Mining Murders Show Peru's Struggles With an Illegal Gold Rush
The deceased — found in a mine shaft after being kidnapped several days earlier — were working as guards at a small operation that is a contractor to Cia. Minera Poderosa SA, one of Peru's largest gold producers. At least 39 workers have been killed in recent years in the gold-rich area of Pataz, the Lima-based metals producer said Sunday in a statement.
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Epoch Times
33 minutes ago
- Epoch Times
Kmart in Legal Crosshairs Over Suspected Ties to China's Forced Labour Camps
An Adelaide-based Uyghur group is taking Australian retail giant Kmart to court for allegedly sourcing its products from factories connected to forced labour camps in China. The Australian Uyghur Tangritagh Women's Association (AUTWA) filed its application in the Federal Court to compel Kmart to produce documents demonstrating what it knows about two clothing suppliers listed on its 2024 and 2025 factory lists with links to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The Region is home to systemic state-sponsored forced labour camps and well-documented atrocities against Uyghur and Turkic Muslim people. 'Kmart, and all companies, must ensure they are not profiting from forced labour in China. China's mass imprisonment, repression and forced labour of Uyghur people is well-documented. Our community has lost family members, friends, and loved ones because of China's brutal treatment of Uyghurs,' said Ramila Chanisheff, president of AUTWA, in a statement. 'Kmart is a go-to store for so many people in Australia. If the company has profited in any way from this sort of systematic repression, I am sure Australians would be horrified.' Jennifer Kanis, the principal lawyer representing AUTWA from Maurice Blackburn, said this is the first case seeking to hold Australian retailers accountable for forced labour in their supply chains, and urged Kmart to be transparent. 'Kmart tells customers that it supports ethical sourcing and the protection of human rights – but we know there are credible links between two of its factories/suppliers and the use of Uyghur forced labour in Xinjiang,' she said. 'Documents will be sought from Kmart to determine whether Kmart engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct about the use of Uyghur forced labour… and the Court will be asked to compel Kmart to hand over information about what due diligence it has conducted on suppliers with links to Xinjiang. Kmart Says It Provides Details of Factories, Sourcing Kmart has denied the AUTWA's allegations, saying it was disappointed the group took the legal action, and that it 'invited the AUTWA to meet' with them several times. 'Kmart has been in correspondence with the applicant's lawyers for over 12 months and has provided extensive details of our Ethical Sourcing Program,' a spokesperson for the Wesfarmers-owned retailer told The Epoch Times. 'For over 15 years, we have had in place an Ethical Sourcing Program, which helps us to identify and mitigate modern slavery risks, including the risk of forced labour, in our operations and supply chains. 'Suppliers in the Kmart Ethical Sourcing Program are regularly monitored through activities including our site visits, audit programs and investigations if we receive any reports or complaints of concern,' they said. 'We encourage any organisation to raise its concerns with us, so we can investigate in line with our policy and commitments.' Kmart's website has details on its stance on slavery and a list of where it sources products. Weaknesses in Australian Laws Highlighted Freya Dinshaw, the associate legal director of Human Rights Law Centre, which is representing AUTWA along with Maurice Blackburn, said that the case highlights some of the weaknesses in Australia's modern slavery laws. 'It shouldn't be left to members of the public to take companies to court and force them to open their books where there are suspicions of links to modern slavery,' said Dinshaw. 'Australian companies should be legally required to investigate and prevent forced labour in their supply chains and face hard consequences if they don't. Australia should also follow the example of other countries like Canada and the U.S. and ban imported goods made with forced labour, so they don't end up on our shop shelves.' The United Nations and human rights organisations have long accused the ruling Chinese Communist Party of crimes against humanity and possible genocide against Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic groups in China's Xinjiang region. Unlike the United States and several European nations, Australia has yet to enact laws banning goods tied to the abuse of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities, despite repeated calls from human rights groups and a Senate inquiry recommending action.
New York Post
8 hours ago
- New York Post
Oil baron CEO claims he was subject of ‘sham' swinger rumors so rival could steal his job: lawsuit
What a crude awakening. The co-founder and CEO of a wealthy Colorado-based energy firm accused an inner-company rival of spreading 'sham' rumors that he and his wife were swingers at a local country club to steal his job, according to a lawsuit. Michael Duginski, of Sentinel Peak Resources in Denver, was axed by his company in May after being sent a memo that he had allegedly exhibited 'unacceptable behavior in the workplace,' according to the lawsuit obtained by BusinessDen. Michael Duginski claims he was axed by his oil firm after his rival co-founder spread rumors that he and his wife were swingers. Crescent Energy Group Duginksi was placed on leave, but his company board allegedly refused to tell him what he was being accused of. After an ominous investigation and a probe, he was fired by the three other members of the company's board, the lawsuit filed last Monday claimed. The former oil baron said the decision to fire him started from rumors over his sexual proclivities spread by jealous co-founder George Ciotti, who took over his job as CEO when he was ousted, court records stated. In July, Duginski had several 'revealing' conversations at the Glenmoor Country Club in Cherry Hills Village, where he learned that Ciotti spread rumors that he and his wife were swingers and had sexual relationships with others outside their marriage, the filing claimed. Ciotti allegedly launched a 'sham investigation' against Duginski to 'create a vacancy for the role he coveted,' the lawsuit said. 'This accusation is untrue, and Mr. Ciotti knew it was false but wanted to harm Mr. Duginski's reputation,' the document said. Duginski had several 'revealing' conversations at the Glenmoor Country Club in Cherry Hills Village, leading him to learn about the rumors. Instagram Duginski is suing Sentinel Peak Resources for $650,000 in back wages, $3 million that he invested in the company and the value of his company stock — in addition to suing Ciotti for defamation. 'Colleagues within his community and industry now have misconceptions about his character,' the filing alleged. Sentinel Peak Resources is a portfolio company focused on the acquisition and development of oil and gas assets, according to its company website. A representative of the company did not immediately respond to The Post's request for comment.
Fox News
9 hours ago
- Fox News
WILLIAM SHIPLEY: What the Durham Annex tells us about the Russiagate hoax
On July 31 and Aug. 1, The New York Times ran two stories pouring cold water on the release of the previously classified "Annex" to the Report of Special Counsel John Durham dated May 23, 2023. But the authors – Charlie Savage and Adam Goldman – misdirected their readers' attention from the start to a non-issue, with the help of a literally false headline claiming Durham found certain documents in the Annex to have been "faked" by Russian intelligence. That's the basis upon which the Times, Washington Post, Politico, network news, and other legacy media have myopically focused their reporting on the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane investigation of President Trump – which we know was "faked" by the FBI, CIA, and Obama White House. Part of Durham's investigation looked into why the FBI did NOTHING – literally – after first receiving the Russian intelligence information in late July 2016, as contrasted with how the FBI reacted to information nearly 60 days old received from an Australian diplomat about a meeting in a London bar. The Annex includes previously classified information on the receipt of "Special Intelligence" throughout the first part of 2016 from a friendly foreign government, showing Russia's seemingly real-time knowledge of the inner machinations of Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. The Annex is a document authored by Durham's team. Since the source documents upon which the Russian memos were based were not provided – or at least not made public – the accuracy of Russian memos' paraphrasing/referencing to the source documents is unknown. All those qualifiers go to the work of "analysis" – what is this document, where does it originate, what does it say, what does it rely upon, can it be corroborated separately, what is our level of confidence in accepting the contents as accurate at face value, etc.? Two items that have attracted the most attention, and which the Times' stories focus on, are "emails" purportedly written by Leonard Bernardo, dated July 25 and July 27, 2016. Bernardo worked for a George Soros-related entity. His emails were hacked, and he had communications with senior Clinton campaign officials. The Annex does not have actual "emails" as you might find them on Bernardo's computer or a recipient's computer – they have none of the typical email formatting. What they appear to be are "retyped" versions of the text in the body of emails into a Russian language memo, the Russian memo was translated into English, with Durham "cutting & pasting" the English translation into his report. The July 25 "email" includes the allegation that Hillary Clinton approved a plan conceived by a "foreign policy adviser" to "vilify" then-candidate Donald Trump by falsely linking him to Russia Pres. Putin. As for the Russian language memo – we don't know the date -- Durham provides an English translation that includes the following: "According to data from the election campaign headquarters of Hillary Clinton, obtained via the U.S. Soros Foundation, on July 26, 2016, Clinton approved a plan by her policy advisor Juliana Smith … to smear Donald Trump by magnifying the scandal tied to the intrusion Russian special services in the pre-election process to benefit the Republican candidate." The Russian memo says next "As envisioned by Smith…." This suggests that maybe among the documents supporting the memo is a description of Smith's plan either by Smith herself or someone else familiar enough with the details to describe it. "As envisioned by Smith, raising the theme of 'Putin's support for Trump' to the level of the Olympic scandal would divert constituents' attention from the investigation of Clinton's compromised electronic correspondence." The Russian memo, which had to have been written after July 27 since it had contents from a July 27 email in it, describes precisely what followed over the next 100 days leading up to the election – establishing "Putin's support for Trump" was the goal of the supposed "plan." The Russian memo goes on: "…by subsequently steering public opinion towards the notion that it [the public] needs to equate 'Putin's efforts' to influence political processes in the United States via cyberspace to acts against critically important infrastructure (resembling a national power supply network) would force the White House [read "OBAMA"] to use more confrontational scenarios vis-à-vis Moscow…." The memo says the Clinton campaign will seek to blow up the significance of Russian election interference – which happens in every election – by equating it to an attack on vital national infrastructure, and link Putin and Trump together in the effort, i.e., any election interference by Putin is really a proxy for an attack on democracy by Trump. Either the Russian intelligence services are clairvoyant and should be playing the lottery every week, or they wandered into a trove of correspondence between people associated with the Clinton campaign describing precisely the game plan executed by the campaign, and White House, CIA, and FBI on its behalf. The July 27 email attributed to Bernardo is also relatively short in terms of what Durham sets forth as the verbatim text taken from the Russian memo, and it confirms that Clinton approved "Julia's idea." The Times' authors falsely reported that Durham called the two Bernardo emails "fake" – and said that they were "concocted" by Russian intelligence. Hence, according to the Times, all the controversy surrounding the release of Annex materials was made irrelevant by that finding. But Durham didn't conclude the emails were fake. What did he conclude? His team's "best assessment" was that they were "composites" – some portion of the text of each was taken from other sources and combined into the text that appeared under Bernardo's name as an "email." It is clear that Bernardo did not write them, i.e., they are not "authentic." But it is also clear that some amount of the content in each was accurate – and predicted events that would unfold over the next 100 days. Durham reached that conclusion only after a long and involved process designed to understand both what the emails were, and how much of the content of the Special Intelligence was accurate. Everything – and I mean everything -- Durham did to answer those questions were things the FBI chose to NOT DO in or after August 2016. Durham asked intelligence analysts – FBI and CIA presumably – if the emails appeared authentic. Most said that they did. Some noted that Bernardo was, in fact, a victim of hacking by the Russians, so it would not be surprising if his emails were in the Russians' hands. It was noted by some that the Russians could have fabricated or altered the original information taken from the source documents. Just the fact that some analysts believed the emails appeared to be authentic should have been enough to push the FBI into action. But it did nothing. Durham interviewed Bernardo and showed him the emails. The FBI never did that. Bernardo said he did not recognize them, and there was language in them that he would not have used -- specifically the sentence "Later the FBI will put more oil into the fire." Judging intelligence translated from a foreign language is tricky. Bernardo denied using that phrase, but how far off is that from a very similar phrase more commonly used by a native English speaker – "Pour gas onto the fire"? Bernardo's original document would have been in English – then translated to Russian – then the Russian version translated back to English. That's how "gas onto the fire" ends up as "oil into the fire." Bernardo also said he did not know who "Julie" was as referenced in the July 25 email. But he noted that the final sentence in the July 25 email – that "things are ghastly for US-Russian relations" was phrased as something that he would write. Durham gathered documents with grand jury subpoenas and search warrants. He looked for the documents obtained by Russian hackers. As for the July 25 and July 27 emails, Durham did not find those among the emails of the Soros Foundation. But he found other emails – either emails or attachments to emails sent by people other than Bernardo – with language identical to Bernardo. Specifically, a passage in the July 25 email was taken directly from an email written by Tim Mauer, who worked for the Carnegie Endowment as a cyber expert. Mauer had never seen the Bernardo emails but agreed that one passage was taken from an email he had sent to colleagues at Carnegie – also hacked by the Russians. Durham also interviewed Julianne Smith, who was a Clinton campaign foreign policy advisor, and who did involve herself in efforts to amplify the threat of the Putin-Trump relationship to U.S. national security. It is noteworthy that Durham begins this portion as follows: "Smith stated she did not specifically remember proposing a plan to Clinton or other Campaign leadership to try to tie Trump to Putin and Russia." That phrasing is never accidental – "did not specifically remember" leaves much room to extricate oneself if a document emerges later that says what it is you claim to not remember. Agents are trained to note such phrases exactly as stated by the person being interviewed. Smith did say "it was possible" she had proposed ideas to campaign leadership "who may have approved those ideas." Again – Durham is showing her emails about a "Clinton Plan" she supposedly hatched, and she cannot be confident what other documents he might have that he isn't showing her. While she didn't remember much of anything about anything, the one thing she was certain of is that she would never have made a proposal that had as part of its execution the involvement of the FBI in furtherance of the effort. Prior to Durham, the FBI did none of this – and has never offered an explanation for why. THAT was the point made by Durham's Annex.
