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Dear Abby helps a mother navigate family dynamics amid her health issues.

The US will “bitterly regret the precedent it has set” after an American submarine sank an Iranian warship, Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araqchi warned Thursday.

China Is Scrambling

Authored by Zineb Riboua via Beyond the Ideological,

The men in Zhongnanhai do not rattle easily. Decades of patient statecraft, a foreign policy built on studied ambiguity, and an economy engineered to absorb external shocks have granted Beijing’s leadership a remarkable tolerance for turbulence. Operation Epic Fury, the American-Israeli air campaign now dismantling Iran’s military architecture, has produced something unusual in the corridors of Chinese power: visible confusion.

Xi Jinping is scrambling. The word is not used lightly. For a leader who has built his image on strategic composure and long-horizon thinking, the current moment is acutely dangerous. Not because China faces a direct military threat, but because every available response to the crisis in the Persian Gulf leads Beijing into a trap of its own contradictions.

Three Reasons Operation Epic Fury Is Catastrophic for Xi

First, the Iranian counterweight is gone. In 2021, Xi told senior Party officials that “the East is rising and the West is declining,” that America was “the biggest source of chaos in the present-day world,” and that China was entering a period of strategic opportunity. Iran was central to that thesis. Beijing needed a defiant Tehran to keep Washington pinned down in the Gulf, to sustain a sanctions-proof energy corridor, and above all, to stand as living evidence that American power had hard limits. The entire architecture of CCP’s dogma of inevitability, which rested on Iran’s ability to endure, and Epic Fury removed the foundation in a single afternoon.

Khamenei was the man who made the thesis feel real. Beijing’s relationship with the Islamic Republic was never really ideological, but Khamenei’s survival was the single most useful fact in Chinese foreign policy. Here was a man Washington had threatened, sanctioned, plotted against, and encircled for over four decades, and he was still giving Friday sermons. Xi personally signed the comprehensive strategic partnership with Khamenei’s government. He personally authorized the weapons transfers. And he personally wielded the Security Council veto. None of it kept Khamenei alive for one additional hour once Washington decided he was finished.

Second, Xi’s own story is collapsing from the inside. The story he told 1.4 billion people, that America is a declining power incapable of decisive force projection, does not match what happened in seventy-two hours over Tehran. State media can suppress the footage and the censors can scrub Weibo, but the ones who matter most, the military planners, the foreign policy professionals, the provincial officials who read between the lines for a living, know what they saw. And if the story is wrong about Iran, the unavoidable next question is whether it was ever right about anything else.

Third, the energy math turns against Beijing. China bought 1.38 million barrels per day of Iranian oil last year and takes over 80% of everything Iran ships. Half of China’s total oil imports pass through the Strait of Hormuz. With Ayatollah Khamenei now dead and Iran’s military leadership weakened, the Gulf’s strategic balance shifts decisively toward Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, whose energy ties with the United States are strengthening. China’s old selling point was very simple and transactional: we buy your oil and never mention human rights. That pitch loses its utility when Gulf producers already feel protected by an American security guarantee that just proved, on live television, that it works.

The Messaging Trap

Xi’s communications problem may be worse than his strategic one, because there is no good answer. If Beijing endorses the strikes, it loses the “Global South.” If Beijing condemns the strikes, it attaches Chinese prestige to a dead man’s regime, and risks provoking a Trump administration that has just demonstrated, through the act itself, that it does not bluff.

So Beijing chose the remaining option: hide behind the United Nations. Mao Ning called the killing “a grave violation of sovereignty.” The language sounds forceful, but the Belt and Road countries are watching, and what they see so far is a confused superpower reading from a script while American carriers do the actual deciding.

Every Iranian Move Is a Chinese Loss

The truly vicious part of Beijing’s situation is that Iran’s entire playbook for retaliation was designed to punish Washington, but the geography and economics of each weapon mean the damage lands on China instead. Iranian missiles aimed at Gulf states threaten the very oil infrastructure and port facilities that Chinese companies have spent billions investing in across the region.

The Strait of Hormuz is worse. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard announced within hours that no ship would pass through the channel, a threat designed as leverage against the West, except that the United States has a shale industry and a crisis-proof strategic petroleum reserve. In fact, according to Kayrros, as of March 31, 2025, China had only filled 56% percent of its above-ground strategic and commercial storage facilities.

Which means that nearly 45% of China’s own oil imports now sit/would sit hostage to a blockade that was never meant to hurt Beijing. The Houthis have resumed attacks on Red Sea shipping, every flare-up in Iraq threatens oil concessions that Chinese companies spent billions building, and the sum of Iran’s resistance amounts to a systematic disruption of Chinese commercial interests across every waterway and energy corridor Beijing depends on, executed in Khamenei’s name, with no regard for who actually pays the price.

Counting Moves

The clearest sign of Beijing’s disorientation is the absence of action: no emergency summits, no diplomatic maneuvers, no military repositioning, even as a Chinese citizen was killed in crossfire in Tehran and over 300 nationals were evacuated. The sum total of Beijing’s response to the largest American military operation in a generation remains a press conference.

Xi bet a decade of foreign policy on Khamenei’s ability to withstand American pressure, and the bet did not pay off. Operation Epic Fury was designed to break the Islamic Republic, but it may also have exposed the uncomfortable truth that Chinese influence in the Middle East was only as durable as the assumption that no one would ever call it into question, and in Zhongnanhai, they know it.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 03/05/2026 – 02:45

Jalen Brunson, at the end of his availability with the media, revealed that he suffered a black eye. 

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501 Afghans Sue Germany Over Revoked Resettlement Promises, Demand Entry Into Europe

Authored by Thomas Brooke via REMIX,

A total of 501 Afghan nationals are currently suing the German government after previously granted commitments to admit them into the country were withdrawn.

The cases are directed against Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), which revoked earlier pledges by the previous federal government to allow the individuals to resettle in Germany. The total number of legal cases was revealed following a parliamentary inquiry by the Left Party.

Despite the growing number of legal challenges, the Federal Ministry of the Interior has stated that a change in policy is “not intended,” Welt reported.

Most of the plaintiffs are currently in Pakistan, where authorities have called on Afghan nationals without long-term status to leave the country immediately. Many of those affected had previously received assurances of admission under resettlement programs introduced following the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021.

The legal action is being backed by left-wing NGOs as well as politicians from The Left. Clara Bünger, the party’s asylum spokesperson, described it as “shameful” that Afghans must sue to enforce what she said were firm pledges made by Berlin, and demanded that all original commitments be implemented without delay.

Their situation has deteriorated significantly in recent months. In July 2025, Pakistan began detaining Afghan nationals who had been earmarked for relocation to Germany but remained stuck in Islamabad after German authorities failed to complete their cases within the agreed timeframes. Around 2,500 Afghans were left in legal limbo as German background checks and visa procedures dragged on far beyond the three-month validity of Pakistani visas — often taking up to eight months.

A total of 501 Afghan nationals are currently suing the German government after previously granted commitments to admit them into the country were withdrawn.

The cases are directed against Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), which revoked earlier pledges by the previous federal government to allow the individuals to resettle in Germany. The total number of legal cases was revealed following a parliamentary inquiry by the Left Party.

Despite the growing number of legal challenges, the Federal Ministry of the Interior has stated that a change in policy is “not intended,” Welt reported.

Most of the plaintiffs are currently in Pakistan, where authorities have called on Afghan nationals without long-term status to leave the country immediately. Many of those affected had previously received assurances of admission under resettlement programs introduced following the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021.

The legal action is being backed by left-wing NGOs as well as politicians from The Left. Clara Bünger, the party’s asylum spokesperson, described it as “shameful” that Afghans must sue to enforce what she said were firm pledges made by Berlin, and demanded that all original commitments be implemented without delay.

Their situation has deteriorated significantly in recent months. In July 2025, Pakistan began detaining Afghan nationals who had been earmarked for relocation to Germany but remained stuck in Islamabad after German authorities failed to complete their cases within the agreed timeframes. Around 2,500 Afghans were left in legal limbo as German background checks and visa procedures dragged on far beyond the three-month validity of Pakistani visas — often taking up to eight months.

Islamabad had repeatedly warned Berlin that it could no longer tolerate the presence of thousands of Afghans with expired documents awaiting onward travel. With no resolution forthcoming, Pakistani authorities began arresting those whose status had lapsed and initiated deportation proceedings.

Alternative for Germany (AfD) co-leader Alice Weidel praised Islamabad last year for doing what the German government wouldn’t. “Pakistan is deporting Afghans to their homeland, whom the conservative coalition government wanted to bring to Germany, thus thwarting these plans. A good thing! The German government must finally end the voluntary admission of Afghans,” she said.

The vetting procedures had already been exposed as deeply flawed. Last year, Bild reported that only one in eight Afghans who entered Germany through special protection programs had been fully vetted by security authorities beforehand. More than 31,000 Afghans, including family members, were said to have arrived without complete background checks.

Berlin has insisted that those flown in were primarily former local staff who had supported the German military during its deployment in Afghanistan. However, reports indicated that only a small proportion of passengers on recent charter flights were former employees of the Bundeswehr or their close relatives.

Security concerns were also raised by the German Police Union, which repeatedly called for Afghan relocation flights from Pakistan to be suspended, citing identity verification problems and potential risks. The union last year urged then-Chancellor Olaf Scholz to halt the program altogether.

In January of this year, it emerged that the federal government had attempted to reduce the backlog by offering financial compensation to Afghans willing to relinquish their resettlement pledges and drop litigation proceedings. According to a report cited by Die Zeit, around 700 individuals were contacted and offered several thousand euros to permanently withdraw from the admission schemes. By the end of the year, only 167 had accepted, while 357 rejected the proposal outright, leaving the majority still awaiting a decision on their future.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 03/05/2026 – 02:00

California’s notorious “party mom” is facing up to 30 years in prison after being found guilty for hosting booze-fueled sex parties for high schoolers. Following a three-month courtroom saga, 51-year-old Shannon O’Connor of Los Gatos was convicted Wednesday on 48 felony counts, including sexual battery, child endangerment and giving alcohol to minors “We expect, as…