Ex-NYC Mayor de Blasio Joins China-Linked Far-Left Group At Anti-U.S. "Emergency Meeting" In Colombia

The New York Post reports that former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio secretly traveled with his girlfriend and a far-left activist group, alleged to have links to the Chinese Communist Party, to attend an "emergency" meeting denouncing the U.S. It's a 180-degree turn for the former Democratic mayor of NYC, long a symbol of American capitalism, even as the image of the metro area deteriorates under Zohran Mamdani's socialist rule.

Source: New York Post 

A source told the NYPost that de Blasio jetted off with members of CodePink, a Marxist propaganda network linked to Chinese billionaire Neville Roy Singham, to attend an "emergency" meeting called Nuestra América to denounce the U.S. and all foreign policy in the West by the Trump administration, including the US capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro in January.

Source: New York Post 

"It's not that Bill de Blasio does not know CodePink is a CCP front group, it's that he is so desperate for relevance and validation that he does not care," a Democratic operative told the outlet, adding, "It's really bottom-barrel stuff that he has to pal around with a bunch of anti-American nuts no one actually takes seriously."

Source: New York Post 

The meeting of socialists was organized by Progressive International, an umbrella group that aspires to "eradicate capitalism everywhere" and includes CodePink among its members.

According to a recent report by The New York Times, Singham resides in China while maintaining a long record of supporting radical-left nonprofits that oppose U.S. interests and align with foreign adversaries.

Singham, who is married to activist Jodie Evans, co-founder of CodePink, has been alleged by House Republicans to be a major financial backer of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, which has organized nationwide protests, including unrest in Los Angeles.

These far-left nonprofits frame U.S. foreign policy as illegitimate while defending authoritarian regimes. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) function as the political activation channel, translating activist energy into electoral and legislative influence on behalf of foreign powers.

The Trump administration has identified CodePink and the "Singham network" as vectors of Chinese propaganda in what is viewed as asymmetric warfare.

In fact, we recently penned the note "Is There A "Cuba Connection" Behind The Radicalization Of America's Nonprofit Left"...

Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer told us earlier this year, "Singham's anti-American villainy became clear with his financing of the violent Black Lives Matter uprisings — to Communist China's delight. He is absolutely in bed with the CCP."

If you want to understand why the radical left appears to hate America and seeks to destroy capitalism and the nation from within, it is not difficult to see that these ideas are rarely developed organically. More often, they are shaped and reinforced by outside influences - like meetings and workshops attended by de Blasio.

This chart above helps explain why the radical left has become so radical.

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/04/2026 - 19:50

The Demise Of Trial By Jury

Authored by Celina via American Greatness,

Justice isn’t blind anymore: Multiculturalism has made impartial justice impossible

“Law grows with the growth, and strengthens with the strength of the people, and finally dies away as the nation loses its nationality.”
— Friedrich Carl von Savigny

Photo: Wyandanch, N.Y.: As the jury foreperson read the verdict of "not guilty" in the Los Angeles courtroom, women at Straight Path Beauty Supply in Wyandanch, New York react expressively on October 3, 1995. (Photo by Dick Kraus/Newsday RM via Getty Images)

On Tuesday, October 3, 1995, the verdict in the O. J. Simpson criminal trial was broadcast live across the globe, a truly defining moment of the late twentieth century. In the now-iconic split-screen imagery, as the words “not guilty” reverberated through the Los Angeles courtroom, black spectators erupted in celebration and applause, raising their fists in jubilation. Conversely, white spectators sat frozen in stunned, horrified silence, grappling with an incomprehensible subversion of the evidentiary record. The stunning juxtaposition of the visual perfectly captured the fracture of a society devoid of a shared moral consensus.

Students at Augustana College react to the verdict of O. J. Simpson’s murder trial, October 3, 1995. A man got away with a murder that everyone knew he committed, and half the room is happy because of his race.

This was obviously not an exercise in blind justice; it was an exercise in racial grievance. Decades later, juror Carrie Bess admitted with chilling indifference in a 2016 documentary that 90 percent of the predominantly black jury knew Simpson was guilty, but voted to acquit him purely as “payback” for the Rodney King incident. When asked if she believed that decision was right, she merely shrugged.

This historic moment illuminates how, in multiracial societies, jury verdicts can trigger visibly racialized reactions rather than a shared acceptance of blind justice. When the fundamental demographic and cultural realities of a nation shift, the institutions built upon its original foundations buckle. This phenomenon is not isolated to the United States. Pivoting into the British context, the exact same dynamics now threaten the ancient English jury system, eroding the foundational pillars of common law.

This institutional decay must be understood as part of a broader civilizational shift away from participatory, community-rooted institutions toward centralized legal authority. Trial by jury, the sacred “little parliament” that Englishmen fought and died for since Magna Carta, is being dismantled because, in a multiracial society flooded by non-Western demographics, it no longer delivers blind justice. It delivers ethnic loyalty.

Nonwhite jurors display clear ethnocentric bias against white defendants and in favor of their own. The data is undeniable. The elites know it. That is why they are quietly abolishing peremptory challenges, gutting jury trials, and now planning to scrap them for almost everything except murder and rape. Demography is destiny, and if the English, Americans, or Australians become a minority in their own courtrooms, there will be no justice left.

The Jury as an “Ancient Right”

Originating from the legal codifications following Magna Carta in 1215, the English jury evolved from a body of local witnesses into an independent arbiter of fact, serving as the ultimate safeguard against the arbitrary power of the sovereign. By the twentieth century, the jury was entrenched in the Anglo-American legal consciousness as a deeply democratic institution that bound the citizenry to the state. In his seminal 1956 Hamlyn Lectures, Lord Devlin famously described the jury as the “little parliament,” noting that it was the “lamp that shows that freedom lives.”

The jury functioned as a localized check on state power, granting the common citizen the authority to temper the rigid application of the law with communal common sense. The historical power of jury nullification, whereby a jury refuses to convict a defendant despite overwhelming evidence of guilt, was historically celebrated as a triumph against state overreach. Cases such as the 1735 trial of John Peter Zenger, who was acquitted of seditious libel against the Royal Governor of New York, cemented the jury’s role as a bulwark of liberty. The jury possessed the ultimate veto, ensuring that the laws enacted by the sovereign could only be enforced if they aligned with the moral intuitions of the populace.

As detailed in the University College London (UCL) academic paper, “Decline of the ‘Little Parliament’: Juries and Jury Reform in England and Wales” by Sally Lloyd-Bostock and Cheryl Thomas, the jury was vigorously defended as an ancient right and a bastion of liberty, a mechanism whereby the ordinary person’s moral compass could inform legal decisions and contain the powers of government.

Yet the foundational prerequisite for this system, a homogeneous society bound by common ethical standards, trust, and a shared cultural inheritance, has been progressively dissolved. The concept of being tried by a jury of one’s “peers” historically implied a trial by individuals who shared the same linguistic, religious, ethnic, and moral baseline as the accused and the broader society.

When a society is fractured along ethnic and cultural lines, the jury ceases to be a microcosm of a unified nation. Instead, it becomes a contested battleground for competing tribal loyalties. Historical nullification, which used to be a noble tool against state tyranny, has mutated into ethnic nullification, where jurors refuse to convict members of their own in-group regardless of the evidence. This weaponization of an ancient right paralyzes the state’s ability to maintain basic order and shatters the epistemic foundation of the legal system.

The Modern Retreat from Jury Trials

Faced with the undeniable reality that juries in multiracial, fragmented societies cannot be trusted to deliver blind justice, the political and legal elites have chosen to quietly execute the institution rather than address the demographic root cause. This trajectory has culminated in contemporary U.K. reforms that represent a significant shift in the architecture of the legal system.

The latest breaking U.K. government news confirms this terminal retreat. In March 2026, Justice Secretary David Lammy formally announced the most significant contraction of the criminal justice system in 800 years. Under the newly outlined proposals, jury trials are about to be scrapped for almost everything. Only defendants accused of murder, rape, manslaughter, and a handful of select “public interest” cases will retain the right to be judged by their peers. The vast majority of criminal cases, offenses carrying a likely sentence of three years or less, which encompass grievous bodily harm, complex frauds, severe assaults, and robberies, will be diverted to a new tier of “swift courts.” In these newly established tribunals, a lone judge will act as both the arbiter of fact and the dispatcher of sentence, entirely bypassing the citizenry.

Justice Secretary David Lammy

The government’s official justification for this draconian measure relies heavily on managerial rhetoric: reducing the record-breaking backlog of more than 78,000 Crown Court cases, cutting costs, and streamlining complexity. Drawing on the independent review of the criminal courts by Sir Brian Leveson, Lammy warned of a “court’s emergency” and asserted that eliminating the jury saves approximately 20 percent of a trial’s time, thereby ensuring greater efficiency and sparing victims the anguish of delay.

However, these technocratic excuses mask a more significant truth. The backlog is only a convenient pretext for a structural overhaul that the state has been maneuvering toward for decades. The abolition of the jury for the vast majority of crimes is the final admission that the multicultural jury experiment has failed catastrophically. The state can no longer rely on twelve randomly selected residents of modern London, Birmingham, or Manchester to share a common standard of truth, nor can it trust them not to fracture along ethnic lines. Consequently, the state is removing the public from the equation entirely. This represents a deep shift from participatory justice to managerial governance, wherein the state seeks to insulate its legal machinery from the volatile, tribal realities of the very society it has engineered.

The Problem of Impartiality in Mass Democracies

To understand why the state is terrified of its own citizens in the jury box, one must engage analytically with the overwhelming empirical evidence demonstrating the collapse of impartiality in diverse democracies. The tension between group identity and individual objectivity is mapped, quantified, and undeniable.

The baseline for this tribalism is clearly illustrated in the “How racial groups rate each other” chart from the 2021 American National Election Studies (ANES).

The data is visually structured as a four-panel grid, with each panel dedicated to the thermometer ratings provided by a specific respondent demographic: white, black, Hispanic, and Asian. While the chart clearly demonstrates universal in-group favoritism, a closer inspection reveals that the intensity and structure of this bias vary significantly across groups.

Black respondents, for instance, exhibit the most pronounced divergence, with their ratings of fellow blacks clustered at the extreme upper end of the scale, while their evaluations of whites, Hispanics, and Asians fall off sharply, producing the widest in-group/out-group gap in the dataset. By contrast, white respondents display a comparatively flattened distribution, with only a modest preference for their own group and relatively similar warmth ratings across all others. Hispanic and Asian respondents occupy an intermediate position, still favoring their own group but also revealing a discernible hierarchy in their evaluations of out-groups, suggesting that these preferences are not only binary but ordered along lines of perceived proximity or affinity. This pervasive, quantifiable tribalism forms the psychological substrate that jurors inevitably bring into the deliberation room.

When this baseline tribalism intersects with the criminal justice system, the results are catastrophic for the concept of blind justice. The Mitchell, Haw, Pfeifer, and Meissner (2005) meta-analytic table, titled “Moderator Analysis for Verdict Decisions” (Racial Bias in Sentencing Judgments), provides definitive proof.

The table tracks the effect size (d) of racial bias, where a positive number indicates a tendency to render harsher judgments against out-group defendants and more lenient judgments for in-group defendants. The data shows that black jurors exhibit a moderate, statistically significant in-group bias effect size of d = 0.428. In sharp contrast, white jurors demonstrate a negligible, statistically non-significant effect size of d = 0.028.

This immense disparity highlights that the ethnocentric bias is more than 15 times stronger for black jurors than for white jurors. This data shatters the prevailing media narrative that the legal system is plagued primarily by white racism. Instead, it proves that nonwhite jurors actively discriminate in favor of their own group, refusing to evaluate out-group defendants with the same leniency.

This dynamic is further corroborated by the U.S. pardoning-decisions bar chart titled “Black Americans and White Democrats Favor Black Criminals in Pardoning Decisions.”

The chart maps the average marginal effect on a 0-100 pardon support scale when the perpetrator is white versus black. The negative marginal effects vividly illustrate racial solidarity: white Democrats display a negative marginal effect of −7 to −8, indicating less support for pardoning white perpetrators compared to black ones. Black Democrats register a massive penalty of −12, and black Republicans also register at −12, indicating a severe, cross-partisan racial solidarity among black respondents in favor of black criminals. Meanwhile, white Republicans hover near zero (n.s.), showing no statistically significant racial preference.

The United Kingdom is not immune to these exact same forces. Research by Cheryl Thomas at UCL provides what can only be described as the smoking gun of ethnic jury nullification.

Displayed as a comparative bar chart titled “Juror Guilty Votes by Defendant and Juror Race (United Kingdom),” the graph contrasts the voting patterns of white jurors against black and minority ethnic (BME) jurors. White jurors voted to find white defendants guilty 39 percent of the time, and BME defendants guilty 32 percent of the time, demonstrating modest fairness and even a slight leniency toward minorities. However, the right side of the chart reveals a terrifying inversion: BME jurors voted to find white defendants guilty a staggering 73 percent of the time, but voted to convict BME defendants only 24 percent of the time.

This chart is the empirical death knell for the multicultural jury. It proves unequivocally that nonwhite jurors display overt levels of in-group bias and clear ethnocentric hostility toward white defendants. When jurors view the defendant box not as a space occupied by a tribal enemy or ally, the “little parliament” ceases to dispense justice. It dispenses ethnic warfare. The tension between group identity and individual impartiality cannot be resolved by mixed tribunals; it can only be suppressed by removing the public entirely and deferring to a judge-only system, which is precisely the trajectory the United Kingdom is now enforcing.

Yet, even removing the jury does not necessarily resolve the problem of impartiality. Judges, like all individuals, are not immune to social, cultural, or ideological influences. Many judges operate within broadly liberal legal frameworks, which can shape interpretive tendencies in ways that are not always neutral.

I explore this notion in greater detail in my article “They’re Not Left-Wing, They’re Anti-White,” where I examine the consequences of ideological bias.

The Decline of the “Common Culture”

The presumption that twelve randomly selected citizens can seamlessly converge upon a shared understanding of truth, duty, and justice is a uniquely Western inheritance. It presupposed a shared language, parallel moral intuitions, and a transcendent identity. The critical civilizational question now facing the United Kingdom, America, and the rest of the Western world is whether institutions built on the bedrock of cultural cohesion can survive once that cohesion has been deliberately dissolved.

The answer was forcefully articulated decades ago by Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of Singapore. Trained as a lawyer at Cambridge, Lee initially absorbed the Anglo-American legal traditions. However, his firsthand experiences in the rapidly diversifying, post-colonial landscape of Singapore shattered any illusions about the universality of the jury system. The catalyst was the 1950 Maria Hertogh riots. The case involved a custody dispute over a Dutch-Eurasian girl, Maria, who was raised by a Malay Muslim foster mother, Che Aminah, during World War II. When a British colonial court in Singapore ordered the girl returned to her biological Dutch Catholic parents, the verdict was perceived as a tribal insult to Islam. The ensuing riots left 18 people dead and 173 injured, exposing the lethal volatility of imposing Western legal paradigms on a multireligious, multiracial populace.

Lee Kuan Yew learned from this bloodshed. As a young advocate, he later defended four Muslim men accused of murdering a British Royal Air Force officer, his wife, and his child during the riots. By his own admission in a 1977 BBC interview, Lee ruthlessly exploited the ethnic and religious allegiances of the jury, playing on their reluctance to convict their co-religionists of killing a white colonial officer in cold blood.i He secured an acquittal that left the judge disgusted and Lee himself feeling “quite sick.”ii He realized that justice was impossible when tribalism overrode the facts. Consequently, in 1969, Lee’s government completely abolished the jury system in Singapore.

His full verdict on multiracial jury trials remains a significant, black-and-white image of unvarnished truth: “In a multiracial society, trial by jury can result in communal prejudices influencing verdicts. . . . You cannot assume that each juror will set aside his race, language, and religion.” Expanding on this in his memoirs From Third World to First and in his BBC interview reflections, Lee positioned himself as the wise Asian statesman who saw clearly what Britain’s elites stubbornly refuse to admit: the Anglo-Saxon tradition of trial by jury only works for Anglo-Saxons or those thoroughly assimilated into their cultural inheritance. It fundamentally fails in a fragmented, non-Western demographic landscape because communal allegiances inevitably corrupt the scales of justice. A shared identity is the invisible scaffolding of the courtroom; without it, the edifice collapses.

Case Studies

For centuries, the defense held the right to dismiss potential jurors without cause, an essential tool for ensuring a fair trial. However, as the United Kingdom’s demographics began to shift in the twentieth century, ethnic-minority defense lawyers began weaponizing peremptory challenges to purge white jurors and architect racially stacked juries sympathetic to nonwhite defendants. The UCL paper by Lloyd-Bostock and Thomas maps this systemic erosion: the number of peremptory challenges was reduced to 12 in 1925, restricted to seven in 1949, slashed to three in 1977, and suffered total abolition by the Criminal Justice Act of 1988.

The tipping point was a notorious 1977 case in Thornton Heath, where a group of black youths was acquitted of serious charges after the defense cynically stacked the jury to ensure a sympathetic, ethnic-minority composition. As the UCL paper shows, the defense “privately agreed to exercise their peremptory challenges to ensure” a specific demographic makeup, resulting in acquittals that fueled the campaign for total abolition. The elites recognized that ethnic-minority lawyers were exploiting the rules to engineer acquittals, and rather than admit that diversity had compromised the system, they quietly revoked an ancient legal right from all citizens.

In the United States, ethnic jury nullification has repeatedly paralyzed the justice system. The Ethan Liming slaying in Akron, Ohio (2022) serves as a grim case study of this phenomenon. Liming, a 17-year-old white youth, was brutally beaten to death outside a school by three black males (including Deshawn and Tyler Stafford) following a minor altercation involving a water pellet gun. Despite the overwhelming brutality of the crime, a diverse jury acquitted the primary assailants of involuntary manslaughter, resulting in a hung jury and a mistrial on the most serious charges, allowing the perpetrators to escape with minor assault convictions. The Liming family was bewildered by grief, and their statement that they could simply not understand “why somebody who gets brutally beat by three individuals walks out with minor felonies” echoed the sentiments of a public witnessing the normalization of ethnic protectionism by coethnics in the jury box.

Similar subversions of justice occur relentlessly. In San Bernardino, California, Ari Young, a black man captured on cell phone video violently beating Deputy Megan McCarthy, stealing her service weapon, and firing it at her, was acquitted by a jury of assault with a firearm.

In Delaware, Calvin Ushery, a repeat offender caught on clear surveillance video brutally pistol-whipping and attacking 68-year-old Asian jewelry store owner Chang Suh with a hammer, was initially granted a mistrial after a jury deadlocked following two days of deliberation.

This was an overt display of black holdouts refusing to condemn a coethnic despite unimpeachable video evidence. Anecdotal accounts from jurors and prosecutors increasingly point to this reality: tribal loyalties frequently override objective evidence.

Conversely, the trial of Derek Chauvin for the death of George Floyd showcased the inverse dynamic. Juries heavily influenced by Black Lives Matter activism, operating in a heavily racialized atmosphere under the implicit threat of civil unrest, delivered swift, maximalist convictions. In these instances, the jury acts as an instrument of out-group targeting and political pacification.

In the U.K., this tribal protectionism operates in real time. Consider the recent trial of Labour Party councilor Ricky Jones at Snaresbrook Crown Court. Jones was filmed at an “anti-racist” rally explicitly calling for the throats of “disgusting Nazi fascists” to be slit, while mimicking the action across his own neck with his finger to a cheering crowd of thousands. The evidence was public and undisputed. Yet a jury swiftly returned a unanimous verdict of not guilty for the charge of encouraging violent disorder.

To understand the verdict, you must simply look at the Snaresbrook map and demographic statistics. The trial was held in a judicial district that is now less than half white British. The area is heavily populated by the very demographics sympathetic to Jones’s political and ethnic alignment. This is what “demography is destiny” looks like in real time, a jury that looked like “modern London” voted to protect one of their own, bypassing the objective law to deliver an ethnically and politically motivated acquittal. The evidence was simply ignored by a jury exercising its demographic prerogative.

Conclusion

The erosion of trial by jury is the death rattle of an ancient civilizational inheritance. The “little parliament” was forged in a society of high trust, shared heritage, and common moral purpose. It was designed to ensure that the law reflected the conscience of a unified community. But a nation cannot have a community conscience if it is no longer a cohesive community.

The empirical data referred to above is irrefutable. The evidence confirms what Lee Kuan Yew observed over half a century ago. Juries in multiracial societies deliver communal victories and tribal revenge. The elites, fully aware of this terminal decay, have chosen to dismantle the institution rather than abandon the demographic project that destroyed it.

By eliminating peremptory challenges and now rapidly moving to scrap the jury for all but the rarest of crimes under the guise of “swift courts,” the state is insulating itself from the chaotic realities of the society it has engineered. Demography is destiny. When the foundational culture is reduced to a minority in its own courtrooms, the civic institutions built by that culture perish. The lamp that shows that freedom lives is being extinguished, replaced by the cold, technocratic glare of the managerial state, ensuring that in the blind pursuit of multiculturalism, there will be no true justice left.

“A great civilisation is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.”
— Will Durant

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/04/2026 - 19:15

Tehran's Toll Booth For Hormuz Strait Divides Countries Into 3 Categories

The last several days have seen a limited number of foreign vessels successfully and safely cross the Strait of Hormuz for the first time, amid the ongoing de facto military blockage by Iran.

A group of several vessels, namely French, Japanese, and Oman-linked ships were reported to have crossed the strait at the end of this week. This included Malta-flagged 'Kribi,' owned by French shipping group CMA CGM, having exited the Gulf through an Iranian-approved corridor, broadcasting "owner France" - as we reported earlier.

via Reuters/AJ

Interestingly, its route was identified by the shipping sourcel Lloyd's List as the "Tehran Tollbooth" - which references an emerging system imposed by Tehran that requires vessels to undergo vetting, disclose ownership and cargo details, as well as obtaining approval before transiting designated corridors.

Three additional tankers, including the LNG carrier 'Sohar LNG,' co-owned by Japan’s Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, also completed the crossing, reportedly by hugging the Omani coastline.

Mitsui confirmed the transit, stating the vessel is "the first Japan-linked vessel and the first LNG carrier" to exit the Gulf since the US-led war began. 

As for more details on this emerging Tehran-erected toll booth: "Following a 90% plunge in traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, as reported by CNBC, Iran has established a highly controlled shipping corridor near Larak Island. The IRGC is now charging tolls starting at $1 per barrel of oil, payable in Chinese Yuan or stablecoins," describes one source. This could amount to up to $2 million for each ship seeking passage. 

As for the vetting process, Russian media - citing Al Jazeera - says there will be three categories:

Iranian authorities have developed a system for managing shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and ensuring passage for vessels from different countries depending on the level of their relations with Tehran, Qatar’s Al Jazeera reported.

According to the TV channel, under Iran’s scheme, all states are divided into three categories: "hostile," "neutral," and "friendly." Countries in the first group will be prohibited from using the Strait of Hormuz, ships from "neutral" states will be subject to high fees, and "friendly" states will be granted the right of free passage through the strait.

Tehran has not provided a complete list of the three categories; however, according to Al Jazeera, virtually all Arab countries in the Persian Gulf are classified as "neutral" or "hostile" states. Under Iran’s plan, these states will either have to pay "substantial fees" or be completely barred from passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

//--> //--> //--> Will WTI Crude Oil (WTI) hit (HIGH) $200 in April?
Yes 2% · No 98%
View full market & trade on Polymarket

As a reminder, Brent futures and WTI futures both closed Friday in triple-digit territory as traders are becoming increasingly alarmed not just of the crude oil and LNG shortage spreading worldwide but also of petrochemical supply disruptions that are inbound that could affect plastics production, the core material that is bedrock for the modern economy.

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/04/2026 - 18:40

Less Than Half Of Health Care Workers Received An Updated COVID-19 Vaccine: CDC

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

A minority of health care workers received an updated COVID-19 vaccine, according to a newly reported survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Just 40.2 percent of health care personnel who responded to the survey said they received a COVID-19 shot between the fall of 2024 and early 2025, CDC researchers said on April 2.

The rate of vaccination was higher, 76.3 percent, for influenza.

The survey was conducted online from March 26 to April 17 in 2025, following the 2024–2025 respiratory virus season. The season begins in the fall of each year and runs into the next year.

Some 2,650 health care workers responded to the survey.

At the time, the CDC recommended influenza and COVID-19 vaccination for virtually all Americans aged 6 months and older, regardless of the number of prior doses. The CDC more recently narrowed its recommendations for those shots, citing factors such as uncertain risk-benefit profiles.

A federal judge blocked the updates in March.

The percentage of workers who took a COVID-19 vaccine increased from the prior season, when the rate was 31.3 percent, according to the newly released survey. The percentage of workers who received a flu shot remained about the same, though it is down from years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

CDC researchers said the increase in COVID-19 vaccination coverage may be from the vaccine for the 2024–2025 season becoming available one month earlier than the preceding year.

Workers aged 18 to 29 were most likely to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. Personnel aged 60 and up were more likely to receive an influenza immunization.

According to survey data, nearly four in 10 employers required influenza vaccination, and about 14 in 100 mandated COVID-19 vaccination. People who worked for employers who required vaccination were far more likely to have received the vaccines. Some 83 percent of workers required to receive a COVID-19 vaccine had received one, compared to 46 percent whose employer recommended COVID-19 vaccination and just 19 percent whose employer did not require or recommend vaccination.

CDC researchers said that the data could “help guide the development and implementation of evidence-based strategies to encourage vaccination, increase coverage, reduce influenza incidence among [health care personnel] and their patients, and limit strain on the health care system.”

The researchers said the findings supported actively promoting vaccination in places of business to increase influenza vaccination coverage among health care workers.

Health care workers who decline vaccination have said in previous surveys that they were worried about vaccine side effects and expressed distrust in health authorities.

The CDC published the study in its quasi-journal, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The publication ensures reports align with CDC messaging and typically does not peer-review papers.

“Although most articles that appear in MMWR are not ‘peer-reviewed’ in the way that submissions to medical journals are, to ensure that the content of MMWR comports with CDC policy, every submission to MMWR undergoes a rigorous multilevel clearance process before publication,” the CDC said in a 2011 report. “By the time a report appears in MMWR, it reflects, or is consistent with, CDC policy.”

Limitations of the paper included the vaccination status being self-reported and unverified. Authors disclosed no potential conflicts of interest.

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/04/2026 - 18:05

The post The March Jobs Report and the Story of Time appeared first on CEPR.

How Social Media Verdicts Could Upend Tech Industry

Authored by Jacob Burg via The Epoch Times,

Two major court verdicts last week finding social media giants Meta and YouTube liable for harm to users could send shock waves through the tech industry.

In a first-of-its-kind lawsuit, a jury in Los Angeles on March 25 found both companies liable for making their platforms addictive and deleterious to the mental health of young users.

The 20-year-old plaintiff, referred to as “Kaley G.M.” or only her initials K.G.M. during trial, testified that she had become addicted to social media at a young age and that it negatively affected her mental health.

Jurors ultimately decided that Meta was more liable for harming K.G.M., giving the tech giant 70 percent of the responsibility, or $2.1 million of the total $3 million in punitive damages, while YouTube shouldered 30 percent, or $900,000.

An additional $3 million in compensatory damages were recommended by jurors to be paid by Meta and YouTube—the only remaining defendants in the case after TikTok and Snap settled with K.G.M. before trial—after deciding they acted with malice, oppression, or fraud in harming children with their platforms.

In a separate case, jurors in New Mexico determined on March 24 that Meta had violated state law by failing to properly disclose risks to and protect children on its social media platforms. The case, brought by New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, resulted in a $375 million fine.

Prosecutor Linda Singer, who previously served as attorney general of the District of Columbia but now works in private litigation, had asked the jury to fine Meta $2 billion.

Former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani called them “bellwether” cases.

“Obviously, these cases will absolutely go up on appeal,” he told The Epoch Times.

“I think they will likely end up before the Supreme Court, and how they view this issue will make or break Big Tech, because I think we’re going to see lots of copycat lawsuits, and the judgments and fines are going to rack up into the billions and billions of dollars.”

A person holds a sign referencing the 20-year-old plaintiff, identified in court as “Kaley G.M.” or by her initials K.G.M., as people wait for a verdict in the social media trial in Los Angeles on March 20, 2026. On March 25, a jury found both companies liable for making their platforms addictive and deleterious to the mental health of young users and ordered the companies to pay $3 million in damages. Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images

While the cases reflect two different sets of accusations—addictive design on the one hand and failure to protect children on the other—both will likely invite a torrent of claims, said John Shu, a constitutional law expert who served in both Bush administrations.

“I think this will definitely open the litigation floodgates in California, and not just for individual lawsuits,” Shu told The Epoch Times. “It also opens the floodgates to class action lawsuits; that’s where the big money is.”

Addictive Design Versus Child Safety Issues

In the Los Angeles trial, jurors heard testimony from a range of witnesses, including therapists, adolescent addiction experts, executives, engineers, and whistleblowers.

The case highlighted the platforms’ design and operation, such as their “infinite scroll” features, beauty filters, and the companies’ proprietary algorithms that determine the type of content served to users.

Plaintiff attorney Mark Lanier did not target third-party content found on the platforms, which enjoys broad protection from the First Amendment and Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act.

Instead, he argued that the tech giants preyed on their vulnerable teen users in pursuit of money and power, comparing them to lions stalking wounded gazelles on the Serengeti.

Plaintiffs’ attorney Mark Lanier (C) speaks to reporters outside the Los Angeles Superior Court in Los Angeles on March 25, 2026. Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

In the New Mexico case, Torrez argued that Meta violated the state’s Unfair Practices Act by knowing about the potential danger its platforms presented to children and hiding it from the public.

His office had its investigators set up accounts on Meta’s platforms posing as minors, after which they began to receive sexually explicit images and messages from adult users.

Jurors ultimately found 37,500 violations under one subsection of New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act and the same number under another. Since fines were limited to a maximum of $5,000 per violation, Meta was fined $375 million.

“It was pretty remarkable, because the jury came back quickly. And the conventional wisdom in these civil cases is that a quick verdict is usually a defense verdict,” Rahmani said, referring to a verdict that is given in favor of a defendant, often when the plaintiff or prosecutors are unable to prove their case.

Instead, jurors returned an “overwhelmingly plaintiff’s verdict in less than a day,” Rahmani said.

But Meta may be forced to do more after it defends itself during the follow-up hearing in May, which will determine whether the tech giant’s platforms created a public nuisance and whether it should be required to pay for public programs to address harms to users.

Accusing Meta of creating a public nuisance with its digital social media platforms is a novel use of the law, Shu said.

“The historical tradition of public nuisance is tied to land or real estate,” he said, using the example of a landowner being required to remove a fallen tree blocking a public road at the threat of fines from a state or municipal government.

Lawyer Matthew Bergman of the Social Media Victims Law Center speaks to the press as survivor parents Amy Neville, Julianna Arnold, Deb Schmill, Judy Rogg, Toney Roberts, and Brandy Roberts stand outside the Los Angeles Superior Court in Los Angeles on Feb. 18, 2026. Jill Connelly/Getty Images

“This is a novel use of public nuisance. But if they convince a judge to do it, that’s going to open the door to massive payouts, not in actual damages, but in so-called ‘abatement costs,’” Shu said. “Because the state attorney general represents all of New Mexico’s 2.1 million citizens, they and their private sector mass-tort plaintiffs lawyers can ask for billions of dollars.”

That’s because in a public nuisance hearing, the awarded damages would not be based on individual violations of the law, but instead applied to the number of citizens in the state.

Critically, both verdicts only require the companies to pay out monetary damages—neither requires either company to change or alter the design or operations of their platforms. That may change for Meta after its May hearing in the New Mexico case.

Meta, Google Deny Allegations

Both Meta and Google, which owns YouTube, have denied that their platforms are designed to be addictive.

“We disagree with the verdict and plan to appeal,” Jose Castañeda, a Google spokesperson, said in a statement to The Epoch Times. “This case misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site.”

Meta said it respectfully disagrees with the two verdicts and plans to appeal.

“Reducing something as complex as teen mental health to a single cause risks leaving the many, broader issues teens face today unaddressed and overlooks the fact that many teens rely on digital communities to connect and find belonging,” a company spokesperson said in a statement to The Epoch Times.

“We remain committed to building safe, supportive environments for young people and will defend our record vigorously.”

Meta also highlighted the fact that the jury in the California case awarded $3 million in punitive damages after the plaintiff’s counsel had sought more than a billion.

Attorney Luis Li, representing YouTube and Google, arrives at Los Angeles Superior Court during the social media trial in Los Angeles on March 25, 2026. Both Meta and Google, which owns YouTube, have denied that their platforms are designed to be addictive and plan to appeal. Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

Future Litigation Potential

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said he noticed similarities between the two social media cases and those he’d previously litigated against the tobacco industry.

“Both [Big Tobacco and Big Tech] have made products with lethal design defects—leading to destructive addiction. Tobacco exploited nicotine’s grip, Big Tech used infinite scrolling, & a myriad of other devices,” he wrote on social media.

“Both have targeted children—relentlessly & reprehensibly—putting profits over public health, promoting generational addiction & harm.”

Shu said social media litigators may follow a similar playbook used against Big Tobacco by first suing based on alleged harms to children before widening the scope to all users of the companies’ products.

“Once they’ve established liability for kids, instead of saying, ‘Well, adults use cigarettes too,‘ now they’re going to say, ’Well, adults use Instagram and Snapchat too,’” he said. “So that’s where all this is headed next.”

Google is particularly vulnerable, Shu said, because it is responsible not only for YouTube, but also for Android, Gemini, and DeepMind, and it is the dominant search engine.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) participates in a forum at the U.S. Capitol on March 17, 2026. Blumenthal said he noticed similarities between the two social media cases and those he’d previously litigated against the tobacco industry. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Braden Perry, a government investigations and corporate litigation attorney, said the verdicts provide regulatory agencies with a road map for pursuing future cases without requiring new legislation.

State attorneys general can also pursue consumer protection actions against tech companies, Perry told The Epoch Times.

Long-Term Impacts on Tech Industry

“If engagement-maximization features become liability risks, platforms will face pressure to redo their algorithms and interfaces to prioritize welfare over engagement metrics,” Perry said, adding that “good actors” in the industry may face more disadvantages than companies “who skirt or ignore the risks” or that are more “aggressive than others.”

He said the verdicts not only threaten Meta and Google, but also the “foundational assumption that technology companies bear no responsibility for their design choices.”

These are not the only ramifications for the tech industry.

The New Mexico case specifically goes “beyond addiction alone and raises broader questions about whether these platforms are reasonably safe for children and adolescents,” attorney Michael Ponce told The Epoch Times.

He said the growing body of scientific research describing how prolonged social media use may negatively impact mental health was critical in both cases.

Images of deceased children are displayed at the “Lost Screen Memorial,” an art installation of large-scale smartphones featuring 50 children who lost their lives due to social media harm online, in Los Angeles on Feb. 13, 2026. Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

Additionally, the central allegation in the California case and many related lawsuits is that companies were aware of the risks but “nevertheless continued to design their platforms in a manner that prioritized user engagement,” Ponce said.

The two verdicts, and any future cases that draw inspiration from them, could “cripple” the tech industry and send a “warning” to social media companies, Shu said.

He said if prosecutors in other states—particularly one with a large population like California’s—decide to follow the same path as New Mexico, the abatement costs for the citizenry if a public nuisance ruling is granted are likely to be massive.

“This is one heck of a warning, it’s kind of like somebody opening up a fire hose on you to wake you up in the morning,” Shu said.

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/04/2026 - 16:55

US Arrests & Boots Soleimani's Fashion Designer Niece From The Country

The Trump administration is rounding up family members of notable Iranian government figures, accusing them of spreading 'pro-Tehran propaganda'. And apparently this is even if the Iranian officials in question are deceased.

The State Department confirmed an unexpected development on Saturday, announcing that the niece of the late Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani is being booted from the country.

Hamideh Soleimani Afshar and her daughter were arrested Friday night, and their permanent residence status has been revoked - now in the custody of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Maj. Gen. Soleimani was the former leader of the elite Quds force wing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) who was assassinated via drone strike as his convoy drove outside of Baghdad International Airport in 2020.

This was during the first Trump administration, and in many ways this brazen killing of someone many countries viewed as essentially a 'diplomat' (certainly Iraq and Russia did) set Tehran and Washington on a collision course. Washington long considered him a terrorist. His popularity inside Iran was immense.

According to more details of the arrest of Soleiman's niece and her daughter:

The State Department did not say where they were arrested. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a post on X that Soleimani Afshar and her daughter lived "lavishly" in the U.S. and are now in ICE custody “pending removal” from the U.S.

The State Department described Soleimani Afshar as “an outspoken supporter of the totalitarian, terrorist regime in Iran.” Her husband is also now not permitted to enter the U.S., the State Department said. Her uncle Maj. Gen. Soleimani, the former leader of the foreign wing of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was killed in a U.S. airstrike in 2020.

Apparently her social media accounts have already been scrubbed and/or deleted, and there are reports saying that she did modeling and/or fashion design in the United States.

Niece of Qasem Soleimani, former commander of the IRGC Quds Force who has now been arrested in the United States is identified as Hamideh Soleimani Afshar. Her daughter has also been arrested by the FBI. Hamideh Soleimani Afshar was a Model in the United States. https://t.co/uiwTiiWTwX pic.twitter.com/5jrfrKn3Qa

— Niloofar Mansoori نیلوفر منصوری (@NiloofarMM) April 4, 2026

It's not entirely clear what exactly she posted that caught the attention of US authorities. She may have merely critiqued the US-Israeli bombing of her homeland - but some X accounts have accused her of positively praising Iranian leadership while opposing the anti-government and economic protests from last January. Laura Loomer is claiming credit for alerting the Trump administration, or playing some kind of role in Hamidea's apprehension and pending expulsion. 

According to more from the WSJ, "Rubio also ended legal status protections for Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani, the daughter of the late Ali Larijani, Iran’s former top national-security official, and her husband, the State Department said. The department said they are no longer in the U.S. and not permitted to enter in the future."

This means that likely other permanent residence holders who have family ties to the Islamic Republic leadership are being scrutinized by US federal authorities.

There could be a lot of Instagram, X, and Facebook scrubbing happening among the Iranian diaspora at this point.

* * *

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/04/2026 - 16:20

Dems' Ballroom Hate Is the Saddest Proof Yet of Their State of TDS Mental Unwellness

Authored by Stephen Kruiser via PJMedia.com,

There was a time not so long ago when the Democrats were formidable and — I'm not kidding here — occasionally enjoyable political foes. During the Tea Party years, we would often encounter Dem activists and hang out with them for a while. Sometimes we would even socialize. The Democrats of recent yesteryear bore no resemblance to the feral, frothing rage mob that the No Kings/Resist Dems are today. 

It's both stunning and depressing that America's oldest, continuously-running political party could undergo a wholesale personality change in just a decade because its entire focus was the hatred of one man, but here we are. There's an oft-repeated line here on the right that says if President Trump cured cancer, the Democrats would suddenly be pro-cancer. It's the kind of absurdist illustration that I've enjoyed using throughout my career but find almost impossible to apply to the Democrats anymore. They're just that far gone. 

Which is why they are up in arms about the building of a ballroom. This is from Sarah:

President Donald Trump has been having a great time building the new White House Ballroom in recent months, but anytime the president is having a good time doing something, a judge comes in and stops him. Apparently, that expands to this $400 million, 90,000 square-foot construction project that is said to be fully funded by private donors.  

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon determined on Tuesday that no statute comes close to allowing Trump to carry out this project  of his own accord, and that construction must be halted until Congress approves the completion.

So, I guess we're just stuck with a half-finished project?  

Well, we're stuck with a half-finished project until this cockamamie ruling gets overturned, which is how this dance usually goes. I would like to note that every one of these Trump Derangement Syndrome judges looks like either a Harry Potter villain or a skin suit tailor from The Silence of the Lambs. 

I'm no legal expert, but much of Leon's ruling reads like a tantrum in a feelings journal. Everything is just so overwhelmingly emo with these people. It's both tedious and exhausting. In fact, if there were an animal representation of "tedious and exhausting," it would be a perfect new mascot for the Democratic Party.

Let's just look at the surface of this. The lefties are furious that a place for formal dancing is being built in the most important residence in the United States of America. A residence that frequently hosts world leaders for formal events. That's like showing up to a kid's birthday party and being deeply offended by the presence of a jumping castle. 

One has to be severely broken inside to be angered by the thought of a place designed specifically for people to have some wholesome fun. Wholesome fun that reflects well on the Republic, to boot. At this point, Congressional Democrats should be showing up to work in straitjackets. For a while, I kept writing that the Dems' TDS behavior was an ongoing cry for help. That's inaccurate though — they are addicted to their misery and don't want to be helped. 

Also, as we have discussed on many occasions, hating Trump is their strategy.

Bill Maher recently chastised the execrable Adam Schiff for prioritizing pushing back on President Trump.

Maher said, "That's all you Democrats have, is 'F*** Trump'." Schiff just sat there looking like the one-note moron that he is.

It would be nice to think that we live in a time where we could find common ground with our political adversaries. We don't, though, and that is 100% the Democrats' fault.

The problem isn't just that they hate us, it's obvious that they hate themselves as well. People who like themselves don't pathologically seek misery the way that the Democrats do here in the Year of our Lord 2026. We can't help them be happy. 

We can, however, win a few more elections and keep giving them things to complain about. That's probably a kindness at this point. 

* * *

credittrader Sat, 04/04/2026 - 15:45

Iran Scrambling To Restore Bombed Missile Bunkers Within Hours After Being Struck

Iran's resilience after more than a month of very heavy US-Israeli bombing has become obvious. The country's somewhat ancient air force and navy have been largely obliterated, and yet all the while the Iranian military has kept up intense ballistic missile and drone strikes on Israel and Gulf states. Tehran's missile arsenal is what is understood to have always been formidable.

And now US intelligence has freshly assessed that Iranian personnel are busy excavating bombed underground missile bunkers and silos and restoring them to operation within a mere hours of US and Israeli strikes.

The New York Times on Friday featured American intelligence analysis saying that Tehran has retained a substantial number of missiles and mobile launchers, raising serious doubts on how close Washington actually is to eliminating the Islamic Republic’s missile capability.

via BBC

The report states that Washington cannot determine how many launchers have been destroyed because Iran has deployed decoys. Underground bunkers and silos may appear damaged, but launchers are rapidly recovered from rubble and returned to use through the quick work of excavators and heavy equipment.

Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, has painted a rosy picture from the Pentagon's point of view: "Here are the facts: Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks are down 90 percent, their navy is wiped out, two-thirds of their production facilities are damaged or destroyed, and the United States and Israel have overwhelming air dominance over Iran," she said.

A senior Western official in the NY Times stated that Iran is firing approximately 15-30 ballistic missiles and 50-100 suicide drones per day across the region.

US officials additionally told the Times that Iran aims to preserve as much of its missile-launch capability as possible to sustain its threat posture throughout the conflict and after it ends.

Some of the remaining launchers are currently inaccessible, buried under rubble from repeated airstrikes, but there's the expectation that Iran will race to dig them out. NYT further cites the following:

Haaretz, the Israeli publication, reported earlier that Iran had used bulldozers to dig out missile launchers that had been buried, or “corked,” in underground bunkers.

President Trump and US planners around him probably didn't expect the Islamic Republic to put up as much of a fight as it's still able to do this many weeks into Operation Epic Fury.

Tehran was heavily bombed last night. Ishfahan was the main target. Visible secondary explosions suggests that underground weapon storages and missile silos were penetrated by the bunker busters.
Huge loss for Iran.#IranWar‌ #middleastconflict #MiddleEastConflict pic.twitter.com/T7HEzhPJyh

— Global Conflict Monitor (@watchdog_global) March 31, 2026

Iranian missiles have continued to wreak havoc across Israel especially, with citizens spending many hours each day huddled in shelters, especially in central Israel and Tel Aviv.

* * *

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/04/2026 - 15:10

DHS Rescinds Policy Requiring Secretary Review Of Contracts Above $100,000

Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) rescinded a policy on March 31 that required the department secretary to personally approve every contract and grant exceeding $100,000.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the Department of Homeland Security in Washington on Feb. 17, 2026. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin issued the reversal across all DHS components, including Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The change ends an earlier directive from former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem that required the secretary’s office to handle routine purchasing decisions previously handled at lower levels.

However, contracts and grants above $25 million will still require secretary review.

DHS stated that the move will “streamline the contract process and empower components to carry out their mission to protect the homeland and make America safe again.” The department told The Epoch Times in a statement that Mullin “re-evaluated the contract processes to make sure DHS is serving the American taxpayer efficiently.”

Mullin signaled the shift at the department during his confirmation hearing this month.

“I’m not a micromanager,” he said, referring to Noem’s policy. “We put people in, we empower them to make decisions. What is required to come up to my level, we'll make decisions.”

Noem’s policy, signed shortly after she took office in 2025, sought to tighten oversight of taxpayer dollars at a time when DHS managed billions in contracts for border security, immigration detention, and disaster response.

In September 2025, a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee review found 1,034 Federal Emergency Management Agency contracts, grants, or disaster-assistance awards that were pending or delayed. The average approval took three weeks, affecting housing inspections, temporary sheltering, and aid distribution after the July 2025 Texas floods and Hurricane Helene.

The change comes as Mullin seeks to reduce bureaucratic gridlock.

The policy shift does not alter core missions funded through contracts, such as ICE detention operations or CBP’s use of surveillance technology and logistics support. Officials say the streamlined approach will help DHS respond faster to both routine needs and emerging threats.

During Noem’s first seven months, DHS saved taxpayers $13.2 billion by reducing grant contracts and cutting 8 percent of non-law enforcement personnel.

The policy also resulted in terminating 118 bad contracts and accelerating state-led recovery funding to get money to victims faster and prevented up to $1.3 billion in external fraud.

Noem left DHS earlier this year after President Donald Trump tapped her for a new hemispheric envoy role focused on regional security.

During his Senate confirmation hearing on March 28, Mullin told senators he would maintain “a very clear line of communication with every one of our agencies’ heads on their authority that [Congress] gave to them within their parameters.”

“But we’re also going to be very responsible for the taxpayer dollars,” he said.

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/04/2026 - 14:35

Artemis II Now Closer To Moon Than Earth

Authored by T.J.Muscaro via The Epoch Times,

Artemis II’s four moon-bound astronauts are officially closer to the Moon than the Earth.

Mission Control confirmed the milestone to the crew at 10:59 p.m. CT on April 3, three days into their historic flight around the moon.

As of 11 p.m., NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen and their Orion spacecraft Integrity were more than 136,000 miles away from the Earth.

This point was also far beyond the halfway point of the more than 252,000 miles they will ultimately reach from home.

Koch noted that the whole crew looked around at each other, acknowledging the milestone.

“We can see the moon out of the docking hatch right now,” she said. “It is a beautiful sight. We’re seeing more and more of the farside, and it’s just a thrill to be here.”

Though now closer to the moon, they still won’t enter its gravitational influence for more than a day.

According to mission leaders, everything is running smoothly, and a planned course-correction burn was canceled because the spacecraft remained on a precise heading.

After two days of critical checkouts, manual test flights, and a series of engine firings from the first crewed launch of the most powerful human-rated rocket NASA’s ever assembled to the first trans-lunar injection burn in more than 50 years, the crew and Mission Control have been able to settle into a much calmer pace.

The first pictures of Earth taken from Integrity were received and shared with the world on the morning of April 3. The crew spoke with members of the media and reflected on how the Earth looked from their vantage point. And upon waking on Day 3, they were able to talk to their families for the first time since the launch.

They then proceeded with the day’s objectives, which focused heavily on testing medical and emergency systems, including performing a CPR demonstration, evaluating the medical kit, and testing the Deep Space Network’s emergency communication.

They were also scheduled to take some pictures of the moon, rehearse cabin configurations in preparation for their upcoming lunar flyby, and find time to exercise during the day.

Each crew member is required to use the flywheel exercise machine—which is like a cross between a resistance cable and a rowing machine—for at least 30 minutes each day.

A view of Earth taken by NASA astronaut and Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman from the Orion spacecraft's window after completing the translunar injection burn on April 2, 2026. NASA

Artemis II’s 10-day flight around the moon and back kicked off with a two-day gauntlet of checkouts, tests, and multiple engine burns. After launching from Kennedy Space Center aboard NASA’s Space Launch System, the crew was placed into an elongated elliptical orbit that carried them tens of thousands of miles above Earth.

The crew then began configuring the interior of their Orion crew capsule for flight before taking manual control of the spacecraft to test out its maneuverability.

Glover, who took the controls, noted that the Orion capsule performed wonderfully and flew better than the simulator.

After that, the crew settled into their first rest period, but had to wake up halfway through to perform an engine burn that kept them in a stable orbit and the correct course ahead of the trans-lunar injection burn that would come several hours later.

But, things have not gone completely perfect. There was an unexpected communications dropout, the toilet was not working properly, and they experienced several censor issues, which have persisted throughout the mission. A helium issue was also detected on the service module.

However, mission leaders reported that all problems had been overcome or mitigated through redundancies, as was the case with the helium. NASA leadership credited the enduring problem-solving to the way teams on the ground continue to work with the moon-bound crew in real time.

“It makes me very happy to see that, although we have some minor issues to deal with, the team operates very well, both on the ground—between our mission evaluation room, our flight control team—and with the crew,” Howard Hu, NASA’s Orion program manager, told The Epoch Times.

On Day 4, the crew of Artemis II will once again fly Integrity manually as they get closer to the moon. They will also attempt to take a “selfie” by utilizing a camera on the end of one of Integrity’s solar panels to take a picture of the spacecraft with the Earth in the background.

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/04/2026 - 13:25

Major US Shale Producer To Boost Output, And It Suggests One Thing

Last month, roughly three weeks into the U.S.-Iran conflict, UBS chief economist Arend Kapteyn told clients that one reason this Middle East energy shock is "not like the 2011-2014 shale boom" is the lack of a comparable response from the U.S. shale patch. In other words, the oil shock was viewed as temporary by major shale players and not worth adding new drilling rigs to the mix.

But now, on day 35 of Operation Epic Fury, that assumption about a less responsive U.S. shale patch in the face of soaring energy prices looks increasingly stale. President Trump's remarks earlier this week were viewed by some analysts as less of a de-escalation. Trump said, "We are going to hit them extremely hard. Over the next two to three weeks, we're going to bring them back to the Stone Age."

Since Kapteyn's mid-March note, Wall Street has also started to reprice the duration of the energy shock. Goldman last week raised its 2026 Brent forecast to $80 a barrel, while Reuters polling shows much of the Street expects crude to be over $82 this year, up from the low $60s earlier this year, reflecting that the Hormuz chokepoint won't fade quickly. 

Context here matters because the energy mess in the Gulf is no longer being treated as a "temporary" shock, and shale can no longer afford to ignore it. The longer Hormuz remains disrupted and the more Trump signals a prolonged military campaign, the greater the odds of a response from America's shale complex. 

The first sign that U.S. shale players are beginning to respond to higher prices, and the admission that elevated WTI prices are here to stay, comes from billionaire oil wildcatter Harold Hamm's Continental Resources, which plans to increase production shortly.

"Continental is increasing our capital budget, which will increase production," CEO Doug Lawler told Bloomberg in a statement.

Lawler did not explain how much production will increase or how many new rigs will be brought online. Continental operates in North Dakota, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Texas, and has recently expanded into Argentina's Vaca Muerta.

As of 4Q25, Continental produced 475,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, with 43% from the Bakken and 23% from the Permian.

Before the conflict, Continental planned to spend about $2.5 billion in 2026, down 20% from 2025, as fears of a global glut emerged and WTI in the low $60s heavily weighed on shale economics.

"If you think that's because they want to help lower energy prices, think again. Any oil company that commits to boosting future investment thinks oil prices will stay high and wants to cash in," former Yahoo Finance reporter Rick Newman wrote on X, responding to the Bloomberg story.

If you think that's because they want to help lower energy prices, think again

Any oil company that commits boost future investment thinks oil prices will stay high and wants to cash in

— Rick Newman (@rickjnewman) April 2, 2026

The question now is whether Continental's move will spur other shale players to bring on rigs and increase production...

... and, if so, that may add industrial tailwinds for the U.S. economy while also weighing on consumers through elevated fuel prices at the pump (at first) before production increases and weighs down prices. 

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/04/2026 - 11:40

FBI Arrests Eight Suspects In $60 Million LA County Over Hospice Fraud

Authored by Madeline Shannon via The Center Square,

The FBI made multiple arrests Thursday in Los Angeles County in connection with allegations over a total of $60 million in hospice-related Medicaid fraud.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli announced the arrests for Operation Never Say Die during a news conference.

“Federal agents from multiple agencies descended on fraudsters throughout Southern California, executing multiple arrests and search warrants,” Essayli told reporters.

Early this morning, the FBI and partners arrested 8 of 15 defendants charged in connection with 9 separate health care fraud investigations focusing on hospice fraud and other schemes. The arrests were made in and around Los Angeles County, as well as in Court d'Alene, Idaho.… pic.twitter.com/FAPVRNdtLy

— FBI Los Angeles (@FBILosAngeles) April 2, 2026

Eight people were arrested, Essayli said, and charges will be brought against 15 individuals who are accused of defrauding $60 million in health care fraud in greater Los Angeles County, including allegedly operating fraudulent hospice care businesses.

Lolita Minerd, 65, from Anaheim, ran Artesia-based Topanga Hospice Care, which ran a $9.1 million price tag over five years, Essayli said.

According to Essayli, one couple said they were approached by Minerd at a grocery store to sign up as patients for her hospice care business. Essayli said they each received $300 a month from Minerd for allowing her to use their names as patients for her business.

Medicare paid $8.5 million on fraudulent claims filed on this couple’s behalf, Essayli said.

Another couple, Gladwin and Amelou Gill, who were both previously convicted of tax evasion charges, were barred by law from opening a hospice, so they used their daughter’s name to open the hospice care, Essayli said. He added their hospice received more than $4 million in Medicare reimbursement payments, and he noted they discharged 70% of their patients.

Another person named in the press conference, Nita Palma, 76, who was previously convicted of health care fraud and is in a federal prison in Seattle, operated another hospice fraud company in Glendale with her husband Adolfo Catbagan, 68, of Glendale, for more than a year and a half, Essayli said. He added the couple submitted more than $4.8 million in fraudulent hospice care claims and got back more than $3.2 million from Medicare.

“This is not just a fraud problem. This is a California problem,” Essayli said during the press conference.

“The problem you see in California is that there is no vetting and no checking. They do not care because it’s not their money.”

The press conference followed an early morning arrest of Gladwin and Amelou Gill in Los Angeles.

Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator for The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, said during the news conference that he was present in Los Angeles during the couple’s arrest.

“These law enforcement leaders and these brave men and women that I was able to witness this morning go after these criminals are doing God’s work,” Oz said.

“And they’re going to be able to do it more effectively because there’s been a demand made by the president and vice president of an all-of-government effort.”

One of the hospice care facilities billed Medicare more than $9.1 million over five years for the care of patients who were supposedly terminally ill, Essayli said. He added the facility discharged 85% of their patients – five times the national average for a facility that is supposed to care for dying patients.

Assemblymember Alexandra Macedo, R-Tulare, reacted on Thursday to the arrests.

“Dr. Oz was excited to share with me that arrests were happening, and that this was just the beginning of what they would be doing out in California to combat hospice fraud,” Macedo told The Center Square on Thursday.

“But they have a lot of questions as to how this was allowed to happen under [Gov.] Gavin Newsom’s watch for as long as it did.”

Macedo conducted a hospice fraud investigation herself in recent weeks, finding multiple hospice care businesses registered to addresses that are the locations of empty lots or run-down, empty buildings, according to previous reporting by The Center Square.

Her investigation showed that 300 separate businesses were tied to a small number of addresses, which she drove out to herself. She also found that many of the phone numbers associated with those businesses were disconnected. Macedo sent the results of her investigation to Congress.

“What my investigation showed me is who the ‘straw men’ were as the registered agents,” Macedo told The Center Square.

“But there is very clearly somebody teaching them how to do this, or, in my opinion, a puppet master, so finding out who these people are attached to will come out with time.”

According to the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Medicare, which reimburses hospice care providers, was defrauded an estimated $3.5 billion from fraudulent Medicare reimbursement payments just in Los Angeles County.

“The recent hospice fraud arrests in California are a stark reminder that government healthcare programs are vulnerable to abuse without strong oversight,” state Sen. Tony Strickland, R-Huntington Beach, told The Center Square on Thursday, answering questions by email.

“Millions in taxpayer dollars were siphoned off while vulnerable patients were put at risk. It’s time for real accountability, aggressive enforcement, and consequences for those who failed to act.”

Some Democratic and Republican lawmakers who have authored Medicare-related legislation in California or who represent districts that include Los Angeles did not respond to The Center Square on Thursday.

Other lawmakers on both sides of the aisle communicated through a spokesperson that they were not available to comment. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid and the FBI did not respond to The Center Square’s requests for comment.

While representatives with Newsom’s office were not immediately available to discuss the arrests, they directed The Center Square to a comment that Newsom’s press office posted on X on Thursday morning.

“Great to see the federal government root out fraud in Trump’s federal health care system in California!” the press office said. “We’re fully supportive.”

The post goes on to note “@CAGovernor Gavin Newsom banned new hospice licenses in 2021 because of rampant fraud.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/04/2026 - 11:05

 

This week, I speak with Songyee Yoon, founder and managing partner of Principal Venture Partners. Her AI-focused investment firm established in 2024, and since 2025, she has beem a member of the board of directors of HP.

We discuss her venture firm’s focus on AI-native companies, and understanding technological innovation. We also cover the tech investment landscape and how she determines which companies are native to AI and which are just “chasing the boom.”

A list of her favorite books is here; A transcript of our conversation is available here Tuesday.

You can stream and download our full conversation, including azny podcast extras, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Bloomberg, YouTube (video), and YouTube (audio). All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here.

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Philippe Bouchaud, co‑founder, chair & head of research/chief scientist at Capital Fund Management (CFM) The $20 billion dollar fiorm specializes in managed futures). He beghan his career in theoretical physics, was awarded the IBM young scientist prize (1990) + C.N.R.S. Silver Medal (1996), and has published over 300 scientific papers and several books in physics & finance.

 

 

 

Current Reading/Favorite Books

 

 

The post MiB: Songyee Yoon, Principal Venture Partners appeared first on The Big Picture.

Netanyahu Boasts 70% Of Iran's Steel Production Capacity Destroyed

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated in Friday remarks that Israeli airstrikes have wiped out roughly 70% of Iran's steel production capacity, dealing a major blow to its ability to manufacture weapons - from missiles and drones to ships.

"Together with our American friends, we continue to crush the terror regime in Iran. We are eliminating commanders, bombing bridges, bombing infrastructures," Netanyahu began in a video statement.

Illustrative image, via Steel Radar

"In recent days, the Air Force has destroyed 70% of Iran's steel production capacity," he added. "This is a tremendous achievement that deprives the Revolutionary Guards of both financial resources and the ability to produce many weapons."

But we should also add that this appears part of the Israeli strategy to bring about government and societal collapse, something Netanyahu has at times been more out in the open about. 

Israel was the first to begin attacking Iranian energy infrastructure, having hit Pars gas field last month - an action which the White House distanced itself from.

What has become clear is that Iran's two largest producers - Khuzestan Steel Company and Mobarakeh Steel Company - have both been knocked offline after repeated US-Israeli strikes, with officials warning it could take months to restore operations, and that's assuming this can be done even as the bombs still rain down.

President Trump has meanwhile warned that Washington has yet to begin "destroying what's left" of the Islamic Republic's infrastructure.

Major bridges have already been taken out, and even medical and pharmaceutical complexes, along with instances of deadly attacks on schools.

But for each escalation on Iran's infrastructure, the IRGC has been hitting back at Israeli and Gulf sites in kind. This has even included reportedly attacking American tech companies based in the Gulf.

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/04/2026 - 08:45

Poland: Pedophilia, Bestiality Scandal Hits Tusk's Party

Via Remix News,

The Kłodzko scandal could bring down the Civic Coalition (KO).

This is the view of PiS candidate for prime minister, Przemysław Czarnek, despite the localized nature of the crime.

“This is a group of people who really have a lot on their minds,” the politician says.

A pedophilia and zoophilia scandal in the Lower Silesian Voivodeship has shocked Poland. Przemysław L., 45, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for sexual offenses committed against underage girls, bestiality, and recording these acts on film and in photographs.

According to Do Rzeczy, his ex-wife, Kamila L., a former Civic Platform activist, was sentenced to 6.5 years in prison for failing to provide assistance to her minor daughter from a previous relationship, who was a victim of rape, and for complicity in animal abuse.

Przemysław Czarnek, the PiS candidate for prime minister, commented on the shocking case and its possible political consequences on Telewizja Republika on Wednesday.

“This is a very serious scandal that will, in my opinion, sink the Civic Platform. I spoke about the Civic Platform and their absolutely scandalous behavior three years ago, when there was a debate on the vote of no confidence in me. And I shouted from the parliamentary podium that these people should be feared, because these people from the Civic Platform, the mayors of cities from the Civic Platform, finance associations and organizations with enormous public funds—over a billion złoty a year—that simply deal with dramatic issues,” said the former Minister of Education and Science.

“I mentioned programs that were simply perverted by their very name,” he added.

As Czarnek pointed out, “this is a community of people who really have a lot going for them, financing these kinds of communities that commit these kinds of shameless, dramatic, criminal, anti-human actions against children, and against animals as well, because we are dealing with zoophilia there as well.”

Politicians from the Civic Coalition also commented on the situation.

“It’s difficult to hold someone accountable; it’s a situation that can happen to anyone. Anyone can have a neighbor like that whom they know nothing about until the police and prosecutors get involved,” one Civic Coalition MP told Wirtualna Polska.

The interviewees emphasize that the case involves a former Civic Coalition (KO) activist and a very low-level figure. The police and prosecutors acted, and the perpetrators were brought to justice, so it’s difficult to speak of the scandal’s political context. “It’s a local issue, perhaps also highlighted by local disputes between the mayor and the Civic Coalition,” notes the Civic Coalition politician.

Word has surfaced that Prime Minister Tusk is offering clarification.

“It’s more likely at the local level, not the central level, not from Deputy Marshal Monika Wielichowska; it’s hard to blame her,” says a senior Civic Coalition (KO) politician.

Wielichowska supported Kamila L. when she was campaigning for the regional position.

“This is certainly an inconvenient matter for Monika. She’s not handling it well,” the source adds.

Read more here...

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Tyler Durden Sat, 04/04/2026 - 08:10

Navy's Top Officer Admits Ford Carrier Fire Halted Its Combat Sorties For Two Days

More details continue to belatedly come out in piecemeal fashion related to the Navy's largest and most expensive supercarrier, the USS Gerald R Ford. It has withdrawn from the Iran theatre of operations and Mideast regional waters, now anchored in Croatia (Split) for largescale emergency repairs, after a March 12 fire which the Pentagon has said was non-combat related left some sailors with minor injuries.

New information has been disclosed by no less than the US Navy's top officer. He has described in fresh remarks that the USS Ford was unable to fly sorties for two days due to (the alleged) laundry fire, which took over a full day to extinguish.

US Navy/AFP/Getty Images

CNN has underscored that this marks the "first indication that the blaze hindered combat operations against Iran." So the incident has been confirmed to have resulted in a complete halt to two days of combat operations against Iran - which is hugely significant given that only two carriers were launching operations at that time (the other was the USS Lincoln). And now the USS George HW Bush is en route across the Atlantic in a scheduled deployment.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle, addressed the Washington-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on Tuesday. While praising the crew's response to the fire, he stated the following:

"They fought that, put it out, and started flying sorties two days after that, so I’m very proud of that crew," he said.

Caudle described that they ended up battling the blaze -  and cleaned up the water damage and fire-fighting substances, for a total of 30 hours.

He also confirmed prior reports of some 600 sailors being displaced from their sleeping quarters due to the damage. 

As for the precise cause of the blaze, the last official word was a March 28 statement from 6th Fleet saying, "military and federal civilian law enforcement continued investigations into a fire aboard the ship originating in the ship’s laundry facilities."

This comes amid an avalanche of speculation that the Ford might have been hit by an Iranian missile or drone - but this remains just theorizing and speculation.

It's problems run deeper, Bloomberg writes...

The USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier arrived at a port in Crete on Monday after it had to leave the Middle East — and the war against Iran — when a fire broke out in its laundry area. But the massive ship’s problems run a lot deeper. https://t.co/B9odzYd9UY

— Bloomberg (@business) March 24, 2026

Adm. Caudle did make another important admission in his Tuesday remarks. He said: "The challenge … is how do you buy down risk in other parts of the world while you're focusing a lot of resources in one area." Already major US military assets have been diverted from southeast Asia, where China's pressure campaign on Taiwan continues, toward the Middle East in relation to Operation Epic Fury.

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Tyler Durden Sat, 04/04/2026 - 07:35

What Might Transatlantic Security Look Like If The US Leaves NATO?

Authored by Andrew Korybko,

If NATO as a whole remains more or less intact upon the US’ hypothetical exit, and the US then reaches bilateral security deals with Poland, the Baltic States, and Turkiye, then not much would change from Russia’s perspective.

Trump’s latest talk about the US leaving NATO is being taken seriously by many Europeans owing to his rage over their refusal to help him reopen the Strait of Hormuz, not to mention them denying the US access to its own bases on their territory and even their airspace for use in the Third Gulf War.

It’s possible that this is just a bluff, however, to usher in the radical reforms that he envisages and which were described here in connection with a prior report about his supposed “pay to play” plans.

Nevertheless, it’s also possible that he’s indeed serious and that the US will ultimately end up leaving NATO, in which case it’s useful to analyze the future of transatlantic security.

For starters, the headquarters of both EUCOM and AFRICOM are in Germany, and it would be very difficult and inconvenient to relocate them.

Therefore, the US might reach a bilateral security deal with Germany in this scenario, which could set the basis for other such deals with other NATO members.

Such arrangements would likely include terms that are advantageous to the US such as its allies committing 5% of their GDP to defense like has already been demanded of them as well as giving a preference to American companies for military-technical procurement.

The US might also demand that its troops be granted immunity for any crimes that they might commit while based in their allied nation.

Trump could seek to enshrine trade privileges for the US into any security deal too knowing him.

The only countries that would likely agree to such terms are those whose leaders either sincerely fear Russia or manipulate the public on this pretext, thus Poland and the Baltic States for sure, but Finland and Romania can’t be ruled out either.

They and the other NATO members would still enjoy Article 5 assurances amongst themselves, but it’s also possible that larger members like France, Germany, Italy, and/or the UK might follow the US’ lead in making demands of the smaller ones for ensuring this.

In that event, the European security system could fundamentally change, but concerns about Russia exploiting the optics of infighting (even if only for soft power purposes and not by initiating hostilities against post-US NATO) could deter the aforementioned larger members from doing this.

If NATO as a whole remains more or less intact upon the US’ hypothetical exit, and the US then reaches bilateral security deals with Poland and the Baltic States, then not much would change from Russia’s perspective.

The same goes for if the US reaches such a deal with Turkiye, which enjoys pragmatic ties with Russia unlike Poland and the Baltic States but is poised to take the lead in expanding Western influence along its southern periphery through the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity”.

If the US remains committed to Turkiye’s defense, any potential clash with Russia could risk World War III. If no such deal is reached, however, then Russia might be more proactive in pushing back against Turkish influence there.

All in all, transatlantic security isn’t expected to change much if the US leaves NATO so long as it retains Article 5-like obligations to several of the bloc’s key members, namely Poland, the Baltic States, and Turkiye.

If it doesn’t, then Russia might consider preventive military action against post-US NATO to eliminate security threats emanating from it, but it could be deterred by nuclear-armed France and/or the UK reaffirming their Article 5 obligations to the bloc’s members.

Nothing would really change then.

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/04/2026 - 07:00

The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of Danish Blend coffee, grab a seat outside, and get ready for our longer-form weekend reads:

• Maybe you should have bought an electric car: We run the numbers on EVs versus gas cars in an era of skyrocketing oil prices. The Iran war has turned the EV skeptics’ math upside down. The Iran War is illustrating the cost of anti-EV nonsense. (Noahpinion)

• How Apple became Apple: The definitive oral history of the company’s earliest days: As Apple turns 50, the founders and early employees tell the story in their own words. The true story of how Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and other bright young tech hobbyists of the 1970s joined forces to ignite a revolution. The mythology gets a reality check—and the reality is more interesting. (Fast Company) see also From the Pages of PC Magazine: How We Covered Apple’s Greatest Hits and Misses: As Apple turns 50, we look back at the boldest (and most questionable) hardware to ever pass through the PC Labs. (PC Magazine)

• Vanguard Investors Cleaned Up: Morningstar’s data shows Vanguard fund holders outperformed nearly everyone else, again. Low costs and discipline beat cleverness every time. (Morningstar)

• Private capital: what are the risks? The FT takes a hard look at private capital’s growing footprint and the systemic risks hiding behind the illiquidity premium. Blackstone’s scale makes this everyone’s problem. As investors seek to retrieve their money, the $22tn industry rejects comparisons with 2008. Regulators aren’t so sure. (Financial Times)

• How American Camouflage Conquered the World: The story of how MultiCam went from a military contract to a global fashion statement. America’s soft power now comes in woodland pattern. The world-famous MultiCam pattern was designed for the military by two Brooklyn hipsters. Now everyone—from babies to ICE agents—is suited up for battle. (Wired)

• Is the Smartphone Theory of Everything Wrong?: Derek Thompson challenges the popular idea that smartphones explain every social ill among young people. The data is more nuanced than the narrative. A Comprehensive Investigation. Many people believe that the nexus of smartphones, Internet, and social media is to blame for every modern catastrophe. Here’s 5,000 words on who’s right and who’s wrong. (Derek Thompson)

• When are bones no longer a person? A strange tale of King Cnut’s femur, ancient DNA, religious belief on bodies and souls, and a debate over what constitutes a person after death. A haunting philosophical essay on the ethics of human remains, identity, and when the dead stop being people. The kind of piece that stays with you. (The Garden of Forking Paths)

• Iran’s Wealth Is Parked on London’s Billionaires’ Row: Years of Western sanctions haven’t prevented money flows out of Tehran: ‘They probably learned from the Russian oligarchs’ (Wall Street Journal)

• Everything With Trump’s Name, Likeness and Signature: As anyone who has ever seen his buildings knows, Donald Trump has always liked to see his name displayed prominently. It’s become a hallmark of his presidency, to the point that the Treasury Department announced on Thursday that President Trump’s signature will appear on U.S. dollars later this year, a first for a sitting U.S. president. (New York Times)

• The Curious Case Of Sidd Finch: The greatest April Fools’ prank in sports journalism history—George Plimpton’s story of a Mets pitcher who could throw 168 mph. A perfect read for the day.He’s a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd’s deciding about yoga—and his future in baseball. (Sports Illustrated)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Songyee Yoon, founder and managing partner of Principal Venture Partners, an AI-focused investment firm established in 2024, and since 2025 a member of the board of directors of HP Inc.

 

When final Gulf oil shipments will arrive around the world, as diesel and petrol prices surge 27% since Iran’s blockade began

Source: Mirror

 

Sign up for our reads-only mailing list here.

~~~

To learn how these reads are assembled each day, please see this.

 

The post 10 Weekend Reads appeared first on The Big Picture.

Has Concern Over Hormuz Made Us Forget The Red Sea?

Authored by Gregory Copley via The Epoch Times,

Wartime concerns about the security of maritime energy traffic through the Strait of Hormuz—connecting the Indian Ocean/Gulf of Oman with the Persian Gulf—have overshadowed the fact that the related issue of Red Sea security is far from resolved and is, in fact, becoming more dynamic.

The Red Sea–Suez link between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean is of equal strategic importance to global trade as the Hormuz choke point and is, through geography and common players, intrinsically linked with the Persian Gulf conflict.

But it is Ethiopia’s civil war, brewing with different factions and with varying intensity since the coup against Emperor Haile Selassie I in 1974, which is again moving in ways that could prove decisive.

Always, in the background, is the reality that Ethiopia could revive its historical influence over the Red Sea–Suez sea line of communication (SLOC).

Inside Ethiopia, the conflicts that have been raging since 1974 between different governments and different factions are at a new level.

The four different Fano opposition militia groups, representing different areas of the Amhara heartland, have been fighting against the central government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali for several years. In early 2026, they came together with a united manifesto of their intentions. This has revived the momentum of the threat to Abiy’s Prosperity Party government.

A statement issued by a united Fano on Jan. 17, 2026 (Tir 9, 2018, in the Ethiopian calendar) noted:

“So that the Amhara struggle may become one, the leaders of the Amhara Fano National Force and the Amhara Fano People’s Organization, through a historic decision that demanded courage, open-heartedness, decisiveness, and trust in the people, have been able to make Fano unity a reality. ... We have designated one leader, one organization.”

Significantly, the leadership of the united Fano all titled themselves as “Arbegna,” a nod to the Arbegnoch, the Patriots, who, under the banner of Emperor Haile Selassie I, fought against the Italian invaders of Ethiopia from 1935 to 1941. This led to the ouster of the Italians at the Battle of Gondar, in late November 1941, the first major Allied victory of World War II, in the ouster of an Axis power (Italy) from territory it had seized.

Today, the result of the four separate Amhara Fano groups fighting against the Abiy government over the past several years was the creation—finally—of the Amhara Fano National Movement (AFNM) as an umbrella for all civil and military operations. AFNM, however, described itself as working on behalf of all Ethiopians desirous of the restoration of the multi-ethnic empire. (Ethiopia is home to some 80 ethnic and linguistic groups.)

Prime Minister Abiy, half-Amhara and half-Oromo, has consistently identified with Oromo causes and first fought against a Tigrean-dominated government of Ethiopia, and then against the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) militia, which was forced into a ceasefire—essentially a military surrender by the TPLF—in November 2022.

Abiy’s Prosperity Party government has increasingly been rejected by his original Oromo militant supporters, who regard him as “insufficiently Oromo” in outlook, and the government’s writ—or its area of focus—now rarely extends beyond the capital, Addis Ababa. The exception for Abiy’s travels is to some major projects such as the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam in the Benishangul-Gumuz Region of western Ethiopia. The dam has been the subject of some hostility from Egypt, which sees its existence as infringing on Egypt’s “right” to control the waters of the Blue Nile, even though they originate in Lake Tana in the Amhara Highlands of Ethiopia, outside Egypt’s territories.

The AFNM designated its first chairman as Arbegna Zemene Kasse, and its military commander as Brigadier General Tefera Mamo.

Meanwhile, Abiy’s government has become increasingly dependent on support from the governments of the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and, to an extent, Turkey and the PRC, each of which has a strong interest in dominating the Red Sea–Suez sea line of communication.

To a key extent, Abiy has focused on modernizing the capital, Addis Ababa—which now resembles a Dubai skyline—but has less control over the broader hinterland of Ethiopia.

At the same time, the government of Egypt is working to support various Ethiopian regional independence groups to destabilize Ethiopian control of the Blue Nile waters, which Egypt claims are critical to its national security and economic well-being. Egypt has maintained an on-and-off war approach to Ethiopia since the late 19th century and lost several major military confrontations with Ethiopia during the late 19th century. All of the supporting nations, as far as Abiy is concerned, also have interests that are inimical to Ethiopia’s revival of Red Sea influence.

It is important to note that Abiy has consistently ensured there is very little foreign news reporting from Ethiopia, which has had the positive benefit for the government that the civil wars, and the massive loss of life, have not been widely known around the world.

On the other hand, it has also prevented international investor and tourism interest in the country.

Now, Turkey, in particular, is vying for control of the region. It now actively controls the Somalian government and uses Somalian coastal territory for its military testing of ballistic missiles, among other things. It was particularly hostile to Israel’s diplomatic recognition of independent Somaliland, on the Red Sea coastline, in late December 2025.

Internally, in Ethiopia, the AFNM has been speaking—in its initial unity document—about representing the interests of all Ethiopian ethnicities and regions, not just the Amhara people and regions. It has been gathering significant military momentum, with additions to its ranks coming from defecting government forces. It did not, however, mention the restoration of Ethiopia’s last constitution from the pre-coup era, given that this was the last democratic reference point for the country.

All subsequent “constitutions” have been designed in the divide-and-conquer mode to keep ethnic groups separate and competitive, keeping various Ethiopian peoples as second-class citizens.

But what the AFNM has failed to do is to address meaningful international support or define the future shape of Ethiopia if it were to attain power. There has been no public discussion of its proposed economic or strategic policies. Only the adoption of the name of the Patriots—the Arbegnoch—gives any indication of its reflection of traditional Ethiopian values or historical Ethiopian geopolitical aspirations, which would include a reunification with Eritrea and the reacquisition of Ethiopia’s traditional Red Sea coastline.

It is significant, however, that Eritrea has been supporting the AFNM groups with arms and other support, and some Tigrean elements from the now-split TPLF have also supported Fano groups.

The AFNM operates freely in Amhara areas close to Addis Ababa and could certainly challenge Abiy’s forces in the capital. The other factor is the reporting that Abiy himself may be closer to the end of his leadership than the start of it. Change may not be imminent, but Abiy is becoming somewhat embattled.

But no wonder the world is oblivious to the wars of the Horn of Africa: The prime minister has consistently kept foreign journalists out of the country.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

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Tyler Durden Fri, 04/03/2026 - 23:00