Eileen Wang was charged in April with one count of acting in the United States as an illegal agent of a foreign government. (Photo courtesy of Arcadia, Calif. City Council)
LOS ANGELES — A Southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government, and has resigned from her city position, officials said Monday.
Eileen Wang, the mayor of Arcadia, was charged in April with one count of acting in the United States as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favourable to Beijing, without prior notification to the U.S. government as required by law.
The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected on a rotating basis.
City manager Dominic Lazzaretto said in a news release that no city finances or staff were involved.
“We want to be clear: this investigation concerns individual conduct, and the charges are for conduct that ceased after Ms. Wang was sworn into office in December 2022,” he said.
Federal officials said she has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison.
According to her plea agreement, Wang and a colleague, Yaoning “Mike” Sun, worked on behalf of government officials for the People’s Republic of China from the end of 2020 to 2022 to promote their interests by promoting pro-PRC propaganda in the U.S. Sun is serving a four-year sentence after he pleaded guilty to the same charge last October. He was also listed in campaign filings as the treasurer for Wang’s 2022 election campaign.
Wang and Sun operated the news website U.S. News Center, aimed at the Chinese American community, and were instructed by Chinese government officials to post pro-PRC content on it.
Wang has also communicated with John Chen, who also pleaded guilty to being an agent for the Chinese government and was sentenced to 20 months in prison.
Wang is expected to appear in federal court Monday afternoon in downtown Los Angeles and plead guilty in the coming weeks.
Arcadia is located about 13 miles (21 kilometres) northeast of Los Angeles. The city of about 53,000 is majority Asian and has a high concentration of Chinese residents.
A group of Canadian schoolchildren were forced to flee a theater performance about Indigenous rights after a drag queen began gyrating and ‘putting their boobs in kids faces.’
Campbell Collegiate students in Saskatchewan were pulled out midway through a performance at the Globe Theatre this week after the ‘production reached levels of maturity beyond expectations,’ according to teachers.
The complaints centered around the antics of drag queen Nick Miami Benz, who was performing in a rendition of Little Red Warrior & His Lawyer, a courtroom drama about an Indigenous person who fights for their ancestral land.
Benz was playing an attorney’s wife named Desmona in the production, which was rated suitable for audiences aged 14 and up.
But footage of the play showed Benz, who uses they/them pronouns, flaunting their assets in fishnet tights, thigh-high boots and a see-through corset.
Students were then seen filing out of the theater as Benz continued, while others in the audience laughed and cheered.
In one scene, a judge was seen bending over and appearing to smell Benz’s behind, leading them to leap into the air and start jumping up and down in front of the crowd of young viewers.
Teachers eventually directed their class to leave and sent parents a message afterward confirming they used ‘professional discretion’ to leave early and planned to complain to the theater.
Canadian schoolchildren were forced to flee a theater performance about Indigenous rights after it featured a drag queen putting on an eye-popping display
Students at the Campbell Collegiate in Saskatchewan, Canada left mid-performance from the Globe Theatre after drag queen Nick Miami Benz’s antics became too much for them to bear
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Students appeared to be equally perturbed with a Snapchat video of the performance apparently taken by a student captioned: ‘Guys wtf is this play. NO WAY THIS IS A SCHOOL TRIP.’
In its statement, the school explained that it runs biannual visits to the theater each year and has had ‘great experiences in the past.’
The school said it felt the play’s focus on Indigenous rights ‘aligned with the curriculum’ it teaches and said it was billed as a ‘satirical farce meets romantic comedy.’
‘The materials provided by The Globe stated the production was rated for students aged 14+, due to mature content,’ Campbell Collegiate said.
‘As the play progressed, the production reached levels of maturity beyond expectations, and we made the decision to leave early based on our professional discretion.’
The school added that it would be reaching out to the Globe Theatre ‘to provide feedback and discuss the age rating’ associated with Benz’s performance.
In a letter sent to parents before the show, Little Red Warrior & His Lawyer was described as a ‘sharp, subversive fable’ about Indigenous culture in Canada, promoted as being ‘not afraid to ask who really owns the land.’
Students claimed the drag queen put on a racy display which included putting their boobs in kids faces’
After the lewd production led Campbell Collegiate teachers to leave with the students, the school said in a message to parents that they left because the ‘production reached levels of maturity beyond expectations’
The drag queen, Nick Miami Benz, who uses they/them pronouns, was seen in footage shaking their assets in fishnet tights, thigh-high boots and a see-through corset
‘In this courtroom comedy, the last member of the Little Red Warrior First Nation tribe isn’t here to play by the rules,’ the description of the show read.
‘Red moves in with his court-appointed lawyer Larry and Larry’s wife Desmona, who soon starts seeing Red in a whole new light.’
Footage of Benz’s performance went viral across social media, as many viewers slated the ‘X-rated’ theater production and praised the school for removing the students early.
One person who said they attended the show said they were ‘dismayed at how the writer demeaned females’ with Benz’s character.
‘I’m glad the teachers took control and removed the students,’ they wrote. ‘The drag queen had nothing to do with the actual story, but seemed to be there for further humiliation.’
One critic wrote on X: ‘Good for the Campbell staff for reacting instead of just sitting there and letting the kids get visually assaulted by this.’
Another said they found the performance mocked Indigenous people, writing: ‘This is their representation of the dignified First People? Disgraceful.’
‘How was this rated +14 exactly?’ questioned another.
‘The Globe Theater can put on whatever shows they want, but they need to be appropriately rated.’
The Daily Mail has contacted the Globe Theatre, Benz and Campbell Collegiate for comment.
Immigrant who pulled loaded gun won’t face deportation
[Question: How is this gunman who came here on a “student visa” in 2015 still here. Who is responsible? Why can’t he be deported? So, Ethiopia is not heaven on earth. Why does this punk Berhe become our responsibility?]
Thomas Kahsay Berhe pointed a loaded Glock 19 9 mm pistol at another driver following a “minor traffic infraction” before fleeing the scene.
An Ethiopian immigrant who pulled a loaded handgun and pointed it at another driver during a road rage incident in Calgary will serve three years in prison, but will not face deportation because his home country has been deemed too dangerous for him to return to.
On June 9, 2023, Thomas Kahsay Berhe pointed a loaded Glock 19 9-mm pistol at another driver following a “minor traffic infraction” that sparked the altercation. He threatened to shoot the other man before fleeing the scene.
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Police tracked Berhe down 11 days later while he was a passenger in a vehicle where another person was in possession of a loaded .38 calibre revolver.
Berhe never had his firearms licence or any registration for the gun.
Alberta Court of Justice A.J. Brown sentenced Berhe to three years in prison last month.
However, Brown noted that while sentences longer than six months would normally have subjected him to an “automatic removal order,” Berhe is not at risk because, “Immigration Canada does stay removal orders to enumerated countries that are in a state of war or otherwise subject to violence, danger, terrorism, etc.; currently, Ethiopia is one such country.”
Berhe came to Canada on a student visa in 2015.
Brown also said that in both incidents involving the firearms, they were “fully loaded with five live rounds” and that Berhe’s attack on the other driver “was persistent and ended only when bystanders, at risk to their personal safety, intervened.”
“Police then conducted a high-risk vehicle stop of the Hyundai in which Mr. Berhe was the front passenger and seized from the floor under his seat a .38 calibre revolver.”
The mitigating factors in the case included Berhe’s youth, his lack of a previous record and his guilty pleas. Brown also noted “his remorse, insight and post-offence rehabilitation; and his family and community support.”
China-Canada food safety pact could be a killer of a deal
Patricia adams Patricia Adams, an economist, is executive director of Probe International, a China watchdog.
22 Apr 2026
In January, Canada’s Food Inspection Agency and China’s customs authority signed a memorandum of understanding to enhance co-operation on food safety and animal and plant health. Prime Minister Mark Carney framed it as part of a bilateral reset aiming for smoother trade. On paper, it establishes technical working groups, information-sharing and biennial meetings. In practice, it asks Canadian consumers and regulators to trust a food system with a well-documented history of repeated, sometimes lethal, failures.
China’s food-related problems are neither ancient history nor isolated incidents. One in 10 meals consumed in the country is estimated to be cooked with “gutter oil” recycled from restaurant waste and sewers. Cats are picked up from the streets and sold as pork or mutton for skewers and sausage stuffing. Cadmium-contaminated rice from polluted regions like Hunan is common. Weight-loss supplements sold as “natural” have contained undeclared sibutramine, a banned drug linked to heart risks.
The 2008 melamine scandal in infant formula killed at least six babies and sickened hundreds of thousands, with officials delaying warnings to protect the Beijing Olympics’ image. In 2014, expired and spoiled meat from a Shanghai supplier reached major fast-food chains across Asia. In 2024, major grain and oil firms were exposed using uncleaned fuel tankers to transport edible oils — a cost-cutting practice that had become routine.
More recently, over 200 children were hospitalized after eating lead-tainted food in a northwest China kindergarten. Just last month, authorities found vendors were using kidney and liver-damaging sedatives in fish transport tanks to keep fish from losing scales, then telling their customers the motionless fish were merely “sleeping.”
China’s government claims its food is beyond reproach, pointing to its Food Safety Law (enacted in 2009, strengthened in 2015) and President Xi Jinping’s “Four Strictest” requirements: precise standards, strict administration, harsh accountability and grave punishment. On paper, penalties include large fines, punitive damages, criminal charges and even execution. But corruption rules. The Communist Party and those favoured by it freely disregard the legal system.
Enforcement is selective, driven more by political loyalty, GDP targets and social stability than consistent consumer protection. Coverups are often shielded.
If necessary, producers rebrand and relocate, while high-profile crackdowns can seem performative. Without an independent judiciary and constraints on Party power, food safety is not just a technical but a systemic governance failure. Incentives to cut corners for profit under competitive and political pressure endure.
Those in privileged positions have for decades avoided the foods most Chinese are resigned to eat. Since the 1960s, Communist Party officials have sourced high-quality, uncontaminated, carefully tested “special provision” foods for themselves and their families through the tegong system of secret farms. Private companies also provide safe food for their employees as perks. Foxconn runs its own tested, traceable farms to avoid pesticides, heavy metals, parasites and other contaminants in their company canteens.
Canadians have reason for caution. Access to Information investigations have revealed that between January 2017 and early 2019, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency flagged nearly 900 shipments from China over contaminants such as metals found in minced garlic, gumballs and haddock filets;
CHINA’S FOOD-RELATED PROBLEMS ARE NEITHER ANCIENT HISTORY NOR ISOLATED INCIDENTS.
glass in bamboo shoots and sesame paste noodles; parasites in wild cod filets; and heavy metals in candy. Allergens, including peanuts, were found in 584 products. And 85 cases involved “Product misrepresentation/authenticity.”
Despite a pattern of widespread contamination, Canada denied entry to only four shipments. The U.S., which imports roughly 10 times as much food from China as Canada, refused entry to 1,828 Chinese shipments during the same period — more than 40 times as many. In the EU, China ranks first for food import safety alerts and refusals. Canada’s ranking of China is not available because, unlike its counterparts in other western nations, the CFIA does not release comprehensive data of its refusals of food imports.
Under the new MOU, Chinese-owned or joint-venture operations will function inside Canada, their supply chains extending back to China for ingredients or methods. Though laden with language to reassure Canadian trade negotiators, the MOU does not magically sanitize those relationships. If a Canadian factory sources additives or raw materials through the same opaque networks that produced gutter oil or melamine milk, Canadian consumers will eat the risk.
