Free Republic

The summer travel season has not exactly gotten off to a great start. Demand is up due to people ready to travel after an almost two-year pandemic kept many travelers at home. There is a pilot shortage now, though, and it is causing cancelations and delays. American Airlines told FOX Business on Monday that it is ending service to three cities on September 7. Those cities are Islip and Ithaca, New York, and Toledo, Ohio.The pilot shortage has been building since the pandemic. Some pilots were put on furlough. Others decided to retire or go into other areas of employment....

U.S.—Americans are facing yet another basic necessity shortage under the Biden Administration. This time a tampon shortage has struck the nation and caused many women to wonder what they will do when they run out of their essential feminine product. "Hey, I have an idea to address the shortage," said one state official. "Why don't we just empty all those tampons from the men's room that no one's using?" The idea helped alleviate the crisis, but the state official was soon fired for discrimination against trans people. In their desperation to find tampons, some women have resorted to entering the...

Consumers, already being pummeled by surging prices, now have to worry about product shortages. In recent months, a handful of common products have become harder to find and more may be added to the list. FOX Business takes a look at the crunch facing consumers. Tampons A spokesperson for Tampax, which is owned by P&G, told FOX Business in a statement that this is "a temporary situation, and the Tampax team is producing tampons 24/7 to meet the increased demand for our products."

A gas shortage and high prices will send “shockwaves through the country,” leading to landlords cutting the heat for tenants and widespread company bankruptcies, warned Klaus Müller, the head of Germany’s Federal Network Agency, which is the regulatory office for electricity, gas, telecommunications, postal services, and railway markets. Müller paints a bleak picture about the crisis in an interview with German newspaper Rheinische Post, saying it will “send shockwaves throughout the country. Banks will ramp up their business with installment loans, and ailing companies will fall into insolvency.” Müller’s office, which is a federal agency within the Federal Ministry for...

Australia’s energy minister asked Sydney and the New South Wales (eastern part of the country) residents to turn off lights and energy-intensive appliances in the evening to prevent power blackouts due to an ongoing energy crunch, The Independent reports. The federal energy minister, Chris Bowen, asked residents in a televised address to turn off energy-intensive devices between “6 to 8 [pm]” to mitigate risks of a spike in power during peak hours. He pointed to several offline coal-fired plants because of maintenance and unexpected issues. Reuters notes that 65% of eastern Australia’s power is generated by coal, but more than...

The shortage threatens the pace of the U.S. transition away from fossil fuels as the Biden administration seeks to decarbonize the grid by 2035.. U.S. renewable energy developers have delayed or scrapped several big battery projects meant to store electrical power on the grid in recent months, scuttling plans to replace fossil fuels with wind and solar energy. At least a dozen storage projects meant to support growing renewable energy supplies have been postponed, canceled or renegotiated as labor and transport bottlenecks, soaring minerals prices, and competition from the electric vehicle industry crimp supply. .... Storing power is considered vital...

Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a major reason that US drivers are paying record prices for gasoline. But it's not the only cause of the spike. Numerous factors are pushing prices up, with regular gasoline hitting a record $4.87 a gallon Monday according to AAA's survey — up 25 cents a gallon in just the last week. Gas prices were already expected to breach the $4 a gallon mark for the first time since 2008, with or without shots fired in Eastern Europe or economic sanctions imposed on Russia. But now the national average is expected to hit $5 a...

The Irish state is planning on reimplementing harsh COVID-style lockdown rules should the Ukraine crisis cause a major fuel shortage. The Europhile government of Ireland is planning a return to draconian COVID-style lockdowns should a fuel shortage arise out of the ongoing Ukraine crisis, a leak revealed to the public on Monday has claimed.

In the latest salvo in an expanding world trade war, sanctions-battered Russia has announced it will limit the export of noble gases, a key ingredient in the manufacture of semiconductor chips. Through Dec. 31, any export of those gases will require special permission from the Russian government. According to Russia’s trade ministry, Russia accounts for nearly a third of the world’s supply of three such gases—neon, krypton and xenon. “We believe that we will have an opportunity to be heard in this global chain, and this will give us some competitive advantage if it is necessary to build mutually beneficial...

President Joe Biden acknowledged Wednesday he did not know about the infant formula shortage soon enough. “I don’t think anyone anticipated the impact of the shutdown of one facility,” Biden said to reporters when asked why he did not act sooner to help end shortages.

Parents still struggle to find baby formula. The left and most media (sorry, same thing?) blame “corporate power run amok.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says, “There might be a need for indictment!” They blame Abbott Laboratories, because it shut down a Similac plant. The Food and Drug Administration says unsanitary conditions led to deaths of two infants, but Abbott denies that its formula recall had anything to do with those deaths. In any case, one factory closure doesn’t normally cause massive shortages. My new video gives the real reason for the formula shortage. First: bans on imports. There’s plenty of...

Authored by Robert Bryce, host of the Power Hungry Podcast, executive producer of the documentary, “Juice: How Electricity Explains the World,” and the author of six books, including most recently, “A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations.” America’s electric grid is being mismanaged and consumers will pay a heavy price for that mismanagement…More evidence of that came with the recent closure of the Palisades Power Plant in Michigan. The 811-megawatt nuclear plant was shut down on the same day that the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) issued a report saying the U.S. electric grid doesn’t have...

California residents were slapped with tighter water restrictions Tuesday two weeks after state officials spiked plans for a $1.4 billion saltwater desalination plant in Orange County amid a season of historic drought.The State Water Resources Control Board unanimously voted to implement a statewide watering ban for ornamental lawns at businesses and commercial properties as residents brace for a prolonged drought, the driest drought of its length in 1,200 years. Local government will also be required to reduce water use by up to 20 percent. “California is facing a drought crisis and every local water agency and Californian needs to step...

Many small businesses continue to struggle and now a growing number of pizza shops in the Grand Rapids area are closing. Just over a year after Rico Nelson took over Franco’s Pizzeria on Alpine Avenue in Walker, he had to shut the store down. He’s far from the only one. "Business usually takes a while to get your niche and get it figured out," Nelson said. "But it’s just so hard with the uncertainty of the future right now, you know?" It’s the perfect storm facing small businesses right now: employee shortages, rising food and gas prices and supply chain...

Oil and gasoline prices increased after each of President Joe Biden’s three Strategic Petroleum Reserve releases which were designed to curb consumer costs. Biden ordered a 50-million-barrel SPR release in November, a 30-million-barrel release on March 1 and a 180-million-barrel release on March 31, saying the “historic” actions would ease pressure felt by Americans at the pump. But marketplace and govern

Last October, a conscientious whistleblower at Abbott Nutrition wrote a letter directly to the interim chief of the FDA, acting Commissioner Janet Woodcock, and others. He claimed there were serious problems at the company’s Sturgis, Mich. plant.But the current head of the agency, FDA Commissioner Robert Califf, will testify before a congressional committee today that the top levels of the agency weren’t aware of the whistleblower’s report because of “mailroom issues.”Dozens of infants are currently being hospitalized because the specialty formula they depend on to survive is out of stock.And the FDA had “mailroom issues.”Politico:Up until now, however, FDA officials...

What's happeningA massive shortage in baby formula is causing outrage and concern as some parents struggle to find infant formula for their children. Why it mattersIn the US, 75% of babies consume formula by the time they're six months old, making the baby formula shortage a critical widespread issue. What's nextThe baby formula shortage has become a national concern, with the White House stepping in to help end the current shortage and prevent future scarcity.As the US continues to grapple with a nationwide infant formula shortage, a military plane carrying over 500,000 baby bottles' worth of specialty formula touched down...

The Biden administration is in talks to tap to into a federal diesel reserve to address energy shortfalls, an official with knowledge of the matter confirmed to The Hill Monday. An interagency team of officials has been monitoring East Coast diesel supplies and developing policy recommendations to address them, the official said. “The team has prepared emergency declarations for President authorize release from the Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve if conditions deteriorate,” they added. “We would call this a bridge to deal with short term supply shortfalls.”

As the Biden Administration is slow to respond to a severe shortage of baby formula in the United States, stores throughout Mexico are fully stocked especially with the high-demand Enfamil brand. Breitbart Texas dispatched local reporters to document the availability of baby formula in various Mexican cities, including several along the U.S. border. In the city of Piedras Negras, opposite Eagle Pass, Texas, the Soriana Supermarket is fully stocked for infant nutrition items. On the other hand, In Eagle Pass, Walmart aisles were empty. In the border city of Matamoros, just south of Brownsville, Texas, a Walmart supermarket and also...

China’s Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns have led to a shortage of a dye widely used in medical scans, prompting U.S. hospitals including the Mayo Clinic to ration supplies, postpone procedures or switch to less optimal imaging. The shortage arose in recent weeks for iodinated contrast media products including Omnipaque, made by General Electric Co.’s GE Healthcare unit at a plant in Shanghai. Omnipaque is given by intravenous injection to patients before imaging procedures to make internal organs, blood and vessels more visible in procedures such as CT scans.