The Telephone News

Toymaker Basic Fun's team that oversees ocean shipments of Tonka trucks and Care Bears for Walmart and other retailers is racing to reroute cargo away from the Suez Canal following militant attacks on vessels in the Red Sea.Suppliers for the likes of IKEA, Home Depot, Amazon and retailers around the world are doing the same as businesses grapple with the biggest shipping upheaval since the COVID-19 pandemic threw global supply chains into disarray, sources in the logistics industry said.Florida-based Basic Fun usually ships all Europe-bound toys from its China factories via the Suez Canal…

A barge carrying three trucks and 2,000 empty cooking gas cylinders lies stranded on the vast sand banks of a diminished Rio Negro river after running aground last month, highlighting the plight of river transport in the Amazon region hit by severe drought.Officials warned that low river levels risk disrupting grains exports from nearby farm states. On the Madeira, they said barge routes used by grain firms such as Cargill, Bunge and Amaggi, are open but loads are being reduced as a precaution.Shipping and logistics group A.P.

Pope Francis said on Friday that migrants who risk drowning at sea "must be rescued" because doing so was "a duty of humanity" and that those who impede rescues commit "a gesture of hate".Francis, 86, spoke at an inter-religious prayer service before a monument dedicated to those lost at sea. Earlier, the city's archbishop, Cardinal Jean Marc Aveline, an Algerian-born Frenchman, criticized politicians who block NGOs and their ships from saving drowning people."We cannot be resigned to seeing human beings treated as bargaining chips, imprisoned and tortured in atrocious ways," Francis said.

On Feb. 10 last year, the cable ship CS Dependable appeared off the coast of the island of Diego Garcia, an Indian Ocean atoll that’s home to a discreet U.S. naval base.Over the next month, the ship’s crew covertly laid an underwater fiber-optic cable to the military base, an operation code-named “Big Wave,” according to four people with direct knowledge of the mission, as well as a Reuters analysis of satellite imagery and ship tracking data.The new super-fast internet link to Diego Garcia, which has not previously been reported, will boost U.S. military readiness in the Indian Ocean, a region where China has expanded its naval influence over the last decade.The CS Dependable is owned by SubCom…

Six people were killed and 64 others were missing after a boat capsized in Democratic Republic of Congo's Lake Kivu early on Monday, local authorities said.Mustapha Mamboleo, a local official at Idjwi island in the lake, said 150 passengers were aboard the motorized boat traveling from Mugote village on Idjwi island to the eastern city of Goma and 80 of them survived.Mathieu Alimasi Malumbi, the transport minister for South Kivu province, confirmed the incident."I can confirm that there was a capsizing of a motorboat with more than 100 passengers on board, many of whom were not on the manifest

Search teams in Gabon have recovered the dead bodies of 15 passengers of a ferry that sank off the West African country's coast last week, bringing the provisional death toll up to 21, the coordinator of rescue operations said on Tuesday.The Esther Miracle ferry was carrying 161 passengers from Libreville to Port-Gentil when it sank close to the coastal village of Nyonie on March 9.Authorities confirmed six deaths on Monday and were still searching for 31 missing people. Air force…

One more tanker took to 20 on Friday the number of vessels waiting in the Black Sea to pass through Istanbul's Bosphorus Strait on the way to the Mediterranean, the Tribeca shipping agency said, amid talks to disperse the build-up.On Thursday, dismissing pressure from abroad over the lengthening queue, Turkey's maritime authority said it would continue to keep out of its waters oil tankers that lacked the appropriate insurance letters, and it needed time for checks.Eight tankers were also waiting for passage through the Dardanelles strait into the Mediterranean…

Norway police on Friday investigated reports of a drone flying over the Kaarstoe [Kårstø] gas plant in southwest Norway on Thursday, while in Arctic Norway a Russian-Israeli citizen was arrested when police found two drones in his car.The Norwegian military Home Guard has been posted at Kaarstoe and other major energy export facilities since authorities boosted security at Norwegian oil and gas installations after the Sept. 26 Nord Stream leaks.At 2130 local time (1930 GMT) on Thursday…

Norwegian police on Thursday responded to a threat made by telephone against the Nyhamna gas processing plant, one of Europe's largest energy export facilities, and later said the incident had been resolved. The threat came amid heightened concerns about the security of oil and gas infrastructure following suspected sabotage of Russia's Nord Stream gas pipelines to Europe, though plant operator Gassco and offshore producers Shell and Equinor said output had not been interrupted.

At least 12 sailors on a Chinese-flagged cargo ship have died of suspected food poisoning off Vietnam's southern coast, a government official said on Friday.After receiving distress calls from the ship's captain, authorities in the island district of Con Dao deployed helicopters to bring the victims and nine other sailors to a hospital onshore, according to Huynh Trung Son, a local government official."The survivors are in critical condition and our medical staff are trying to save them," Son said via telephone."We haven't been able to identify the nationality of the sailors, but they are likely Chinese," he added.The Wu Zhou 8 ship was en route from Thailand to China, he said, adding that it was not immediately clear what the ship was transporting.The ship was built in 2013 with a carryin

“An inventor is simply a fellow who doesn’t take his education too seriously.” –Charles KetteringJust for fun, try asking a friend a few questions. Who developed the telephone? Chances are that your friend will reply, Alexander Graham Bell. Who developed the lightbulb? That would be Thomas Edison. Who developed the telegraph? That would be Samuel F.B. Morse. Now ask, who developed containerization? Unless your friend has a background in maritime history, he is likely to draw a complete blank. The answer is a man named Malcom McLean. But who exactly was he? Was he a shipping executive?

Police in Bangladesh on Wednesday opened an investigation into eight officials from a shipping container depot after a blaze killed at least 44 people, including 10 firefighters, and injured around 200 others, officials said.Firefighters put out the blaze at the depot in Sitakunda, 40 km (25 miles) from the southeastern port city of Chittagong, on Wednesday, four days after it began late on Saturday, triggering a series of explosions.The investigation was opened into officials who were directly involved operating the depot on suspicion of negligence and mismanagement…

Firefighters in Bangladesh brought a blaze at a container depot under control on Tuesday, three days after fiery explosions killed at least 43 people at a facility that a senior fire service official suspected had not followed safety guidelines.Drone footage showed smoke and rows of burnt-out containers from the fire that began late on Saturday, triggering blasts and blazes at Sitakunda, 40 km (25 miles) from the southeastern port city of Chittagong. Authorities have not determined…

California port leaders expect imports to rise as Shanghai, home to the world's busiest seaport, emerges from a two-month COVID-19 lockdown.The question is whether that release of pent-up goods will again swamp West Coast ports that have recently emerged from the pandemic's massive cargo wave, they and other experts said.The Port of Shanghai was open during the city's shutdown, but cargo flows still slowed. Area factories that make everything from Tesla electric vehicles to Apple laptops ran out of components and quarantines idled some truckers.As the city returns to normal…

Iran urged Greece on Tuesday to cooperate to resolve a crisis over the seizure of ships without involving the United States, after Iranian forces seized two Greek tankers in the Gulf following the seizure of an Iranian vessel off Greece.Tehran seized the Greek ships on Friday after Athens impounded the Iranian-flagged Pegas in April. The United States, which has imposed a tough sanctions regime on Iran, confiscated the Iranian oil cargo that was on the Pegas.U.S. and Greek diplomats have called on Iran to immediately release the Greek tankers, their cargoes and their crews. U.S.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday condemned the "unjustified seizure" of two Greek-flagged vessels by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard last week, the State Department said.Iranian forces seized two Greek tankers in the Gulf on Friday, shortly after Tehran warned it would take punitive action against Athens over the confiscation of Iranian oil by the United States from a tanker held off the Greek coast. "Iran's continued harassment of vessels and interference with navigational rights and freedoms are a threat to maritime security and the global economy…

The United States on Saturday denied that it had carried out military operations in Russian territorial waters, after Moscow said a Russian naval vessel chased away a U.S. submarine in Russian waters in the Pacific.Russia accused Washington of breaking international law and creating a national security threat over the incident at a time of high tensions between Moscow and Washington over a Russian military buildup near Ukraine.Interfax news agency cited the Russian Defense Ministry as saying a Russian naval vessel chased away a U.S.

Vietnam has been in talks with Iranian authorities over the seizure last month of a Vietnamese oil tanker off the Iranian coast, in an effort to guarantee the safety of the crew, the Southeast Asian nation's said on Thursday.Talks had taken place on a diplomatic level in Hanoi and Tehran "to verify information and settle the incident to ensure safety and humane treatment for Vietnamese citizens," Vietnam foreign ministry spokeswoman Pham Thu Hang told a regular briefing.The Pentagon on Wednesday rejected claims by Iran's Revolutionary Guards that they thwarted an attempt by the United States to detain a tanker carrying the Islamic Republic's oil in the Sea of Oman.American officials said Iranian forces had actually seized a Vietnamese-flagged oil tanker, MV Southys, and U.S.

Two people are trapped on a ferry that was engulfed in a blaze as it sailed from Greece to Italy early on Friday, the coastguard said, after scores of others passengers and crew members were rescued.A total of 239 passengers and 51 crew were onboard the Italian-flagged Euroferry Olympia when the fire broke out and rescue vessels had taken most of them to the island of Corfu where ambulances were waiting, the Greek coastguard added."We were woken up around 4:20 a.m. Within an hour we had left the ship ...

Austria is sticking with its opposition to including the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in a package of sanctions against Moscow that the European Union is preparing in the event Russia invades Ukraine, Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg said on Friday.Austrian oil company OMV is one of Russian gas giant Gazprom's partners in the pipeline project connecting Russia to Germany, which has been completed but is not yet operational as it is awaiting German and EU regulatory approval. Austria owns 31.5% of OMV and backs the project.U.S.

Life-saving water supplies from a New Zealand navy ship were distributed across Tonga's main island on Friday, as other countries battled the logistics of delivering aid to one of the world's remotest communities.Six days after the South Pacific archipelago was devastated by a volcanic eruption and tsunami that deposited a blanket of ash and polluted its water sources, the HMNZS Aotearoa docked in the capital, Nuku’alofa.The ship carried 250,000 liters of water and desalination equipment able to produce 70,000 litres more per day, New Zealand's High Commission said."Trucks ...

Two tankers have had their environmental and safety classification withdrawn by a U.S. company that provides such certification, after accusations by a U.S. advocacy group that they had shipped cargoes of Iranian oil, documents seen by Reuters show.Countries targeted by tougher U.S. sanctions, including Iran and Venezuela, have responded to the mounting pressure with elaborate strategies to circumvent restrictions on their oil exports.Top oil shipping companies say they have in turn responded by tightening guidelines and deploying technology to prevent accidental sanctions breaches, which U.S. officials have said could lead to them being…

Philippines' Rodrigo Duterte and Chinese President Xi Jinping stressed the need to exercise restraint to maintain peace in the South China Sea, Manila's presidential office said on Saturday.The two leaders held an hour-long telephone summit on Friday, discussing a broad range of topics including concerns over the Ukraine crisis and COVID-19 pandemic responses."The leaders stressed the need to exert all efforts to maintain peace, security and stability in the South China Sea by exercising restraint…