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Governor Wes Moore (D-MD) said Sunday on CBS’s “Face The Nation” that maritime operations in the Port of Baltimore could be fully functional by May while discussing the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge. Host Margaret Brennan said, “We are so sorry about the recovery and the fatal accident. How do you describe where we are in this recovery process and potentially rebuilding?”

“… Others believe this was a deliberate attack of US infrastructure based on various factors that do not seem to add up. Could it have been an inside job or a foreign agent? The truth will come to light, as it always does. Let me begin by explaining how crucial the Francis Scott Key Bridge was to America’s supply chain. Around 52.3 million tons of international cargo estimated to be worth $80.8 billion passed through the port in 2023. Around 4,900 trucks, carrying around $28 billion in goods, must be rerouted due to the bridge collapse. It is the second...

The best time to repeal the Foreign Dredge Act was before the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed. The next best time to repeal it is right now. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge figures to snarl traffic around Baltimore, but the bigger problem might be the downed bridge's effect on maritime activity. Until the bridge's wreckage can be cleared away, the Port of Baltimore is cut off from the Chesapeake Bay, the Atlantic Ocean, and the global supply chains beyond. It remains unclear how long the port will be closed, but federal Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said...

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Wednesday that there’s currently no timeline for when the Port of Baltimore can reopen following the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge a day prior. “Too soon to venture an estimate,” he told reporters during the White House daily press briefing. “The vast majority of the port is inside of that bridge, which means most of it cannot operate.” Buttigieg, who traveled to Baltimore on Tuesday hours after the collapse, said he is concerned about the local economic impact of the port closure and noted that 8,000 jobs are directly associated with port activities....

The Port of Baltimore has been brought to a standstill thanks to the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, creating risks to the U.S. economy of additional inflation, diminished productive capacity, and larger government deficits.The Port of Baltimore was the 17th busiest port in the nation ranked by total tons in 2021, according to the latest data available from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. It is the fifth largest on the East Coast, outsized by the ports of New York-New Jersey; Virginia; Mobile, Alabama; and Savanah, Georgia. (snip) It was the first in terms of the volume of automobiles...

The Pentagon’s plan for floating piers and a causeway to surge humanitarian aid into Gaza is drawing fire from military experts for its lack of detail, potential danger to U.S. troops, and risk of mission creep. Bottom line, it’s a bit of a head-scratcher. “Biden is committing the United States military to conducting a highly complex, very expensive, low-production operation to bring food into the strip — when Biden could massively increase the amount of food into the strip with far less effort or expense: demand that Israel merely open the damn gates and roll the hundreds of trucks awaiting...

“I don’t know a single maritime professional who thinks this is a good idea given the location and conditions ashore, but orders are orders.”During President Biden’s State of the Union address, the President stated that he was directing the military to set up a temporary pier in Gaza that would enable supply of humanitarian aid the the Palestinians. We had predicted that he would say that: Biden to Announce Plans to Build Port in Gaza for Humanitarian Aid Shipments: President Joe Biden will announce during his State of the Union address plans to build a port on Gaza’s coast to...

A lot of people spent the weekend scratching their heads over this; It will take a few weeks to make the transit from Virginia to the eastern Mediterranean. The 37-year old Besson can’t even break 12-knots fully loaded. …and yes my friends - the Army has its own navy. I feel real sorry for the Operational Planners. In an area thick with poorly controlled hostile forces with everything from snipers to ATGM, how do you work this force protection problem? What are your ROE if you take fire? What if you are confronted with a wave of people wanting refuge...

The U.S. military port that is intended to provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza is expected to take up to two months to construct and requires over 1,000 U.S. servicemembers to complete, the Pentagon said. In a press conference on Friday, Press secretary Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder told reporters that that port would take at least 1,000 U.S. forces. "We anticipate that it'll take over 1,000 U.S. forces to participate in building this capability," Ryder said. "As far as time frame, several weeks, likely up to 60 days in order to deploy the forces and construct the causeway and the pier,"...

President Biden will announce during his State of the Union address on Thursday that he’s directing the U.S. military to lead the construction of a port along the coast of Gaza on the Mediterranean Sea to boost the amount of aid getting to Palestinian civilians. “We know the aid flowing into Gaza is nowhere near enough and nowhere near fast enough. The president will make clear again this evening that we all need to do more and the United States is doing more,” a senior administration official said on a call with reporters. The port would be able to receive...

Cars stolen from the District, Maryland, Virginia, and beyond are winding up in shipping containers, headed overseas, and it’s a problem that customs officials say is getting worse. Port of Baltimore Director Adam Rottman told FOX 5 that last fiscal year they intercepted 149 stolen cars, but in the last three months, that number is already at 70, on pace to just about double last fiscal year’s total. "Transnational criminal organizations will make money any way they can, whether it’s drugs, terrorism, human smuggling, selling fake Care Bears, anything they can do to make a dollar," Rottman told FOX 5,...

More than 100 demonstrators and activists gathered at the Port of Oakland on Friday to block the entrance to a ship that they claimed was transporting military weapons to Israel.

The Port of Nagoya, Japan's largest port by total cargo throughput and responsible for handling some of Toyota Motor's car exports, has suffered a crippling system glitch, with the port operator saying Wednesday it suspects a cyberattack. As of noon, the port in central Japan remained unable to load and unload containers from trailers. Police have launched an investigation, saying the operator has received a ransom demand in exchange for the recovery of its system. The system failure occurred Tuesday morning when an employee could not start a computer, according to Nagoya Port Authority. A message indicating that the computer...

Evidence of potential construction of a Chinese military site has been observed by American spy services in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The Washington Post obtained top-secret intelligence that the construction activity had been identified around Abu Dhabi in December 2022. Those documents were leaked by National Guardsman Jack Teixeira on a Discord server, who faces 15 years in prison. The activity in question occurred around a year after the UAE, a US ally, had announced that they would stop the construction after US officials suggested that the area would end up being used by Beijing for military purposes, per...

Last week, the largest West Coast port — the Port of Los Angeles — along with the Port of Long Beach experienced an unplanned 24-hour closure. The ports closed because dock workers simply didn’t show up, leaving the Thursday night shift and the Friday day shift unmanned. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union issued a statement saying workers not showing up for their shifts was no big deal:On the evening of Thursday, April 6, 2023, International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 13 held its monthly membership meeting as is its contractual right. … Several thousand union members attend the...

Moscow announced today that the port of Mariupol is operational again, after three months of fighting to take control. The Russian Ministry of Defense claims that the army has removed all mines in the port and that it can now operate at full capacity again... Recall that last night, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that it will open four humanitarian corridors at sea, in order to be able to pass foreign ships that had been stranded for months in the port of Mariupol.

Top Chinese ports in Shenzhen and Hong Kong record some of the largest congestion in nearly half a year due to China’s zero-tolerance approach, locking down more than 50 million people and shuttering factories to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Bloomberg reports 174 vessels anchored or loaded off the country’s top ports, the largest number since Oct. 21, when a massive typhoon battered the area. “Shenzhen is the second-busiest port next to Shanghai, so we will expect to see significant volume shift to the other ports within China,” said Ryan Closser, a director at FourKites, a supply-chain information provider. “A...

CORONAVIRUS disruptions have continued in China’s Ningbo, where the world’s third-largest container port is striving to maintain operation levels. Truck entry into the port area remains restricted while some container freight stations have halted operations due to roadblocks and other lockdown measures in the city’s Beilun District, home to a string of large box terminals. The latest infection wave, which emerged on January 1, have so far been contained within the district, where 26 local cases were confirmed as of 2000 hrs local time on January 4, the Ningbo government told a press conference today. Most of them are from...

The Port of Los Angeles has announced plans to begin charging ocean carriers a dwell fee for empty containers lingering in marine terminals to combat congestion, adding pressure for carriers to pick up empties for transport back to Asia. The fee will be similar to the import container dwell fee announced in late October, which has yet to be implemented. The new empty fee is still subject to approval by the Los Angeles Harbor Commission and would take effect on January 30, 2022, at the discretion of the Executive Director.

Fires erupted in Syria's Latakia Port's container storage area following an Israeli missile attack, Syrian state media reported on Tuesday. The attack, the second in December, damaged facades of a hospital, some residential buildings and shops "The Israeli "aggression" caused big materialistic damages and assessing its results is still a work in progress", the Syrian defence ministry said in a statement. Israel has mounted frequent attacks against what it has described as Iranian targets in Syria, where Tehran-backed forces including Lebanon's Hezbollah have deployed over the last decade to support President Bashar al-Assad in Syria's war. Live footage aired by...