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The XFL is making an unexpected comeback thanks to Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. The football league attempted a re-launch this year, and it didn't go all that well. The wrestler-turned-actor, who also happens to be a former football player, stepped in to help purchase the league alongside his business partner Dany Garcia and Red Bird Capital. Now, Johnson has revealed that the XFL will return in 2022. The XFL is making an unexpected comeback thanks to Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. The football league attempted a re-launch this year, and it didn't go all that well. The wrestler-turned-actor, who also happens...

The Maldives government is now alarmed at the amount of debt it owes to China. With the coronavirus pandemic, the tourism-dependent islands are now finding it difficult to repay the Chinese debt that the previous government took. India and China have been trying to gain clout in the region. Under Former President Abdullah Yameen’s government, China invested millions of dollars in infrastructure projects under Chinese President Xi Jinping’s flagship Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). However, in 2018 Yameen faced election defeat. In an interview with BBC, the current Speaker of Parliament Mohamed Nasheed said that the Chinese debt amounts to...

VIDEO: US Coast Guard says it’s keeping an eye on 27 oil tankers anchored off the coast of Southern California. Another great example of floating storage build-up as demand for oil and refined products plunge | #OOTT #Contango video via @USCGLosAngeles     https://twitter.com/JavierBlas/status/1253722290266738689?s=20    

China has often been accused of luring the poor African countries in its debt-trap by providing them loans for much-needed infrastructure projects and then control them when they fail to pay off their debts. Tanzania President John Magufuli has cancelled a Chinese loan worth $10 billion signed by his predecessor Jakaya Kikwete to construct a port at Mbegani creek in Bagamoyo over terms and conditions that, he said, beat the logic. Magufuli said that the terms of the Chinese loan agreement could only be accepted by a drunken man. His predecessor, Jakaya Kikwete had signed the deal with Chinese...

US President Donald Trump has blamed a teleprompter going "kaput" for a glaring anachronism in his Fourth of July speech. He told crowds on Independence Day the Continental Army "took over the airports" from the British during the American Revolutionary War in 1775. Explaining away the slip-up on Friday, Mr Trump also said it was hard to read the teleprompter in the rain. He hosted a military parade at the Lincoln Memorial on Thursday. During his "Salute to America" speech, he was talking about the year 1775 when he said: "Our army manned the air, it rammed the ramparts, it...

LAPORTE — Law enforcement in LaPorte County is preparing for the possibility of an already-congested and dangerous U.S. 20 being overrun with more semi-trucks as drivers avoid the 35 percent cost increase of traveling the Indiana Toll Road. Much of that stretch of highway being down to one lane in each direction for resurfacing adds to the concerns. LaPorte County Sheriff John Boyd said he’s reached out to Indiana State Police to help patrol U.S. 20 if an increase in truck traffic becomes too much for his staff to handle alone. “We’re going to prepare for it,” Boyd said. “We’re...

A recent surge in arrests and cocaine seizures in Peru points to an increased presence of Mexican drug cartels, counter-narcotics officials say. The cartels have also contributed to more drug-related violence in Peruvian cities, ports and in remote valleys in this Andean country where coca, cocaine's base material, is grown, the officials say. Peruvian claims of Mexican cartels expanding echo those by officials in other Latin American countries, from Honduras to Argentina, where Mexican gangs have supplanted once-powerful Colombian cartels as kings of the illicit-drug underworld. .... That Mexican drug lords are sending emissaries here is no surprise to Hidalgo...

South Carolina’s port traffic reached an all-time high during the 2017 fiscal year. The state Ports Authority (SCPA) on Wednesday reported it moved a record 2.14 million 20-foot equivalent units between July 2016 and June 2017, a 10 percent increase compared with the previous year. SCPA said the volume at its Inland Port in Spartanburg County near Greer finished the year having completed a record 121,761 rail moves, a 33 percent increase compared with fiscal year 2016. “We had a strong fiscal year, reflective of a capable and hardworking SCPA team and entire maritime community,” said Jim Newsome, president and...

Coast Guard officials confirmed Thursday morning via Twitter four containers had been scanned and cleared. Fourteen agents with radiation detection technology investigated these containers and found no signs of radiation, officials said.

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. Senator Hillary Clinton says she's pleased the Bush administration and a United Arab Emirates company have agreed to delay the company's takeover of significant operations at six major American ports. But the New York Democrat says she's still opposed to the deal and plans to introduce legislation that would block Dubai Ports World or any other company owned by a foreign government from operating U-S ports. Clinton said critical infrastructure like ports must be operated by the United States, not foreign-owned companies. She made the comments yesterday in an appearance in Miami Beach. Clinton, who is seen...

SACRAMENTO -- Gov. Jerry Brown took a strong stand against coal on Friday, approving an East Bay lawmaker's bill to ban state funding for coal-related projects. In signing state Sen. Loni Hancock's bill, the governor also praised the Oakland City Council for voting to ban transportation of the ore through its city and encouraged other cities to do the same. "Other localities should follow suit -- and the state should, too -- to reduce and, ultimately, eliminate the shipment of coal through all California ports, Brown wrote in a signing message.

Four years ago, one of China’s largest agricultural importers sent representatives to the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., hoping that meetings with elite party officials might yield business opportunities. The company, the Dandong Port Group, was particularly focused on the governors in attendance, according to an interview with Dandong’s general counsel broadcast by Chinese state television. But now, the company’s widening influence is coming under scrutiny by federal prosecutors, who are examining the relationship between Dandong’s wealthy and connected chairman, Wang Wenliang, and Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia, a Democrat who was elected in 2013. A federal law enforcement...

John Kerry Unveils Comprehensive Plan to Fight the War on Terrorism <![if !vml]><![endif]>February 27, 2004 For Immediate Release Los Angeles, CA – In a speech today at the UCLA International Institute, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry offered his comprehensive approach to fighting the global war on terrorism. In the second of a series of speeches on national security, Kerry presented a plan to identify, disrupt, and eliminate terrorist networks using all the resources at our disposal. As CIA Director George Tenet starkly reminded us this week, we are threatened by a far-flung terrorist network that will continue to operate...

A private jet owned by a North Texas company has been impounded for the past 2 1/2 weeks and its passengers and crew detained by the Congolese government in central Africa, where officials say it was used to smuggle gold from rebel territories in the nation's eastern provinces. The plane was leased by Southlake Aviation, based in suburban Dallas-Fort Worth, to a subsidiary of CAMAC International, The Dallas Morning News reported in its Sunday editions. CAMAC company is owned by Kase Lawal, a Nigerian-born Houston oil tycoon an appointee of President Barack Obama to the Advisory Committee for Trade Policy...

The Dubai Ports World controversy of 2006 is making a comeback, only this time the Arab principal has actually gained control of the container contract for a major U.S. port. The site is Port Canaveral, near the Kennedy Space Center on Florida’s east coast, which is frequented by U.S. and NATO-ally nuclear submarines. A 35-year contract signed last year and set to go operational next month allows a United Arab Emirates-based company managed by Badr Jafar to operate a cargo terminal managing containers. The UAE has been a major donor to the troubled Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. And...

Canada’s military has again delayed the opening of a major new Arctic port, a sign the government is struggling to assert sovereignty over a remote resource-rich region. The planned deep water naval facility at Nanisivik – some 3,100 km (1,900 miles) north of Ottawa – is one of the key components of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s “use it or lose it” approach to the Arctic. The port, initially due to open in 2012, will now not be operational until 2018.

West Coast docks are paralyzed as employers and longshoremen continued to spat about contracts and congestion problems. There are plenty of losers. Exporters, like farmers and ranchers, can't get their perishables to Asian markets during the Lunar New Year when demand for fruit and meat is particularly high. And importers large and small are beginning to report shipment delays and inventory shortages. Are there winners? Kind of … Air Freight. Some importers, like electronics dealers and luxury retailers, can afford to put their cargo on planes, despite at least a ten-fold increase in shipping costs. ... East Coast/Gulf Coast ports....

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The nation's top labor official flew Monday to California in an attempt to resolve a damaging contract dispute between West Coast dockworkers and their employers. U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez headed for San Francisco, where months-long negotiations between the dockworkers union and a maritime association of companies have come to a halt. So, too, has the movement of billions of dollars of cargo that is supposed to pass through 29 seaports from Southern California to Seattle. The ports are a critical trade link with Asia and the gateway not just for imports such as electronics,...

One of the big reasons for the slowdown at the 29 West Coast ports isn't on the tip of everyone's tongues, including elected officials, is because the public doesn't see it, he said. It's like cracks in the foundation of a house: virtually invisible but still very dangerous for the structural integrity of the house.

A massive shutdown of America’s supply chain is now in progress because of a labor dispute between dockworkers and their employers. The average dock worker, according to Zero Hedge, makes about $145,000 per year plus some $80,000 per year in benefits, but apparently their overtime pay is insufficient, which has led to widespread strikes at the nation’s busiest ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach. The ports are now being partially shut down for at least the next four days, but the months-long dispute has already led to hundreds of container ships and tractor-trailers being left in limbo (see pictures...