European banks saw their shares nosedive on Wednesday amid the unfolding US banking crisis.

Trading had to be halted for a number of bank stocks, including Credit Suisse, due to the steep losses. The Swiss banking giant was down 28% in afternoon trading, while Societe Generale, which also temporarily halted trading, was down 12%.

Shares of the embattled Swiss bank hit another all-time low for a second consecutive day on Wednesday after its top investor, Saudi National Bank, said it would not be able to provide more financial aid due to regulatory restrictions.

Trading in shares of the investment bank was halted several times on Wednesday morning as the stock price dropped below two Swiss francs ($2.17) for the first time.

Emails released by House Republicans investigating the coronavirus pandemic seem to expose Dr. Anthony Fauci’s deceptive attempts to push the ‘natural origins’ theory behind the spread of the virus.

Fauci, who served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases under both Presidents Trump and Biden, frequently downplayed the lab leak theory.

Fauci stated that “most people hold by” the belief that the virus came from a bat in the Wuhan market rather than a lab.

And he often remained silent as those who promoted any theory other than that involving ‘natural origins’ were cast aside as conspiracy theorists.

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.