Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

Nigerian Man Accused of Running Fake Government Agency with Federal Budget

An enterprising Nigerian named Adeniyi Adeyemi is facing charges in the capital of Abuja for creating and running a fake government agency for over a year, complete with about $1 million in funding from the Nigerian federal government.

According to prosecutors, Adeyemi created an agency called the Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council (PFIPC) in 2024 and installed himself as director-general. He kept the phony agency going until he was arrested in October 2025.

Adeyemi was somehow able to secure office space for his fake agency inside the Federal Secretariat office complex in Abuja, along with a million dollars of funding. He got his hands on some presidential stationery and used it to request cooperation from other government agencies – and evidently some of his requests were taken seriously, although prosecutors have not yet indicted any other government officials for colluding with him.

Police investigators said they have traced a total of 34 bank accounts to Adeyemi, including nine of them that were opened in the name of various government agencies. According to prosecutors, Adeyemi even recruited staffers to work for his fake agency.

The ersatz Director-General of the Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council (PFIPC) also forged a realistic-looking letter of appointment from President Bola Tinubu, purportedly signed by presidential chief of staff Femi Gbajabiamila.

Gbajabiamila was the official who filed a petition to arrest Adeyemi, who faces eight counts of conspiracy, forgery, and impersonation alongside two accomplices known as “Femi” and “Anu,” who remain at large.

The Premium Times of Nigeria reported that Adeyemi appeared before the Federal High Court in Abuja for his arraignment on Wednesday “after several failed attempts to bring him before the court.”

Those previous attempts were unsuccessful “for various reasons,” including based on requests by his lawyers, his absence from court and the judge’s official engagement elsewhere. A judge swore out a bench warrant for Adeyemi’s arrest after he failed to appear for a July arraignment, and he was arrested within 12 hours, but it still took a surprisingly long time to get him into court.

Adeyemi said through his lawyers that he skipped out on his July arraignment because he “feared for his life” and had written an open letter to President Tinubu asking for protection. The Premium Times observed that he did not look particularly fearful when he finally made it to the courtroom on Wednesday, strolling cheerfully into chambers wearing a baseball cap and a white traditional robe known as a kaftan.

Adeyemi pleaded not guilty to all eight of the charges against him and was remanded to custody in the Kuje Correctional Center by the judge. He has claimed in media interviews that his PFIPC was a legitimate agency and he was working to bring foreign investment into Nigeria.

The case has become a hot topic among Nigerians, who have long complained about corruption and incompetence in their government, but are still shocked that a random con artist could create and operate a phony high-level government agency for months without being detected.

Some critics of the Tinubu government have postulated that Adeyami could only keep his scam running for so long if he was paying off legitimate government officials to evade oversight.

Adeyemi himself has claimed he paid Gbababiamila, the presidential chief of staff, a fee of 400 million Nigerian nairas (about $300,000) to help him forge his fake presidential appointment document. Adeyemi has asked Tinubu to establish an independent anti-corruption panel to investigate his case.

Keep reading

Supertanker Ablaze After Iran Attack In Hormuz As US Deploys 10K More Troops & Third Carrier To Mideast

Iranians are apparently going back on the offensive, after it’s been widely reported that US-protected oil transit through the Strait of Hormuz has been fast gaining steam. Iran state media says a supertanker is burning off the coast of Oman after coming under Iranian attack:

Local sources reported that a 2.5 million barrel capacity supertanker that was traveling through the Strait of Hormuz illegally was hit 8 kilometers off the coast of Oman and is burning, reports Fars

Earlier we reported that starting in mid-August (on Aug. 16), Iran’s Supreme National Security Council set October 1 as a deadline. It warned at the time that if Washington failed to lift its naval blockade of Iranian ports within 45 days, Tehran could resume attacks against US forces, and by implication step up attacks on foreign shipping.

Iran’s 45-day deadline for the United States has now expired. That deadline has now passed, potentially adding another layer of uncertainty to an already tense confrontation where Tehran may decide it must act ‘preemptively’ while facing more bombs by Trump (likely after the midterms).

Signs of potential major escalation, or the next round at least (which Trump has hinted will come after the midterm elections), just hit The Wall Street Journal, and sent oil prices soaring. A quick summary:

  • The Pentagon is sending a third aircraft-carrier strike group and additional Marine Corps ships to the Middle East, adding 9,000 to 10,000 more troops to the region.
  • The ships, jet fighters, Marines and sailors will arrive in the region by the end of November, as President Trump considers renewing strikes on Iran after the midterm elections.
  • The additional servicemembers will add to the more than 50,000 troops already in the region, with the deployments coming after Trump rejected Iran’s latest proposal for a seven-day ceasefire.

Keep reading

The Disastrous Disability Signal In The UK That Corroborates The US Data!

The Disability Signal Across the Atlantic

On August 11 I wrote US Disabilities Hit an All-Time High of 37 Million In July: UP 23% Since Feb 2021. The BLS Current Population Survey printed 37,029,000 Americans 16 and over reporting a disability. That is seven million more people since February 2021, a 3-to-4 sigma break from the pre-2020 plateau that has not mean-reverted. The inflection is February 2021 with the Covid vaccine rollout not in 2020 when Covid was at its most virulent strain. Alternative explanations fail the timing and the magnitude test. The UK PIP system corroborates that US survey signal with something the American series cannot give you: medically assessed new claims broken down by body system and underlying cause.

If you want to know whether that US survey signal is real, stop arguing about survey design and look at an administrative system that actually diagnoses people.

Go back to the UK Disabilities (PIP) Project we published at Phinance Technologies. The page is still up…use it. It was built so researchers, doctors, and ordinary citizens could see the same thing we saw in 2023. You can look at total body system new claims or by underlying cause new claims (best viewed on desktop) within a body system. You can pick absolute new claims, excess new claims, percent excess new claims and excess new claims z score. We also break it out by monthly and yearly data. Finally you can sort it by age group as well. Play with data and be horrified like we were in 2023. Interactive charts…all done by Phinance Technologies for free.

PIP is not the protagonist from Charles Dickens’s novel Great Expectations. It is the UK’s main working-age disability benefit officially known as the Personal Independence Pension program by the UK Department of Work. Claims are medically assessed. Decisions, “clearances,” as noted above are coded by body system and then by underlying cause. The positive award rate has been stable at around 40 percent, so you are not looking at a sudden collapse in standards. You are looking at more people presenting with more illness…new claims, not just the stock of existing claimants, sorted monthly or yearly and by age band versus a 2016–2019 trend.

That is the advantage over the US survey. The BLS series tells you that disability exploded after early 2021 with the vaccine rollout and not in 2020 with the virus. PIP tells you where in the body it exploded, and it lets you watch the timing against the vaccine rollout curve on the same chart.

Keep reading

Mystery Shrouds Destruction Of US Spy Satellite

A mysterious breakup of a decades-old American spy satellite has sent debris hurtling through low-Earth orbit, with the U.S. Space Force now tracking the fragments for potential threats to other spacecraft, according to Space-Track.

The satellite, known as USA 32, came apart on September 13 at approximately 5:13 p.m. ET, according to U.S. Space Forces-Space. Officials have not publicly determined what caused the nearly 40-year-old spacecraft to suddenly fragment.

“All tracked debris are being incorporated into routine conjunction assessment screenings to support spaceflight safety,” U.S. Space Forces-Space said in a notice. “No immediate threats have been identified; further analysis is ongoing.”

USA 32 had been circling Earth since the final years of the Cold War.

The National Reconnaissance Office satellite blasted into space aboard a Titan II rocket on September 5, 1988. Public records identify the spacecraft as an electronic and signals intelligence satellite designed to collect information from orbit.

USA 32 has also been identified as FARRAH III, part of a secretive family of American intelligence satellites whose name was inspired by actress Farrah Fawcett.

The satellite was traveling in an orbit roughly 480 miles above Earth when it broke apart. Officials have yet to disclose how many fragments were produced.

That uncertainty matters because debris traveling at orbital speeds can pose a hazard to functioning satellites even when the individual pieces are relatively small. Space Force tracking systems routinely monitor objects around Earth and screen their trajectories for possible collisions.

Exactly what happened to USA 32 remains a mystery.

A collision with an untracked object is one possible explanation for an unexpected satellite breakup. Aging spacecraft can also fragment because of failures involving batteries, pressurized tanks or other components. There is currently no public evidence establishing any of those scenarios as the cause of USA 32’s demise.

Keep reading

Georgia Election Board Asks Trump DOJ to Declare Statewide Dominion QR-Code Machines UNLAWFUL Before Midterms — Demands Six-Month Phase-Out as Raffensperger Stonewalls

Georgia’s Republican-controlled State Election Board has formally invited the Trump Department of Justice to step in and shut down the Peach State’s unverifiable, QR-code voting system before voters start casting ballots in the 2026 midterms.

In a September 30 letter to Attorney General Todd Blanche, State Election Board Executive Director James Mills asked the DOJ to prohibit the use of “unreadable, unverifiable QR-code-based vote tabulation and any other electronic tabulation method that does not permit the voter to verify the vote that is actually counted,” concerning Georgia’s Dominion voting system, now owned by Liberty Vote USA.

Mills also asked Blanche to set a binding six-month deadline, forcing Georgia to dump the machines and move to a system with voter-verifiable, hand-auditable paper records.

The letter, obtained and published by the Georgia Recorder, was copied to Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.

According to the Georgia Recorder, the demand follows a September 28 resolution, introduced by GOP appointee Carolyn Roddy and passed 3-2, directing Mills to seek federal help forcing a software fix on the Dominion Democracy Suite 5.5-A system, the same equipment, now branded Liberty Vote, that Georgia rolled out statewide for the 2020 election. Early in-person voting begins October 13.

The letter does not stop at the machines. Mills asks the DOJ to open an investigation into Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office for withholding, blocking review of, and allegedly altering original election records, and for sharing Georgia motor-vehicle and voter-registration data with private vendors including ERIC and the Center for Election Innovation and Research.

He also wants a court-backed order requiring a forensic backup of election-management servers and Dominion scanners, then installation of a later EAC-certified software version, 5.17, 5.20, or newer, before November, with independent verification that CISA-documented vulnerabilities and the so-called DVSorder privacy flaw have actually been fixed.

Keep reading

‘Covered Their Tracks’? New Details Emerge In OpenAI’s ‘Rogue-AI’ Breach

OpenAI’s AI agents “obscured hacking activity” during breaches of government websites, citing digital forensics firm Asymmetric Security. According to the FT, the agents pulled data from 55 websites, including the CDC, the SEC, the International Energy Agency and the Mayo Clinic, using tactics that included “erasing records or making them inaccessible.”

Asymmetric co-founder Pippa Thompson told the paper it was “possible” the agents were deliberately covering their tracks – though the firm couldn’t determine whether that was deliberate or “a side effect of going awry because of constraints imposed in a test exercise.” 

Asymmetric’s own report, published the same day, is far more cautious. It was built in 48 hours over a weekend, “using only publicly available data” – no model transcripts, no server logs from the targeted organizations and no records from the services the agents used.

Potato, Potahto

The report’s summary does say some tactics left records “erased or inaccessible” – but the examples it gives describe normal expiry, not deletion: the agents used a throwaway ‘Boomlify’ inbox set to self-destruct after 48 hours, and an upload to ntfy, a push-notification service that keeps messages for 12 hours by default. They also moved from public scans on urlquery – a website-scanning service whose reports anyone can search – to private accounts “which could hide their search activity and data access.”

So, did the agents use ephemeral services on purpose to cover their tracks? They can’t say for sure.

“These records alone do not establish whether the account-registration attempts were intended to conceal activity (this analysis would require full model transcripts).”

As for the 55 websites, Asymmetric’s earlier list of “Organizations whose data was accessed” runs to exactly 55 entries, and adds: “In the vast majority of cases, all data retrieved was and is public.” The CDC and the Mayo Clinic aren’t on it – the Oct. 1 report says only that the agents probed them. The SEC told the FT no private information was accessed. Where the agents did try to break in – hunting for exposed behind-the-scenes files on a climate-data site and trying a classic database-hacking trick on an Education Department data site – Asymmetric found evidence of the attempts, but none that they succeeded.

Keep reading

Brazil Court Goes on Censorship Spree Days Before Presidential Election

Brazil’s top electoral authority, the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE), issued new censorship rulings on Wednesday as the nation prepares to hold presidential elections this weekend.

The South American nation is hours away from holding its 2026 general elections, scheduled for Sunday, October 4, with all polls suggesting that a runoff election will be held on October 25 between current incumbent socialist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and conservative Senator Flávio Bolsonaro.

In the past week, the 2026 Brazilian presidential campaign has seen two new controversies emerge surrounding Bolsonaro and Lula. The conservative senator denounced being the target of a fake news campaign accusing him of allegedly planning to remove the title of Brazil’s patron saint from Nossa Senhora do Aparecida (Our Lady of Aparecida), a title of the Blessed Virgin Mary that holds 300 years’ worth of faith and veneration for Brazilian Catholics.

Sen. Bolsonaro — who is running for office after his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, was banned and imprisoned for “crimes against democracy” charges — is an Evangelical Christian. Globonews, which Bolsonaro accused of acting as a “central hub” to spread the fake news campaign against him, issued a public retraction and apology after the claim was confirmed to be false.

On Wednesday, a three-out-of-five majority of the TSE’s justices ordered the complete removal of any and all social media content involving the fake news campaign against Bolsonaro, upholding an initial ruling issued by Supreme Court Justice and TSE member André Mendoça in response to a request issued by the Bolsonaro presidential campaign team.

Wednesday’s ruling was preceded by a back-and-forth series of court orders on the matter. The state-owned news agency Agência Brasil detailed on Wednesday that Mendoça had originally ruled to censor the fake news campaign posts against Bolsonaro — but Supreme Court Flávio Dino overturned the censorship orders on the grounds that they infringed the free speech rights of a local comedian who lodged a complaint on the matter. Supreme Court Justice Luiz Fux later overturned Dino’s ruling. The impasse led to the head of the Supreme Court, Edson Fachin, bringing the matter to a vote.

Metrópoles detailed that Justice Mendoça had initially argued that removing social media posts pertaining to the fake news campaign did not constitute censorship, as the content had already been proven to be misinformation and therefore “does not constitute prior censorship, as it does not establish prior state control over future expressions, does not require judicial authorization for new publications, and does not suspend users’ profiles, accounts, or channels.”

Separate from the controversy surrounding the fake news campaign against Flávio Bolsonaro, President Lula has found himself at the center of a firestorm after he bizarrely claimed this week that Brazilian girls learn to “get touched” from a young age. According to Lula’s ruling Workers’ Party (PT), the Brazilian president was allegedly referring to cervical cancer screenings.

The TSE also issued censorship rulings on Wednesday against conservative lawmaker Nikolas Ferreira over his response to Lula’s controversial statements. Ferreira, a 30-year-old Congressman from Minas Gerais, published a video expressing his outrage about Lula’s remarks while questioning the “explanation” provided by his party. In the video, which remains publicly available at press time, Ferreira affirmed that there is the possibility that a pedophile “might be listening” to Lula’s remarks and stressed, “girls aren’t to be touched from an early age.”

TSE Justice Estela Aranha reportedly gave Ferreira a 24-hour deadline to remove a video, arguing that the lawmaker allegedly “took the president’s statement about medical exams out of context and attributed a sexual connotation to his words.” Arahna ordered Ferreira to abstain himself from both republishing the video and from producing any kind of content that is “substantially identical” to the original piece under penalty of a yet-to-be determined fine.

“The contested publication is not limited to political criticism or disagreement regarding the appropriateness of the language used,” Justice Aranha reportedly argued.

“In developing the line of reasoning set forth in the contested media report, the respondent introduces a connotation entirely different from that present in the original statement, shifting the discussion from the realm of public health to that of various criminal acts,” she continued.

Ferreira referred to the situation in a social media post, which reads, “Lula knows so much about what he lost that he only requested the removal of the video from my network, but not a right of reply, because he knows he would have to explain the inexplicable.” In a separate post, the lawmaker pointed out that it was Lula who appointed Justice Aranha to the TSE in 2025.

The contents of the conservative lawmaker’s video appear to have greatly infuriated Lula, who called Ferreira a “bastard” during a Tuesday night campaign rally. In the same event, Lula’s wife, First Lady Rosângela “Janja” Lula da Silva, referred to the lawmaker as a “little shit.”

Hours later, the Brazilian president once again insulted Ferreira in a Wednesday interview with Terra Brasil, referring to him as a “complete idiot” for allegedly spreading “misinformation” against him.

Keep reading

Federal Judge Blocks $100,000 Fee For H-1B Visas

A second federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from imposing a $100,000 fee on H-1B visas, which allow U.S. companies to hire high-skilled foreign workers.

U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam, based in Oakland, California, determined that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the State Department did not adhere to proper federal rule-making processes before the implementation of the fee went into effect.

In the 35-page decision, Gilliam on Sept. 30 blocked the agencies from implementing the fee ordered by President Donald Trump in a Sept. 9, 2025, presidential proclamation. The block will remain in place until the federal rule-making process has been followed, the judge ordered, including a formal proposal for a rule change and a standard 30- to 60-day period for public comment.

In the initial lawsuit, the plaintiffs – a coalition of unions, employers, and nonprofit organizations – requested the court block the administration from imposing the new fee and require federal agencies to process H-1B visas in accordance with existing law.

They argued in a lawsuit that Trump has no authority to unilaterally impose fees, taxes, or other mechanisms to generate revenue for the United States.

“Here, the President disregarded those limitations, asserted power he does not have, and displaced a complex, Congressionally specified system for evaluating petitions and granting H-1B visas,” the lawsuit said.

The plaintiffs, including Global Nurse Force and the American Association of University Professors, among others, claimed that the Trump administration failed to assess how the fees would affect hospitals, schools, churches, and universities that rely on the H-1B program.

“Without relief, hospitals will lose medical staff, churches will lose pastors, classrooms will lose teachers, and industries across the country risk losing key innovators,” litigation and advocacy nonprofit Democracy Forward Foundation, representing the plaintiffs, said in a statement.

The group applauded the ruling.

“Today’s decision … protects a system that was thrown into chaos overnight,” attorney Steve Bressler said.

The program offers 65,000 visas annually, with another 20,000 visas for workers with advanced degrees, approved for three to six years.

The White House did not immediately return a request for comment.

In past statements, the administration has defended the legality of its program reforms.

According to a White House fact sheet, the proclamation was to address the misuse of the H-1B program, which Trump said had been exploited by companies to replace American workers “with lower-paid, lower-skilled labor.”

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said the fee requirement is legal and that it was aimed at “discouraging companies from spamming the system and driving down American wages, while providing certainty to employers who need to bring the best talent from overseas.”

In June, a federal judge in Boston also temporarily blocked the fee. In July, the First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to pause the ruling.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is also suing to challenge the fee. A district judge rejected its claims that Trump lacked the constitutional authority to set the fee, and the Chamber of Commerce is now seeking a review of that decision by an appeals court.

Keep reading

Tokyo court grants legal protection to human voices in AI clone case

A Tokyo court has awarded legal protection to the human voice in a landmark case in which a popular Japanese anime voice actor demanded that TikTok close an account over its unauthorized use of an artificial intelligence clone of his trademark baritone.

The Tokyo District Court’s decision Wednesday was the first acknowledgment of the right to one’s voice in Japan. The ruling was good news for many anime voice actors at a time when they are increasingly concerned about the use of AI-generated versions of their voices on social media.

The plaintiff, Kenjiro Tsuda, is an actor best known for his “lustrous and deep” voice in starring characters such as Kento Nanami in “Jujutsu Kaisen,” a popular anime series.

In his lawsuit, Tsuda said that the anonymous operator of the TikTok account “Nanami” wrongfully profited by attracting viewers with his voice narrating in more than 180 videos about urban legends and paranormal phenomena, and asked for the material to be deleted.

“The human voice is symbolic of individual personality, just like one’s portrait,” Presiding Judge Aya Takahashi said, according to a court document seen by The Associated Press.

It is appropriate to consider the unauthorized use with an obvious intention to take advantage of the commercial appeal of Tsuda’s voice “an infringement of publicity rights,” Takahashi said.

As of November 2025, the account had more than 200,000 subscribers, with viewers often noting the similarities between the narrator’s voice and Tsuda’s.

The defendant argued that the videos used an AI-generated voice that sounded like Tsuda’s but was not his, and that the videos did not damage the actor’s reputation as a voice actor.

The ruling dismissed Tsuda’s demand that all the videos using his voice be deleted, because the account had already been closed.

Wednesday’s decision comes at a time of growing concern among Japanese voice actors about the AI cloning of their trademark voices in anime.

Keep reading

Global Crop Prices Log Biggest Quarterly Jump Since Ukraine Invasion As Sticky Inflation Hits Grocery Bills

The Bloomberg Agriculture Spot Index (BCOMAGSP) posted its largest quarterly gain since Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, as Black Sea disruptions, a crisis in the Strait of Hormuz, and mounting El Niño risks have formed what could be considered a perfect storm poised to drive food prices higher.

BCOMAGSP, which tracks 10 major crops including corn, soybeans, wheat, coffee, sugar, cotton, cocoa, and others, jumped 13% in the third quarter.

Beyond the Russia-Ukraine fighting and disruptions to grain shipments from the Black Sea region, the next big threat to the crop space is a strengthening El Niño, on track to rank among the strongest on record. This puts various types of crops in major growing belts around the world at risk and has sent harvest yields plunging. 

Already, India’s weakest monsoon season in a decade has added to concerns about harvests and food prices.

Keep reading