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Iranian authorities seized an alleged Israeli-linked cargo ship near the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday morning, in the latest escalation of tensions between the two countries, amid concerns of an Iranian attack in response to an airstrike on an Iranian embassy earlier this month.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Demand for transporting goods from Asia to Europe by rail via Russia has increased by an average of 30% since the start of the Red Sea crisis, the Financial Times newspaper reported, citing logistics companies and rail operators. German shipping company DHL said that requests to transport goods on Russian railways have increased by 40% since container ships began traveling along alternative routes following the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, the report said on Sunday. At the same time, Netherlands-based Rail Bridge Cargo said that rail freight traffic via Russia was 31% higher this year compared...

CAIRO (Reuters) -Ships will have to obtain a permit from Yemen's Houthi-controlled Maritime Affairs Authority before entering Yemeni waters, Houthi Telecommunications Minister Misfer Al-Numair said on Monday. Houthi militants have repeatedly launched drones and missiles against international commercial shipping in the Gulf of Aden since mid-November, saying they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians against Israel's offensive in Gaza.

An American couple has gone missing in the Caribbean after three escaped prisoners allegedly used their yacht to island hop before getting recaptured by authorities, according to investigators. Ralph Hendry and his wife Kathy Brandel disappeared from their yacht, Simplicity, which was docked in the waters of the southern Caribbean nation of Grenada, Hendry's sister, Suellen Desmarais, told ABC News. Police have not confirmed the identity and nationality of the couple but are investigating the incident. Hendry and Brandel were last seen alive by their boating neighbor at the dock on Sunday afternoon, according to Desmarais. The neighbor said he...

FBI Overstepped in Search of Hundreds of Safe Deposit Boxes, Court RulesThe 9th Circuit compared the searches to the “abuses of power” that “led to adoption of the Fourth Amendment in the first place.”The FBI overstepped its constitutional authority when agents searched hundreds of safe deposit boxes without warrants in 2021, a federal appeals court ruled. The court compared the FBI’s tactics to the kind of indiscriminate searches that led to the enactment of the Bill of Rights in the first place.In March 2021, the FBI raided U.S. Private Vaults, a safe deposit box company in Beverly Hills, California. The...

The Shiite Houthi terrorist organization warned on Friday that American President Joe Biden will pay “a heavy price” for authorizing airstrikes alongside the United Kingdom against Houthi assets in Yemen. The Pentagon and the British Ministry of Defense announced on Thursday that they had coordinated dozens of strikes against strategic Houthi targets intended to limit the terrorists’ ability to disrupt international shipping. The Houthis, who consider themselves the legitimate government of Yemen, declared war on the nation of Israel in October in support of fellow terrorist group Hamas’s invasion of the country on October 7, in which it engaged in...

Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi, an Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps commander, has recently been crowing about how the Islamic Republic of Iran had managed to disrupt traffic in the Persian Gulf, and now it is doing the same in the Red Sea. Full of braggadocio, he threatens that now the Islamic Republic will close off the entire Mediterranean Sea, and keep it closed until Israel halts its war in Gaza.The Arabs call the Mediterranean El-Bahr el-Abiadh el-Moutawwassit, “la mer blanche du milieu” in French, and “the white sea in the middle [of the world]” in English. In the time...

US helicopters sank three boats carrying Houthi gunmen who attacked a container ship that was transiting the Red Sea, the US military said Sunday. A US warship also shot down two ballistic missiles fired from Yemen, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement. It said that at 6:30 a.m. local time, the Maersk Hangzhou, a Singapore-flagged, Denmark-owned and -operated container ship issued a second distress call after earlier reporting that it was hit by a missile.

A US destroyer intercepted a hijacked Israeli-managed oil tanker in the Gulf of Aden earlier today, freed the crew, and took the Houthi pirates into custody. My colleague Jeff Charles covered the piracy in this post, High Seas Drama: Another Israeli Tanker Seized by Unidentified Attackers Near Yemen.Shortly after dawn local time, the Central Park, a small Liberian-flagged oil and chemical tanker managed by an Israeli company registered in London, sent a distress call saying it was being boarded by armed men. The USS Mason, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, was operating in the area. According to reports, the Mason directed...

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Attackers seized a tanker linked to Israel off the coast of Aden, Yemen, on Sunday, authorities said. While no group immediately claimed responsibility, it comes as at least two other maritime attacks in recent days have been linked to the Israel-Hamas war...."...The vessel is carrying a full cargo of phosphoric acid.”

An Israeli ship named “Galaxy Leader” has reportedly been hijacked by Yemen’s Houthi militia in the Red Sea. The ship had 22 people on board, according to reports. Israeli sources said that the Houthis seized a vessel partially owned by Israel in the Red Sea. No Israeli nationals were on board the ship, according to the sources. Earlier on Sunday, Yahya Sarea, a spokesman for the Iran-backed Houthis, said that the group would target all ships owned or operated by Israeli companies or carrying the Israeli flag, according to the group’s Telegram channel.

The Israel Defense Forces says the hijacking of a shipping vessel in the Red Sea by the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen is a “very serious incident on the global scale.” It says the ship was sailing from Turkey to India with an international civilian crew, without any Israelis aboard. “This is not an Israeli ship,” the IDF adds. The military directly blames the Houthis for the hijacking. There are no Israelis among the crew aboard the Galaxy Leader ship. Arabic-language media outlets say there are 52 crew members aboard the vessel. The Bahaman-flagged vessel is registered under a British company,...

The White House said the US would respond to Iranian aggression together with allies and partners in the Middle East region.Iran tried to seize two oil tankers near the strategic Strait of Hormuz early Wednesday, firing shots at one of them, the US Navy said. It said that in both cases, the Iranian naval vessels backed off after the US Navy responded, and that both commercial ships continued their voyages. “The Iranian navy did make attempts to seize commercial tankers lawfully transiting international waters,” said Cmdr. Tim Hawkins, spokesman for the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet. “The US Navy responded immediately...

The U.S. Navy deterred Iranian forces from seizing two commercial tankers on Wednesday in separate incidents. First, at about 1 a.m. local time, an Iranian navy vessel approached the Marshall Islands-flagged oil tanker TRF Moss in international waters in the Gulf of Oman. It departed when the U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer USS McFaul arrived at the scene, the U.S. 5th Fleet announced on Wednesday. Approximately three hours later, another Iranian vessel began harassing the Bahamian-flagged oil tanker Richmond Voyager in international waters roughly 20 miles off the coast of Muscat, Oman. It opened fire with both small arms and crew-served...

NEW - Iran seizes second oil tanker in a week — US Navy(Navy Video Of It In Link Below)https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1653709518247698437

The U.S. Navy said Iran seized a Marshall Islands-flagged oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman on Thursday amid wider tensions over Tehran’s nuclear program. The Navy’s Mideast-based 5th Fleet identified the vessel as the Advantage Sweet. Satellite tracking data for the vessel from MarineTraffic.com showed it in the Gulf of Oman just north of Oman’s capital, Muscat, on Thursday afternoon. It had just come from Kuwait and listed its destination as Houston, Texas.

Summary: As soon as it became an independent nation, the US faced an "unconventional enemy" in the Barbary Pirates who had controlled the Mediterranean Sea for hundreds of years. Presidents George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison all exercised their power as Commander in Chief in various ways to deal with the threat posed by the pirates before Madison was eventually able to declare victory against them.Narrative: It was the end of the eighteenth century, and for hundreds of years, pirates from the Islamic countries on the coast of North Africa had controlled the Mediterranean Sea. They plundered...

(Video at the link) The news here is that the Russian superyacht "Amadea" had fled to Fiji to avoid sanctions and Fiji has consented to the seizure and forfeiture of the ship to United States authorities. Amadea becomes the first Russian superyacht to fly a US flag. About the superyacht Amadea: Amadea is a motor yacht with a length of 106.1m. The yacht's builder is Lürssen from Germany who delivered superyacht Amadea in 2017. The superyacht has a beam of 18.0m, a draft of 4.1m and a volume of 4,402 GT. The Amadea features exterior design by Espen Øino International,...

The United States has confiscated Iranian oil held on a Russian-operated ship near Greece and will send the cargo to the United States aboard another vessel, three sources familiar with the matter said. It was unclear whether the cargo was impounded because it was Iranian oil or due to the sanctions on the tanker over its Russian nexus. Iran and Russia are facing separate U.S. sanctions. The Iranian-flagged ship, the Pegas, was among five vessels designated by Washington on Feb. 22 – two days before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – for sanctions against Promsvyazbank, a bank viewed as critical to...

The US authorities are considering the possibility of transferring assets of the Bank of Russia frozen in the United States to Ukraine. This was stated by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken at a hearing in the Senate Appropriations Committee. The question now, Blinken said, is whether there are legal provisions in the US that allow forfeiture. This issue is being considered by the staff of the Ministry of Justice. "We're working very closely with the US Treasury and Justice Departments to explore how we can effectively freeze and seize assets," Blinken said. During the discussion of this issue, Senator...