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Shipping firms plead for UN help amid escalating Middle East conflict

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Shipping firms plead for UN help amid escalating Middle East conflict

The world’s shipping industry has called on the United Nations to provide military protection for vessels operating in the Middle East after the latest seizure of a container ship by Iran, although much commercial traffic between Asia and Europe has already been re-routed around Africa.

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The seizure by Iranian forces of a Portuguese-flagged container ship as it left the Persian Gulf has prompted global shipping companies to demand the United Nations provide increased military protection, with shippers already having been forced to take lengthy detours to maintain European trade flows amid the intensifying conflict in the wider region.

Iranian Revolutionary Guards in the Strait of Hormuz seized the MSC Aries on Saturday morning (13 April), increasing unease within a shipping industry that has found itself in the crossfire of tit-for-tat hostilities in the Middle East, and prompting Portugal’s foreign ministry to summon Tehran’s ambassador three days later to demand the release of the ship and crew.

“We have seen a worrying increase in the attacks on shipping,” runs the letter to UN secretary general Antonio Guterres, made public today (April 19) and signed by the UK-based World Shipping Council, the European Community Shipowners’ Association (ECSA) and over a dozen other industry groups.

“The world would be outraged if four airliners were seized and held hostage with innocent souls onboard,” the letter continues. “Regrettably, there does not seem to be the same response or concern for the four commercial vessels and their crews being held hostage,” it states in reference to other vessels seized by Iran in recent months.

The ECSA told Euronews that the intensifying conflict in the region had already led to certain increased shipping costs and jeopardised European trade flows.

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“The situation in the region continues to put our seafarers in danger and is increasingly impacting Europe’s supply chain and overall economic security,” secretary general Sotiris Raptis said. “It is essential to safeguard the safety and well-being of our seafarers and to protect key shipping routes and the international principle of freedom of navigation,” he added.

The ECSA welcomed the decision in February to deploy the EU’s naval force to the region in an operation dubbed Aspides, after several months of Yemeni Houthi rebels targeting vessels in the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea. “We continue to encourage all coordinated efforts, including diplomatic, that can contribute to the de-escalation of the crisis in the area,” Raptis said.

Now Israeli military strikes inside Iran have further raised tensions in the region, with recent moves by Tehran stoking fears that the Strait of Hormuz, the gateway to the petroleum-rich Persian Gulf, could become a choke point for global oil supply, with potential knock-on effects on the wider economy.

Some 20 million barrels or about a fifth of the world’s oil supply pass daily through the only connection between the Persian Gulf and global trade routes, analysts at ING Global Markets Research said in a note published on 18 April. “Tensions have already been reflected in somewhat higher oil prices, with a large risk premium already priced in before last weekend,” the ING note stated. “This could easily lead to supply concerns should the situation escalate.”

In an advisory note issued this morning (19 April), the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) warned vessels crossing the Arabian Gulf and western Indian Ocean of a potential increase in sightings of unmanned aircraft, or drones, although it said there appeared to be no imminent threat. “There are currently no indications commercial maritime vessels are the intended target,” noted the UKMTO, an information service for global shipping run by the Royal Navy, while requesting captains to report any “suspicious activity”.

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For some cargo shippers, however, the impact of the latest developments appears to be limited by the fact that much of the trade flow between Asia to Europe has already been diverted away from the Red Sea and the Suez canal. Maersk, a Danish container shipping firm that vies with the Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) for the title of world’s largest, stopped using the shortest route to the EU market on 2 January, three days after Houthi forces attacked the container ship Maersk Hangzhou, prompting an intervention by the US military.

“It’s a longer journey, so you need more fuel and more vessels to keep the weekly sailings,” Maersk spokesperson Rainer Horn told Euronews of the firm’s decision to re-route vessels round the Cape of Good Hope. But the impact on trade was “not comparable with what we saw during the Corona pandemic…it’s just a single spot where you can’t sail”.

The increased shipping costs are often negligible for customers using containers to ship their products into Europe, according to Horn. “If you have 30,000 T-shirts in a 40-foot container, and you pay $200 dollars more, it’s a few cents,” Horn said. “The good thing about container shipping is the impact of transport costs are minimal to the product.”

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Minnesota braces for what’s next amid immigration arrests and in the wake of Renee Good shooting

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Minnesota braces for what’s next amid immigration arrests and in the wake of Renee Good shooting

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Already shaken by the fatal shooting of a woman by an immigration officer, Minnesota’s Twin Cities on Sunday braced for what many expect will be a new normal over the next few weeks as the Department of Homeland Security carries out what it called its largest enforcement operation ever.

Protesters screamed at heavily-armed federal agents and honked car horns, banged on drums and blew whistles in attempts to disrupt their operations in one Minneapolis neighborhood filled with single-family homes.

There was some pushing and several people were hit with chemical spray just before agents banged down the door of one home on Sunday. They later took one man away in handcuffs.

“We’re seeing a lot of immigration enforcement across Minneapolis and across the state, federal agents just swarming around our neighborhoods,” said Jason Chavez, a Minneapolis city councilmember. “They’ve definitely been out here.”

Chavez, the son of Mexican immigrants who represents an area with a growing immigrant population, said he is closely monitoring information from chat groups about where residents are seeing agents operating.

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People holding whistles positioned themselves in freezing temperatures on street corners in the neighborhood where 37-year-old Renee Good was shot and killed Wednesday, watching for any signs of federal agents.

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More than 20,000 people have taken part in a variety of trainings to become “observers” of enforcement activities in Minnesota since the 2024 election, said Luis Argueta, a spokesperson for Unidos MN, a local human rights organization .

“It’s a role that people choose to take on voluntarily, because they choose to look out for their neighbors,” Argueta said.

The protests have been largely peaceful, but the Twin Cities remained anxious. Minneapolis public schools on Monday will start offering remote learning for the next month in response to concerns that children might feel unsafe venturing out while tensions remain high.

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Many schools closed last week after Good’s shooting and the upheaval that followed.

While the enforcement activity continues, two of the state’s leading Democrats said on Sunday that the investigation into Good’s shooting death shouldn’t be overseen solely by the federal government.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and U.S. Sen. Tina Smith said in separate interviews Sunday that state authorities should be included in the investigation because the federal government has already made clear what it believes happened.

“How can we trust the federal government to do an objective, unbiased investigation, without prejudice, when at the beginning of that investigation they have already announced exactly what they saw — what they think happened,” Smith said on ABC’s “This Week.”

The Trump administration has defended the officer who shot Good in her car, saying he was protecting himself and fellow agents and that Good had “weaponized” her vehicle.

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Todd Lyons, acting director of ICE, defended the officer on Fox News Channel’s “The Sunday Briefing.”

“That law enforcement officer had milliseconds, if not short time to make a decision to save his life and his other fellow agents,” he said.

Lyons also said the administration’s enforcement operations in Minnesota wouldn’t be needed “if local jurisdictions worked with us to turn over these criminally illegal aliens once they are already considered a public safety threat by the locals.”

The killing of Good by an ICE officer and the shooting of two people by federal agents in Portland, Oregon, led to dozens of protests across the country over the weekend.

Thousands of people marched Saturday in Minneapolis, where Homeland Security called its deployment of immigration officers in the Twin Cities its biggest ever immigration enforcement operation.

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Associated Press journalists Giovanna Dell’Orto in Minneapolis, Thomas Strong in Washington, Bill Barrow in Atlanta, and John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, contributed.

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Netanyahu and Rubio discuss US military intervention in Iran amid ongoing nationwide protests: report

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Netanyahu and Rubio discuss US military intervention in Iran amid ongoing nationwide protests: report

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Secretary of State Marco Rubio discussed the possibility of U.S. intervention in Iran, according to a report.

The two leaders spoke by phone Saturday as Israel is on “high alert,” preparing for the possibility of U.S. military intervention in Iran, according to Reuters, citing multiple Israeli sources. A U.S. official confirmed the call to Fox News Digital but did not provide additional details.

The report comes as nationwide anti-regime demonstrations across Iran hit the two-week mark.

On Saturday, the Iranian regime triggered an internet “kill switch” in an apparent effort to conceal alleged abuses by security forces and as protests against it surged nationwide, according to a cybersecurity expert. The blackout reduced internet access to a fraction of normal levels.

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KEANE WARNS IRANIAN REGIME TO TAKE TRUMP ‘DEAD SERIOUS’ ON PROTEST KILLING THREAT AMID ONGOING DEMONSTRATIONS

Secretary of State Marco Rubio holds his end-of-year press conference at the State Department in Washington, D.C., Dec. 19, 2025. (Kevin Mohatt/Reuters)

On Sunday, Iran’s parliament speaker warned that the U.S. military and Israel would be “legitimate targets” if America strikes the Islamic Republic.

Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf issued the threat as lawmakers rushed the dais in the Iranian parliament, shouting, “Death to America!” according to The Associated Press.

President Donald Trump offered support for the protesters on Saturday, writing on Truth Social that “Iran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before. The USA stands ready to help!!!”

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IRANIAN MILITARY LEADER THREATENS PREEMPTIVE ATTACK AFTER TRUMP COMMENTS

In this frame grab from video obtained by the AP outside Iran, a masked demonstrator holds a picture of Iran’s Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi during a protest in Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (UGC via AP)

At a news conference Friday, Trump said Iran was facing mounting pressure as unrest spreads across the country.

“Iran’s in big trouble,” he said. “It looks to me that the people are taking over certain cities that nobody thought were really possible just a few weeks ago. We’re watching the situation very carefully.”

The president said the U.S. would respond forcefully if the regime resorts to mass violence. 

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“We’ll be hitting them very hard where it hurts. And that doesn’t mean boots on the ground, but it means hitting them very, very hard where it hurts,” he said.

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Protests in Iran intensify for the 12th day. (The National Council of Resistance of Iran)

Fox News Digital reached out to the State Department and White House for comment.

Fox News Digital’s Emma Bussey, Brie Stimson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Four killed, 20 injured in overnight Russian strikes across Ukraine

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Four killed, 20 injured in overnight Russian strikes across Ukraine

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Russia fired more than 150 drones overnight into Sunday targeting close to two dozen locations across Ukraine, killing at least four people and injuring 20 more.

Ukraine’s Air Forces say they intercepted 125 drones aerially but confirmed that at least 25 strike drones struck their targets.

They added that Moscow’s latest barrage mainly targeted Kharkiv, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk, all of which were targeted in Saturday’s overnight strikes as well.

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Local officials in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia say the strikes targeted residential areas and energy infrastructure. More than 385,000 homes were affected by electric, gas or water outages, at a critical time as temperatures plunged to 10 degrees below Celsius.

Regional lawmakers say service was restored to most of the affected households and areas by Sunday morning, but added that emergency work was still being carried out to restore power to the remaining homes.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of timing their attacks with the cold peaks of winter as to maximise civilian suffering.

“They struck targets that have no military purpose whatsoever – energy infrastructure, residential buildings. They deliberately waited for freezing weather to make things worse for our people. This is deliberate, cynical Russian terror specifically against civilians,” wrote Zelenskyy in a post on X.

He also noted that this week had seen heightened Russian assault on Ukrainian cities, announcing that his country’s defence forces recorded thousands of attacks using a variety of different weapons.

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“Over the course of this week, Russia launched almost 1,100 attack drones against Ukraine, more than 890 guided aerial bombs, and over 50 missiles of various types – ballistic, cruise, and even the Oreshnik medium-range ballistic missile.”

The Ukrainian leader thanked all units responsible for protecting the country and responding to attacks, and praised their tireless efforts and resilience.

He also called on allies to ensure his embattled country maintains “stable support”, in defence and diplomatic fields as coordinated dialogue efforts continue in search of peace.

Meanwhile, Russia says that one person was killed in Ukrainian strikes on the western city of Voronezh. Officials say a young woman succumbed to her wounds at an intensive care unit of a local hospital after debris from a drone fell on her house during Saturday’s attacks.

They added that at least three others were injured in the attacks which targeted more than 10 residential apartment buildings, private homes and a high school.

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The city of Voronezh lies just 250 kilometres from the Ukrainian border and is home to approximately one million people. The attacks, which Kyiv have yet to confirm, came after the Kremlin’s major offensive on Ukraine in the early hours of Saturday.

Additional sources • AP

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