Senator Lindsey Graham called for Biden to 'hold Russia accountable' for downing a US drone and threatened to shoot Putin's war planes if they approach American assets even over international waters.

South Carolina GOP Senator Graham said the US should gun down Russian warplanes that approach an American asset in the airways over international waters after two Russian fighter jet pilots had forced down an unnamed US aerial vehicle (UAV) over the Black Sea yesterday, March 14. 

According to military officials, the Russian pilots repeatedly dumped fuel onto the drone and flew in front of it in a 'reckless' and 'unprofessional' manner before a collision caused the American UAV to crash.

A member of Signature Bank's board of directors was forced out of her job as president of a New York college late last year, it has been revealed - over a scandal involving millions of dollars in unpaid bills.

When addressing the missed payments back in 2019, Judith Huntington blamed the unpaid bills on the school's controller and its vice president for finance and administration - who have both since been fired - saying they failed to provide her with accurate information on the college's finances.

Over the course of several years spanning 2013 to 2017, the College of New Rochelle failed to pay necessary federal and state payroll taxes, flouting and outright ignoring rules regarding use of federal grant money. Amassing a debt of at least $31.2 million, the school closed in 2019 after 115 years due to the three years of irregularities. 

Plunging bank stocks drove Wall Street lower on Wednesday, as turmoil at Credit Suisse renewed fears of a banking crisis after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.

The S&P 500 Banks Industry Group Index dropped more than 4 percent in midday trading, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 450 points, or 1.42 percent 

Shares of First Republic, one of the regional banks swept up in contagion fears after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank last week, dropped up to 23 percent after Standard & Poors downgraded the bank's bond rating to Junk status. 

British and German fighter jets scrambled to intercept two Russian aircraft flying close to Estonia in a joint NATO mission on Tuesday - hours after a Kremlin warplane downed a US drone over the Black Sea - amid fears of an escalation in the region.

The RAF and German Typhoon jets were reacting to a Russian air-to-air refuelling aircraft after it failed to communicate with Estonian air traffic control in the Baltic Sea, and as it approached NATO airspace.

The Russian Il-78 Midas plane was intercepted as it was flying between St Petersburg and Kaliningrad. The NATO jets were later redirected to intercept a Russian Antonov 148 military transport aircraft that was also passing close to Estonian air space, the RAF said in a release on Wednesday.

An undated video has surfaced of a public school teacher saying that her goal is to confuse kids about gender. The teacher, whom parents have identified as a Mounds View Public Schools teacher, explains in the video that some of her students can’t tell if she’s a boy or a girl.

Alpha News reached out to the district multiple times to confirm the identity of the teacher but received no response.

In the video, the teacher is wearing a school lanyard reading “Valentine Hills Elementary.”

“The students asked the other teacher if I’m a boy or a girl,” she says in the video. The “other teacher” allegedly asked the students if this really mattered, to which one student responded, “No, I just can’t figure it out. It’s just so hard. I can’t figure it out.”

“And I was just like, yes, that’s the goal,” the teacher says in the video.

The woman in the video has been identified by parents and former students as Kourtney Ryan, a Valentine Hills Elementary school music teacher. One parent said she believes the 2021-22 school year was Ryan’s first year at the school.

“I am very upset that this teacher is saying that her goal is to confuse kids. Her personal life has no place in an elementary school,” the parent told Alpha News. “She is wearing a mask and her lanyard, which she wears while on the clock as a teacher paid by taxpayers.”

Shares of Credit Suisse on Wednesday plunged to a fresh all-time low for the second consecutive day after a top investor of the embattled Swiss bank said it would not be able to provide any more cash due to regulatory restrictions. Trading in the bank’s plummeting shares was halted several times throughout the morning as it fell below 2 Swiss francs ($2.17) for the first time.

According to CNBC News, The stock recovered slightly by around midday London time, before extending losses in early afternoon deals. Credit Suisse was last seen trading nearly 29% lower for the session.

The share price rout renewed a broader sell-off among European lenders, which were already facing significant market turmoil as a result of the Silicon Valley Bank fallout. Several Italian banks on Wednesday were also subject to automatic trading stoppages, including UniCredit , Finecobank and Monte Dei Paschi.

Webmaster addition: The irony here is that all those nations hit by US sanctions are fairly isolated from this crises!

Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, will vote against Eric Garcetti to become the U.S. Ambassador to India, she announced Wednesday.

Hirono broke away from her party and will vote against President Biden's nominee after saying she received "very credible" information regarding Garcetti that she says is disqualifying. Hirono did not detail what the information is.

Hirono told reporters that she had received "information that was given to me in confidence, but very credible, which is leading to my no vote," according to NBC

The senator had previously said she was in favor of Garcetti's nomination. Her about-face comes as Republicans have roadblocked his nomination over a sexual harassment scandal in his previous office. Hirono gave no indication that her information related to that scandal, however.

The federal bailout of Silicon Valley Bank wouldn’t have been needed if SVB bankers understood the basics about hedging bank risks, or if federal regulators weren’t asleep to the rising possibility that the California bank might fail, Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said on the Senate floor Wednesday.

Kennedy said SVB wasn’t broke and was only suffering from a liquidity crisis that both the bank itself and federal regulators had the power to correct.

"If the management of Silicon Valley Bank had known the difference between a banking textbook and an L.L. Bean catalog, Silicon Valley Bank would have never bought securities that are so sensitive to interest rates without hedging that risk. Honestly, it’s banking 101," Kennedy said.

President Joe Biden went viral on Twitter after he made yet another call for Congress to enact an assault weapons ban across the United States. 

"It's time for Congress to ban assault weapons," Biden tweeted Tuesday. 

"It’s time for your nap," WalkUp Foundation founder Ryan Petty wrote back. Petty lost his daughter, Alaina Petty, in the Parkland, Florida, shooting and has previously told Fox News Digital that more gun control would not make students safer in a February interview.

"Criminals don’t obey gun laws," Petty said. 

Left-wing activists masquerading as judicial reform advocates are trying to dilute the conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court by using the pretext of stricter “ethics codes” to force recusals.

The net result could be eroding the power of the current 6-3 Republican-appointed majority without expanding the court — a radical move many liberals have been pushing to make the court swing left.

The guidelines in the “Model Code of Conduct for U.S. Supreme Court Justices” could have forced Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from cases involving the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol incursion because his wife, Ginni, had advocated for the 2020 election to not be certified because she believed the results were marred by fraud.

“Lmfao this is so fake that it’s embarrassing Biden’s handlers even thought anyone would think it was real,” State Freedom Caucus Network Comms Director Greg Price tweeted.

Webmaster addition: Down 24% last time I checked.

Actor Alec Baldwin has dodged a bullet in his legal efforts to avoid prison time for the accidental shooting death of a movie set staffer.

Special prosecutor Andrea Reeb from the Santa Fe District Attorney’s office has voluntarily stepped down from the case to hold Baldwin accountable for the death of Halyna Hutchins after Baldwin pointed and allegedly fired a loaded gun at the cinematographer after being told the gun did not hold live rounds.

Baldwin’s attorney in February filed a motion to dismiss Reeb relating her position in the New Mexico state legislature, arguing that it would be unconstitutional for a lawmaker to serve in another branch of state government.

A prominent Boston Black Lives Matter organizer has been slapped with additional fraud charges, this time in relation to alleged schemes to defraud the city out of Covid relief and rental assistance funds, federal officials said.

As WCVB  reported, Monica Cannon-Grant, 42, and her husband Clark Grant, 39, were charged on Thursday with three counts of wire fraud conspiracy, 17 counts of wire fraud, one count of conspiracy and one count of making false statements to a mortgage lending business by a federal grand jury. Additionally, Cannon-Grant was individually hit with charges of mail fraud, filing false tax returns, and failing to file tax returns. 

The married couple are the founding executives of Violence in Boston, a purported "nonprofit" that aimed to create "social, political and economic change to communities across the world" until it permanently shut down in July 2022 after five years. 

In June of 2020, Violence in Boston partnered with the local Black Lives Matter chapter to organize a George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmad Arbery that drew out "thousands" of participants, the outlet reported.

Maricopa County attorneys have responded to Arizona GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s election lawsuit, which she brought to the state Supreme Court, arguing that her legal team has not presented any new arguments after the state Court of Appeals rejected her case a few weeks ago, The Epoch Times reports.

“Lake’s Petition utterly fails at fulfilling its limited task,” the county lawyers stated. “It does not present any argument illustrating a need for this Court to review the court of appeals’ opinion. It does not identify a single novel legal issue that this Court needs to clarify. And it does not identify any legal precedent that should be overturned or abrogated.

“Instead, the Petition is almost entirely a regurgitation of petitioner Kari Lake’s failed arguments before the trial court and the court of appeals,” they wrote.

U.S. Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz has testified that his agency does not have “operational control” over the nation’s borders after months of a record surge in migration.

The sudden collapse of Silicon Valley Bank was supposed to have been fixed by Sunday afternoon when federal regulators said they would make depositors whole starting Monday.

But early this week, some companies were still left hurrying to make sure they could make this week’s payroll. In biotech—a sector where many startups relied on SVB—some were still finalizing the opening of new checking accounts to pay their employees from; and many of those who tried to move their funds out of their SVB accounts were unable to do so because the bank’s website kept crashing.

Two elderly Florida residents have been arrested by Florida Department of Law Enforcement agents on voter fraud charges.

The agents arrested Ocala resident Donna Prentes Brady on March 13th, and booked her in the Marion County Jail, based on evidence that she voted in both the 2020 New Jersey state primaries and general elections-n person in Marion County and by mail in Sussex County, New Jersey.

Both counts are third-degree felonies.