Sunday, November 1, 2026
Friday, October 30, 2026
Corruption is Everywhere > Anti-corruption blogger murdered in China; Toronto cop at center of corruption investigation
Chinese anti-scam blogger killed by criminals hired online to silence his work
Phoebe Zhangin Shenzhen
A Chinese investigative blogger who exposed telecoms fraud and other illegal activity was killed by criminals hired on social media, according to media reports, prompting calls for heavier punishment for the perpetrators.
The body of Wu Kai, who used the name “Huijian” on social media and had written for years about telecoms fraud in Southeast Asia, was discovered in southern China in November 2024. His death and details of the case were revealed this week.
In August 2024, Wu accused Liu Ren – a central figure in a conglomerate masterminded by Chinese tycoon Chen Zhi – of being a casino loan shark, beating someone to death, extorting protection fees from shops, operating telecoms fraud compounds and engaging in armed transnational crimes, according to a Jiemian News report on Tuesday.
Liu was extradited from Cambodia to China in June this year. A police statement at the time said he had been ordered by Chen in 2016 to found a group called Jinbei, which operated telecoms fraud compounds in Cambodia and carried out fraud involving “extremely large amounts” of money starting in 2020.
===============================================================================================
Toronto cop at centre of Project South corruption investigation denied bail for a 3rd time
Const. Timothy Barnhardt has been in custody since his arrest in early February
A Toronto police officer described as the “genesis” of the Project South corruption investigation was denied bail for a third time Friday afternoon in Toronto.
Justice Philip Campbell made his ruling in Ontario Superior Court following a mandatory detention review hearing held earlier this week.
Const. Timothy Barnhardt, 56, has been in custody since his arrest in early February.
The judge's reasons for his decision and details from the hearing are protected under a routine publication ban aimed at ensuring Barnhardt's right to a fair trial.
Barnhardt, 56, will remain in custody while facing 10 charges — the most of any of the seven Toronto police officers and one retired officer arrested in the police corruption and organized crime investigation led by York Regional Police. Two of the officers charged have since pleaded guilty and been sentenced.
The allegations against Barnhardt include trafficking police uniforms and drugs, supporting illegal cannabis dispensaries by accepting bribes in exchange for protecting against police investigation, and releasing confidential information to criminals, which police say helped facilitate targeted shootings.
None of the charges against Barnhardt and the others accused in Project South have been tested in court.
In addition to the police officers, 20 civilians were charged in connection with the sweeping probe that began in June 2025 after York police officers uncovered an alleged conspiracy to kill a senior corrections officer at Toronto South Detention Centre. The charge against one civilian has since been stayed. Another pleaded guilty and was sentenced earlier this week.
Brian Da Costa, a civilian and alleged drug trafficker charged in Project South, also remains in custody. (Pam Davies/CBC)
Investigators allege Barnhardt accessed private information about the senior corrections officer and provided it to a civilian, Brian Da Costa, who was then accused of releasing it to others charged in the murder plot.
From there, police-intercepted communications revealed to investigators that Barnhardt "routinely sold confidential database information to known criminal associate Da Costa, often at Da Costa's direction," according to an information to obtain (ITO) application filed in the case.
Barnhardt was previously denied bail in April, following a Superior Court review of the original decision to deny him bail soon after his arrest.
Wednesday, October 28, 2026
Corruption is Everywhere > Certainly in the Hallowed Halls of Lula's Brasilia
Brazil: When Democracy Becomes a Weapon
Political prosecutions, censorship, and allegations of U.S. interference.
By Dr. Jill Glasspool Malone and Robert W. Malone
Political Opinion
We have been appalled by the glowing, almost celebratory mainstream media coverage of Lula’s election victory and the treatment of Flávio Bolsonaro, who reportedly fled Brazil amid fears of political persecution. Rather than investigate allegations of censorship, judicial corruption, election interference, and political repression, much of the Western press appears content to celebrate those wielding power. But there are people much closer to events on the ground, and their voices deserve to be heard.
Glenn Greenwald is one of them. Unlike journalists whose principles change with the political winds, Greenwald has consistently challenged abuses of state power, regardless of who benefits. His reporting on the Operation Car Wash scandal exposed prosecutorial misconduct involving Lula’s prosecution. Now he is investigating allegations of similar abuses directed against Lula’s political enemies, particularly through the extraordinary powers exercised by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes.
Mike Benz takes the story directly into Washington. He alleges that the Biden administration coordinated an extraordinary intervention surrounding Brazil’s 2022 presidential election, involving the CIA, State Department, Pentagon, and White House. His account raises questions about American diplomatic pressure, electronic voting machines, and USAID funding allegedly directed toward organizations aligned with Lula and Brazil’s censorship apparatus. Although Benz acknowledges that he cannot prove voting-machine manipulation, his allegations about American involvement demand answers.
The images and statements reproduced below reveal another dimension: international political figures and institutions publicly celebrating Lula, even as serious allegations of judicial overreach and political persecution are happening in real time.
When journalists, activists, and opposition figures flee their country rather than face a judicial system they believe has been weaponized against them, this is no longer ordinary politics. And when American government agencies are accused of helping shape that political environment, Americans have every right to demand a full accounting.
We believe this story is far bigger than Brazil. It concerns the abuse of judicial power, censorship, foreign interference, and the willingness of powerful institutions to defend conduct they would condemn if the political parties were reversed.
Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald writes:
The Brazilian Supreme Court Judge revered by the Brazilian left (and now the American left for seizing Bolsonaro’s passport), Alexandre de Moraes, comes from the extremist “law-and-order” faction of the Brazilian Right as well as its extreme pro-austerity neoliberal pro-banker wing.Less than a decade ago, when Moraes was nominated to the Supreme Court, the Brazilian left branded him a white supremacist, a fascist and a leader of the right-wing coup government. One of Brazil’s leading left-wing politicians @GuilhermeBoulos explicitly accused Moraes of having committed the worst crime against humanity that exists: “RACIST GENOCIDE,” by deliberately murdering poor black people en masse while he was the Justice Secretary for São Paulo Governor Geraldo Alckmin (who himself spent years being called all the same names by the Brazilian left until Lula picked Alckmin as VP in 2022).Then -- starting in 2019 -- Moraes began censoring, imprisoning and persecuting Lula’s enemies and imprisoning his own critics, and was overnight transformed by the large Brazilian media and the left into the Savior of Brazilian Justice and Democracy. Only on the left can one transform from *fascist and genocidal racist* to heroic guardian of justice in less than a decade.Also, Moraes’ own corruption scandals make everyone else’s seem trivial, yet his passport works just fine and he freely travels the world in great wealth that he and his family received from the corrupt billionaire banker responsible for Brazil’s worst-ever banking collapse…
Please continue reading this lengthy but fascinating article at this link:
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
What Denisovans may have looked like
Good to see you after all this time. Chinese scientists put a face to the Denisovans
Scientists use fossil fragments found in northern China to reconstruct the features of the ancient hominids
Holly Chik South China Morning Post
Chinese scientists have finally put a face to the Denisovans, a mysterious species of ancient humans who were previously known only through the evidence of their DNA and fossil fragments.
The hominids were thought to have lived in parts of Siberia and East and Southeast Asia thousands of years ago.
The work of reconstructing their face was based on fossils excavated from Xujiayao, a major archaeological site in northern China’s Nihewan Basin, between 1976 and 1979.
Scientists also confirmed that the collection of ancient human remains belonged to the Denisovan lineage, allowing them to reconstruct what they looked like.
The remains, dated between 138,000 and 199,000 years old, included skull bones and teeth that had long puzzled palaeontologists trying to classify where they fit on the ancient human family tree.
Without any complete skulls to work with, the team, led by Fu Qiaomei, a palaeontologist at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, had to reconstruct their features from fragments.
They concluded that their skulls were low and wide, with fairly thick bones. The sides of the braincase were relatively flat rather than rounded, while the back section of the lower jaw was quite wide, according to the official newspaper Science and Technology Daily.
“This analysis provides a comprehensive view of Denisovan features, showing both traits reminiscent of Homo erectus (such as a thick cranial vault) and those characteristic of modern humans (for example, a strongly arched temporal squama),” the scientists wrote in a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature on Wednesday.
The researchers were also able to confirm that the fossils were Denisovans through the discovery of a key protein marker that was not found in Neanderthals and modern humans.
While the extraction of ancient DNA is almost impossible, proteins can survive longer than DNA without fully degrading.
“The palaeoproteomic results revealed Xujiayao hominins as Denisovans,” the researchers said, adding that their “similarities with other East Asian late Middle Pleistocene archaic Homo (such as Jinniushan, Dali and Hualongdong) indicate that they all belong to the Denisovan lineage”.
The study also showed that “Denisovans could have lived in East Asia from at least [300,000 to 45,000 years ago], paralleling the temporal range of Siberian Denisovans”.
“[It was] a broadly distributed homo lineage that adapted to diverse ecological zones, including the high-altitude plateau, subtropical forest and insular environments, across Siberia, East Asia and Southeast Asia.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)