The Federal Reserve is expected to increase current interest rates by one-quarter of a percentage point. The Fed's forthcoming decision is raising questions as the banking crisis appears to be far from over, despite stabilization measures being taken by the US and Swiss governments.

The US federal takeover of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, and the Credit Suisse merger with UBS has not calmed markets so far, according to the Western press. Banks around the world reportedly face falling customer deposits and losses on holding securities.

Financial experts predict an economic slowdown and growing recession risks. Some say that the unfolding banking crisis is largely prompted by the Federal Reserve's aggressive interest rate hikes and project that the US central banking system may cut rates in September 2023 to avert recession. Others suggest that the banking crisis has long been in the making and is caused by the failure of an economic structure built upon artificially cheap money.

The US Commerce Department announced proposed restrictions on Tuesday on new foreign operations of semiconductor manufacturers who receive federal funding in the US.

"CHIPS is fundamentally a national security initiative. That's why the law included guardrails to protect our national security," Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo posted on Twitter. "Today, we're building on them to ensure malign actors don’t have access to cutting-edge technology that can be used against America and our allies."

The use of ammunitions with depleted uranium (DU) by the Kiev regime may result in a spike of oncological diseases akin to the outbreak registered in the aftermath of the Yugoslav War, Ivan Konovalov, military expert and political analyst, told Sputnik.

On March 21, UK Minister for Defense Annabel Goldie told British lawmakers that London would grant a squadron of Challenger 2 main battle tanks to Kiev, as well as ammunition including armor-piercing rounds that contain depleted uranium. "Such rounds are highly effective in defeating modern tanks and armored vehicles," she bragged.

"The main feature of these shells is that they have a very high level of penetration. Depleted uranium provides a level of penetration that other shells do not," Konovalov told Sputnik. "I recall the history of the Yugoslav War; I worked there [at the time]. The Americans used depleted uranium in their air bombs."

For more than three decades [since 1991], the United States of America and the United Kingdom have been waging continuous wars on Iraq to occupy this oil rich country.

The armed forces of those two countries attacked civilians with different kinds of conventional, non-conventional, and banned weapons such as cluster bombs ammunitions, napalm bombs, white phosphorous weapons and depleted Uranium weapons.

Depleted Uranium (DU) is a radioactive and chemically toxic heavy metal. If ingested, inhaled, or it enters the human body through wounds or skin, it remains there for decades.

Within the human body the (DU) particles would be a continuous source for emitting alpha particles. With its toxic effects, published research & epidemiological studies have proved that it causes serious health damages to the human body. Some of the damage to the human body is to lymph tissue, kidneys, developing fetuses, neurological system, the bones, lung fibrosis, and an increase in the risk of many types of cancer and malignancies.

Hundreds of tons of (DU) expenditure have been fired & exploded on Iraqi highly populated areas like Basrah, Baghdad, Nasriya, Dewania, Samawa, and other cities.

Exploration programs and site measurements by Iraqi and non-Iraqi researchers all proved the existence of (DU) related contamination over most Iraqi territories.

Iraq’s Minister of Environment admitted in July 23, 2007 in Cairo that “at least 350 sites in Iraq are contaminated with (DU)”. She added that the nation is facing a tremendous number of cancer cases and called for the international community to help Iraq cope with this problem.

Foot Locker has become the latest chain to close its stores across the nation with the company set to shut more than 400 of its under-performing shops by 2026.

The 420 stores that are set to close across the United States account for nearly 10 per cent of Foot Locker's total sales.

Foot Locker said the closures will allow the company to introduce new store concepts and boost the company's annual revenue by £1billion. 

With issues such as his budget priorities and handling of international crises dominating headlines, President Joe Biden’s “woke” transformation of the United States military has continued largely below the radar, according to a recent report.

Last month, the Center for Military Readiness (CMR) published an update on the Biden administration’s work to infuse the armed forces with left-wing gender ideology, via the most recent version of DoD Instruction 1300.28, a document on “Inservice Transition for Transgender Service Members.” The group says it contains “prime examples of woke-ism in the military, defined as policies that impose progressive ideology and take them to extremes with enforced compliance, even if it hurts the institution.”

First, the document changes the official working definitions of various terms to cater to LGBT dogma, including “transition” as a “period of time when individuals change from the gender role associated with their sex assigned at birth to a different gender role”; replacing “preferred gender” with “self-identified gender.”

March 15, the U.S. Treasury Department released its latest international capital flow report, which revealed that at least 16 countries worldwide sold U.S. Treasury bonds in January of this year. These countries include China, Belgium, Luxembourg, Ireland, Brazil, France, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Mexico, Israel, Kuwait, Colombia, Sweden, Bahamas, Vietnam and Peru. Even Bermuda has been selling U.S. Treasuries. France sold $5.1 billion of U.S. Treasuries in January, adding to its cumulative net sell-off of 25% since last April, during which it sold a net of $62.1 billion in U.S. debt. The position fell from a peak of $246 billion to $183.9 billion. Meanwhile, Germany sold $9.4 billion of U.S. Treasuries in January alone, a single-month sell-off ratio of nearly 10%. Israel sold $1.7 billion, and its position has fallen from a peak of $69.1 billion in December 2021 to $46.1 billion, for a cumulative net sell-off of $23 billion and a net sell-off ratio of 33%. Among these three allies, France sold the most, while Germany had the largest short-selling rate in a single month. In terms of the selling ratio, Israel is leading the wave of U.S. Treasury bond selling.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to use federal healthcare funds to cover at least six months of rent for the state’s disproportionately large homeless population and for those on the brink of losing their housing.

Russia today vowed to 'respond' to Britain's plans to send ammunition that contains depleted uranium as Moscow warned there are 'fewer and fewer steps' to a nuclear collision.

The Kremlin has claimed that some of the ammunition for the Challenger 2 battle tanks that Britain is sending to Ukraine includes armour piercing rounds which contain depleted uranium.

And today, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said that Russia will 'respond' to the UK's move. 

Republicans in the Arizona state Senate on Monday passed legislation that would require education officials to create a list of books with sexually explicit content that cannot be used in school.

Lawmakers voted 16-12 along party lines to pass SB 1700, which requires the Arizona Department of Education to maintain a list of books that public schools may not make available to students, including "books that are lewd or sexual, promote gender fluidity or gender pronouns or groom children into normalizing pedophilia." 

The bill would also give parents the right to request that a school district or charter school remove objectionable library or classroom materials and enhances other requirements for content available in school libraries. 

The top DC federal judge did more than force Trump’s lawyer to testify. She actually turned over docs directly to investigators.

The Democrats have destroyed our judiciary.

Another sacred tenet of our judicial system – legal attorney-client privilege – unconstitutionally shredded by the Democrats.

Once the COVID diagnosis was made, there was no chance for me to see my brother. The hospital permitted no visitors to COVID patients. Eventually, I couldn’t even talk to him on the phone, because the machines in the room made it hard for him to hear what I was saying. So there was little I could do. I told two different doctors and two different nurses that I absolutely forbid the use of Remdesivir. They argued, but agreed to go with my wishes.

On January 18, I discovered that they had begun giving him Remdesivir against my explicit instructions, on January 15. That just happened to coincide with when Ricky began to really spiral downwards. They stopped when I ordered them to, but obviously the damage had already been done. They also refused my request to give him Ivermection. I was told “Ivermection isn’t allowed at this facility.” He died on January 20, my niece’s birthday.

A private Japanese lander has made it to the moon.

The Hakuto-R spacecraft entered lunar orbit late Monday night (March 20), notching a huge milestone for the Japanese company ispace, which has big plans in Earth-moon space.

"The successful insertion of the lander into lunar orbit is an important step toward the establishment of a payload transportation service, as it demonstrates that ispace is capable of transporting customer payloads to orbit around the moon," representatives of Tokyo-based ispace wrote in an update(opens in new tab) on Tuesday (March 21).

"Future ispace missions will involve deployment of satellites into lunar orbit," they added.

They finally caught Trump!

I am, of course, joking—the most entrenched portions of the illiberal left are having a nationwide party in anticipation of a potential Trump arrest, but is there really anything for them to be excited about?

Soros-funded DA Alvin Bragg is trying to use a convicted liar as the foundation on which to bring bogus misdemeanor charges, long past their statute of limitations, against President Trump. …

I don’t think I have ever heard of such a weakly composed case in my entire life—Alvin Bragg should lose his right to practice law in any capacity for bringing such a frivolous case before the court and before the American people.

President Trump has issued a new response to the thinly-veiled witch hunt being carried out by DA Bragg and his handlers in the Democratic Party:

A witness who testified before a grand jury on Monday in regard to an investigation into Donald Trump by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has spoken publicly about another supposedly key witness in the case, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen.

Robert Costello, who is a former legal advisor to Cohen, referred to him as a “convicted perjurer” and suggested that his testimony to the grand jury may be less than reliable regarding Trump.

News broke on Friday that Bragg was close to indicting Trump over hush money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 campaign, allegedly to keep her quiet about an affair the two of them had in 2006. The grand jury has been hearing evidence and testimony regarding the case, as well as his business practices.

The London Metal Exchange revealed a surprising mix-up last week at a warehouse in the Dutch port city of Rotterdam.

An operator for the warehouse weighed bags that were thought to contain 54 metric tons of nickel, only to find that they were filled with stones, according to The Wall Street Journal.

It appears that JPMorgan Chase is the unlucky owner of those bags, the Journal said on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Had they contained nickel, the bags would have been worth $1.3 million at current prices, representing 0.14% of nickel inventories, Bloomberg reported. While that means the mix-up will have a relatively minor impact on metal markets, it does call the security of the LME's contracts into question. "In an industry riddled with scandals, the LME's contracts are viewed as unquestionably safe," Bloomberg said.

The controversial rescue deal for troubled lender Credit Suisse and the continuing fallout from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank indicates the world is sliding into a crisis “far worse” than the GFC, one analyst has argued.

Following crunch talks aimed at stopping the stricken bank from triggering a wider international meltdown, Swiss bank UBS on Sunday agreed to take over its rival Credit Suisse for $US3.25 billion ($4.8 billion) – less than half its Friday closing valuation.

The deal, in which Switzerland’s biggest bank will take over the second-largest in the country, was vital to prevent irreparable economic turmoil spreading throughout the country and beyond, according to the Swiss government.

“This is as bad as it gets,” ACY Securities chief economist Clifford Bennett said in a note on Monday.