https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/03/08/gaza-floating-pier/

Gift Link: https://wapo.st/3TsD3HJ

Construction will take up to two months and require 1,000 U.S. troops who will remain off shore, officials say. Once complete, it will enable delivery of 2 million meals daily.



The U.S. military anticipates that a floating pier, to be built off Gaza’s coastline in coming weeks, will enable delivery of 2 million meals daily to Palestinians facing starvation, the Pentagon said Friday, describing its plan to address the worsening humanitarian crisis there without deploying American personnel directly into the war zone.

Construction of the offshore pier and causeway connecting it to land will take as long as 60 days and require about 1,000 U.S. troops, Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, told reporters.

President Biden announced the initiative during his State of the Union address Thursday, as hopes dim for a another cease-fire in Israel’s five-month war with Hamas and his administration contends with withering criticism for the vast supply of U.S. weapons that have contributed to the conflict’s massive civilian death toll. It’s one element of a broader “maritime corridor” that the United States and other countries have pledged to establish amid growing concerns about the situation.

The perceived need for the floating structure is a reflection of the political land mines that have stymied efforts to get humanitarian aid to those trapped by the fighting.

Israel’s deep-water port at Ashdod is less than 25 miles from Gaza, but Israeli officials have refused to open its northern border crossing. Egypt’s El Arish port, just south of Gaza, has been a key arrival point for assistance. But all shipments must go through a laborious process of loading onto trucks that travel to an Israeli inspection site, only to be unloaded and reloaded again to then join an ever-growing line of vehicles waiting to enter the Palestinian territory.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/02/29/police-officer-shot-dc/

https://wapo.st/49WPvVL



Police arrested a man who they believe shot and wounded a D.C. Housing Authority police officer Thursday morning in a Navy Yard apartment building, authorities said, ending an hours-long shelter-in-place order and a massive police presence that unnerved residents in the dense residential area.

The officer was shot in the torso about 5:45 a.m. inside the Carroll Apartments at 410 M St. SE, a public housing building for senior citizens. He was alert and in stable condition at a hospital at 9:30 a.m., officials said.

Housing Authority Police Chief Michael Reese said the shooting occurred after two officers came to the apartment building to investigate reports of an “unwanted guest.” There they found a man and a woman “who were not residents” outside an apartment unit on the second floor, the chief said.

The officers asked the two to leave, but the man refused and fired a gun as the officers were attempting to arrest him, Reese said.

Reese said there were additional shots fired in the lobby and outside the apartment building, but did not specify by whom. The officer has been on the force for six years, the chief said.

The man then fled and hid in a building about a block away, Reese said. An emergency alert from the D.C. government advised occupants to shelter in place, as residents looking out of their windows captured an armored vehicle rolling into their garage.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/02/27/economy-immigration-border-biden/
Gift link: https://wapo.st/3OXqTnC



Immigration has propelled the U.S. job market further than just about anyone expected, helping cement the country’s economic rebound from the pandemic as the most robust in the world.

That momentum picked up aggressively over the past year. About 50 percent of the labor market’s extraordinary recent growth came from foreign-born workers between January 2023 and January 2024, according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis of federal data. And even before that, by the middle of 2022, the foreign-born labor force had grown so fast that it closed the labor force gap created by the pandemic, according to research from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

Immigrant workers also recovered much faster than native-born workers from the pandemic’s disruptions, and many saw some of the largest wage gains in industries eager to hire. Economists and labor experts say the surge in employment was ultimately key to solving unprecedented gaps in the economy that threatened the country’s ability to recover from prolonged shutdowns.



“Immigration has not slowed. It has just been absolutely astronomical,” said Pia Orrenius, vice president and senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. “And that’s been instrumental. You can’t grow like this with just the native workforce. It’s not possible.”

Yet immigration remains an intensely polarizing issue in American politics. A record number of migrants have crossed the southern border since President Biden took office, with apprehensions topping 2 million for the second straight year in fiscal 2023, among the highest in U.S. history. Cities like New York, Chicago and Denver have struggled to keep up with busloads of immigrants sent from Texas who are overwhelming local shelters.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/26/investing/premarket-stocks-trading/index.html



New York
CNN
—
The US economy isn’t out of the woods yet, but it’s doing a lot better than many forecasters thought it would just a few months ago.

At least better than economists at S&P Global Ratings thought it would.

They now expect US real gross domestic product to grow by 2.4% in 2024, up from their forecast of 1.5% in November. Real GDP is the value of all goods and services a country produces, after adjusting for inflation.

Before the Bell spoke with Satyam Panday, chief economist at S&P Global Ratings, to discuss the state of the economy and how GDP impacts your wallet and 401(k).

Satyam Panday: It’s been almost three months since our last prediction, and this is a significant revision. Since November we’ve had data come out that shows much stronger growth in the jobs market, so we made some changes. But the overall message still remains the same, we will be slowing down to below trend growth for some time, it’s just that the timing is pushed back because of the strength of US households.