China's state-owned shipping giant COSCO rejected a report published last week alleging that the company had concealed advanced surveillance equipment aboard its cargo ships to monitor US military communications near the coastlines of target nations, including the US.
Reuters quoted COSCO on Friday as calling the allegations "totally unfounded" and false.
What Reuters reported on Tuesday:
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the U.S. assessment of the Chinese program, said COSCO has a decades-long intelligence-collection partnership with Beijing. The arrangement allows China to collect communication signals from vessels and aircraft operating across Europe, North America and Asia, they said.
The advanced equipment aboard the ships is intended to enable China to gather information about "military communications technologies and encryption developments," one of the officials said.
The world's fourth-largest container carrier also told the outlet:
COSCO SHIPPING has always adhered to market‑oriented operations and compliance practices across all our global businesses
All communication, navigation, safety and operational equipment installed on our vessels is used solely for legitimate commercial purposes, including navigation safety, ship-to-shore communications and emergency response.
The allegations surface just weeks before Chinese President Xi Jinping's expected Sept. 24 visit to Washington for talks with President Trump.
If substantiated, COSCO's alleged use as a signals intelligence operations would fit a broader pattern of Chinese gray-zone activity in which commercial infrastructure and civilian technologies are leveraged to advance state objectives.
Dr. Ryan Clarke of the CCP BioThreats Initiative wrote in a book last year that Beijing's strategy increasingly combines next-generation weapons with irregular and nonkinetic tools, including synthetic narcotics such as fentanyl and cannabinoids, what he characterized as biological weapons involving COVID-19, psychological influence through platforms such as TikTok, and other instruments of unconventional warfare.
Tyler Durden Sat, 09/05/2026 - 19:15Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,
A horrific copycat Lindsay Clancy murder of a child has been committed by a woman in Frankfort, Illinois.
Prosecutors say Corie Walsh hanged her 2-year-old son, Barrett, from a basement rafter on Tuesday, then tried to kill herself with a knife. She told police she did it because the boy was the "devil" and the "anti-Christ."
Witnesses said she had become "very invested" in the Lindsay Clancy trial and was still texting friends about it hours before her son was found.
HORRIFIC: An Illinois mother, Corie Walsh, hanged her 2-year-old son in the basement before trying to kill herself in what appears to be a Lindsay Clancy copycat. She told police she did it because the little boy was the "devil" and the "anti-Christ."... pic.twitter.com/aK2j2FuFjM
— RedWave Press (@RedWavePress) September 4, 2026Just after 4pm on Tuesday, Frankfort police were called to the 22700 block of Brook Stone Court. A neighbor was already on the floor doing CPR on 2-year-old Barrett Walsh. The neighbor told investigators she had found the boy hanging from a device attached to a basement rafter, a ligature around his neck, his feet off the ground. An autopsy's preliminary finding was asphyxia from ligature compression of the neck.
Upstairs, the same neighbor found Corie Walsh in a bathtub with a knife. Court papers describe Walsh fully dressed, surrounded by bloody water, with cuts to her wrists and thigh.
Walsh later told officers she "did this to her baby because he was the 'devil' and the 'anti-Christ.'" In the hospital she described how she killed him. Those statements, prosecutors said, matched what was found in the house.
?? BREAKING — New details emerge about Corie Walsh, the mother who KILLED her 2-year-old son in Frankfort, Illinois.
She allegedly HUNG the 2-year-old child from the rafters in the basement...
Investigators said she called the child the "devil" and the "anti-Christ." A... pic.twitter.com/Jc5qWsbJCc
Another infant was found at the home unharmed. Two school-age children returned around the time the body was found. Walsh's husband was out of state on business and flew home that night.
Prosecutors are asking a judge to deny pretrial release, writing that Walsh poses "a specific, real and present threat to her husband and her living three children."
They say she spoke of harming the remaining children and her husband.
Walsh, charged with three counts of first-degree murder on different theories of intent, was held for medical treatment and booked into the Will County jail. Her first court date is set for Tuesday, September 8.
Her lawyer, Andrea Lyon, issued the line the Clancy fandom has been rehearsing for weeks:
"This is a tragedy, for the Walsh family all of whom are mourning the loss of this child. It is also a tragedy in that Corey herself was experiencing a psychotic episode at the time this happened."
Prosecutors added the detail that turned a suburban homicide into a national alarm. Witnesses told police Walsh "had recently become very invested in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial." She had been "actively discussing the case via group text message with her friends" until about 12:30 p.m. Tuesday - three and a half hours before Barrett was found. The Clancy jury was already deliberating in Plymouth when those texts went out.
Questions clearly have to be asked regarding the media coverage of support for Clancy and the fallout from it.
...While the jury sat, Clancy's supporters gathered outside the courthouse in pink. They screamed at the district attorney as he tried to speak. One of the lines captured on video: "You only cared when the kids were dead! Why don't you care about the mother?!"
? WTF?! DERANGED Lindsay Clancy fans are SCREAMING at the District Attorney while he attempts to give a press conference
These people need to be INSTITUTIONALIZED
"You only cared when the kids were dead! Why don't you care about the mother?!"
Just VILE. pic.twitter.com/aPimy7EG4l
That is the moral inversion this case has been selling for weeks. The children are the backdrop. The mother is the victim. The system is the villain. The man who will not play along is the problem.
Joe Rogan earlier noted that If the women in pink could see the crime scene - "those dead kids with their vacant eyes staring up because their mother took their life, the last thing that they saw was their mother standing over them, choking them to death" - he said, "I don't think they would feel so bad."
He added that if a father had done this he would not get a fan club, and if Clancy walks, "her supporters should have to let her babysit."
Bill Maher, no MAGA mascot, asked the question the pink shirts treat as blasphemy: "What I don't get is why does she have fans?" He compared the courthouse crowd to the women who turned Luigi Mangione into a folk hero. Frustration with systems is one thing. Building a following around a woman who ended three young lives is another. He also noted the wider cultural permission structure: not many women kill their children, "but a lot of them are not afraid to say, 'I don't like being a mom.'"
White liberal women are identifying with a child murderer. Courthouse pilgrimages have been framed as sisterhood. "I could have been her" essays written with living children in the next room.
Rep. Brandon Gill pointed out that mental illness is not a license.
"She's anything but brave." "I have an enormous amount of sympathy for the three kids who were slaughtered. I don't for Clancy."
"You don't get a license to murder your children or anybody else because you have health problems," He stated, adding "We've gotten into the habit of medicalizing evil." When Will Cain asked whether medicalizing a crime lets people dodge accountability, Gill answered: "It's a lack of recognition that evil exists."
Brandon Gill is absolutely right.
Mental illness is NEVER an excuse for killing children.
GILL: "She's anything but brave."
"I have an enormous amount of sympathy for the three kids who were slaughtered. I don't for Clancy."
"You don't get a license to murder your children or... pic.twitter.com/MyLed6vjqg
Prosecutors in Massachusetts never denied Clancy was severely ill. They said she still understood what she was doing: she cleared her husband out of the house on an errand, she completed three killings with a method that worked, she chose a different method for herself that failed. The jury never reached the question of sentence. One man would not sign off on the idea that doubt about her mind erased the crime.
In Illinois, the first apparent copycat did not wait for a verdict. Her lawyer is already reaching for the same word: psychotic episode. The remaining three children and the husband who was out of town are now, in the state's filing, people she may still try to harm.
Jury service is not a support group. It is the last brake in a culture that has spent a generation teaching women that their distress is the main character and other people's bodies are scenery.
Eleven jurors, on the defense account, were prepared to treat three strangled children as a tragedy that happened to their mother. One juror would not.
Contagion is not a metaphor when a mother in Frankfort is discussing a live murder trial until lunchtime and a neighbor is cutting a toddler down from a rafter the same evening.
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Tyler Durden Sat, 09/05/2026 - 18:40Summary:
New details have emerged about the meeting between US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier today. The meeting began hours after Putin ordered Russian forces to suspend strikes on Kiev for three days.
Bloomberg reports that Putin opened talks with Witkoff and Kushner by describing the situation they were seeking to resolve as "not simple."
Putin asked them to convey his best wishes to President Trump.
The outlet continued:
Expectations for the visit are low, though, according to people close to the Kremlin. Multiple previous trips to Moscow by Witkoff and Kushner failed to achieve progress and there's no reason to believe they're bringing acceptable proposals now, the people said.
Putin is ready to stop the war only on his own terms, and Moscow's demands are getting tougher because it believes it has the military edge over Ukraine, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive matters.
People familiar with the thinking in Kyiv said Ukraine is also pessimistic about making meaningful progress around the Witkoff-Kushner visit. The US envoys are expected to push previous ideas like making Donbas an economic free zone, which Russia has already rejected, the people said.
Putin meets Witkoff and Kushner for Ukraine peace talks.
Putin meets Witkoff and Kushner for peace talks. pic.twitter.com/NqqAelwuEG
— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 5, 2026More footage from the meeting:
Steve Witkoff to Putin:
President Putin, thank you so much for having us.
We were sitting outside just now, me, Jared, Kirill, Yuri, and we were talking about, when we retire, we will have all these incredible stories and memories, and yours will be right at the top of it all. pic.twitter.com/r4OVAZSaST
Putin to Kushner and Witkoff:
The quality of the mediation and the trust placed in those carrying it out are, of course, very important.
I want to tell you that we are comfortable working with you, and that the level of trust on our side throughout this process is quite high. pic.twitter.com/EimtFxf6Eh
For now, the optics suggest that the Trump administration is reactivating high-level diplomacy in an effort to end the 4.5-year war, a grinding conflict that continues to impose severe human and economic costs on both sides. The renewed push also comes as Trump and Republicans enter the final two months before the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
After Moscow, Kushner and Witkoff plan to travel to Ukraine on Sunday, marking their first trip since the war began.
US Envoys Witkoff, Kushner Land In Moscow For Peace Talks As Putin Halts Attacks On KievRoughly 11 days after CIA Director John Ratcliffe unexpectedly traveled to Moscow and reportedly floated a trilateral summit involving President Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner arrived in Moscow on Saturday morning.
"Dmitriev was deep in conversation with Witkoff and Kushner as they stepped onto Russian soil for key Ukraine talks," Russian media outlet RT wrote on X, accompanying the post with footage of the US delegation's arrival.
Dmitriev deep in conversation with Witkoff and Kushner as they step onto Russian soil for key Ukraine talks https://t.co/eC8u8gbJVe pic.twitter.com/DIksgrUj54
— RTRussia (@RT_Russia_) September 5, 2026Russian outlet Sputnik reported that Putin had ordered a three-day pause in strikes on Kiev just as Witkoff and Kushner arrived in Russia for peace talks.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated:
Putin orders halt to strikes on Kiev for three days, starting from midnight today - Kremlin
Other statements by Dmitry Peskov:
🔸The pause in strikes on Kiev is linked to the preparation and holding of meetings with American negotiators there
🔸The Russian president will meet… pic.twitter.com/MJ0g4pWizr
Witkoff and Kushner are scheduled to meet Putin before traveling to Kyiv on Sunday, marking their first visit to Ukraine since the war began.
Bloomberg reports that expectations for a breakthrough peace deal to end the war remain low.
The Kremlin said there was "no talk of new ideas," while describing Moscow's negotiating position as "unshakeable." Russia continues to demand that Kiev surrender the entirety of four regions claimed by Moscow and abandon its NATO ambitions, conditions that Kiev rejects.
The diplomatic push comes as intensifying attacks by both sides around the Black Sea raise the risk of a global food crisis next year. Meanwhile, Ukrainian attacks on Russian energy infrastructure, combined with disrupted Persian Gulf flows, are pushing the global refined-products market toward crisis, creating twin food and energy risks.
The visit merely suggests an intensifying Trump administration campaign to reopen high-level negotiating channels ahead of the midterm elections in the US and end the Russia-Ukraine war after more than four years of costly fighting.
Tyler Durden Sat, 09/05/2026 - 18:39