Weather Hampers Search for Missing After Korean Trawler Sinks
More than 50 people remain missing a day after a South Korean fishing vessel sank in the Bering Sea off the coast of Russia's far eastern Chukotka region as severe weather conditions hampered a rescue operation, officials said on Tuesday. Eight people - a Russian official, a South Korean crew member, three Filipinos and three Indonesians - have been pulled from the water although the South Korean died of hypothermia, officials in Seoul said. U.S. rescue helicopters joined the search operation for several hours on Tuesday but failed to make headway, South Korean Prime Minister Chung Hong-won told a meeting of government officials. The South Korean government and Sajo Industries…
Mega-Containerships Trigger Terminal Shake-ups
Bigger container ships are resulting in much greater peaks in container terminal activity, which together with the ever larger combined volumes of bigger alliances, demands fewer, larger terminals in each port. Terminal operators are reacting by consolidating terminal layouts and ownership – and by working more closely together – but what are the consequences for their customers? Drewry Maritime Research discuss in this extract from their latest 'Container Insight Weekly'. A recent visit to the Eurogate terminal in Hamburg by China Shipping’s post-Panamax vessel CSCL Le Havre involved an exchange of 11,600 teu, illustrating the sheer scale of volumes per call that terminals increasingly have to deal with. The vessel is shared with CMA CGM and UASC.
South Korean PM Resigns Over Ferry Disaster
South Korean Prime Minister Chung Hong-won resigned on Sunday over the government's response to the April 16 ferry disaster. The Sewol ferry sank on a routine trip south from the port of Incheon to the traditional holiday island of Jeju. "Keeping my post too great a burden on the administration," a sombre Chung said in a brief announcement. Chung was booed and someone threw a water bottle at him when he visited grieving parents the day after the disaster. More than 300 people, most of them students and teachers from one high school on a field trip, have died or are missing and presumed dead. The children were told to stay put in their cabins, where they waited for further orders. The confirmed death toll on Sunday was 187.
