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Arcadia mayor Eileen Wang admits acting as Chinese spy, running fake news website with ex-lover in shocking plea deal

The former mayor of Arcadia resigned after admitting to acting as an illegal foreign agent of China in a federal plea deal unsealed on Monday.

Eileen Wang agreed with prosecutors that she worked with the People’s Republic of China to boost propaganda with a fake news website on US soil between 2020 and 2022. She was elected to Arcadia City Council in November 2022 — the city is within LA County.

Wang worked with her then fiancé, Yaoning “Mike” Sun, on a web site called “U.S. News Center,” which claimed to be news source for Chinese Americans, according to court documents.

But in reality the pair were carrying out Beijing’s orders through the site.

Wang and Sun “executed directives” from the Chinese government, posting propaganda designed to boost China, all while reporting back to their masters with screenshots showing how many people viewed the stories, according to the plea agreement.

In one case, Wang’s spymaster ordered her to post a PRC-authored essay denying the existence of genocide and forced labor in the Xinjiang region, the plea deal states.

“There is no genocide in Xinjiang; there is no such thing as ‘forced labor’ in any production activity, including cotton production. Spreading such rumor is to defame China, destroy Xinjiang’s safety and stability,” wrote Wang’s master, according to the plea agreement.

Wang complied and her handler wrote back, “So fast, thank you everyone.”

In another case, Wang’s PRC boss commended her on page views received by a certain piece of propaganda. Wang wrote back, “Thank you leader”.

Wang pled guilty to the federal charge at her arraignment in downtown Los Angeles on Monday afternoon. She faces a maximum of 10 years in prison.

LA’s top federal prosecutor, Bill Essayli, said this is not the first time China has been caught trying to exert its influence in the United States.

“Ms. Wang is just the latest to act as an agent for the PRC and it should terrify Americans that she was able to rise to the highest levels of local office in her city,” Essayli said.

Under the terms of the plea agreement, Wang admitted that that she acted under the control of Chinese officials to promote propaganda in the U.S.

Prosecutors in 2024 charged Sun with conspiracy and acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government.

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Europol Ran Secret Data Platforms on Millions of Innocents

Europol built and operated secret data analysis platforms stuffed with passport photos, phone records, financial transactions, and geolocation data belonging to people never suspected of any crime.
The systems ran for years without the security or data protection safeguards EU law requires, and the agency concealed parts of them from its own privacy regulator.

A joint investigation by CORRECTIV, Solomon, and Computer Weekly, based on leaked emails, internal documents, and whistleblower testimony, reveals that these parallel platforms became the backbone of Europol’s analytical work. “They protect the law while breaking it,” one former senior official said.

The main system, called the Computer Forensic Network (CFN), was set up in 2012 to handle digital evidence. After the 2015 Paris attacks, Europol’s cybercrime unit EC3 repurposed it into a mass analysis platform operating outside IT controls.

By 2019 it held two petabytes of data, roughly 420 times larger than Europol’s official databases. The agency’s own data protection officer found that 99 percent of operational data sat in this unregulated environment, with no adequate logging of who accessed or modified anything.

Alongside the CFN, a second covert system called the “Pressure Cooker” let staff store and analyze operational data without the constraints of EU law. A leaked 2022 email marked “Importance: High” warned that the regulator might discover the “irregular situation with the Pressure Cooker.” Europol claims it was just an internal nickname for a lawful system. Former officials say it was a separate platform hidden from the EU’s data protection watchdog for years.

The EU’s privacy regulator, the EDPS, spent nearly a decade trying to bring Europol into compliance, then closed its monitoring in February 2026 with 15 out of 150 recommendations still unimplemented, including core security safeguards.

British Conservative MP David Davis said the findings, “if true, point to serious failures of oversight, legality and data protection.”

He demanded the UK Home Office explain “whether any personal data of entirely innocent British citizens is being stored in Europol’s systems and, if so, why it is being stored and why the UK government is allowing it to be stored.”

The European Commission is now preparing legislation to double Europol’s budget and expand its mandate. It wants to hand broader surveillance powers to an agency that ran an unaccountable data warehouse for the better part of a decade and still can’t guarantee the personal data of innocent people inside its systems hasn’t been tampered with.

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Shapiro’s AI Chatbot Plan Opens the Door to ID-Gated, Surveilled Conversations

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is suing Character Technologies for letting its AI chatbot impersonate a psychiatrist.

Shapiro then proposed ideas that would require a digital ID to use an AI companion bot, force companies to surveil every conversation children have with chatbots, and automatically report flagged messages to authorities.

The proposals first appeared in Shapiro’s February 2026 budget address. The May 5 lawsuit press release recycles them for a second round of coverage, using a real legal action as a vehicle for something far broader.

We obtained a copy of the lawsuit for you here.

Shapiro wants to “require age verification and parental consent to utilize AI companion bots.” Age verification that can’t be bypassed by typing a fake birthday means government-issued ID uploads, facial scans, credit card checks, or third-party identity services. There is no version of enforceable age verification that doesn’t harvest and store sensitive personal data. The proposal would turn chatbot access into an identity-checked activity, requiring you to prove who you are with documents before a bot will talk to you.

This mirrors Senator Josh Hawley’s federal GUARD Act, which the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced 22-0 on April 30. The GUARD Act explicitly states that a “reasonable age verification measure” cannot be a checkbox or a self-entered birth date. What it can be is a government ID, a biometric scan, or a financial record tied to your legal name.

Shapiro’s proposal doesn’t spell out its methods yet but if the goal is real enforcement rather than theater, it lands in the same place. Between Harrisburg and Washington, showing papers to chat is becoming a bipartisan consensus.

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Hall of Records theories explode as CIA doc mentioning ‘temple under Sphinx’ found

The location of an ancient library believed to lie beneath Egypt‘s Great Sphinx has long been one of archaeology’s greatest mysteries.

Now, a resurfaced CIA document from 1952 is reigniting speculation surrounding the legendary Hall of Records after a cryptic reference to a ‘temple under Sphinx’ was found inside a Cold War-era photographic inventory.

The Hall of Records legend has fascinated the public for nearly a century, with some claiming the mythical archive contains ancient texts, maps and evidence of a lost civilization that predated recorded history. 

The 10-page CIA file, dated November 20, 1952, is titled ‘Presentation Form for Graphic Material’ and appears to catalog 11 rolls of black-and-white photographic negatives taken between July and December 1950.

Rather than an intelligence briefing, the document appears to be a simple archival inventory. 

But believers say the phrase ‘Temple under Sphinx’ stands out because it is not a standard archaeological description commonly used today.

One X user posted: ‘So the CIA knows about the temple UNDER THE SPHINX. Still want to call BS on the Hall of Records?’

While no hidden temple has ever been confirmed beneath the Great Sphinx, archaeologists have long known about the ancient Sphinx Temple, a structure located directly in front of the monument on the Giza Plateau. 

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OpenAI sued over ChatGPT’s alleged role in guiding FSU shooter

OpenAI is being sued by the family of a victim killed in the April 2025 mass shooting at Florida State University that left two people dead. The lawsuit alleges that OpenAI’s ChatGPT enabled the attack.

Vandana Joshi, the widow of Tiru Chabba, who was killed alongside the university dining director Robert Morales, filed the federal lawsuit against OpenAI in Florida on Sunday.

The complaint also names Phoenix Ikner, the man accused in the shooting, as a defendant, citing his “extensive conversations” with ChatGPT. The suit says that OpenAI failed to effectively detect a threat in ChatGPT’s conversations with Ikner, claiming the chatbot “either defectively failed to connect the dots or else was never properly designed to recognize the threat.”

According to the complaint, Ikner, then a student at FSU, shared with ChatGPT images of firearms he had acquired. The chatbot then allegedly explained how to use them, “telling him the Glock had no safety, that it was meant to be fired ‘quick to use under stress’ and advising him to keep his finger off the trigger until he was ready to shoot.”

The suit said Ikner began his attack at FSU by following the instructions.

At one point, the lawsuit alleges, ChatGPT said that it’s much more likely for a shooting to gain national attention “if children are involved, even 2-3 victims can draw more attention.” Later, on the day of the shooting, the lawsuit says, Ikner asked about what “the legal process, sentencing, and incarceration outlook” would be.

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San Francisco plots outdoor smoking ban as locals erupt

San Francisco is rolling out a sweeping outdoor smoking ban that would snuff out cigarettes on bar patios and parklets across the city.

The move has ignited outrage among local business owners, who argue the draconian measure is just the latest example of government overreach putting neighborhood bars at risk.

The controversial ordinance, being crafted by Supervisor Myrna Melgar and Dr. John Maa of the San Francisco Marin Medical Society, would require bars and taverns to follow the same smoke-free outdoor regulations already imposed on restaurants under state and local law, KTVU reported.

If passed, customers would no longer be allowed to smoke while enjoying drinks at outdoor bar spaces across the notoriously left-leaning city.

Maa, a surgeon backing the proposal, insisted the crackdown is necessary to protect patrons, workers and pedestrians from secondhand smoke.

“This is to protect the patrons of these establishments and also importantly, the employees and anyone who might be exposed to secondhand smoke,” Maa told the outlet.

He argued San Francisco should put public health ahead of business profits.

But furious bar owners have slammed the proposal as an example of heavy-handed government meddling.

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AI Is Losing The PR Battle And The Consequences Could Be Huge

Lately, when watching high-profile sporting events like the NBA Playoffs, you may have noticed a rash of commercials for artificial intelligence (AI) companies. While average commercials strive to show off new products or services or recruit new customers, these AI commercials seem to have a different primary objective. They seem to target goodwill.

Heartwarming commercials show families bonding over AI-generated memories, where AI brings life to old family photos. Emotional voice-overs promise connection, creativity, and even nostalgia. These AI companies are trying to sell people a good reputation.

This strategy should tell us something. Companies don’t often spend millions trying to make you feel good about their brand unless they know, deep down, that you don’t trust it.

Despite hundreds of billions of dollars pouring into AI development, the industry is quietly losing the battle for hearts and minds. And sentimental advertising is not doing much to fix this problem.

Rare Bipartisan Agreement on AI

A new national survey from Marquette University Law School should give the AI industry serious pause. According to the poll, roughly 70 percent of Americans believe artificial intelligence will do more harm than good for society. Even more striking, the skepticism cuts across party lines.

Poll Director Charles Franklin put it bluntly: “It really is striking … there’s pretty much bipartisan skepticism … That’s an awful lot of partisan agreement, where we normally see Republicans and Democrats on opposite ends.”

In today’s political climate, bipartisan agreement on anything is rare. On AI, however, Americans seem united, just not in the way Silicon Valley might hope.

Worse yet is the fact that this poll supports similar findings on AI skepticism from numerous other surveys. A particularly damning NBC News poll from last month showed that AI’s net favorability rating ranked lower than nearly every other topic.

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Caught On Tape: California Billionaire Tax Architect Admits Wealth Confiscation Could Go Even Further

One of the co-authors of California’s controversial ‘one-time’ tax on billionaires appeared to suggest that the levy could extend beyond a single imposition.

Marxist economics professor Emmanuel Saez, who hails from France, made the comment during a Tuesday debate against economist Arthur Laffer at the University of California, Berkeley.

“I don’t think it’s going to be a one-time tax. Because you can’t surprise billionaires more than once,” Saez said. “Even then, maybe some of them were expecting something like this. So, it’s going to be a debate about this time, you know, a permanent wealth tax at a low rate that’s going to last for a number of years.”

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Mayor Overruled After He Dissolved Entire Police Force Following Dispute with His Wife

Municipal government is usually defined by procedure, paperwork, and painfully slow decision-making.

Not in the small town of Cohutta, Georgia.

In the span of a little over a week, the town went from a workplace mediation involving the mayor’s wife, to the firing of the entire police department, to an emergency public meeting that reinstated every officer almost as quickly as they had been dismissed.

According to WRCB-TV, the issue originally began between local officers and Cohutta Mayor Ron Shinnick’s wife.

Several officers had filed complaints about Shinnick’s wife, Pam, who had previously been relieved from her duties as town clerk for creating a hostile work environment.

The officers alleged that Pam still had access to private town information and other sensitive data.

This would eventually lead to formal mediation resolving the matter, and the town attorney assuring the local police officers that their jobs were not in any sort of danger.

About a week later, by Wednesday morning, Shinnick had dissolved the entire department.

When asked by WDEF-TV about the abrupt nature of the dissolution — and whether he was concerned about the livelihoods of these officers — Shinnick largely waved both concerns off.

“Well, I don’t think it’s that dire at all,” he said. “They’ll get a paycheck. We’re not that way, and I appreciate their service, okay? It is time for a change.”

Shinnick further compared the chaotic ordeal to sports: “It’s a guy thing. You know, occasionally, college football programs, you have to change the coach, and some people like it, some don’t. And that’s just kind of the way it happens sometimes, you know?”

That mayor’s words didn’t land with many of the officers.

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Iranian Agent in the U.S. Coordinates Arms Pipeline Fueling the Sudan War

On the night of April 18, federal agents intercepted Shamim Mafi at Los Angeles International Airport as she attempted to board a flight to Istanbul. The 44-year-old Iranian national and U.S. permanent resident was arrested on charges of trafficking arms on behalf of the Iranian government. First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli stated that she is charged with “brokering the sale of drones, bombs, bomb fuses, and millions of rounds of ammunition manufactured by Iran and sold to Sudan.” She has pleaded not guilty. Her trial is scheduled for June 23.

In addition to alleged arms trafficking, the case has uncovered a logistics network that has been moving Iranian weapons through Sudan for more than a decade. The pipeline has survived Israeli airstrikes and the Abraham Accords and is now operating at a scale that dwarfs anything previously prosecuted in a U.S. courtroom.

Court records show Mafi brokered a contract worth more than $72.5 million for Mohajer-6 armed drones from Iran’s Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics, destined for Sudan’s Ministry of Defense. Beyond the drones and 55,000 bomb fuses, the complaint alleges she arranged the sale of 500 non-guided aerial bombs, 70,000 AK-47s, 250 million rounds of AK-47 ammunition, 1,000 rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and 500,000 rockets.

Mafi allegedly operated through an Oman-registered front company, Atlas International Business LLC, which received more than $7 million in payments in 2025 alone. The payments were structured to evade detection. Some funds were transferred through informal hawala money-exchange systems operating across the Middle East and Africa, while other amounts moved through banks in Dubai and Turkey. Additional payments were reportedly delivered in crates of $100 bills.

Search-warrant records show nearly 62 bidirectional contacts between Mafi and an officer from Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) between December 2022 and June 2025. During interviews with FBI agents, Mafi acknowledged the contact.

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