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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/44982339

Everyone become more North Korean immediately. It gets the goods. The US is busy bombing random highways, meteorological institutes, neighborhoods of internationally-acclaimed filmmakers, priceless architecture with skilled brickwork & historical value. It's like they are trying to exact revenge for a loss they sense is coming, but they sure don't seem to believe it. It's just the quagmire-as-strategy meant to rip small nations to shreds & ruin the region + its partners. Out of luck, I guess they thought going smaller than Russia was safe.

In a statement on Wednesday, the IRGC said the latest phase was staged by the Corps' Aerospace Force in support of the "proud offensives," carried out by Lebanon's Hezbollah resistance movement against Israeli targets, and the residents of southern Lebanon, who have been bearing the brunt of Israeli aggression.

Iran released footage of the 80th wave of Operation True Promise 4, launching missiles towards US-Israeli positions in the region

— Press TV 🔻 (@PressTV) March 25, 2026

"Strategic points and military centers located in the northern occupied territories were smashed under the heavy and sustained missile attacks of the IRGC's Aerospace Force," the statement read.

The IRGC said the military command of the Zionist army in the northern city of Safed, responsible for coordinating attacks and defenses along the territories' northern borders, was among the primary targets.

Series of pre-announced operations begins

The statement described the strikes as the opening of a series of pre-announced operations against the "child-killing Zionist regime."

The Corps said northern assembly points of Zionist forces and the Gaza belt would be subjected to heavy missile and drone attacks, emphasizing that the IRGC would not relent the slightest while it carries out this bout of counterstrikes.

The IRGC further stated that targets in central occupied territories, including Tel Aviv, Kiryat Shmona, and Bnei Brak, alongside US military bases of Ali al-Salem and Arifjan in Kuwait, al-Azraq in Jordan, and Sheikh Isa in Bahrain, were struck with liquid- and solid-fuel precision missiles and attack drones.

IRGC issues ultimatum to Israel: End genocide or face heavy strikes

— Press TV 🔻 (@PressTV) March 24, 2026

"This wave continues…," the statement concluded in a sign of unquenched resolve.

Operation True Promise 4 began on February 28, momentarily after the United States and the Israeli regime started their latest round of unprovoked aggression targeting the Islamic Republic.

The Corps has vowed to sustain the reprisal until "complete victory."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-xMt1y-Fzk

CNBC's Eunice Yoon reports from the China Development Forum in Beijing on how China is positioning itself as a strategic partner for multinational firms targeting growth in the world's second-largest economy.

Snip:

The approval rating of US President Donald Trump among the United States population has fallen to 36%, the lowest since his inauguration on January 20, 2025. This is evidenced by the results of a poll conducted jointly by Reuters and international service Ipsos.

Trump's performance as head of state is approved by 36% of respondents. The opposite opinion is held by 62% of survey participants. The rest did not answer.

According to the provided data, 35% of respondents positively assessed the US strikes on Iran, while 61% viewed them negatively. Only 25% of respondents believe that the measures taken by the current Washington administration to lower prices in the country are effective.

Snip:

Activists from ten countries sailed to Havana with solar technology to support Cuba’s fight for energy independence.

On the morning of March 24, 2026, a ship appeared on the horizon off Havana’s coast. It was The Maguro, renamed Granma 2.0 by its international crew, docking at the Sierra Maestra terminal.

For many Cubans, this moment marked a break in the naval and economic wall that has long surrounded the island. Onboard were thirty-two activists from ten nations, including members of the Progressive International and The People’s Forum.

They flew the flags of Cuba and Palestine, linking the struggles for sovereignty in both the Caribbean and the Middle East.

Snip:

“The fake powers, notably the United States, which for decades exploited the oppressed nations of the world, particularly Islamic countries, through threats and intimidation, have now been brought to their knees before the eyes of the world with divine assistance,” the statement read.

Abdollahi said that given the facts on the battleground, the enemy is now desperately seeking off-ramps from the conflict it initiated.

Donald Trump, the president of the United States, “understanding the realities on the ground and finding himself trapped in the quagmire of war, has turned to the leaders of certain countries to seek a way out after losing hope in achieving his objectives,” General Abdollahi stated.

He said the current historic situation is “a great honor for the heroic nation of Iran.”

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency operates a network of 170 unofficial detention sites around the country, called “hold rooms,” according to agency data obtained via the Freedom of Information Act. Located in warehouses, strip malls, office parks, and ICE substations, the facilities are held to different standards than the agency’s official detention facilities. They are not permitted to contain beds, and are not required to contain toilets. Though agency policy limits the time a detainee can be kept in a hold room to 72 hours, federal data show thousands of violations of that rule, including many stays lasting weeks or months at a time.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/37408

The US State Department under President Donald Trump has been accused of stealing more than a billion dollars from immigrants and sponsors in what experts are calling “the largest fraud in the history of the US immigration system.”

A report published last week by the Cato Institute, written by director of immigration studies David J. Bier, found that the State Department and Department of Homeland Security were receiving millions of applications from immigrants whom Trump has made ineligible for legal status and pocketing the fees without ever processing the requests.

"The US government collected over $1 billion in immigration fees then refused to process the applications," said Austin Kocher, a fellow at Immigration Lab and a professor at Newhouse and Syracuse University in a social media post breaking down the report on Monday. "No denials. No refunds. Just silence."

The report zeroes in on a series of policies signed by Trump and enacted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) head Joseph Edlow, which have collectively barred nationals from 92 countries from immigrating to the US.

One proclamation signed by Trump in December bans legal entry and most visas for the nationals of 40 nations—including Cuba, Venezuela, Nigeria, Iran, and Haiti—based on nationality. A memo sent by Edlow extended the freeze to many USCIS immigration-benefit applications for people from targeted countries already living in the US, including work authorization and permanent residency filings

Another State Department policy bans visa applications from immigrants in 75 countries from being processed indefinitely, purportedly based on data showing that residents of those countries use welfare at disproportionately high rates.

These policies block more than 320,000 people abroad from entering the US and potentially as many as 561,000 potential permanent residents when those already living in the US are considered.

Although people from these countries are categorically denied immigrant visas and most other visa types under a series of travel bans signed by Trump, the government is still collecting fees for visas, work permits, and green cards.

The report cited evidence that the department has directed consular officers that they "should not counsel applicants or advise them" that they are subject to the bans when they come in for their interviews, because it "could be seen as pre-adjudication."

Upon revealing this directive last month, immigration attorney Curtis Morrison described it as a way that "embassies scam visa applicants subject to the travel ban out of fees."

As Bier explained:

To immigrate to the United States or to obtain authorization to work or travel internationally, noncitizens must usually pay a fee to have their applications processed. USCIS’s immigration fee revenues were nearly $7 billion, and the Consular Affairs budget was about $6 billion.

The fees stack up. For instance, to sponsor a spouse, a US citizen must pay a $675 fee to USCIS to petition for their spouse to obtain lawful permanent residence. Then, the immigrant must pay $1,440 to adjust status from temporary to permanent residence. That application takes so long that people usually pay $560 for the spouse to receive an employment authorization document, so the total fees can add up to $2,675.

Bier estimated that more than 2 million applications were affected by the bans, with fees coming primarily from work permit filings and permanent residency or immigrant visa applications.

He explained that these fees are difficult to track precisely because the government does not publish detailed statistics on them. He was also forced to rely on out-of-date fee statistics from 2023-24 because the Trump administration "has simply stopped publishing most statistics."

That said, Bier noted that the numbers are most likely to “understate reality” because they include only those who likely had their requests processed in the past year, not those whose processing was delayed by backlogs.

Of the more than $1 billion in fees the Trump administration would have collected for services it never rendered, data from previous years suggested that about $543 million came from Cuban immigrants, who filed about 935,000 applications during the period under review.

The next highest were Venezuelans, who paid an estimated $138 million in fees. Iranians, Haitians, and Afghans were also among the nationalities with the highest numbers of unprocessed applications.

The Trump administration has used high-profile instances of fraud committed by members of immigrant groups, such as Somalis in Minneapolis, to cast aspersions upon entire nationalities and target them for immigration bans and attacks by federal law enforcement.

However, as Bier explained before the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, based on the findings of a Cato report, "immigrants aren't to blame" for most welfare fraud, accounting for just 5% of it, 31% less per capita than native-born US citizens.

He argued that the Department of Homeland Security "isn't anti-fraud" but instead "openly carrying out the largest fraud in the history of the US immigration system... raking in billions of dollars in immigration fees and not providing the adjudications that applicants are entitled to."

"DHS and State can deny anyone who fails to make their case. Instead, this administration is pocketing thousands of dollars from hardworking Americans and their relatives, including spouses and minor children of US citizens, and then not even looking at their applications," he said. "This is a scam. This is fraud."

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Yesterday, a British YouTuber was found guilty of murdering his pregnant partner following a four-week trial that revealed how the Northern Irish man had beaten, strangled and stabbed 14-week pregnant Natalie McNally in December of 2022. It was a horrific crime, but one that has gained wider attention due to the way in which Stephen McCullagh attempted to provide himself with an alibi for his pre-meditated attack: A faked six-hour livestream of GTA Vice City.

This dynamic is reflected in a new a YouGov poll fielded by ReThink Media from February 2026 that shows 25% of Americans believe the patently false claim that Iran currently possesses nuclear weapons and 45% believe the also false, but slightly more subjective, claim that Iran has an active nuclear weapons program (“Iran does not have nuclear weapons but is working toward developing them,” as the poll question puts it). The annual threat assessment published in March 2025 by the US Director of National Intelligence clearly stated: “We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.” A finding affirmed it again just this week. Thus, only 5% of Americans agree with the consensus of the US intelligence community that Iran neither has nuclear weapons nor an active nuclear weapons program.