About 3,800 workers are on strike at Swift Beef Company, one of the largest beef processing plants in the United States. Workers at the plant, who belong to the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7, overwhelmingly voted to strike after negotiations with the facility’s parent company, JBS USA, stalled. The strike draws immediate national attention because the Greeley plant represents a major part of the American beef supply chain.
Like nearly all job disputes, there are two sides to the argument: JBS USA leaders said the company offered competitive pay and benefits, while the union members were concerned about wages, workplace safety, and job conditions inside the plant.
JBS USA operates as the American division of the global meat company JBS S.A., which runs one of the largest beef processing operations in the world. This disagreement now places one of the country’s largest slaughter facilities in the middle of a labor standoff.
Most ranchers can still get cattle to market because the national herd is smaller, and that could give JBS some leverage in negotiations, since other slaughterhouses can absorb the Greeley plant’s work, Greiman said.
Feedlots hold clues to consumer costs
Yet an extended strike at Greeley could disrupt the industry, particularly in Colorado and neighboring states, said Jennifer Martin at Colorado State University’s animal sciences department.
“The feedlots, the people who have the cattle right now — the longer they sit kind of in a holding pattern, the more expensive they become to feed,” said Martin. “For consumers, it means that prices will likely go up.”
Training versions of AI models on classified data is expected to make them more accurate and effective in certain tasks, according to a US defense official who spoke on background with MIT Technology Review. The news comes as demand for more powerful models is high: The Pentagon has reached agreements with OpenAI and Elon Musk’s xAI to operate their models in classified settings and is implementing a new agenda to become an “an ‘AI-first’ warfighting force” as the conflict with Iran escalates. (The Pentagon did not comment on its AI training plans as of publication time.)
Training would be done in a secure data center that’s accredited to host classified government projects, and where a copy of an AI model is paired with classified data, according to two people familiar with how such operations work. Though the Department of Defense would remain the owner of the data, personnel from AI companies might in rare cases access the data if they have appropriate security clearance, the official said.
Diesel fuel, the lifeblood of U.S. industry, crossed an alarming and historic benchmark Tuesday.
Amid the Iran War and the Strait of Hormuz crisis, the U.S. average retail diesel prices have crossed $5 a gallon, the highest since December 2022.
This marks only the second time diesel prices have hit the historic 5-dollar benchmark, according to Reuters. Tuesday’s new average of $5.04 is now a record high, according to analysts at GasBuddy.
Meanwhile, gas prices across the country have surged 74 cents a gallon. This reportedly marks nearly a 30% increase over the past month, the highest monthly spike since Hurricane Katrina.
“The problem is, is we’re so strained financially coming into this issue,” explained Littleton, a third-generation farmer from Gibson County in the state’s northwest.
“We have had a couple of record losses over the last couple of years, so everyone’s kind of grabbing at straws anyway, and then to have input prices increase yet again, it just really couldn’t happen at a worse time.”
Littleton, who cultivates corn, soybeans, and wheat, is one of thousands of farmers nationwide who will pay significantly more this spring for the essential nutrients their crops require.
Nitrogen-based fertilizer is particularly crucial for corn, typically the largest crop in the U.S., which feeds the nation’s livestock and is converted into fuel for most U.S. vehicles.
This action has caused a significant slowdown in shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a critical choke point for 20 per cent of the world’s oil and natural gas.
Cesar Chavez has been lauded by Mexican-Americans as an iconic labor leader who fought for farmworkers’ rights in the 1960s, but his legacy may be marred by growing allegations of “profoundly shocking” behavior.
Several celebrations of Cesar Chavez Day, which is observed March 31, have been canceled across the country by the United Farm Workers, an organization Chavez co-founded.
‘These allegations have been profoundly shocking. We need some time to get this right, including to ensure robust, trauma-informed services are available to those who may need it.’
The union said in a letter Tuesday that the claims against Chavez were “incompatible” with the organization’s values.
A shooting at a U.S. Air Force base in New Mexico on Tuesday left one person dead and another wounded, according to military officials.
from www.washingtontimes.com
Homosexuals and gender-confused individuals should embrace “queer joy” as a way to withstand attacks from “white Christian nationalists,” according to a University of Kansas law professor.
“I contend that queer joy as resistance is just one strategy for resistance, one that ought to be pursued alongside other tactics of resistance,” Professor Kyle Velte argues in a paper published on SSRN.
Velte lists a number of supposed infringements on the “rights” of LGBT people.
Among these are Supreme Court rulings that found artists, such as bakers and website designers, cannot be forced by the state to use their skills to promote so-called same-sex “marriage.” The law professor also criticized the 2021 case Fultonv.City of Philadelphia which affirmed social service providers cannot be forced to place kids in same-sex households.
“The impact of these decision[s] means that some vendors and faith-based social service agencies may refuse to serve LGBTQ people,” Velte wrote.
A quick look at state legislative sessions across the country shows it’s clearly that time of year again for gun control advocates. Like the critters in a game of Whack-A-Mole, proposals to further restrict the right to keep and bear arms are popping up for consideration in state after state, needing to be (metaphorically) bopped back down by defenders of the Second Amendment.
As I recently explained to Minnesota state legislators, gun control advocates’ preferred policies do little more than scapegoat peaceable and lawful gun owners while completely missing the point — most violent crimes are committed by a small subset of repeat offenders who are already prohibited from owning any guns, at all. Those criminals aren’t likely to comply with new laws making it doubly illegal for them to possess a certain type of firearm. Even then, it wouldn’t matter because criminals could just as easily use “featureless” versions of the same guns (which, again, they still can’t lawfully possess) to carry out their crimes.
At the same time, gun control advocates often downplay (or even outright ignore) the fact that law-abiding Americans routinely rely on their right to keep and bear arms to defend themselves and others from actual violent criminals who ignore gun control restrictions. A 2013 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledged that almost every study on the issue has found that between 500,000 and several million defensive gun uses occur every year in the United States. An extensive 2021 national survey conducted by a Georgetown professor further substantiated this reality, concluding that Americans used their firearms defensively an average of 1.2 million times a year.
Israel’s defense minister said Wednesday that the country would escalate its war against Iran, and its parallel assault on the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah in Lebanon, clearly signaling an escalation of the conflict in the heart of the Middle East.
“The intensity of attacks in Iran is increasing. We are in the midst of achieving a decisive outcome,” Katz said in his video message, shared on social media.
“Israel’s policy is clear and unequivocal: no one in Iran has immunity, and all are targeted. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and I have authorized the IDF to neutralize any senior Iranian official for whom an intelligence and operational opportunity arises, without the need for additional approval. We will continue to intercept and hunt them all,” he said.
“Significant surprises are also expected throughout today across all arenas, which will escalate the war we are conducting against Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon.”
The human cost of Israel and America’s air campaign on Iran is mounting, nowhere more painfully felt than in the children’s wards of its hospitals.
In the intensive care unit of one, four-year-old Anita lies in a coma with severe head injuries a few days after being pulled out of the rubble of her home when it was destroyed in an air strike.
Her mother Zeiba was in torment, clutching her tiny hand and begging her to wake up. Doctors say she almost certainly never will.
An asteroid just exploded above Ohio with the force of 250 tons of TNT
Eyewitness accounts and videos taken from across the Midwest reveal the streak of a large fireball across the daytime sky
A flashy fireball streaked across the skies above the Midwest on Tuesday, falling to Earth near Lake Erie and Ohio at around 9:00 AM EDT. Some reported hearing a boom loud enough to shake their houses.
The object appears to have been a seven-ton asteroid that spanned nearly six feet in diameter, according to NASA. When it fell, it was traveling at around 40,000 miles per hour in a southeasterly direction before “fragmenting”—blowing up—over Valley City in Ohio. The explosion had the equivalent force of 250 tons of TNT, the agency said, and “may have also shook houses north of Medina.”
Far-left podcast host Joy Reid argued that the United States is only “marginally better” than Iran, even after the brutal Islamic regime recently slaughtered tens of thousands of protesting citizens.
During the January anti-regime protests, thousands of Iranians were killed by their own government.
Estimates of the number killed vary substantially, hampered by the ongoing internet shutdown.
The Iranian government has acknowledged more than 3,000 dead.
However, the US-based organisation HRANA (Human Rights Activists News Agency), whose figures have been reliable during previous crackdowns, says it has verified more than 6,000 dead and has more than 17,000 more recorded deaths under investigation, giving a possible total of about 22,000.
A fresh wave of attacks on the United Arab Emirates’ energy infrastructure has ramped up concerns over prolonged supply disruptions amid the Iran war.
It comes after the world’s largest ultra-sour gas development was struck by a drone, a fire broke out in the UAE’s Fujairah Oil Industry Zone, and another tanker was hit near the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz.
The UAE also reopened its airspace on Tuesday after a brief shutdown following a fire caused by an Iranian drone attack hitting a fuel tank.
Operations at the UAE’s massive Shah gas field remained suspended on Tuesday following a drone attack, which caused a fire at the facility, according to Abu Dhabi authorities. No injuries were reported from the incident.
The Shah gas field is located about 110 miles southwest of Abu Dhabi and is operated by a joint venture between Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. and Occidental Petroleum Corp. It has the capacity to produce 1.28 billion standard cubic feet of gas per day and 4.2 million tons of sulfur per year.
NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani is one of the most singularly focused Democrat politicians I’ve seen in a long time. He often will turn anything, any unrelated news event, any public appearance, into a discussion about the so-called “Palestinian cause,” and how Israel and, via extension, America, is allegedly committing “genocide” against the Hamas (and Hezbollah) terrorists who literally want to wipe the Jewish people and their western allies off the map.
We saw this, for instance, the weekend of March 7th and 8th, when Mamdani’s first words about the attempted terrorist attack by two adult teens – who the DOJ said were inspired by ISIS – on anti-Mamdani demonstrators that weekend at Gracie Mansion, were to condemn… Islamophobia.
“This was a vile protest rooted in white supremacy entitled ‘Stop the Islamic takeover of New York City,” Mamdani proclaimed. “I’m the first Muslim mayor of our city. Anti-Muslim bigotry is nothing new to me, nor is it anything new to the roughly one million New Yorkers who know this city as our home,” he went on to say while merely giving a passing reference to the attack itself, where IEDs were thrown.
Democrats are lambasting a top Trump adviser for dismissing concerns that high oil prices brought on by the war in Iran will raise costs for American consumers.
The adviser, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, acknowledged that a prolonged war would “hurt consumers” in a Tuesday morning interview on CNBC.
“We’d have to think about, you know, if that continued, what we would have to do about that,” he said. “But that’s, like, really the last of our concerns right now, because we’re very confident that this thing is going ahead of schedule.”
Hassett made the comment in the context of arguing that the economy is “fundamentally sound,” and would not be disrupted if the war in Iran were extended for a significant period of time.
Last week, a terrorist tried to kill Jewish children at the Temple Israel Synagogue in West Bloomfield Township, Michigan. Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, 41, drove his truck — which was laden with fireworks and accelerants — into the synagogue. He exchanged fire with two security guards and died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The media ran interference for Ghazali, saying his family was killed in Israeli strikes in Lebanon as part of Operation Roaring Lion. The New York Times called him a “quiet restaurant worker,” and the Mayor of Dearborn Heights, where Ghazali was from, said the Lebanon strikes were the motivation behind the Temple Israel attack, attempting to justify it because Ghazali “lost family members.” Except that wasn’t accurate. It turns out Ghazali’s brother, Ibrahim Muhammad Ghazali, was a Hezbollah terrorist.
But now it’s revealed that Ayman Ghazali also had deeper ties to Hezbollah than initially reported, including Ghazali’s ties with other members of Hezbollah, an overseas trip, and odd behavior in the weeks before the terrorist attack.
A near disaster took place in Israel. Iran launched missiles into the Old City of Jerusalem. The missiles were intercepted. However, the debris landed just a few feet away from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. One of the most sacred sites in Christianity, believed to be the place of Jesus’ crucifixion, burial, and resurrection.
An Iranian missile exploded over Jerusalem’s Old City. Its fragments fell on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Armenian Patriarchate, the Jewish Quarter and on the Temple Mount near the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Just a reminder, the only reason Christian holy sites in the Old City of Jerusalem remain standing, is because it is part of Israel. If the Palestinians controlled the Old City of Jerusalem’s Christian Quarter, all traces of Christianity would be attacked and destroyed. Exactly what the Palestinians have tragically done to the once flourishing Christian community in Bethlehem.
🚨A ballistic missile fragment just fell on the courtyard of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem’s Old City.
This is what evil looks like. This is why Israel fights.
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem🇺🇸🇮🇱🕊️@Real_life_Netpic.twitter.com/ypDl6I6ELB
Federal immigration authorities have finally arrested a dangerous illegal alien from El Salvador who was wanted for horrific crimes against children, weeks after anti-ICE activists disrupted an earlier attempt to take him into custody.
Walter Roberto Vides-Ortez was arrested on March 12, according to federal officials, following a failed operation in February that was interrupted by activists in Boston.
Activists Disrupt Initial ICE Operation
Agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement were attempting to arrest Vides-Ortez on February 12 at his residence in East Boston.
Officers were waiting in vehicles for the suspect to emerge when a group of activists surrounded them, blowing whistles, shouting obscenities.
They even accused agents of traumatizing children at a nearby elementary school close to where the suspect was living.