Free Republic

The United Kingdom’s lone munitions filing factory exploded on Wednesday, just two days after a fire erupted at the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant in Scranton, Pennsylvania.As The Gateway Pundit previously reported on April 15th, the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant (SCAAP), the United States’ primary producer of 155mm artillery shell bodies, caught fire.Just two days later, on April 17th, a section of the United Kingdom’s lone munition factory exploded after a single shell went off inside the factory.The explosion occurred at the BAE Systems munitions factory in Glascoed, Wales.BAE Systems is the biggest defense contractor in Europe and the 7th largest...

Ukraine used Cessna-sized drones to attack deep inside the Russian Federation in the early hours of Tuesday morning, launching multiple strikes against a factory and oil refinery in the longest range hits of the war so far. A drone factory and an oil refinery over 800 miles from the frontline of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine were the targets in an attack claimed by Kyiv’s military intelligence bureau in the early hours of Tuesday morning. Footage shared from the scene by Ukrainian state media shows a large drone — perhaps the size of a civilian single-engine pleasure aircraft — crashing into...

Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shia terror group, fired rockets into northern Israel on Wednesday, hitting a factory that employed people with special needs, and killing a 23-year-old Druze Arab named Zaher Bashara in the facility. The Times of Israel reported that Bashara, who worked as a driver at the Alon paper goods company, was set to be engaged and had been his family’s breadwinner since the death of his father, providing for his extended family.

(CNN) - A furnace explosion at a Chinese-owned nickel factory in Indonesia on Sunday has killed at least 13 workers and injured 38 others, officials say. The incident took place at a factory in the Morowali Industrial Park on the island of Sulawesi. The factory is operated by Chinese steel and nickel giant Tsingshan, which has stakes in Indonesia’s lucrative nickel mining industry and runs operations under its local arm, Indonesia Tsingshan Stainless Steel (ITSS). Morowali police spokesperson Ipda Hamid told CNN affiliate CNN Indonesia that 13 people had died at the scene, with multiple victims being rushed to nearby...

Activists protesting against Israel picketed several entrances to a major factory operated by BAE Systems, one of the world’s largest defence contractors on Friday. Dozens of protesters — with organisers from ‘Workers for a Free Palestine’ claiming “400+” — blocked entrances to a major defence factory in Rochester, Kent on Friday morning. Protesters chanted that Israel is a “terrorist state” and pleaded with employees of BAE Systems to go home rather than try to go to work. A protester quoted by the Kent Messenger claimed: “This is our power as people. Your power is your voice and direct action like...

A $4 billion Panasonic electric vehicle battery factory in De Soto, Kansas, will help satisfy the Biden administration’s efforts to get everyone into an EV. It also will help extend the life of a coal-fired power plant. Resource Adequacy Panasonic broke ground on the facility last year. The Japanese company was slated to receive $6.8 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act, which has been pouring billions into electric vehicles and battery factories as part of its effort to transition America away from fossil fuels. The Kansas City Star reports that the factory will require between 200 and 250 megawatts of...

I was hoping that the week of July 4th would start off with fireworks, but we got bad news about the economy. US factory activity contracted for an eighth month in June, slipping to the weakest level in more than three years as production, employment and input prices retreated. The Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing gauge fell to 46, the weakest since May 2020, from 46.9 a month earlier, according to data released Monday. The current stretch of readings below 50, which indicates shrinking activity, is the longest since 2008-2009. The decline in the ISM production gauge, which also stands...

A man opened fire at a Mercedes-Benz factory in southwestern Germany on Thursday, leaving two people dead, the company said. The shooting occurred in Sindelfingen, a city near Stuttgart. The suspect, a 53-year-old man, was taken into custody, a spokesman for the Stuttgart prosecutor’s office said. Police received the first emergency calls around 1:45 a.m. EDT on Thursday morning, a police spokeswoman told the news agency dpa.

ST. SIMONS, Ga. — A large fire at a factory near St. Simons Island has led to Glynn County issuing a shelter-in-place order for parts of the island. The Pinova plant in nearby Brunswick, Ga. caught fire Saturday and strong winds are reportedly pushing the smoke over the island. Fire officials have not confirmed how the fire started.

Communities in rural Michigan are revolting against a decision to allow a Chinese-owned firm to build a battery plant in the area, according to footage of a recent Green Charter Township board meeting obtained by conservative outlet The Midwesterner. More than 100 residents of Green Charter Township and Big Rapids in rural Mecosta County, Michigan, showed up to the March 14 meeting to voice concerns over the presence of the Chinese-owned company, Gotion Global, amid growing concern over national security issues related to China. "The thing that drives some the most crazy about this is that this is a Chinese-owned...

TSMC (2330.TW), the world's largest contract chipmaker and a major supplier to Apple Inc (AAPL.O), said on Wednesday it was constructing a building that could serve as its second chip factory in Arizona in the United States. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd said in an emailed statement to Reuters that it could use the building for future expansion but has not yet arrived on a final decision for a second chip manufacturing plant. "In light of the strong customer demand we are seeing in TSMC's advanced technology, we will consider adding more capacity in Arizona with a second fab based...

China is losing its influence; it’s in decline. At the same time, however, China, ruled by a despotic regime, is responsible for 28.7 percent of global manufacturing output (more than 10 percentage points ahead of its No. 1 rival, the United States). This utter dependence on China for manufacturing must be stopped. As I write this, three countries are working to siphon customers away from China. Will their efforts prove to be successful?I speak from experience when I say the following: communist China is not a fun place to live in. Moreover, with its frequent power cuts and the Chinese...

A fire broke out at Tesla Gigafactory Berlin’s recycling plant in the early hours of the morning, and now a local group that has been fighting the project is using the fire to call for stopping production. In the early hours of the morning, Tesla’s own fire brigade at Gigafactory Berlin called the local fire department of the municipality of Grünheide, where the factory is located, for help. According to a report from Märkische Oderzeitung, a local newspaper, a large pile of cardboard and wood caught on fire at the recycling facility located at the factory (translated from German): A...

Update (2130ET): Add Toyota Motor Corp. and Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., the world's largest battery maker, to the growing list of companies shutting down factories in China's Sichuan province as a drought-induced power crisis worsens, according to Bloomberg. Toyota closed its plant in the provincial capital of Chengdu until Saturday, a company spokesperson said, while Contemporary Amperex halted operations at its lithium battery factory in Yibin. Sichuan is one of China's most populated provinces, with 80 million inhabitants, and is home to a major manufacturing hub heavily reliant on hydropower. However, a heatwave and drought have caused reservoir levels to...

Factory Fires, Mergers & Acquisitions, Business Sales, Factory Disruptions, Leadership Transitions, and Supply Shortages ranked as the top 6 supply chain disruptions in 2021, according to data released from Resilinc, the world’s leading supply chain risk monitoring and mapping solution. The exclusive data, compiled from Resilinc’s EventWatch monitoring database reveals that supply chain disruptions were up 88% year-over-year, with 90% of disruptive events being human-caused. 2021 saw the most factory fires ever recorded in a single year. Resilinc sent out 1,946 Factory Fire alerts, an increase of 129% year-over-year. The uptick is due mostly to gaps in regulatory and process...

It is billed as the largest economic development project in the history of Georgia, an electric vehicle factory that could grow to be five times as large as the Pentagon and produce as many as 400,000 emissions-free trucks a year. **SNIP** But in recent months, the project has gotten tangled in the kind of partisan politics that is pulsing through many aspects of American life. Opponents have been holding rallies, organizing online, dabbling in conspiracy theories and even threatening local officials. And beyond the political disputes, the debate over the factory is emblematic of broader tensions bedeviling the environmental movement,...

Dear liberals: Pretty soon, your iPhone could be assembled in a country where homosexuality is punishable by death, and religious dissidents are sometimes beheaded. In what could be a victory for Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s effort to attract tech companies to help diversify Saudi Arabia’s economy away from oil and gas, Foxconn, the Taiwanese consumer tech giant that’s one of Apple’s biggest contractors, has reportedly submitted a proposal to build a $9 billion factory in the Kingdom. WSJ reports that the kingdom “is reviewing an offer from the company, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry, to build a...

CommentaryFor far too long, China has been the “world’s factory.” That sweater you’re wearing, check the tag. Does it say “Made in China”? Everything, it seems, is made in China—the Walmart of the World.Last year, as other countries were crippled by the pandemic, China’s manufacturing output, according to a Time report, was $3.854 trillion, “accounting for nearly a third of the global market.”As the journalist Srivatsa Krishna has noted, China’s manufacturing output is now “equal to that of the US, Japan and Germany” combined. Moreover, as the world’s largest exporter of goods, China appears to be in a much stronger...

Japanese auto group Toyota Motor has halted operations at its three factories in Thailand as the country's delta-variant COVID epidemic disrupts the supply of key automobile parts. The closures underline how the pandemic is still putting the automobile supply chain under strain. The stoppage started from Wednesday (July 21) and will last at least until July 28, Nikkei has learned. Toyota said it will "assess the situation and decide" whether to resume operations from July 29. The carmaker has sourced wire harnesses to connect electrical components from an external factory, which was recently forced to shut down temporarily due to...

Climate change and animal rights protesters in the U.K. have blocked entry to a factory which makes burgers for McDonald's while demanding the fast-food chain moves to an entirely plant-based menu. Around 50 activists from the Animal Rebellion group have set up camp and formed a blockade at the OSI Food Solutions factory in Scunthorpe, England, in a bid to cause "massive disruption" to McDonald's supply chain. **SNIP** "More generally, McDonald's represents the broader meat and dairy industry, which we want to see a transition to a plant based food system, which in line with reports and science which shows...