US Supply Chains Disrupted by Baltimore Bridge Collapse
The collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, which has cut off ocean routes to the city’s major port, is expected to cause severe disruptions to local transport and logistics, producing ripple effects on global supply chains.
The four-lane bridge collapsed on Tuesday after being hit by the Singapore-registered container ship Dali, operated by Danish shipping giant Maersk. As a result of the accident, a large section of the 1.6-mile (2.6km) bridge collapsed into the Patapsco River, with multiple vehicles falling nearly 55 meters into the water.
Built in the 1970s, the Francis Scott Key Bridge spans the Patapsco River, and is the only passage connecting the US’ ninth-biggest foreign trading port to the ocean. The Port of Baltimore is the country’s busiest maritime terminal for exports of vehicles.
According to Maryland Governor Wes Moore, no other port in the country brings in more vehicles than Baltimore, with up to 850,000 cars and light trucks going in and out of its terminals annually. Parts used in vehicle assembly also pass through the port or across the bridge.
READ MORE: US bridge collapses after being hit by ship (VIDEO)
The major hub for East Coast shipping also handles significant volumes of coal. During the second quarter of 2023, the port’s facilities had the second-highest coal export capacities, data tracked by S&P Global shows.
Ten ships are reportedly stuck inside the port, unable to leave as the collapsed bridge spanned the only way in and out of the harbor. Another 30 small cargo vessels, tug boats, and other craft are also trapped in the port. Nearly 40 ships heading for Baltimore were forced to divert.
Commenting on the tragedy, US President Joe Biden said the bridge is vital to the economy, citing concerns about traffic and jobs connected to the port. He noted that the port supports around 15,000 jobs and that over 30,000 vehicles used the bridge each day.
Officials closed the port to ship traffic following the incident. Rescue efforts are underway as the authorities search for six people who are still missing.
EXCLUSIVE: General Flynn Calls Baltimore Barge Disaster A Black Swan Event
NATO’s Use of Depleted Uranium Linked to Cancer Epidemics – Serbian Lawyer
In 1999, an armed confrontation between the ethnic Albanian separatists of the Kosovo Liberation Army and the Serbian military led to the bombing of the then Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, consisting of Serbia and Montenegro, by NATO forces.
There is a direct cause and effect connection between the use of depleted uranium by NATO troops and the increase in the incidence of cancer and other diseases, Serbian lawyer Srdjan Aleksic told Sputnik.
? There is a direct link between the use of depleted uranium by NATO troops and the rise in cancer rates – this is a lesson for Ukraine, Serbian lawyer Srdjan Aleksic said pic.twitter.com/RNBvIODJNV
— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) March 27, 2024
He represents in Serbian courts the interests of those who have suffered from the consequences of the use of depleted uranium, as well as the interests of family members of people who have already died.
Aleksic makes no secret of the fact that this is a deeply personal story for him: his mother, who lived in an area bombed by NATO, also died of cancer.
“Citizens first approached me with this issue five years ago. Until then, we didn’t know why we had such a large number of people with cancer in Serbia – more than 30,000 people a year, and about 15,000 people die every year. We can say that there is a cancer epidemic, especially in south-central Serbia, as well as in Kosovo and Metohija,” Aleksic said.
As per NATO’s official version, it used 15 tons of depleted uranium ammunition in those areas, he said.
“According to our data, much more, over 45 tons of depleted uranium [was used]. This means 100 times more radiation than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” the lawyer said.
According to his data, before 1999, Serbia was an ecologically clean country and the statistics of cancer incidence were quite low.
“After 1999, there was a sharp jump, there were almost a hundred times more new cases,” the lawyer said. “Now Serbia has a big problem with cancer.”
On March 24, 1999, an armed confrontation between ethnic Albanian separatists of the Kosovo Liberation Army and the Serbian military and police led to the bombing of Yugoslavia by NATO forces, which lasted for more than two months. Serbian authorities say the bombing killed about 2,500 people, including 89 children, and injured some 12,500. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said the use of depleted uranium weapons caused an increase in the number of cancer patients in the country.
EXCLUSIVE: General Flynn Calls Baltimore Barge Disaster A Black Swan Event
Israel’s Attempt to Eradicate Hamas is Only Leading to Even Greater Radicalization
When Israel first launched its response to the deadly Hamas attacks on its soil in October, their stated goal was to get rid of the terrorists and secure peace for the Israeli people. Many countries were initially very supportive of this effort – until it became clear that they didn’t care who they had to kill in the process.
Now, with the body count of innocent Palestinians in Gaza climbing catastrophically and much of the Gaza Strip obliterated, they are actually inspiring even more of the type of anger and disillusionment toward them that they aimed to eliminate.
Last month, Israeli protesters gathered en masse to try to physically block aid that the Palestinian people desperately need from entering Gaza. Some of them drove several hours to try to stop medicine, food and fuel from making its way into the enclave, bypassing armed soldiers and concrete blocks. They succeeded in stopping the trucks that were waiting to cross, cutting innocent people off from a much-needed lifeline.
A survey carried out by Israel’s Channel 12 found that an unbelievable 72% of Israelis think Gaza should not get any aid as long as they are holding hostages, ignoring the fact that many of the people who need this aid the most have nothing to do with taking or holding hostages.
This is exactly the type of behavior that radicalizes people. Those who have no hope and nothing to lose are highly vulnerable to being recruited by terrorist groups like Hamas. With more than 30,000 deaths in Gaza reported so far, thousands of young Palestinians are finding themselves without homes or families and with little to live for.
Experts warned more Palestinians would seek revenge
As the death toll started soaring in November, a senior associate fellow for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, H.A. Hellyer, warned: “The cycle of radicalization cannot be thwarted by operations like the one Israel is carrying out, which only makes the cycle deeper, wider and uglier.”
Not only could they end up creating “Hamas 2.0”, he cautioned, but they could inspire violence from another group that hasn’t made a name for itself yet.
Palestinian politician Hanan Ashrawi agreed, saying: “You’re going to radicalize more people. And you’re not only going to increase the trauma — you’re going to increase the demand for revenge.”
In fact, the anger toward Israel is extending far beyond the Gaza Strip. In a rant about the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)’s request for Congress to give another $14 billion to Israel, Ana Kasparian of The Young Turk pressed Americans on whether they accept this use of taxpayer money.
After calling AIPAC “evil”, she said: “Are you okay with a lobbying group representing the best interests of a foreign government telling you [that] you need to bust your ass every day, work a job that you likely hate, and have a portion of your earnings taken from you by our federal government and funneled to the Israeli government so they can commit atrocities in the Gaza Strip?”
Prolonged humanitarian crisis in Gaza is turning the world against Israel
How are people supposed to react when people like Israeli politician Moshe Feiglin openly called for leveling Gaza, saying: “Gaza needs to turn to Dresden. Annihilate Gaza now!” What about when Deputy Knesset speaker Nissim Vaturi wrote on X that the common goal of Israelis is “erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth”? And let’s not forget Israeli Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu, who suggested Israel drop a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip.
As Israel’s attacks on Gaza continue, living conditions for Palestinians continue to get worse. A newly released report indicates that 70 percent of the population of northern Gaza is dealing with catastrophic levels of hunger. With half of the Strip’s population overall on the brink of starvation, there are warnings of a “major acceleration of death and malnutrition.”
People are scavenging, drinking polluted water, and eating grass just to survive, and Israel is keeping life-saving aid from making its way to the people. Footage of the ongoing suffering and humanitarian crisis there is only serving to turn what little support Israel had left around the world against it for good.
EXCLUSIVE: General Flynn Calls Baltimore Barge Disaster A Black Swan Event
Germany: Foreigners Responsible For 100% of Serious Sexual Assault Cases in Frankfurt, 57.4% of All Crimes
The new crime statistics from the German city of Frankfurt contain shocking figures regarding foreigners and major crimes, including one particular figure that shows they are responsible for 100 percent of all serious sexual assault crimes and 57.4 percent of all crimes.
The data shows that even for the worst crimes, well over half of all suspects are foreigners — those without a German passport. The rest of the suspects, 42.6 percent, are German citizens, but it is important to note that the data does not track whether these German suspects have a migration background, as Germany does not record this data.
When it comes to crimes against life, 54 percent of cases of murder were committed by foreigners, while they were responsible for 64.8 percent of cases involving manslaughter.
Sexual crimes
When it comes to serious sexual crimes, foreigners are also vastly overrepresented, with the data showing they were also responsible for 64.1 percent of all rape cases. In one of the most extreme data points from the new statistics, foreigners were responsible for 100 percent of serious sexual assault cases.
In cases of sexual harassment, foreigners were responsible for 64.4 percent of cases, while foreigners were responsible for 57.1 percent of cases involving abuse of minors
Responding to the crime statistics, Police Chief Stefan Müller said: “The fuse in conflicts is short, and mutual respect is increasingly being lost. People are prepared to get into physical confrontations very early on.”
Robbery, theft and trafficking
Foreigners were also vastly overrepresented in robbery cases, including 65.5 percent of robberies, 75.6 percent of aggravated robbery, 93 percent of car thefts, 87.5 percent of handbag thefts, 93 percent of pickpocketing cases, 87.5 of violent burglaries, 80 percent of daytime burglaries, and 72.9 percent of street thefts.
Foreigners also committed 75 percent of money counterfeiting crimes, and 62.5 percent of sexual blackmail cases.
Foreigners were additionally responsible for 83.3 percent of human trafficking cases and the same amount of forced prostitution cases.
A police spokesman for Frankfurt told Germany’s Bild newspaper: “We have the airport here. This is a gateway. If we exclude the violations of immigration law from the statistics, we have a proportion of 57.4 percent of non-German suspects.” This number is far above the national average of 35 percent.
Frankfurt has a higher proportion of foreigners than the rest of Germany, but as a result, it may showcase what awaits the rest of Germany should the foreign population continue to grow. It is also not the only state experiencing this troubling development.
Nationwide and state-level trend
Federal crime statistics also show that foreigners are vastly overrepresented in serious crimes such as murder, rape, robbery, and assault.
And last week, Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann stated that foreigners are responsible for a vastly higher share of crime compared to their share of the population.
“We will not accept the increase in crime, even if it is a nationwide trend for which foreigners and immigrants are particularly responsible,” Herrmann said in a press release on Monday last week. “The crime statistics make it clear that uncontrolled immigration also has a negative impact on the security situation.”
“It is particularly important to take those foreigners who pose a threat to public safety out of the country as quickly as possible after serving their sentence. In addition, we finally need a fundamental change of course in asylum policy and, above all, an effective containment of illegal migration,” he added.
In regard to sexual assault and rape, women are increasingly victimized in Germany due to mass immigration. Data released earlier this year shows that 8,590 women and men were raped or sexually assaulted by foreigners since 2015.
Responding to the data, Christian Democrat (CDU) MP Christoph de Vries, who is also a member of the Interior Committee, said: “It is obvious that the risk of women becoming victims of rape or other sexual offenses in Germany has increased significantly in recent years due to asylum migration from Arab and Maghreb countries.”
The co-chair of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), Alice Weidel, told the NZZ that the numbers are “unbelievable” and that “behind every case there is a terrible personal fate.”
EXCLUSIVE: General Flynn Calls Baltimore Barge Disaster A Black Swan Event
UN Expert’s Report Accuses Israel of Committing Genocide in Gaza
The expert is not the first to warn that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians. Scholars and states, including a case brought by South Africa in December, have warned that offensive acts carried out by Israel in their war against Hamas have amounted to acts of genocide against civilians in the Gaza Strip.
A United Nations-appointed expert has found that there are “reasonable grounds” to believe Israel is committing genocide in the Gaza Strip, according to a report released on Monday. The expert said there are clear indications that Israel has violated three of the five acts listed under the UN Genocide Convention.
“It is my solemn duty to report on the worst of what humanity is capable of and to present my findings,” Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Occupied Territories, told the UN Human Rights Council on Tuesday. The Italian lawyer is one of dozens of independent human rights experts mandated by the UN to report and advise on specific themes and crises.
The UN expert wrote that she found “reasonable grounds to believe” that the “threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide against Palestinians as a group in Gaza has been met”.
“I implore member states to abide by their obligations, which start with imposing an arms embargo and sanctions on Israel and so ensure that the future does not continue to repeat itself,” she said.
The report, “The Anatomy of a Genocide”, writes that after “five months of military operations, Israel has destroyed Gaza”. It notes that over 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 13,000 children.
At least 71,000 Palestinians have also been injured, the report says, with many receiving “life-changing mutilations”. At least 70% of residential areas have also been destroyed, and 80% of the whole population has been “forcibly displaced”.
“This report concludes that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating Israel’s commission of genocide is met,” the report writes. “One of the key findings is that Israel’s executive and military leadership and soldiers have intentionally distorted jus in bello principles, subverting their protective functions, in an attempt to legitimize genocidal violence against the Palestinian people.”
Albanese was prohibited by Israel to visit the war-torn region, therefore the report was based on “data and analyses from organizations on the ground, international jurisprudence, investigative reports and consultations with affected individuals, authorities, civil society and experts.”
Nor did the report examine the crimes committed by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups in Israel on October 7—which it “firmly condemns” and urges the accountability of—as it is beyond the “geographic scope” of the expert’s mandate. It also noted that Israel has carried out “five major assaults” on Palestine since it imposed the siege on Gaza in 2007.
“By Day 9, this assault had already caused more deaths (2,670) than Israel’s previous deadliest war against Gaza, in 2014 (2,251). Only a fraction of the mass killing, severe harm and ruthless, life-threatening conditions inflicted on Palestinians over the following five months of assault can be captured in this report,” she writes.
The 1948 Genocide Convention, which was enacted in the wake of the mass murder of Jews in the Nazi Holocaust, defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious groups”. Israel’s diplomatic mission in Geneva has rejected the report and maintained that the war is targeting the Islamist group Hamas and not Palestinian civilians.
An official from the US, Israel’s top ally, told AFP that Washington is “aware” of the report but has “no reason to believe Israel has committed acts of genocide in Gaza”.
“Many could not bury and mourn their relatives, forced instead to leave their bodies decomposing in homes, in the street or under the rubble,” the report writes. “Thousands have been detained and systematically subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment. The incalculable collective trauma will be experienced for generations to come.”
“Israel’s actions have been driven by a genocidal logic integral to its settler-colonial project in Palestine, signaling a tragedy foretold.”
EXCLUSIVE: General Flynn Calls Baltimore Barge Disaster A Black Swan Event
Russian Homeless Man Sets Hungarian Homeless Man on Fire in Austria
The Hungarian man who was set on fire in Austria on Saturday is in a critical but stable condition under intensive care. According to Austrian police, a 65-year-old Russian man doused him in flammable liquid and set him on fire.
The 52-year-old victim was lying in the open street in front of a shop in Graz when the Russian man allegedly approached him and set him ablaze, Austrian press outlet Die Presse reported. A witness identified the Russian man as setting the Hungarian man on fire, which led to the Russian man’s successful apprehension.
People in the area attempted to help the burn victim until ambulance and fire services arrived. Firefighters applied first aid and extinguished the blaze near the convenience store.
Police say the Russian confessed to an arson attack, but claims he did not know there was a man there. He refused to give details about why he was setting a fire or what he thought he was burning, but claimed it was an accident.
According to the hospital treating the Hungarian man, 20-25 percent of the victim’s body was burned, including third-degree burns. The injuries were life-threatening, but the man’s condition has since stabilized. He will undergo further serious surgery in the coming days.
The Russian man is reportedly in the country illegally and lives among the country’s homeless community. He is currently in the Graz-Jakomini prison.
Austria’s Caritas and the aid organization VinziWerke condemned the attack and called for homeless people to accept accommodation offers, with a worker claiming that the victim had been offered shelter days before the attack but refused.
Caritas Styria director Nora Tödtling-Musenbichler said: “We are shocked and deeply affected by this new dimension of violence against the homeless, which we strongly condemn.”
Amrita Böker from VinziWerken also stated: “That a person who lives in great poverty is also the victim of such a brutal act of violence fills me with shock, sadness and anger.”
EXCLUSIVE: General Flynn Calls Baltimore Barge Disaster A Black Swan Event