The U.S. Federal Maritime Commission on March 26 accused China of detaining Panama-flagged vessels in response to Panama’s termination of Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison’s concessions for two key ports.
Panama’s Supreme Court ruled in late January that the concessions held by Panama Ports Company, a unit of CK Hutchison, for the Balboa and Cristobal terminals in the Panama Canal were unconstitutional.
The ruling followed an audit by Panama’s comptroller, which alleged irregularities in the 25-year extension of the concession granted in 2021.
Following the ruling, Panama named U.S. subsidiaries Maersk APM Terminals and Mediterranean Shipping Company’s (MSC) Terminal Investment Limited as interim operators of the ports under 18-month contracts.
Laura DiBella, commissioner at the Federal Maritime Commission—an independent federal agency regulating the U.S. international ocean transportation system—said on March 26 that China has increasingly detained Panama-flagged vessels “under the guise of port state control” and the level of detentions was “far exceeding historical norms.”
“These intensified inspections were carried out under informal directives and appear intended to punish Panama after the transfer of Hutchison’s port assets,” DiBella said in a statement.
“Given that Panama‑flagged ships carry a meaningful share of U.S. containerized trade, these actions could result in significant commercial and strategic consequences to U.S. shipping.”
DiBella said that detaining or impeding vessels documented under U.S. law, as well as those from other nations engaged in commerce with the United States, are “inconsistent with the Commission’s mandate” to protect America’s global supply chain.
“The [Federal Maritime Commission] is charged with ensuring an efficient, competitive, and economical transportation system for the benefit of the United States,” she said.
The commissioner added that China’s Ministry of Transport has summoned Maersk and MSC to Beijing for high‑level discussions, but details had not been provided on the talks.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian told reporters on March 27 that the U.S. government had made “wrongful allegations” and accused Washington of trying to assert control over the Panama Canal.
CK Hutchison has denounced the ruling as unconstitutional and launched international arbitration proceedings against the Panamanian government, seeking more than $2 billion in damages, according to the Federal Maritime Commission.
“CKH considers the ruling, the executive decree, the purported termination of PPC’s concession, and the takeover of the terminals to be unlawful,” CK Hutchison said in a statement to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on March 23.
The Panama Canal carries about 5 percent of worldwide maritime commerce, and U.S. President Donald Trump has sounded an alarm about the Chinese influence on the critical waterway that connects the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
CK Hutchison, which has ties to the Chinese Communist Party, has plans for a $23 billion sale of global ports, including the Panama assets, to a consortium led by BlackRock and MSC.
Mayor Mamdani’s new deputy mayor for community safety is an anti-cop radical who previously led aGeorge Soros-funded lobbying group that pushed defunding police and abolishing jails, The Post has learned.
Francois, 42, spent the past four years working for West Hollywood, Calif.-based Beyond Impact, most recently as its chief program officer.
Renita Francois, NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s new deputy mayor foe community safety, is an anti-cop radical who previously led a George Soros-funded lobbying group that pushed defunding police and abolishing jails.Erik Pendzich/Shutterstock
The group’s pet programs include “Dream Defenders,” a self-described “black-led, feminist, socialist, abolitionist, and internationalist political formation fighting for a world without prisons, police, capitalism, and imperialism.”
Another, called “Movement for Black Lives Action,” embraces the “Defund the Police” movement, supports abolishing prisons and providing reparations for slavery descendants, and proclaims its “bold mission” includes bringing about “electoral justice” for Blacks, so they have better representation in government, according to its website.
Beyond Impact – which was rebranded in February after previously being named “Tides Advocacy”— and other offshoots of the Tides Network have received more than $51 million over the past decade from Soros’ hard-left grant-making network Open Society Foundation, records show.
More than $35 million went directly to Beyond Impact and was predominately spent backing initiatives that tried influencing elections and supported so-called criminal-justice reforms, like cashless bail.
Soros typically tries to keep a low profile, exerting influence by donating under the radar to lefty candidates — including former President Joe Biden and soft-on crime district attorneys across the United States like Manhattan’s Alvin Bragg — and funneling money to liberal causes and groups.
Open Society Foundations and related nonprofits he founded have doled out more than $32 billion worldwide since 1984, according to its website.
Francois — who earned degrees at arch-liberal University of California, Berkeley and Cornell Johnson Graduate School of Management — has no experience in law enforcement, according to her LinkedIn profile.
She joined the nonprofit in 2022 after spending the previous seven years working for far-left former NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio as a top honcho in the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, and oversaw its neighborhood safety action plan.
In her new City Hall role, she will oversee an Orwellian-titled office with just one other staffer — and a $260 million budget.
Her main goal will be figuring how best to shift responsibility for “nonviolent” 911 mental-health-emergency calls from the NYPD to social workers and other civilian responders.
The new office will also house existing city programs, including ones to combat hate crimes, reduce shootings through violence interrupters, and provide services to sexual assault victims.
Francois (with Mamdani to her left) was appointed last week to the $290,000-a-year post and will head the socialist mayor’s new “Office of Community Safety,” which aims overhaul how the NYPD responds to 911 calls.Matthew McDermott for NY Post
Law enforcement experts, however, are questioning whether emergency response times will rise because dispatchers might have to spend extra time deciding whether cops should be sent on calls involving the mentally ill.
“I don’t want to predict this, but with my experience I think it’s just going to go very bad quickly if there’s confusion,” said retired NYPD Detective Michael Alcazar, an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice who served in the NYPD for three decades before retiring in 2019.
“I think [the new office] shows a little bit of naiveness on the part of the mayor here. . . . This administration’s trying to reinvent the wheel,” he added.
Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch raised serious questions about whether the office is even necessary, while testifying under oath last week during a City Council hearing.
She estimated only about 2% of calls for service would be removed from her department’s jurisdiction and diverted to the new office, citing 2024 figures showing nearly 86,000 of the 4.3 million received that year were nonviolent mental health calls.
“I believe that you need to send the police when there’s a call for a violent person,” she said.
Critics say the new office is a huge waste of taxpayer dollars and that Mamdani is vastly understating the number of calls requiring a police response.
“This entire agency is just a $260 million boondoggle to fill a campaign promise and find new ways to keep dangerous criminals out of jail,” Council Minority Leader David Carr (R-Staten Island) said.
“In that regard, it appears the mayor found the right person for the job: an activist who ran a Soros-funded organization that advocates defunding police and abolishing prisons.”
In 2024, Beyond Impact reported $92.5 million in revenues accumulated predominately through donations, but was still $612,715 in the red, according to its latest available tax filings.
The nonprofit’s main expenses included $22.4 million for salaries, with Francois pocketing $184,955 in base salary and “other compensation.”
The group also doled out $16.8 million for “political campaign activity” to boost lefty candidates and causes.
Key benefactors included the Working Families Party, which got $937,000; Make the Road Action, which received $450,000, and other groups also backed by Soros — whose get-out-the-vote groundwork played a pivotal role in helping Mamdani upset ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo in last year’s Democratic mayoral primary.
“The Office of Community Safety will both prevent violence before it happens and ensure that when New Yorkers are in crisis, they receive the right response, at the right time, from the right people,” added Mamdani spokesman Sam Raskin.
“We’re building something better: a coordinated, citywide system that sends mental health professionals and civilian responders to nonviolent emergencies, while allowing police to focus on the work they are trained to do.”
Francois did not return messages.
The deputy mayor told NY1 on Wednesday she understands it might “be a little bit scary for some people” to see civilians rather than cops respond to 911 calls, but the administration is committed to the new “compassionate-first approach.”
“We don’t want to lead with fear. We want to lead with hope,” she said.
Critics such as Carr aren’t buying the “compassionate” veneer.
“New York City already has an Office of Community Safety — it’s called the NYPD. Just stay out of the way and let them do their job,” he said.
A CUNY Cuba conference in Midtown devolved into an anti-US hatefest, with far-left speakers deriding the “evil empire” as the “No. 1 terrorist in the world” — urging comrades to “speed up” its demise “in every way possible.”
But radicals attending the Action Conference for US-Cuba Normalization on March 14, including elected officials, ex-Black Liberation Army members, and reps from the Democratic Socialists of America, spoke glowingly about the 1959 Cuban Revolution as they demanded Uncle Sam lift its embargo and remove Cuba from its State Sponsors of Terrorism list.
“The threat is the US Empire itself,” proclaimed Mullin, an ex-adjunct political science professor who was fired after helping organize a vile anti-Israel campus protest in 2024 at the City College of New York’s Harlem campus, that officials said resulted in $3 million in damages.
And while socialist NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani didn’t attend, he’s still sweet on the “Sugar Bowl of the World,” assured Danny Valdes, who co-chairs the DSA’s Cuba Solidarity Working Group.
Danny Valdes, who co-chairs the Democratic Socialists of America’s Cuba Solidarity Working Group, told other activists that NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani is an “ally of Cuba.”Thestustustudio/ X
“My direct experience of organizing alongside Zohran in DSA is he is an ally of Cuba,” Valdes re-assured fellow activists, adding Mamdani supports ending the US embargo.
Stu Smith, an investigative analyst with the Manhattan Institute, told The Post it’s mind-boggling the taxpayer-funded CUNY’s Graduate Center would provide space for such an anti-American powwow.
“I love Cuba!” declared Councilwoman Gale Brewer (D-Manhattan).Thestustustudio/ X
“There was no critique of the Cuban government as being a culpable actor in the suffering of Cubans,” said Smith, who posted video on the March 14-15 conference on X.
“I think it sends a very clear message that anti-imperialism is becoming part of the DNA of America’s left –and that there’s an entire faction of American political actors who do not have the best interests of America in mind.”
CUNY’s Graduate Center did not return messages.
NYC Councilwoman Gale Brewer (D-Upper West Side) looked to the radical crowd to help her plot her next move.
DSA organizer Danny Valdes and Mayor Mamdani.Danny Valdes/ Instagram
Since 2024, she has been trying to get a non-binding City Council resolution passed calling for an end of the embargo on Cuba and removing the country from the terror list – but few of her colleagues have signed on.
“If you want me to work on this resolution or different wording, let me know what the wording is,” she offered.
Brewer also reminisced about a late close friend of hers who was “very supportive” of the late Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro, and the councilwoman boasted about visiting the Communist country many times and assisting the Cuban embassy whenever it had “troubles” in New York City,
“I love Cuba!” declared Brewer.
Other pols in attendance included state Sen. Jabari Brisport (D-Brooklyn), and Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), who addressed the conference through video.
The conference’s sponsors included the Socialist Workers Party, Nicaragua Solidary Coalition, Housing Justice League, National Network on Cuba and Workers World Party.
Dupont quoted Marxist revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara (pictured) — “Create two, three, many Vietnams,” which called for a global revolution against America.Corbis via Getty Images
The organizing efforts displayed during the conference shouldn’t surprise anyone because Cuba has become a “finishing school for America’s most radical activists,” said Smith.
“The American left will go there for activist vacations and just gas themselves up to do more militant organizing when they come back,” he said. “They come back, energized and ready to be even more extreme.”
Hundreds of socialists from North America and Europe flocked into Havana last weekend to meet with Communist Party officials — staying in luxury hotels and traveling in air-conditioned buses —while the rest of the island grapples with a worsening economic crisis that has starved it of electricity, food, water and medicine.
