15,000 Federal Employees Take Federal Buyout; China’s Biggest Banks in Trouble

The Terrifying Way Scammers Clone Your Voice to Defraud Your FamilyPhishing, which as far back as the 1990s used fake emails to scam unsuspecting victims, evolved into the use of fake SMS or text messages, known as smishing attacks. Now, that evolution has entered a new stage with voice-phishing or vishing attacks that involve voice cloning. One method is to send a voicemail message generated by artificial intelligence (AI), seemingly from a panicked child or grandchild, to a family member, urging them to send money, often through a bogus bank link.

“The everyday vishing script is a high-pressure, ‘urgent problem’ phone call,” Nathan House, CEO of StationX, a United Kingdom-based cybersecurity training platform, told The Epoch Times. “The caller spoofs your bank’s number, claims your account is compromised, and needs you to ’verify’ a one-time passcode they just texted—actually your real two-factor code,” he said.

“The hallmarks are a trusted name on caller ID, an emotional or financial threat, and a demand for immediate action—usually sharing credentials, reading back a code, or wiring money,” House said. (More)

House Passes Bill to Protect Falun Gong, Counter CCP’s Forced Organ HarvestingThe House of Representatives passed a bill on May 5 aimed at ending Beijing’s persecution of the spiritual group Falun Gong. The Falun Gong Protection Act, passed by voice vote with broad bipartisan support, includes provisions to sanction individuals implicated in the forced harvesting of organs of Falun Gong practitioners.

The sanctions would apply to a list of foreign nationals “who the President determines to have knowingly and directly engaged in or facilitated the involuntary harvesting of organs within the People’s Republic of China,” the bill states. Penalties include blocking an offender from entering the United States, invalidating the offender’s visa, and imposing criminal punishment of fines of up to $1 million and 20 years in prison, among others.

Falun Gong, a spiritual practice involving meditative exercises and teachings based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, has faced harsh repression in China since 1999. The Chinese regime views Falun Gong’s popularity as a threat and has subjected its 70 million to 100 million practitioners to arrests, prolonged jailing, forced labor, and various other kinds of torture. (More)

China’s 6 Biggest Banks Report $1 Billion Profit DropChina’s six largest banks have posted first-quarter reports with a significant drop in both earnings and profits. Experts say the profit drop indicates a stalling economy that is likely to continue to worsen as the effects of the tariff war between China and the United States kick in.

The six major Chinese banks, which are all state-owned, released their first-quarter data on April 29. Taken together, their net profit attributable to parent companies fell by $1 billion compared with the same period in 2024, a decrease of about 2 percent. The six banks reported a total revenue of $125 billion in the first quarter, a year-over-year decrease of $1.9 billion.

Among them, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the world’s largest lender by assets, saw a 4 percent net profit drop year-over-year. The Bank of China posted a 2.9 percent decrease from the year before. (More)