A growing share of the world’s electric-vehicle batteries contains nickel from Obi, an Indonesian island where the mining company Harita Group has long paid for goodwill, according to alleged leaked documents published on October 22 by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). When accusations of such payments reach an Indonesian courtroom, accountability usually […]
A new trial in the unified Hotesur and Los Sauces money laundering cases opened Friday in Buenos Aires against Argentine former President Cristina Kirchner, her son, Deputy Máximo Kirchner, and 17 other defendants.
Federal Oral Tribunal 5 allowed the former President and the deputy to attend the opening session virtually, with the favorable vote of judges José Michilini and Fernando Machado Pelloni. The ruling sought to coordinate the deputy’s parliamentary schedule and simplify transfer logistics from the home where the former president is serving a sentence.
The remote format was granted exceptionally, only for the formal reading of the indictment and the order sending the case to trial. The tribunal said later hearings will be in person for all defendants.
The case covers 19 people, including businessmen Lázaro Báez, Cristóbal López and Fabián de Sousa. Hearings are set for Mondays, Fridays and Saturdays, including the January 2027 judicial recess, when the defense lawyers must attend in person every day.
With over 300 witnesses initially slated to testify, the dynamics of witness credibility and testimonies would play a crucial role in shaping the outcome, but it was reduced by agreement between the parties.
[JUSTICIA] Terminó la audiencia por Hotesur y Los Sauces: solicitaron que Cristina Kirchner sea juzgada como "jefa de una asociación ilícita, coautora de lavado de activos y admisión de dádivas", y su hijo, Máximo, fue imputado como "organizador del entramado criminal". https://t.co/3s4n4ORbW3pic.twitter.com/VbWP9G9bve
The prosecution alleges that Kirchner’s family bought hotels and apartments, rented them to businessmen, mainly Báez, and laundered illegal money from public works.
The defense’s argument about the legitimacy of the funds is crucial. The defense, led by Carlos Beraldi and Ary Llernovoy, says the properties were bought with declared funds, including assets the family owned before Néstor Kirchner became Mayor of Río Gallegos, and that rentals were invoiced, banked and at market prices. The defense says similar claims were dismissed in three illicit enrichment cases. None of these claims has been tested at trial, and the defendants are presumed innocent.
Lawyer Carlos Beraldi maintained from the start that the hotels operated, collected and paid taxes like any other business. In September 2023, Chamber I of the Federal Chamber of Cassation revoked a previous dismissal and ordered that the trial go ahead.
The merged file brings together two fronts. Hotesur concerns the family’s hotel operation, while Los Sauces covers the real estate company at the center of the billing accusation.
The Cassation court removed the two judges who had dismissed the case and left only Palliotti, the magistrate who had voted to convict Cristina and Máximo Kirchner.
The same account recalls that in November 2021 judges Adrián Grünberg and Daniel Obligado dismissed the case against all defendants, with Adriana Palliotti dissenting, relying on an accounting expert report that found no harm. In September 2023, the Cassation Chamber overturned that decision and ordered a trial.
The opening of the process was preceded by an episode described as embarrassing. The Cassation court ordered the Federal Oral Tribunal 5 to merge the Hotesur and Los Sauces cases into a single proceeding and to begin it this Friday.
It is the first time in the country’s history that the Cassation court has dictated how a trial must be conducted, a power that normally belongs to each oral tribunal. Political pressure mounted after a Supreme Court resolution, and the judges had only 72 hours to unify the files. The order left the tribunal with no margin to set its own calendar.
The core of the Los Sauces case is the billing of the family’s real estate firm. According to the accusation, 88% of everything the company collected between 2009 and 2016 came from businesses controlled by Báez and from the Indalo Group.
The Hotesur portion of the merged case has not yet been read in court. The next hearings, set for October 26 and October 30, will determine how the combined process advances.
Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., lashed out at President Donald Trump on Friday after he accused her of using a fake name and revived longstanding allegations surrounding her former marriage.
"The pedophile protection party's president is laundering right-wing conspiracy theories through the most corrupt DOJ in American history," Omar wrote on X.
"Whenever the news turns bad, this creep reaches for one name: mine," she continued. "So let's make it crystal clear. My name has always been Ilhan Omar."
Omar then turned her fire on Vice President JD Vance, adding, "Maybe you should focus on what your VP's real name is."
The verbal pushback came as Trump called on Omar to resign from Congress Thursday after Fox News Digital reported that Omar's birth name is Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, according to two people familiar with the ongoing federal investigation, including a law enforcement source.
A Justice Department court filing this week, related to a search warrant for her Washington-area home, identified the Minnesota Democrat as "Congresswoman Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, a/k/a Ilhan Abdullahi Omar."
Omar's office disputed Fox News Digital's reporting, insisting, "Ilhan Omar is her real name." Omar has not been charged with a crime.
"It was just revealed that Ilhan Omar's name is not Ilhan Omar," Trump wrote on Truth Social Thursday, accusing the congresswoman of using a "fake name" and calling for her immediate resignation. Trump also revived longstanding allegations that Omar's former husband, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, is her brother — claims Omar has repeatedly denied. He pointed out that the name used in the DOJ filings matched that of the man she allegedly married and is related to.
When asked during an MS NOW interview this week whether there was any familial relationship with Elmi, Omar responded, "Not to my knowledge." Her spokesperson later said the answer was sarcastic and reiterated that Omar "repeatedly and unequivocally" denied the allegation.
Federal investigators are probing whether Omar or her father made false statements on immigration paperwork.
Agents searched Omar's Washington, D.C., residence earlier this month and seized her cellphone and passport, while her sister has also been questioned as part of the investigation, Fox News Digital previously reported.
If you're reading this, then the internet still works. But that's something that we shouldn't necessarily take for granted after this week's global cybersecurity meltdown.
"Think of it this way: someone discovered that millions of buildings in the country have the same broken lock, and now everyone knows how to open it," writes Matt Shumer in a lengthy post on X about the situation. "The lock maker has sent out a fix, but every building owner has to install it themselves, and many haven't yet."
This is the world we live in now. In August, more than 100 tech companies signed a letter warning about exactly this possibility. On Thursday, one of Anthropic's top information security officers wrote that cybersecurity threats "are going to get a lot worse before they get better." Major banks are rushing to secure themselves after reports of autonomous agents operating inside accounts (though many of them may have been authorized by account holders).
This is unlikely to be the last incident like this. Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike says it saw twice as many "agentic intrusions" (hacking done by an autonomous or semiautonomous AI) in August as in July, and then the number doubled again in September.
Scary stuff, for sure. As is usually the case, however, prevention is better than panic.
Shumer's post contains many helpful suggestions for better online security—it is particularly important to secure your email accounts, since that is the gateway to so much of what we do online. Here's a 15-step plan to stay more digitally secure in the AI age. (And if you're really worried about everything falling to bits, Reason's got you covered there too.) If your devices and browsers have updates available, install them. And for the love of digital gods, don't click on random links in strange emails!
The man who (maybe) saved the internet? There is an old XKCD webcomic—and I'm dating myself as a very specific type of millennial by even referencing that—that seems to perfectly sum up what happened this week. Here it is:
Source: https://xkcd.com/2347
Here's the craziest part: That's basically true! Except the one random person lives in Czechia instead of Nebraska. His name is Ondřej Surý, and TheAtlantic's Charlie Warzel found him:
Surý, who lives in Czechia, does not work for the PHP Foundation. But alongside his day job as director of domain-name-system engineering at the nonprofit Internet Systems Consortium, in a volunteer capacity, he maintains and helps automate patches for the coding language. His work, with that of just a handful of others, has allowed countless websites and organizations to fix these vulnerabilities quickly. Over the past 48 hours, he's become arguably the unsung hero of the entire internet—despite the fact that the only compensation he receives is from modest donations. "Ondřej will save the internet today," a user in the PHP Subreddit wrote.
In the war between AI hackers and AI defenders, it's still humans who are the heroes. At least for now.
Art of the steal. Yesterday, in this space, I detailed how voters are fed up with the Trump administration's seemingly endless stream of corruption. But it's been a whole 24 hours, which means there is yet another scandal in the news—thanks to a Vanity Fairarticle about President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.
The article is an excerpt from a forthcoming book. In it, author Matthew Cole claims that Dutch investigators gained access to Kushner's phone with the help of Russian hackers. The evidence from the phone and other sources shows that Kushner has been taking money from the governments of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to "push their agenda with Trump."
Kushner says the article's claims are "outrageous and categorically false."
But wait, there's yet another corruption story. The Justice Department is reportedly probing whether Trump ally Corey Lewandowski profited from his role as a top adviser at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The Washington Post reports that the investigation is based on a referral from the DHS inspector general and is focused on "contracting fraud."
It may or may not be connected to other allegations that surfaced in September, when The Wall Street Journalreported that Lewandowski approached officials in Qatar and the UAE about being hired to help with "visa issues" and other matters.
In both matters, Lewandowski has denied the allegations. He's no longer working for the department, having been fired earlier this yearamid a messy scandal involving then–DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, who was also canned.
Scenes from Virginia: Federal prosecutors indicted state Sen. L. Louise Lucas (D–Portsmouth), one of the most powerful Democrats in Virginia, on charges of racketeering and money laundering in connection with illegal marijuana sales. (Don't get me started on how dumb it is that recreational marijuana use has been legal here since 2021, but commercial sales are still forbidden. If it's legal to use something, it should be legal to sell it!)
Lucas pushed the failed Virginia redistricting effort and has been an outspoken critic of Trump. She plans to fight the charges. Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, also a Democrat, said in a statement that the timing of the indictment, just days before the midterm elections, "further erodes the trust the American people deserve to have in the Department of Justice."
QUICK HITS
"The last thing José García-Sorto remembers after being shot in the chest is being pulled from his car, pinned to the pavement and handcuffed, his blood pooling around him on a Phoenix interstate. All he could think about was what would happen to his two young children if he died." The New York Times has a harrowing account of a Honduran immigrant who was shot by immigration officers last year. He's never been charged with a crime in connection with the incident, which suggests "the authorities did not find evidence that he had put anyone in danger."
The Cato Institute's annual ranking of "Freedom in the 50 States" is out. Arizona takes the top spot. How did your state do?
Is alchemy real now? A California company claims it has successfully turned mercury into gold.
The World Series begins tonight, and it ought to be terrific. Despite low payrolls, Tampa Bay and Milwaukee were the top teams in their respective leagues this year. They are deep, talented teams full of characters worth cheering—Brewers' star pitcher Jacob Misiorowski is a huge Pokémon nerd; Rays' star hitter Yandy Diaz escaped from Cuba after being imprisoned there. And this is the first World Series since 1980 to match two franchises that have never won a championship.
by Matt Agorist, The Free Thought Project: A recent Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Inspector General audit found that the TSA has been mishandling sensitive biometric data collected at airports. (Pleasure To Burn) A recent Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Inspector General audit found that the TSA has been mishandling sensitive biometric data collected at airports. […]
by Dave Christie, LaRouche Organization: With what appears to be significant momentum towards a trilateral summit between Xi, Putin and Trump next month at the APEC summit in China, the world is as close to a new paradigm, as it is to nuclear war. Indeed, with the recent “secret” meeting between Hegseth and Netanyahu, such […]
by Brian Shilhavy, Health Impact News: It is being reported that the U.S. is evacuating Americans from countries in the Middle East in what could be the beginning of an escalation of the war there. Could an “October Surprise” be imminent as we get closer to the U.S. mid-term elections? Report: US Troops and Diplomats […]
by Andrew P. Napolitano, Lew Rockwell: “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.” — Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) The U.S. Constitution was ratified to create and to restrain the government. It established boundaries beyond which the government may not venture, even when it invokes national security, public order, […]
from State Of The Nation: The inevitable AI crash and burn is much closer than they are telling US. SOTN Editor’s Note: The headlines are now coming out faster and more furiously by the day regarding the deliberately fabricated AI bubble. For example: TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/ Ken Griffin Says AI Is “Almost Certainly” A […]
by Jim Quinn, The Burning Platform: “In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall […]
Neuf ans après l’adoption de la loi Sapin II, applicable depuis le 1er juin 2017, la deuxième ville de France, Marseille, ne dispose toujours pas d’un dispositif anticorruption complet. Dans un rapport rendu public le 16 octobre 2026, la chambre régionale des comptes de Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur qualifie le risque d’atteinte à la probité d’« élevé et connu » et pointe des « graves et anciennes lacunes ». Plutôt que de se mettre en conformité, le maire Benoît Payan conteste le rôle des magistrats financiers.
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Le rapport d’observations définitives de la chambre régionale des comptes de PACA (réf. PAR2025-0939) porte sur la commune de Marseille, exercices 2018 et suivants. Ce n’est pas une procédure pénale, mais un contrôle de gestion. Et il dit une chose simple : la loi anticorruption de 2016, applicable depuis le 1er juin 2017, n’est toujours pas appliquée dans la deuxième ville de France.
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La loi anticorruption existe depuis neuf ans, mais les garanties restent incomplètes
La chambre régionale des comptes (CRC) de Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur a examiné la gestion municipale depuis 2018. Son constat est sévère : la commune « ne respecte toujours pas les exigences de la loi Sapin II », faute de s’être dotée d’un dispositif anticorruption complet. Les initiatives récentes sont qualifiées de « modestes », malgré un risque d’atteinte à la probité décrit comme « élevé et connu ».
Les magistrats financiers évoquent de « graves et anciennes lacunes » dans le contrôle interne et la prévention des atteintes à la probité, particulièrement dans les mairies de secteur. Ils soulignent également la nécessité d’éviter les interférences entre responsabilités politiques et fonctions administratives. Sept recommandations ont été formulées.
Ces observations ne constituent ni une condamnation pénale ni l’affirmation qu’une infraction aurait été commise, mais posent une question de gestion élémentaire : comment une grande collectivité peut-elle justifier l’absence prolongée d’un dispositif complet de prévention alors que le risque est identifié ? La loi ne date ni d’hier ni de la veille du contrôle. Elle est applicable depuis juin 2017.
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Des recettes en hausse, des effectifs qui gonflent et une gestion sous surveillance
Selon les chiffres rapportés par Presse Agence , les produits de gestion de la ville ont progressé de plus de 286 millions d’euros depuis 2018. Les effectifs municipaux sont passés de 14 426 à 16 188 agents, tandis que l’absentéisme demeure supérieur de 43 % à la moyenne nationale sans avoir été pleinement diagnostiqué. Depuis 2018, l’administration a connu quatre réorganisations et cinq directeurs généraux des services. La CRC relève aussi une situation financière fragile, malgré une baisse de 22 % de la dette entre 2018 et 2024, et un autofinancement faible.
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Face à ces observations, Benoît Payan a déclaré en conseil municipal : « Je n’accepterai jamais qu’un magistrat préconise à notre place des politiques publiques. » Il a également imputé une partie des critiques à un manque de moyens de la chambre. Le maire a mis en avant le passage de 28 à 7 recommandations, chiffre qu’il avance lui-même, et s’est engagé à appliquer les sept recommandations définitives. Mais la réduction du nombre de recommandations ne suffit pas, à elle seule, à démontrer que les carences relevées ont été corrigées.
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La question n’est pas de savoir si les magistrats doivent gouverner Marseille : ce n’est pas leur rôle. Leur mission est de contrôler la gestion et de signaler les insuffisances. Les contribuables marseillais financent une administration de plus de 16 000 agents et des services dont la gestion doit pouvoir être évaluée avec rigueur. La probité ne saurait être une exigence réservée aux citoyens, aux entreprises et aux associations qui doivent respecter les règles : elle doit également guider ceux qui administrent l’argent public. À Marseille, neuf ans après l’entrée en vigueur de Sapin II, c’est précisément cette exigence qui reste à traduire en actes.
An uncanny strength of the second Trump administration has been its ability to be involved in so many scandals that no single one seems to become a dominant story.
Take the most recent allegations about Alina Habba, Trump's former personal defense attorney, who recently landed a plush gig working for Julio Herrera Velutini, a Venezuelan banker. Habba will get $50 million over five years to do unspecified work for a company that barely exists, according toThe New York Times, while Herrera got a presidential pardon for a 2025 campaign finance charge.
But that constellation of corruption might finally be breaking through to voters ahead of next month's midterm elections.
A recent Fox News poll found that "government corruption" was the top issue for voters, ranking ahead of inflation and gas prices. Conservative commentators are taking notice.
"What they're saying is, 'Look, we're tired of you getting rich and us getting poor,'" former White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said this week.
Tim Carney, senior columnist at the conservative Washington Examiner, also tabs the corruption issue—along with other "avoidable mistakes" such as the Iran War and tariffs—as one of the major reasons why Democrats are likely to win the midterms:
Trump and his family have enriched themselves in this second term in ways more similar to third-world regimes or Cook County than to any previous administration. He and his family operate a financial company that has received heavy investments from Qatar's government. He's sold access to himself by selling otherwise worthless cryptocurrency. The IRS he controls settled a lawsuit with him, promising to pay him $1.8 billion (this settlement was voided by a judge).
Trump is not directly on the ballot next month, of course. And most voters might not be able to tell you the details of any single Trump scandal in detail. Even so, this may turn out to be the defining narrative of the second Trump administration, and there seems to be a growing consensus that Republicans have allowed (if not aided and abetted) his corrupt behavior, so it's time to give Democrats a shot at reining it in.
The Trump corruption issue is like the Biden cognitive decline issue in one key sense: Everyone around the president or even supporting him professionally from afar should be asked about it, and their lies/claims of ignorance should be hung around their necks like dumbbells.
Vice President J.D. Vance told journalist Mark Halperin this week that he's "never seen any evidence that anybody's selling access to the president." When Halperin pushed back, Vance doubled down: "What I would say is I don't think there's evidence that the Trump family has become enriched by politics," the vice president said.
So either Vance isn't paying attention, or he's deliberately misleading. "Credit to Vance, it's as good an argument as is available to him," writes Daniel Foster at National Review. "The bad news is it's still not very good."
The internet nearly crashed on Wednesday as digital security and website administrators scrambled to patch two vulnerabilities in the PHP programming language that serves as the basis for many websites.
"Since its development in the 1990s, PHP has evolved into an essential scripting language for web development and is used across vast swaths of the internet in websites and software," explainsWired. "Everything from publishing systems like WordPress and Drupal to e-commerce platforms like Adobe's Magento are built on PHP."
The potential hacking abilities of advanced AI agents make these sorts of security risks more serious. In this case, however, the problem was also identified with the help of AI.
"Ryan Austin, a researcher at Calif, uncovered the flaws with help from GPT-5.6 Sol, one of OpenAI's most advanced models, during an audit of PHP's source code in August," The Wall Street Journalreports. Another security researcher had flagged the issue years ago, but it had never been fixed because it was considered "considered too difficult to exploit" by human hackers.
This is the future of humanity's digital landscape. "Given the severity of these flaws and PHP's widespread use, we consider this one of the most impactful security issues in recent memory," OpenAI said in a statement on Wednesday. "It highlights how AI can uncover security flaws with internet-scale impact, but the same capabilities can also help attackers rapidly develop offensive tools and exploits."
(A shoutout to Reason's web development team for keeping us up and running, today and every day.)
"Fanciful fiction." Media outlets also continue to face decidedly nondigital threats over articles and polls that make the president unhappy.
The White House threatened Politico on Wednesday with unspecified "consequences" for publishing "fanciful fiction" in a series of articles earlier this month about White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. If the articles are not retracted, it would trigger "an immediate review of Politico's relationship with the White House, and, of course, consideration of all other appropriate and available legal remedies," wrote White House counsel William O. Scharf in a letter to the media outlet's publisher.
Meanwhile, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr issued vague threats to broadcasters who cover what Carr called "Fake Polls" intended to "alter the normal patterns of voter turnout and enthusiasm."
These sorts of threats are an affront to the First Amendment, of course. But they are downstream of a more significant issue: the very existence of the FCC.
It's a problem, obviously, that the FCC is run by an authoritarian jackass. But the bigger problem is that the agency contains so many tempting tools for an authoritarian jackass to wield. https://t.co/Q4IJXntkOy
A judge in New Mexico ordered social media giant Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram, among other things) to pay $25 billion for misleading users about data privacy. Last month, a jury found that Meta had violated the state's consumer protection laws 43 million times.
The environmental studies for California's high-speed rail line include such absurdities as counting bumblebees "one by one" and considering the train's "acoustic impacts on waterfowl and shorebirds." That's how to spend 16 years and $15 billion building nearly nothing.
Obvious metaphor alert!
A group dispatched by Hegseth's team in February attempted to move the historic globe, said to be used by Eisenhower during World War II.
They lifted it from its home in an Army office in the Pentagon … and dropped it. pic.twitter.com/vTjWdYXn0k
Ukraine's High Anti-Corruption Court extended the other obligations of Herman Halushchenko, a former justice minister implicated in a major graft case, for two months.
from ZeroHedge: Ukraine’s wartime corruption saga, which so far has swept through the state nuclear monopoly, the president’s former chief of staff and the prosecutor general’s office, has now reached the one institution that was supposed to be above it all: the central bank. On Wednesday morning, detectives from the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), working […]
by Mike Adams, Activist Post: The Pneumonic Plague PSYOP Explained The headlines are designed to make your pulse spike: a young lab technician in Siberia is dead, a hospital wing is sealed off, hundreds are under observation, and the word “plague” is being broadcast across every corporate news feed on the planet. By the time […]
by Dave Christie, LaRouche Organization: All eyes are on St. Petersburg today—at least the eyes of geopolitical analysts and the geopolitical architects out of the City of London. Putin will meet Witkoff again, in talks that were scheduled to discuss the crisis in Ukraine. But what is the crisis in Ukraine, other than the longstanding […]
by Ryan McMaken, Lew Rockwell: I recent weeks, German and French politicians have denounced free speech, and especially the concept of “freedom of speech” as long envisioned in the libertarian tradition of natural rights. French President Emmanuel Macron on September 29 stated that ”The so-called American ‘free speech’ today, which some people have promoted, is the […]
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