A U.S. scientist and his wife have appeared in a US federal court over espionage charges, which include passing on secret information to Venezuela.

Nuclear physicist Pedro Leonardo Mascheroni and his wife, Marjorie Roxby Mascheroni, now face a total of 22 charges. If convicted, they could be sentenced to life in prison.
Both the defendants are U.S. citizens, who once worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation says it had the couple under surveillance for the past two years.
In March 2008, 75-year-old Mascheroni had a series of conversations with an FBI agent posing as a Venezuelan official, during which he spoke of his plan to help the Latin American country develop nuclear weapons.
According to the justice department, he later passed on a coded 132-page document containing 'restricted data' on nuclear weapons to the undercover agent in exchange for an initial payment of USD 20,000.
(Source: Press TV)