Italian authorities have arrested a Chinese man accused by US prosecutors of being part of a hacking team that stole coveted US research into a coronavirus vaccine on behalf of Chinese intelligence.

Italian authorities arrested a Chinese national accused by the United States of working at the direction of Beijing to steal COVID-19 vaccine research from U.S. universities, immunologists and virologists.

Top officials said the Trump administration will use executive action and work with state officials to ban sales of farmland nationwide to Chinese buyers and other foreign adversaries.

The Trump administration has announced it will work to limit Chinese nationals and nationals from other so-called adversarial countries from purchasing U.S. farmland.

US agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins on Tuesday said the administration would work with state and local governments to take “swift legislative and executive action to ban the purchase of American farmland by Chinese nationals and other foreign adversaries”.