NYC needs a mayor who has our backs — not sides with terror and crime

 He didn’t quite order flags at One World Trade Center to be flown at half-staff to mourn Iran’s ayatollah, as the Babylon Bee predicted, but our Islamic Marxist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, did issue a statement taking Iran’s side against the US “illegal war of aggression.”

“Americans do not want this,” he posted on social media.

He must be mad that President Trump didn’t give him a heads-up on the Iran attack during their bro-mantic visit in the Oval Office Friday. As if.

Like his fellow radical Dems — Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom and AOC — Mamdani failed to read the room.

Iranians in New York celebrating the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s demise were quick to flame the newbie pol on social media in response to his tone-deaf tweet.

“I don’t feel safe in New York listening to someone like you, Mamdani, who sympathizes with the regime that killed more than 30,000 unarmed Iranians in less than 24 hours,” responded Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad, who has been targeted for assassination by Iranian hitmen for her vocal criticism of the despotic regime.

“You stayed quiet when we have faced massacre, when Islamic Republic assassins were sent here in New York to kill us,” she posted on X. “Stay quiet now!”

Mamdani also claimed to be taking extra steps to ensure the safety of New Yorkers in the wake of Operation Epic Fury, as concern grows over the potential for retaliatory terrorist attacks.

Former FBI Deputy Director Chris Swecker has warned of the risk of Iranian terrorist “sleeper cells” who sneaked across President Joe Biden’s border or “lone wolf” Muslim radicals sympathetic to the regime.

Sure enough, early Sunday morning, a Senegalese immigrant, reportedly wearing a “property of Allah” hoodie and an Iranian flag undershirt, opened fire at a bar in downtown Austin, Texas, murdering two people and wounding at least 14 others before he was shot dead. Now the FBI is investigating the former New York City resident for what they call a potential terrorism “nexus.”

In such perilous times, New York needs a mayor who has our backs.

But Mamdani is no Rudy Giuliani.

Instead, in the mere two months he has been in office, Mamdani has consistently sided with terrorist regimes against America and with criminals against law enforcement, whether ICE or the NYPD.

He expresses his disdain for the NYPD by starving it of funds and manpower; he just cut $22 million from the budget and canceled the extra 5,000 cops Eric Adams had budgeted to hire this year to offset high attrition due to a stampede of resignations and retirements.

Like some NYC protesters, Mamdani took Iran’s side after the US and Israel’s joint attack, saying Americans “do not want” the “illegal war of aggression.”Robert Miller for NY Post

Defunds his defenders

How can we have any faith that he even wants to keep us safe?

His first instinct is to treat cops with contempt, even while he and his wife are protected around the clock by a personal NYPD detail said to be 60 officers strong, costing taxpayers millions of dollars a year.

Two incidents over the last two weeks illustrate his shameful attitude.

First, distressed schizophrenic Jabez Chakraborty was shot and injured by an NYPD officer after he lunged at him with a 13-inch kitchen knife.

Cops had been called to his Queens home by his frightened family, and probably saved lives that day by risking their own skin. But Mandani made a big show of visiting Chakraborty in the hospital, where he was being treated for non-fatal injuries, insisted his handcuffs be removed, objected to assault charges filed by the Queens district attorney and repeatedly declared that he should not be prosecuted.

But in a break from mayoral tradition, he did not visit the officers to offer them comfort and encouragement or to boost police morale.

By omission, he fed the anti-cop narrative that they had been heavy-handed and trigger-happy. I’d like to see how he would deal with a paranoid schizophrenic trying to kill him — without his NYPD detail.

Then, last week, when a mob at Washington Square Park pelted an NYPD patrol with snowballs reportedly containing rocks and ice shards, sending two officers to the hospital with facial lacerations and head injuries, Mamdani dismissed the attack as just “kids having a snowball fight,” implying that the cops were wimps.

The one perpetrator arrested so far is no kid. Gusmane Coulibaly is a 27-year-old repeat offender from The Bronx. He was initially charged with felony assault on a police officer, but Mamdani’s soft-on-crime soul brother, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, downgraded the charge to a minor misdemeanor and let him go.

Needless to say, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, her troops and their union are furious that the mayor is so feckless and disrespectful toward the men and women in blue who try to keep us safe under increasingly fraught conditions.

“The attitude of this mayor must change,” a retired NYPD sergeant of 21 years’ service told me.

“If not, I fear we may be grieving an outcome of an incident far more serious.”By demoralizing, insulting and effectively defunding the NYPD, Mamdani has ensured that we are less safe than we should be.

The exodus from the NYPD will only accelerate, and he refuses to even replace the missing cops.

On every issue, the mayor is out of touch, out of his depth and out to lunch.

Dems lose game of ‘chicken’

Chuck Schumer and pals tried to brand President Trump with the juvenile acronym “TACO” for “Trump Always Chickens Out.” It hasn’t aged well.

Time and again, Trump has shown resolve and unflinching nerve where his predecessors have failed to act.

While his puny critics scream “fascist” and write hysterical essays in The Atlantic declaring Trump is an “authoritarian dictator,” he is methodically taking out actual authoritarian dictators who pose a threat to the world, whether it’s Venezuela’s Maduro or the late and unlamented Ayatollah Khamenei. Dictators of the world, you’re on notice.

At some point, the joke stopped being about Trump and started being about the miserable Trump-deranged sad sacks who keep getting it wrong. The man they hate with every fiber of their being keeps blowing up their narratives simply by doing his thing and loving America with an unabashed patriotism that can’t be faked.

The more they insist on TACO, the more the world sees him as the GOAT: the greatest of all time.

The joke is on them

Albany wa$te on reparations

Kathy Hochul, Carl Heastie and Andrea Stewart-Cousins are quietly wasting $10 million of New York taxpayers’ money on a ridiculous inquiry about paying “reparations” to the descendants of slaves.

Then, when the inquiry is over, they’ll be asking for billions more to pay all the people they’ve been promising free checks, despite the fact that New York hardly had any slaves and abolished slavery early.

The New York State Community Commission on Reparations Remedies — stacked with leftist activists, and not a single white person — is holding its first public meeting for the year on Staten Island on March 21.

Please attend and share your thoughts. 

https://nypost.com/2026/03/01/opinion/miranda-devine-nyc-needs-a-mayor-who-has-our-backs-not-zohran-mamdani-who-sides-with-terror-and-crime/

'AP: People Are Chilling Their Carbs to Try to Lose Weight'

 Online influencers claim the secret to low-calorie rice, pasta, and potatoes may be as simple as chilling out.

Are they right? Not quite. But a small yet solid body of science does suggest that chilling these carbohydrate-rich foods after cooking them still could help people slim down.

For several years, wellness and nutrition influencers have promoted a process called retrogradation, urging people to cook, chill, then reheat carbohydrate-rich foods. They say doing so can cut the calories.

Retrogradation is real, but it isn't quite that simple.

Two Kinds of Starch

Most of the carbohydrates in these foods -- as well as most of the calories -- come from starch, of which there are two types: hard-to-digest amylose and easily digested amylopectin. The latter is processed quickly and spikes blood sugar. The former is processed slowly and moderates blood sugar.

Most raw carbohydrates (think uncooked potatoes) are made mostly of the hard-to-digest starch (also called resistant starch), but cooking converts it into the easily digested one. This is why diabetics need to be mindful when eating starchy foods.

Here's where the influencers get excited. Chilling those cooked foods triggers "retrogradation," a process that converts easily digested starch back into resistant starch, making it harder to digest even if the food is then reheated.

What does that mean for calories and blood sugar? Here's what we know.

Studies of how retrogradation influences diet mostly have been small and focused on how consumption of resistant starches influences blood sugar, particularly for diabetics.

Multiple studies since 2015 have found that people who ate rice that was cooked and then cooled had sometimes significantly lower blood glucose levels after eating compared to people who ate freshly cooked rice. Those findings are generally well accepted.

Less studied is whether retrogradation also reduces the calories available from these foods.

Kind of, says David Ludwig, MD, PhD, an endocrinologist and researcher at Boston Children's Hospital. "It doesn't appreciably change the calorie content of that food," he explained. "(But) it may well affect your hormones and metabolism in a way that makes controlling calories a lot easier."

Though retrogradation's effects on calories is neither as direct nor as dramatic as some suggest, it nonetheless has promise as part of healthier eating, Ludwig said.

Reducing Blood Sugar Spikes and Cravings

Eating foods high in resistant starch reduces the surge in blood sugar typically seen after consuming cooked carbohydrates, he explained. And that's key not only for diabetics.

Studies have shown that those sugar spikes activate the brain's reward mechanism and trigger cravings, making overeating snacks and later meals more likely.

Also, those blood sugar surges increase the body's production of insulin, which not only makes us feel hungry, but prompts the body's metabolism to store more calories as fat, Ludwig said.

"When the food retrogrades, it digests more slowly," he said. "It's going to keep your blood sugar more stable. You'll have less insulin to drive fat storage and likely have an easier time avoiding overeating."

So is chilling your pasta, rice, and potatoes worth it?

If you eat a diet high in refined starches, chilling can technically mitigate some of their negative impacts. But Walter Willett, MD, DrPH, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, says that to be effective, it would have to be done consistently, and he questions whether that's practical for most people.

It also isn't plug-and-play simple. Retrogradation works better with some grain varieties than others. Some food manufacturers favor varieties of rice, for example, that are naturally low in resistant starch because they cook more quickly. But this information rarely is available to the consumer, so it's hard to know when chilling makes a difference.

Willett also noted that retrogradation only helps with blood-sugar effects.

"Chilling does not restore the losses of fiber, minerals, and vitamins that have been removed in the refining process," he said.

Better, he said, would be to keep it simple: Substitute minimally processed whole grains cooked as one normally would.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/primarycare/dietnutrition/120077

'KFF: As More Americans Embrace Anxiety Treatment, MAHA Derides Medications'

 After a grueling year of chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation to treat breast cancer, Sadia Zapp was anxious -- not the manageable hum that had long been part of her life, but something deeper, more distracting.

"Every little ache, like my knee hurts," she said, made her worry that "this is the end of the road for me."

So Zapp, a 40-year-old communications director in New York, became one of millions of Americans to start taking an anxiety medication in recent years. For her, it was the serotonin-boosting drug escitalopram (Lexapro).

"I love it. It's been great," she said. "It's really helped me manage."

The proportion of American adults who took anxiety medications jumped from 11.7% in 2019 to 14.3% in 2024, with most of the increase occurring during the COVID pandemic, according to survey data from the CDC. That's 8 million more people, bringing the total to roughly 38 million, with sharp increases among young adults, people with a college degree, and adults who identify as LGBTQ+.

Even as psychiatric medications gain public acceptance and become easier to access through telehealth appointments, the rise of a class of antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, known as SSRIs, has triggered a backlash from supporters of the "Make America Healthy Again" (MAHA) movement who argue they are harmful. Doctors and researchers say medications such as fluoxetine (Prozac), sertraline (Zoloft), and escitalopram are front-line treatments for many anxiety disorders, including generalized anxiety disorder and panic disorder, and are being misrepresented as addictive and broadly harmful even though they've been proved safe for extended use.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has decried broadening SSRI use. During his Jan. 29 confirmation hearing, he said he knows people, including family members, who had a tougher time quitting SSRIs than people have quitting heroin. More recently, he said his agency is studying a possible link between the use of SSRIs and other psychiatric medications and violent behavior like school shootings.

FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, MD, MPH, has also suggested that SSRI use among pregnant women could lead to poor birth outcomes.

SSRIs' common side effects include upset stomach, brain fog, and fatigue. Some SSRIs also can reduce libido and cause other sexual side effects.

For many people, however, the side effects are mild and tolerable and the benefits of treating chronic anxiety are worth it, said Patrick Kelly, MD, president of the Southern California Psychiatric Society. "The statements about SSRIs were just not grounded in any sort of evidence or fact," Kelly said of Kennedy's comments.

A recent comprehensive study showed that over half of people with generalized anxiety disorder taking an SSRI saw their anxiety symptoms reduced by at least 50%. Side effects prompted about one in 12 to stop taking an SSRI.

"When it's being done right and when you're also using appropriate therapy techniques, SSRIs can be really, really helpful," said Emily Wood, MD, PhD, a psychiatrist who practices in Los Angeles.

MAHA Blames Anxiety on Poor Diet, Lack of Exercise

Supporters of MAHA have partly blamed poor dietary choices and the increase of a sedentary lifestyle for the rise of a number of health problems, including anxiety, depression, and other mental health disorders. As a remedy, they have called for measures such as reducing consumption of ultraprocessed foods, which studies in recent years have connected to depression and anxiety, and cutting back on screen time in favor of exercise.

Psychiatrists often encourage a healthy diet and exercise as an adjunctive therapy for anxiety and depression. Wood said those who can manage anxiety without medication should also consider talk therapy. The proportion of American adults using mental health counseling boomed from 2019 to 2024 as teletherapy grew in popularity, federal data shows. "Anxiety disorders are amongst our psychiatric disorders that really respond well to cognitive behavioral therapy," she said.

But medication can help.

Studies show the risks of taking SSRIs during pregnancy are low for mother and child. By contrast, "depression increases your risk for every complication for a mother and a baby," Wood said, adding that recent statements by government officials about SSRI use during pregnancy are "potentially leading to real harm for these women."

Some people who stop taking antidepressant medication will experience nausea, insomnia, or other symptoms, especially if they quit suddenly. But "the concept of addiction simply does not apply to these chemicals," Kelly said, a statement backed up by studies.

Addiction, though, is a possibility with benzodiazepines such as alprazolam (Xanax) that are often a second line of treatment for anxiety. These controlled substances can also increase the risk of opioid overdose in patients taking both types of drugs. During congressional hearings last year, Kennedy also decried benzodiazepine overuse as a problem.

While benzodiazepines are effective for short-term use, they require monitoring and care, Wood said.

"Those are really great meds for acute anxiety and not great as long-term anxiety medications, because they are habit-forming over time," Wood said. "If you're taking them on a daily basis, you'll need more and more to get the same effect, and then you have to come down from them in a tapered way."

And an increasing number of people are also occasionally taking beta-blockers such as propranolol for anxiety. Some people use beta-blockers to prevent a racing heart before a public speech or other big moments, even though they are not FDA-approved for treating anxiety and are prescribed "off-label."

Beta-blockers can cause dizziness and fatigue, but they are "nonaddictive, really helpful for bringing down the autonomic nervous system, going from fight or flight to something more neutral, and really safe," Wood said.

Social Shifts Drive Increased Use of Anxiety Meds

A number of leading theories could explain why so many more people are taking anxiety medication, including increased social media use, more isolation, and heightened economic uncertainty, physicians and researchers say.

Plus, the medicines are relatively easy to get. Many people obtain SSRI and benzodiazepine prescriptions from their primary care physician. Others obtain the medications after a brief teletherapy appointment.

Many social media influencers talk about their mental health struggles, easing some stigma among young people and encouraging them to get help. About a third of teens in a recent study said they get mental health information via social media.

Still, increased access to anxiety medication can be a problem when combined with a trend of self-diagnosis based on social media trends. A Google search for "buy Xanax online" leads to sponsored promises of same-day treatment, though fine-print disclaimers clarify that a prescription is not guaranteed.

"I think increased access is good, but that's not the same thing as, you know, ordering Xanax online," Kelly said.

Young adults are largely driving an increase in anxiety medication use. The proportion of Americans ages 18 to 34 taking anxiety medication rose from 8.8% in 2019 -- the first year such survey data became available -- to 14.6% in 2024. By contrast, the rate didn't change much among adults 65 and older, CDC data shows.

The pandemic and COVID lockdowns greatly increased stress among many American adults, particularly young adults.

And data show more women than men take anxiety medication. Jason Schnittker, PhD, a department chair and professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, said that's because they're more likely to need them. They are also likelier than men to report when they feel anxious, and doctors are "inclined or see anxiety more readily in their female patients than their male patients," Schnittker added.

Broader trends could also be at work. Schnittker said studies have shown anxiety growing more prevalent among ensuing generations for much of the 20th and 21st centuries. Schnittker, author of "Unnerved: Anxiety, Social Change, and the Transformation of Modern Mental Health," said growing income inequality could be partly to blame, with people feeling stress over improving their economic status. Social and religious activities have been replaced by more isolation. And people have become more suspicious of others, creating a sense of unease around strangers.

For Zapp, the cancer survivor, it took a few months on escitalopram before she started seeing clear results. When she did, she said, it felt like her mind was less noisy, making it easier to focus. She also underwent talk therapy, but now her chronic anxiety is stabilized on medication alone.

"It definitely helped me get back to my day-to-day in a way that was productive and not just riddled with my anxieties throughout the day," she said.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/psychiatry/anxietystress/120067

Biologic on Par With OIT for Turning Allergy-Forbidden Foods Into Everyday Eats

 Most multi-food allergic children succeeded in longer term regular dietary consumption whether treated with oral immunotherapy (OIT) or omalizumab (Xolair) alone, results from stage 3 of the OUtMATCH trial showed.

After finishing 52 months of multi-food allergy treatment, most patients maintained their tolerance, with 77% of oral immunotherapy recipients and 67% of omalizumab-treated patients continuing dietary consumption as planned at 3 months (P=0.10).

At 6 months post-treatment, those rates remained similar at 65% and 63%, respectively (P=0.80), reported R. Sharon Chinthrajah, MD, of Stanford University in California, at the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology annual meeting.

Safety also came out similar in the long-term phase, with most patients reporting some adverse event. Both cases (7%) requiring epinephrine and the three cases (10%) meeting anaphylaxis criteria that were potentially related to dietary consumption occurred in the omalizumab group. One case of eosinophilic esophagitis occurred in the omalizumab group after transition to dietary consumption.

"This real food is like oral immunotherapy in that you could still have allergic reactions to your 'dose,' so you still have to be mindful about monitoring for allergic reactions. But hopefully it gets us a little step closer to interacting with food in a normal way," Chinthrajah told MedPage Today.

It's good news that the two treatments came out similar at the end, she noted: "If one treatment option doesn't feel right, becomes burdensome, you have too many side effects, we can switch pathways and still go towards treating a chronic disease with a different approach."

Co-author Alkis Togias, MD, chief of the Allergy, Asthma, and Airway Biology Branch at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Rockville, Maryland, agreed: "At least now we know that under appropriate care, you can actually stop either one of these therapies and go into regular food, which is the ultimate goal as opposed to cure patients forever."

Although that fits with clinical experience, there had been little data to prove it, noted co-author Wayne G. Shreffler, MD, PhD, director of the Food Allergy Center at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard in Boston.

"One of the dirty secrets about OIT, in a way -- and I have this conversation all the time in clinic -- is there's level one, randomized controlled clinical trial data showing that OIT raises people's thresholds," he said. "But whether or how much it actually helps people lose their allergy over time, that never has been -- and frankly never will be -- an outcome in a randomized clinical trial, because now we don't even have a licensed product. It's just foods."

Stage 3 of OUtMATCH was "at least an effort to get at this question of 'Are we really inducing something like remission in people?'," he said.

The initial stage of the complex trial led to FDA approval of omalizumab for the treatment of immunoglobulin E (IgE)-mediated multi-food allergy in adults and children, ages 1 year and older, to help reduce allergic reactions like anaphylaxis following accidental exposure. It showed that regular omalizumab injections increased the amount of peanut and other foods that multi-food-allergic children could consume without an allergic reaction.

Stage 2 of OUtMATCH included 117 children with confirmed allergy to less than half a peanut and similarly small amounts of at least two other common foods, including milk, egg, cashew, wheat, hazelnut, or walnut. Median age was 7 years, and 55% were boys.

Participants were randomized to receive either double-blind omalizumab and placebo OIT or multi-allergen OIT and placebo injections. Treatment in both groups started with 16 weeks of open-label omalizumab, then at week 9, OIT or placebo OIT was initiated and was escalated to a maintenance goal of 1,000 mg for each participant's study-specific allergens. At week 16, participants transitioned to blinded omalizumab or placebo injections for 44 weeks before being re-challenged.

The 81 who completed this stage went on to stage 3, with a treatment plan for dietary consumption of one to three of their former allergy eliciting foods as determined by their last double-blind food challenge results. For most of them (n=74), that involved peanut, while about half (43) got a plan for consumption of cashew. Walnut, milk, egg, hazelnut, and wheat also were included.

Dietary consumption success meant consuming a median of at least 300 mg per day of allergenic food as indicated in diary records and study team evaluations.

Individual allergens had similar success rates as seen in the primary results, Chinthrajah said. For example, peanut consumption continued for 77% of post-OIT patients and 67% of post-omalizumab patients at 3 months and 65% and 60%, respectively, at 6 months (P=0.43 and 0.80, respectively).

A limitation of the analysis was that participants did not randomly succeed to stage 3 but might represent a selected population who stuck out the treatments long term.

Some patients do well with strict allergen avoidance, Chinthrajah acknowledged. "But for others who are really impacted psychosocially, which many of our families are, there are many treatment options and combination approaches," she said.

"And ultimately the next step is really trying ... to not think every day that you're taking medicine, but you're incorporating foods back into your diet that were previously forbidden," she added.

Disclosures

OUtMATCH was supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the National Center for Translational Sciences.

Chinthrajah disclosed relationships with Genentech and Novartis.

Shreffler disclosed multiple relationships with industry, including Novartis, Allergy Therapeutics, and DVB.

Togias disclosed no relationships with industry.

Primary Source

American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology

Source Reference: Chinthrajah RS "Evaluation of dietary consumption feasibility following treatment with multi-food oral immunotherapy or omalizumab in OUtMATCH" AAAAI 2026; Abstract L22.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/meetingcoverage/aaaai/120102

Air freight rates expected to spike as Iran war escalates

 The war launched by the United States and Israel against Iran on Saturday is already disrupting air cargo traffic in the Middle East, a key freight corridor between Asia and Europe where two of the world’s largest cargo airlines are based, and raising the potential for a rise in air freight rates. 

Airlines are suspending flights, rerouting traffic around the conflict zone and unable to use key transload hubs in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Qatar because of retaliatory missile attacks by Iran. More scheduling changes are anticipated in the days ahead. 

Longer routes require more fuel, reducing the amount of cargo aircraft can carry so as not to exceed weight limits. Some airlines are expected to add refueling stops.

“We are expecting some potentially significant move in rates, especially Asia-Europe, if the situation continues with large-scale flight cancellations,” said Neil Wilson, editor of global price reporting agency TAC Index, said in an email exchange.

FedEx (NYSE: FDX) has suspended flights to and from Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

“The safety and well-being of our team members is our highest priority. As a result, pickup and delivery services in Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, Qatar and United Arab Emirates have been temporarily suspended until further notice. Shipments to and from other markets throughout the region may experience extended transit times,” the company said in a service alert. “We are closely monitoring the situation and will resume services as soon as it is safe to do so.”

UPS has not announced any operational changes, but said in a statement provided to FreightWaves, “We are closely monitoring this fluid situation and using established contingency plans to manage our operations safely and efficiently.”
Qatar Airways, which operates 29 Boeing 777 freighter aircraft and carries huge volumes of cargo on widebody passenger planes, has temporarily halted flights to, and from, Doha due to the closure of Qatari’s airspace. Qatar Airways Cargo offers shippers 13 tons of capacity per day.The airline warned customers to expect flight delays once the airspace re-opens and it resumes operations there. In the meantime, tendered cargo is being held at its hub and other stations around the world. 

Emirates Skycargo, the fourth-largest cargo airline by traffic, has similarly suspended flights through Dubai. It operates nearly a dozen Boeing 777 freighters and leases several crewed Boeing 747-400s from third-party carriers. The United Arab Emirates has closed its airspace and Dubai International Airport sustained minor damage to a passenger concourse from an Iranian attack, according to news accounts from the region.

Bahrain’s international airport also suffered minor damage from a drone attack.

Etihad Airlines, which operates five Boeing 777 freighter aircraft in addition to a large fleet of widebody passenger aircraft, has suspended all flights through Abu Dhabi until Monday at 2 a.m. Airlines are monitoring the situation and could choose to extend any flight suspensions.

The cargo arm of Oman Air said it is experiencing limited disruption to some services within the region. Oman Air is a smaller carrier, with nine Boeing 787, 10 Airbus 330, and  32 Boeing 737-800/MAX8 passenger jets, plus one 737-800 converted freighter, according to Flightradar24 data. Services to Europe and the Asia Pacific continue to operate as scheduled, with rerouting implemented and some minor delays. As a precautionary measure, the carriage of perishable cargo has been temporarily restricted, while general cargo operations continue as normal.

Hong Kong-based Cathay Group, a hybrid carrier with 20 Boeing 747 cargo jets, suspended all operations in the Middle East, including passenger services to and from Dubai and Riyadh, as well as freighter services to and from Al Maktoum International Airport in Dubai. Flights typically passing over the affected area are being rerouted, it said.

Data from Netherlands-based consultancy Rotate shows global air cargo capacity is down 18% from last week due to flight suspensions by Middle East carriers and other carriers opting not to serve the Middle East. Freighter operators in Asia that aren’t subject to sanctions or Russian airspace closures due to the war in Ukraine are pivoting from the Middle East and flying over Russia to reach European destinations, according to Rotate. 

Air India has suspended all flights to destinations in the Middle East, as well as many flights to Europe and New York.  

United Airlines has cancelled all departures to and from Tel Aviv, Israel through March 6. The airline has also canceled flights through Dubai through March 4. SWISS suspended flights to Dubai through March 4 and to Tel Aviv through March 8. “Until and including 8 March, we will continue to avoid the airspace of Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait and Bahrain,” the passenger airline said in a notice.

Freightos, an international cargo marketplace and freight data provider, said air cargo rates in and out of the Middle East have remained stable so far. 

Impact on ocean shipping

Meanwhile, on the ocean front, container shipping lines Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd, MSC and CMA CGM are ceasing services to and diverting vessels away from the Strait of Hormuz and the region, with CMA CGM introducing a $4,000 emergency surcharge per forty-foot container for services to the region. Hapag Lloyd announced a war risk surcharge of $1,500 per 20-foot equivalent unit for cargo transiting the Arabian/Persian Gulf, effective March 2. Reefer and special containers will be charged at $3,500 per TEU.

Marsk also cautioned customers about possible service disruptions in the UAE, Oman and Qatar.

Iranian Revolutionary Guards attacked two oil tankers on Sunday. Four seafarers on the MT Skylight were injured and transferred ashore for medical treatment after their vessel was attacked in the Strait of Hormuz, according to officials in Oman and the Palau Ship Registry.

DP World has suspended operations at the port of Jebel Ali in Dubai after an aerial interception caused a fire there Saturday night.

Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have threatened to resume strikes. In response, carriers that had restarted some Red Sea sailings have diverted vessels back around the Cape of Good Hope, postponing industry plans to return to the shortcut between Asia and Europe.

“While the situation is still developing, we can already now advise of significant delays ahead for both shipments already in transit and for upcoming shipments to and from the Middle East. It is also likely that there will be delays on the Asia-Europe trade lane as a result of this,” said Scan Global Logistics in a notice to customers.

International supply chains have buffeted by geopolitical events in recent years, including the Ukraine war, the Israel-Hamas war and the proliferation of global tariffs triggered by the United States.

https://www.freightwaves.com/news/air-freight-rates-expected-to-spike-as-iran-war-escalates

Israeli airforce attacks Tehran

 The Israeli army said its forces have begun a fresh wave of airstrikes against the Iranian capital, Tehran, early on Sunday, local time.

Multiple blasts were reported in the city, with fires burning in several areas. Tehran has been repeatedly struck by US and Israeli warplanes since the beginning of the conflict on Saturday. Other areas of the country were also targeted, including naval facilities on the coast of the Persian Gulf.

https://breakingthenews.net/Article/Israeli-airforce-attacks-Tehran/65770646