Increase in new Measle cases across U.S. set to surpass last year’s count

Measles

Important Takeaways:

  • A recent uptick in measles cases has physicians and public health officials worried about protecting young children from infection
  • The CDC recently sent team to the Chicago, where the Department of Public Health confirmed five measles cases, four of which were identified in a shelter housing recently arrived migrants.
  • At Sacramento’s UC Davis Medical Center emergency department, one infected child may have exposed some 300 people to the virus.
  • Meanwhile, potentially hundreds of people in Michigan were exposed to the virus in late February and early March at two hospital emergency departments, two urgent care centers, and a pharmacy
  • A total of 17 states have reported 45 measles cases this year as of March 7, the CDC reported. In all of 2023, there were 58 cases.
  • Global measles cases are up because of the disruption in routine vaccination due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, misinformation has also been playing a role, the experts noted.

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Machete-wielding militias battle gangs in Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Armored-police-vehicle-Haiti

Important Takeaways:

  • Since the start of the month, criminal groups have been attacking with unprecedented coordination the last remnants of the Haitian state – the airport, police stations, government buildings, the National Penitentiary.
  • Leaving the city isn’t an option this time; the airport, under siege by gangs, has been forced to close
  • Port-au-Prince’s gangs are still choking off the supply of food, fuel and water across the city
  • Fear, mistrust, and anger reign. Death is on everyone’s mind.
  • The indelible mark of extrajudicial executions – a stretch of black soot thick and irregular across the pavement – is all that remains of hundreds of suspected criminals killed by residents, their bodies disposed of by flame according to a local security source.
  • Today, talk of a political solution sounds more than ever like wishful thinking as long as gunshots ring out in the evenings, puncturing the city’s hush.
  • Increasingly, the only thing that everyone shares is trauma.

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Fourth eruption in three months on the Reykjanes Peninsula in Iceland

4th-Rupture-Iceland

Important Takeaways:

  • Iceland’s Meteorological Office said the eruption began overnight, with a nearly 2-mile fissure opening up in the Earth and pouring out lava.
  • Sunday’s eruption is believed to be the largest of the four
  • There have been no confirmed deaths from the four eruptions, though one worker has been declared missing after reportedly falling into a volcanic fissure.

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Vladimir Putin manipulated another election to remain indefinitely in power

Putin-News-Conference

Important Takeaways:

  • The tally, virtually unimaginable in any democratic nation, suggests that the Kremlin is now less focused on manufacturing a veneer of electoral legitimacy and more on creating a cult of personality around Putin as Russia’s undisputed national patriarch and leader for life.
  • We should see elections under Putin as not being about popular sovereignty, but about popular subordination
  • It is about the masses voting to accept Putin as their czar
  • It’s not just that the Kremlin is no longer embarrassed to rig the election. I think it’s almost, ‘So, what you can do about it?’
  • Western leaders face a strident, emboldened adversary in command of a nuclear arsenal.
  • Appearing supremely confident, Putin shrugged off the “unfortunate” death of his main rival, Alexei Navalny, in prison last month, which has left Putin with no conceivable challenger.
  • Nobody from the very beginning considered these elections to be elections

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Israel tells civilians to evacuate after taking control of al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City

al-Shifa-Hospital-grounds

Important Takeaways:

  • Israeli forces are in control of al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, after an overnight raid on the medical complex, and have told thousands living nearby to evacuate towards the south of the Palestinian territory.
  • Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesperson, said early on Monday that troops were “conducting a high-precision operation in limited areas of Shifa hospital based on … intelligence information indicating the use of the hospital by senior Hamas terrorists to command attacks”.
  • The IDF has used leaflets and social media to urge civilians around Shifa to leave the vicinity, telling them to head immediately along Gaza’s coastal road to al-Muwasi, an area 18 miles (30km) south.
  • The Israeli military issued grainy drone footage of the Shifa raid that it said showed troops coming under fire from a number of buildings within the hospital complex.
  • The IDF said troops had been instructed on the importance of avoiding harm to patients, civilians, medical staff and equipment.
  • Israeli forces have raided a number of hospitals in Gaza during a military campaign launched after the surprise attack by Hamas into southern Israel in which the militants killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 250 others hostage.
  • Benjamin Netanyahu has said no amount of international pressure would stop Israel from realizing its war aim of “crushing Hamas” and has pledged to launch a long-anticipated offensive in Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza that is now home to more than 1 million people displaced from elsewhere in the territory.

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Putin ally Belarus deploys troops, weapons near NATO border

Belarus-military

Important Takeaways:

  • Belarus has reportedly deployed tanks near its border with NATO, while tensions between Russia and the strategic alliance continue to simmer amid the war in Ukraine.
  • The Belarusian military “mobilized reservists and kicked off major military maneuvers,” according to a report published by The Kyiv Post on Thursday. Troops and equipment including tanks from Belarus’ 19th Guards Mechanized Brigade were reportedly deployed near the country’s western border with NATO member country Lithuania.
  • The Community of Railway Workers of Belarus—a group opposed to the policies of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who is a close ally to Russian President Vladimir Putin—said that a train loaded with military equipment and personnel arrived on Wednesday night in Oshmyany, an area located less than 15 miles from the border with Lithuania.
  • The group said that the train arriving at Oshmyany station consisted of four passenger cars filled with Belarusian troops and 42 cars loaded with equipment, including nine T-72B tanks. Belarus’ Ministry of Defense later confirmed that the deployment included T-72B tanks and BMP-2 infantry fighting vehicles, according to the Belarusian Hajun news project.

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Reuters reports that Russia has loaded nuclear-capable glide vehicle into launch silos

ICBM transport

Important Takeaways:

  • Russia’s rocket forces loaded an intercontinental ballistic missile equipped with the nuclear-capable “Avangard” hypersonic glide vehicle into a launch silo in southern Russia, according to a defense ministry TV channel broadcast on Thursday.
  • President Vladimir Putin announced the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle in 2018, saying it was a response to U.S. development of a new generation of weapons and a U.S. missile defense system that it could penetrate.
  • As it approaches its target, the Avangard glide vehicle detaches from the rocket and is able to maneuver sharply outside the trajectory of the rocket at hypersonic speeds of up to 27 times the speed of sound (about 21,000 miles per hour or 34,000 kilometers per hour).
  • The ‘Zvezda’ television channel owned by the Russian defense ministry showed a ballistic missile being transported to a launch silo, slowly raised into vertical position and then lowered into a shaft in the Orenburg region near Kazakhstan.
  • Russia says the post-Cold War dominance of the United States is crumbling and that Washington has for years sown chaos across the planet while ignoring the interests of other powers.

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A perfect storm creating global food crisis: Is the black horse out of the gate?

Black Horse

Important Takeaways:

  • A “perfect storm” of factors has created a global food crisis that just continues to intensify
  • Right now, we are literally teetering on the brink of such a disaster.
  • According to the UN’s World Food Program, we are dealing with “a hunger crisis of unprecedented proportions” right now…
    • Conflict, economic shocks, climate change and soaring prices for food and fertilizer are all combining in a perfect storm to create a hunger crisis of unprecedented proportions. Right now, in some of the hungriest places around the world, there just isn’t enough food to feed the population.
  • According to an article that was posted by the New York Times, the number of countries that are “at risk of famine” just continues to grow…
    • The list of countries at risk of famine now includes Afghanistan, Syria and Mali. Humanitarian observers also worry that North Korea may be nearing a famine.
    • About 90 million people are facing severe hunger in Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Yemen. These countries, unfortunately, have their own histories of severe food shortages, but the world has never witnessed all of these countries descending toward mass starvation at the same time.
  • Here in the United States, there is still enough food to go around, but supplies of food have been getting tighter.
  • According to the Farm Bureau, the U.S. actually lost more than 140,000 farms during one recent five-year period…
    • Between 2017 and 2022, the number of farms in the U.S. declined by 141,733 or 7%, according to USDA’s 2022 Census of Agriculture, released on Feb. 13. Acres operated by farm operations during the same timeframe declined by 20.1 million (2.2%), a loss equivalent to an area about the size of Maine.
  • And the size of the U.S. cattle herd is now the smallest that it has been in 73 years…
    • Not many ranchers active today will remember the last time the U.S. cattle industry was this small. On January 1, 2024, the All Cattle and Calves inventory was 87.15 million head, the smallest total inventory since 1951. The All Cattle and Calves inventory is 1.9 percent smaller year over year and is the fifth consecutive year of declining cattle inventories, a total decrease of 7.65 million head or 8.1 percent since the most recent peak in 2019. The 2023 calf crop was 33.6 million head, down 2.5 percent year over year and the smallest calf crop since 2014.

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Chinese are sneaking in and Cartels are using drones to find weak points, watch border patrol’s response warns AF General

Drone-1052x615

Important Takeaways:

  • AF Gen. Warns It’s Not Just Illegals at the Border, It’s Cartel Drones—With Over 1,000 Encounters a Month
  • That’s the disturbing takeaway from Air Force General Gregory M. Guillot, who testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday and answered questions from Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC). Guillot took over as Commander of the United States Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command in February.
  • And he’s concerned about what he’s seeing in his new position:
    • “The number of incursions was something that was alarming to me as I took command last month,” Guillot told the senator. “I don’t know the actual number – I don’t think anybody does – but it’s in the thousands…”
    • Budd pressed for what time frame Guillot was referencing in regard to the “thousands” of drone incursions.
    • Guillot responded, “I would say in probably over a month we could probably have over 1,000 a month.”
  • What are these drones, and who’s controlling them? It doesn’t take a brain scientist to conclude that they are likely mostly operated by the human and drug trafficking Mexican cartels, who presumably are scouting the U.S. response to the border invasion and looking for the best ways to counter it. The unmanned aircraft could themselves be used to transport narcotics:
  • But drones and illegal immigrants from South and Central America aren’t the only problems…
    • “The number of Chinese that are coming across the border is a big concern of mine. In fact, in the short period of time that I’ve been in command, I’ve gone down to the southern border to talk to the agents and leadership about that. And then I’ve also spoken with the acting commissioner of the CBP on this subject,” Guillot said.
    • Guillot continued, “What concerns me most about specifically the Chinese migrants is – one, that they’re so centralized in one location on the border. And two, is while many may be political refugees, other explanations, the ability for counterintelligence to hide in plain sight in those numbers.”

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Defensive measures? Putin’s jamming GPS across Poland, Lithuania, and into Finland

Weapons-of-War-map

Important Takeaways:

  • WEAPONS OF WAR Putin sparks chaos in Europe by jamming GPS on flights & ships with top secret electronic weapon, warns military chief
  • The weapon has reportedly been jamming GPS technology on flights and ships across the eastern flank of NATO, causing severe disruption.
  • A surge in disruption to the GPS guiding system for air and sea traffic has been detected in Finland, the Baltic nations and Poland, Estonian military chief Martin Harem told the Telegraph.
  • “What we have seen is a malfunctioning of GPS for ships and air traffic,” he said.
  • “And we really do not know if they [Russia] want to achieve something or just practice and test their equipment.”
  • He added: “But definitely, nobody should behave like this, especially when you’re at war with a neighboring country.”
  • According to Western intelligence reports, the fixed jamming system is called Tobol – which looks like a huge dish with an antenna.
  • Analysts have identified at least seven Tobol complexes in Russia.
  • The secret weapon transmits signals on the same frequency as the satellite, which prevents connected devices from receiving the legitimate signal, reports the Washington Post.
  • Electronic warfare expert Dr. Thomas Withington said the dish can be directed to disrupt GPS signals in multiple directions – which could be key to protect Kaliningrad as well as Russia from potential incoming missiles.
  • He argued that the system is rather defensive in nature – and is being used as a “invisible” shield against Nato’s arsenal of satellite-guided missile systems.
  • “This may surprise some people but I think, ostensibly, it’s defensive,” he told The Telegraph.
  • “The Russian military is highly concerned by Global navigation satellite system weapons.”

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