asia, as well as central and Southwest Australia.

Circle pattern recognition

Fairy circles aren’t the only natural phenomenon that can produce round, repeated bare spots in a landscape. One factor that sets fairy circles apart from other types of vegetation gaps is a strongly ordered pattern between the circles, said Dr. Stephan Getzin, a researcher in the department of ecosystem modeling at the University of Göttingen in Germany.

“Fairy circles are defined by the fact that they have, in principle, the ability to form a ‘spatially periodic’ pattern,” which is “significantly more ordered” than other patterns — and none of the patterns in the survey clear that high bar, Getzin said.

But in fact, there is no universally accepted definition of fairy circles, Guirado said. He and his coauthors identified potential fairy circles — gauging the size and shape of individual circles, as well as the patterns they formed collectively — by referencing guidelines established across multiple published studies. The metrics of those spatial patterns, in fairy circles old and new, “are virtually the same,” he said.

Of the new locations that were identified, some passed muster with Dr. Fiona Walsh, who as part of an international team has investigated fairy circles in the Australian outback. “Pattern distribution in Australia appears to be congruent with some of what we previously reported,” said Walsh, an ethnoecologist at the University of Western Australia. Walsh was not involved in the new survey.

Fairy circles’ mysterious origins

The study authors also compiled environmental data where circles were spotted, collecting evidence that might hint at what causes them to form. The researchers determined that fairy circle-like patterns were most likely to occur in very dry, sandy soils that were high-alkaline and low in nitrogen. The scientists also found the fairy circle-like patterns helped stabilize ecosystems, increasing an area’s resistance to disturbances such as floods or extreme drought.

But the question “What shapes fairy circles?” is complex, and factors that create fairy circles may differ from site to site, the study authors reported. Getzin previously wrote that certain climate conditions, along with self-organization in plants, generated fairy circles in Namibia, and while insects such as termites take advantage of the dry patches, their activities don’t directly produce the patterns, he said in the email.

“Aboriginal people illustrated these patterns at least since the 1980s and said they knew of them for generations, probably millennia earlier,” Walsh said.

“In Australia, termites do not simply ‘play a role’,” she added. “They are the primary mechanism and interpretations need to be centred on termite-grass-soil-water dynamics.”

Many questions about fairy circles have yet to be answered, and the authors of the new study are optimistic that their global atlas will open a new chapter in the study of these peculiar barren spots.

“We hope that the information we publish in the paper can provide scientists around the world with new areas of study that will solve new puzzles in the formation of fairy-circle patterns,” Guirado said.

Mindy Weisberger is a science writer and media producer whose work has appeared in Live Science, Scientific American and How It Works magazine.

Taiwan unveiled its first-ever domestically built submarine on Thursday, an accomplishment the island democracy’s leader hailed as a significant milestone as Taipei works to boost its military deterrence in the face of a growing threat from Beijing.

President Tsai Ing-wen presided over a ceremony at the submarine’s shipyard in southern Kaohsiung city where the diesel-electric vessel was officially named “Narwhal” in English and “Hai Kun” in Mandarin – which can be loosely translated as “sea monster”.

“The submarine is an important realization of our concrete commitment in defending our country,” Tsai said. “It is also important equipment for our naval forces in developing asymmetric warfare strategies.”

“In the past, many people thought building an indigenous submarine would be an impossible task. But we have made it,” she added.

The ceremony was a significant personal moment for Tsai, who launched a flagship defense policy to build the first domestic submarine shortly after taking office in 2016.

Taiwanese defense chiefs hope the submarines would help to make it far harder for a potential invasion by China, which claims the island as its territory and has ramped up its saber-rattling in recent years.

Journalists were given a tour inside the submarine’s shipyard but were not allowed to take close-up photos for security reasons.

Details about the ship’s size or capability were also not disclosed during the ceremony, which was also attended by Sandra Oudkirk, Washington’s de facto ambassador to Taiwan, as well as the representatives from the Japanese and South Korean missions in Taipei.

Tsai said the indigenous submarine project was “a top priority” of her administration.

With the addition of “Narwhal”, Taiwan will have a total of three submarines by 2025 – it already has two Dutch-made submarines that were first commissioned in the 1980s.

Taiwan previously has said it plans to build a total of eight indigenous submarines.

Asked about the new submarine at a monthly press briefing on Thursday, China’s Defense Ministry likened the vessel to “a mantis trying to stop a chariot”, invoking a common Chinese idiom.

Defending the first island chain

While the Taiwan Strait might be too shallow for submarines to operate in, the vessels could be most useful when deployed to target Chinese warships in the Bashi channel – which separates Taiwan from the Philippines – and the waters between Taiwan and Japan’s westernmost islands, he said.

Because China’s access to the Pacific Ocean is limited by the first island chain – which includes Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines – its naval forces would need to pass through these two strategic points to gain access to the wider ocean.

Therefore, Huang said, Taiwan can help limit China’s projection of military power by deploying its submarines there.

In the event of a military conflict, the Chinese navy “will definitely want to enter the area to the east of Taiwan so as to surround us and limit the US’ ability to intervene,” Huang told the briefing.

“Because submarines can operate deep under water and are hard to detect, they have a better chance of getting close to (Chinese) aircraft carriers” and launching attacks.

That assessment was shared by Collin Koh, senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, who said the new submarine fleet would help Taiwan build a “more credible second-strike capability.”

“China has a lot of focus on countering what they see as potential US military intervention, and it has planned for a major naval engagement with the US outside the first island chain, around the Philippine Sea,” he said.

“If the Taiwanese want to contribute to that, then one way to do that is to bottle up the PLA Navy within the first island chain, don’t allow it come out and help the US military intervention become successful,” he added.

Admiral Huang also said the submarines are designed with the capability of carrying US-made MK-48 torpedoes, which can be used to target surface ships.

A challenging journey

Taiwan has increasingly emphasized a policy of defense self-sufficiency, which has seen the island ramp up its domestic weapons development to modernize its armed forces and be less reliant on overseas procurement.

Tsai took office at a time when Taiwan had been struggling to persuade the United States and European nations to sell the island big ticket military hardware items.

That has become less of an issue in recent years as Beijing ramps up diplomatic, economic and military pressure on Taipei and the United States in particular has signed off on a slew of large military sales under President Joe Biden and his predecessor Donald Trump.

But Taiwan’s indigenous military procurement program remains a lynchpin of its defense strategy, particularly when it comes to systems like anti-ship missiles that could defend against a potential invasion.

Taiwan’s success in building its first submarine could help alleviate some concerns over its military preparedness as Beijing increasingly asserts its territorial claims over the island democracy of 23.5 million.

China’s ruling Communist Party views Taiwan as part of its territory, despite having never controlled it. Beijing has long vowed that the island must be “unified” with the Chinese mainland, by force if necessary, while the Taiwanese authorities strongly reject China’s territorial claims over it.

Beijing has ramped pressure on Taiwan under Xi Jinping, China’s most assertive leader in a generation.

In recent years Chinese fighter jets, bombers and surveillance aircraft have conducted an ever growing number of sorties around the island, while Chinese warships have crossed the unofficial Median Line that runs down the Taiwan Strait with growing frequency.

Last summer China’s military launched massive drills to protest a visit to Taiwan by then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

At the internal briefing, Admiral Huang said Taiwan first attempted to build a new submarine fleet when former president Lee Teng-hui founded a task force in 1995, but faced difficulties as the US was reluctant to sell its submarines to the island.

The project formally began in 2016, after Tsai took office.

He said the process of building Taiwan’s first submarine had been very challenging due to budget limitations, delays resulting from a global chip shortage, and concerns over possible Chinese espionage.

The project involved a total of 1,003 Taiwanese personnel, most of which were involved in designing the submarine’s blueprint, Huang said. The personnel were all subject to monitoring by a military security division to ensure no secrets were leaked.

Huang said he was given a budget of $1.54 billion (NT$49.36 billion) to build the first ship. About 60% of the budget was spent on acquiring overseas materials and military equipment, but he believed that percentage would decrease in the future as Taiwan’s domestic submarine shipbuilding industry becomes more mature.

He declined to disclose which countries approved export permits for Taiwan but said he had reached out to senior military leaders in the US Pacific Fleet, Japan, South Korea and India.

After the submarine was unveiled, it will enter sea trials next month before entering service next year.

The self-declared republic of Nagorno-Karabakh will cease to exist from next year after its president signed a decree dissolving state institutions following its defeat by Azerbaijan.

The Azerbaijani victory last week triggered a a huge exodus of ethnic Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh and marked the end of decades of conflict.

President Samvel Shahramanyan’s decree called for all institutions and organizations of the Republic of Artsakh – which is not recognized internationally – to dissolve by the start of next year.

“The Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) ceases its existence,” read the decree, which was shared on Facebook by the Artsakh government.

Shahramanyan said the decision had been made “due to the current difficult military-political situation.”

Azerbaijan’s campaign lasted 24 hours, before both sides agreed to a Russia-brokered ceasefire which saw Karabakh’s armed forces disband. But the Azerbaijani presidency insisted that the Artsakh government also dissolve itself, warning that, if they did not do so, the offensive would continue “until the end.”

The decree called on Azerbaijan to observe the “free, unconstrained, and unhindered passing of the population of Nagorno-Karabakh, including the militants who laid down their weapons, with their property and transportation means through Lachin corridor.”

A sudden end

Nagorno-Karabakh lies within Azerbaijan’s borders but has for decades operated autonomously with a de facto government of its own. After Azerbaijan’s lightning offensive – which killed at least 200 people and injured many hundreds more – Baku said it had taken back control of the region, seemingly bringing to an end a conflict that has lasted more than a century.

Azerbaijan has long been clear about the choice the local Armenian population had to make: Stay and accept Azerbaijani citizenship, or leave. The majority of the population have voted with their feet, choosing to flee their ancestral home rather than submit to rule by Baku.

More than half of the population of Nagorno-Karabakh has fled for Armenia over the past week, after Azerbaijan lifted the blockade of the Lachin corridor – the only road connecting the enclave to Armenia – to allow people to leave.

Some 60,000 people had crossed the border into Armenia by Thursday morning, with many arriving in a “dire” condition, according to Samantha Power, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), in a visit to the border town of Kornidzor Tuesday.

“The military attacks of last week have made a dire situation even worse,” Power said Tuesday, adding that many of those who had arrived were suffering from “severe malnutrition,” according to doctors at the scene.

At least one person was killed and 162 people were injured in a massive warehouse explosion in the Uzbekistan capital Tashkent early on Thursday morning, health officials said.

The situation at the scene of the warehouse explosion in Tashkent, Uzbekistan is “under control” as emergency workers continue efforts to fully extinguish a fire caused by the explosion, the Uzbek Ministry of Emergencies said in an update.

A teenager, aged 16 or 17, died at the scene, according to the Health Ministry. The ministry also said 24 of the people injured were admitted to hospitals.

“From the first minutes, the leadership of the Ministry of Emergency Situations has been working at the scene of the incident, and the forces and resources of specialized organizations have been involved,” a Ministry of Emergencies statement read, adding that the fire was contained at 5:02 a.m. local time on Thursday (8:00 p.m. ET).

Several videos circulating on social media earlier on Thursday showed a huge column of fire and smoke billowing into the night sky.

The blast happened at a warehouse close to Tashkent’s airport, according to Reuters, citing local news site Daryo.

Russian state news agency Tass citing the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Uzbekistan said that a fire broke out in one of the warehouses in city’s Sergeli district after the facility was struck by lightning.

The warehouse was owned by Inter Logistics LLC, the ministry said, according to Tass.

Flights appeared to continue to depart and arrive from Tashkent’s international airport overnight and into Thursday morning local time, according to data from Flightradar24.

With nearly 3 million residents, Tashkent is the largest city in the Central Asian, former Soviet state.

China has declined to comment on its defense minister’s whereabouts as questions swirl over his status a month after he was last seen in public.

Gen. Li Shangfu’s absence since late August has fueled rumors about his fate, but during a regular press briefing Thursday, Defense Ministry spokesperson Wu Qian said he was “not aware of the situation” when asked whether the minister was under investigation.

Li’s disappearance follows a series of unexplained personnel shakeups that have roiled the upper ranks of China’s ruling Communist Party this summer, including the ousting in July of former Foreign Minister Qin Gang.

Days later, Beijing announced the replacement of two generals leading the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force, the military branch overseeing the nation’s arsenal of nuclear and ballistic missiles.

The disappearance of two high-profile ministers in quick succession has raised questions about the governance of leader Xi Jinping, who has made China’s political system even more opaque as he concentrates power and enforces strict party discipline.

Senior Chinese officials have vanished from public view in the past, only to be revealed months later by the Communist Party’s disciplinary watchdog that they’ve been detained for investigations. Such sudden disappearances have become a common feature in Xi’s anti-corruption campaign and gaps in information are not uncommon within the Chinese political system.

Where is Li Shangfu?

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that Li was taken away in September by authorities for questioning, citing a person close to decision making in Beijing.

The Financial Times reported that the US government believes the defense minister has been placed under investigation, citing American officials. Neither of the reports cited a reason for the investigation.

When asked earlier this month by reporters, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he didn’t have “anything to offer” on the matter, which he added was an issue for the Chinese government to decide.

Li, who was sanctioned by the US in 2018 over China’s purchase of Russian weapons, is still listed as China’s defense minister, one of its five state councilors, and a member of the party’s powerful Central Military Commission (CMC).

In late July, the CMC’s Equipment Development Department issued a notice calling for public tip-offs on corrupt procurement practices dating back to 2017, which coincides with a time period that Li was in charge of procurement in the department.

It’s not clear if any disciplinary actions have been or will be taken against Li.

Former foreign minister Qin, who vanished from public view for a month before being removed from his ministerial post, has also retained the position of state councilor, a senior role in China’s cabinet, according to the State Council’s website.

Neither Li nor Qin were pictured in footage of a Communist Party study session attended by senior party officials and aired by state broadcaster CCTV on Wednesday. All three other state councilors were visible.

Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Qin was found by a Communist Party investigation to have been engaged in an extramarital affair while serving as China’s envoy to Washington, citing people familiar with the matter.

Qin had an extramarital affair with a high-profile Chinese television presenter who had a child through surrogacy in the United States, the Financial Times reported Tuesday.