Geert De Clercq News

A French warship operating in the Red Sea has shot down two drones that were launched at it from the Yemen coast, the defence ministry said on Sunday.It said the multipurpose frigate Languedoc had intercepted and destroyed a first drone at around 9:30 p.m. local French time on Saturday, and a second one around 11:30 p.m.

More than 100 firefighters fought a huge blaze at grain silos in the French Atlantic port of La Rochelle on Thursday, disrupting shipping activity at one of France's biggest grain export terminals.The fire started on a conveyor belt at around 8:00 a.m. (0600 GMT) in a grain silo complex operated by SICA Atlantique, the local prefecture said.Some 120 firefighters brought the blaze under control, helped by the use of a 72-metre (236.22 ft) high lift platform to access the conveyor belt above the grain silos…

A burned-out car carrier off the Dutch coast is being towed to port for salvage, Dutch authorities said on Thursday.The Fremantle Highway, which was travelling from Germany to Egypt when the blaze broke out on July 26, will be towed from its current location north of the islands Ameland and Schiermonnikoog to nearby harbour Eemshaven, the Dutch public works and water management ministry said in a statement."Most of the ship has now been inspected and there are no indications that there is still fire on board," Rijkswaterstaat said, adding that the situation on board is now stable.The fire aboa

British and French officials traded blame on Wednesday after 27 migrants died when their dinghy deflated as they made a perilous crossing of the English Channel.The accident was the worst disaster on record involving migrants in the narrow seaway separating the two countries.The Channel is one of the world's busiest shipping lanes and currents are strong. Human traffickers typically overload the dinghies, leaving them barely afloat and at the mercy of waves as they try to reach…

Fire broke out onboard a nuclear submarine docked at the Mediterranean port of Toulon on Friday and was still raging but under control by afternoon, local officials said.Nobody was hurt and no nuclear materials or weapons were on board the vessel, the Perle, which is in dry dock for repairs, the prefecture said in a statement.“The fire is under control. It will not spread, but it has not yet been put out,” a spokeswoman for the Mediterranean prefecture told Reuters.The prefecture also said that smoke coming from the Perle was not radioactive.Dozens of firefighters were on the scene…

An Italian cruise ship bound for the Italian harbor of Savona had 36 people on board infected with the coronavirus when tests were undertaken on passengers during a stop in the French port of Marseille, French authorities said on Friday.A Marseille area prefecture official told Reuters that he could not comment on how many of those infected had disembarked and how many were still on the ship, which was due to leave Marseille on Friday evening to sail to Savona.On Thursday and Friday…

Passengers who have tickets to travel back to their home countries will be allowed to disembark from the coronavirus-hit Costa Luminosa cruise ship in Marseille, the port authority and the cruise operator said on Thursday.A port official told Reuters that 639 passengers, including 187 French nationals, would be allowed to leave the ship in small groups, depending on the timing of their transport home.There were more than 1,420 passengers on the liner, including 230 Americans, 168 Italians and 100 Canadians…

The main cruise ship operators in French waters have agreed on measures to limit pollution caused by their vessels, including hooking up to the power grid instead of keeping their engines running during stopovers.The "Blue Charter" agreement signed in Marseille by Costa Cruises, MSC Cruises, Royal Carribean Cruises and Ponant also pledged to use less-polluting fuel when manoeuvring in harbours as well as other measures to reduce emissions.The four signatories transport 95% of the passengers and account for 85% of the stopovers in Marseille…

Mediterranean resort town Cannes, France's fourth-biggest cruise ship port, will ban the most polluting cruise ships from next year in a bid to boost air quality in the city.The ban will target ships that do not respect a 0.1% cap on sulphur in their fuel and could stop some passengers from disembarking in the city famous for its film festival."It's not about being against cruise ships. It's about being against pollution," Cannes Mayor David Lisnard told Reuters Television in an interview.Under the European Union's clean air policy…

French container shipping group CMA CGM booked record revenue in 2018 as trans-Pacific goods traffic remained buoyant despite U.S.-Chinese trade tensions, but soaring oil prices cut deep into its profits, it said on Friday.The firm's 2018 volumes rose by 9.3 percent and for the first time exceeded 20 million TEUs (Twenty-foot Equivalent Units) due to a strong performance of most of the shipping lines operated by the group, in particular the Transpacific, India/Oceania and Africa lines.Full-year revenue grew 11.2 percent to a record $23.48 billion…

Russia's first-floating nuclear power plant arrived in the Arctic port of Murmansk over the weekend in preparation for its maiden mission, providing electricity to an isolated Russian town across the Bering Strait from Alaska.The state company behind the plant, called the "Akademik Lomonosov", says it could pioneer a new power source for remote regions of the planet, but green campaigners have expressed concern about the risk of nuclear accidents. Greenpeace has called it the "nuclear Titanic".Russian state nuclear company Rosatom…

A project to build a canal to link Paris with major harbours of northern Europe will depend on lining up the necessary funds, the French government said on Wednesday, without saying if it believed the finance could be found. France has long planned to build the waterway dubbed the Seine-Nord canal to allow large barges to sail from Paris to the harbours of Antwerp and Rotterdam, reducing truck traffic on its motorways. The project has been studied for more than a decade and funding options for the 4.5 billion euro ($5.3 billion) programme have been discussed with regional governments and the European Union. The previous government had set up a project company with a view to start work on the 107 kilometre canal in 2017 and have it ready by 2023.

Two potential buyers have emerged for STX France, a shipyard subsidiary of the struggling South Korean group STX Corp, according to a French finance ministry source. The French state holds a 33 percent minority stake in STX France, which runs a naval shipyards in Saint Nazaire on the west coast. Lossmaking STX Corp is in administration. A French finance ministry source said a South Korean court was poised to clear a decision to liquidiate STX Corp's assets on Friday this week, a move that could clear the way for the sale of its assets.

Tidal power is moving beyond the prototype stage for state-backed French naval shipbuilder DCNS, which is targeting a billion euros in sales from the technology in the next decade. DCNS, which is 35 percent owned by defence group Thales and 64 percent by the French state, builds warships and submarines but aims to sell its first commercial tidal power system in four years and wants to get up to 25 percent of its sales from renewable marine energies by 2025. The firm bought Ireland's OpenHydro…

French container shipping firm CMA CGM plans to delist Neptune Orient Lines (NOL) following its takeover of the Singaporean shipper, CMA CGM's vice chairman Rodolphe Saade told French daily Les Echos. CMA CGM, the world's third-largest container shipping company, said earlier this month it holds over 78 percent of NOL shares after buying Temasek Holdings' stake in a $2.4-billion deal agreed last year. Minority shareholders can sell their shares to CMA CG until July 18. Saade said he was confident they will sell and added that as soon as CMA CGM holds 90 percent of NOL, Singapore law will oblige any remaining minority shareholders to sell, after which NOL will be delisted.

Seven Somali men accused of hijacking a French yacht in an assault in which its owner was killed and his wife abducted in the Arabian Sea four years ago appeared before a French court on Tuesday, all facing life sentences. The men have not been charged with homicide, but with hijacking - a crime punishable with life imprisonment - as well as theft, abduction and illegal confinement, according to Martin Pradel, the lawyer of one of the suspected attackers. The trial, set to last two weeks, is the latest in a series of judicial cases in France involving maritime piracy abroad.

French oil services company Bourbon said on Monday that the three Nigerian crew members kidnapped after one of its speedboats was boarded off the Nigerian coast on April 8 had been released.   "They are in good health and arrived at Port Harcourt on May 8," Bourbon said in a brief statement.   The crew members had been abducted on board a Surfer 1440 boat.   Bourbon operates a fleet of light, fast cruisers called Surfers that are used to move professionals to offshore oil and gas sites, especially in West Africa.     (Reporting by James Regan; Editing by Geert De Clercq)

France has launched a tender for several floating offshore wind turbine projects in what is set to be the first attempt to test this new technology on an industrial scale. French environment agency ADEME on Wednesday posted a tender document inviting companies to submit proposals to build floating wind farms with between three to six turbines each, with a capacity of at least 5 megawatts per turbine in three sites in the Mediterranean and one site off southern Brittany. Portugal and Norway have pioneered the new technology in the past few years with a single floating turbine each, and Portugal plans to build a 25 MW floating wind demonstration farm, but the French project will be the first to test floating offshore wind on a large scale.

The total cost to France of reimbursing Russia for cancelling two warship contracts will be less than 1.2 billion euros, French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Thursday. Le Drian said on radio RTL the initial price for the two Mistral helicopter carrier warships had been 1.2 billion euros, but France will have to pay less than that because the ships were not been finished and the contract was suspended. "Talks between President Putin and President Francois Hollande have concluded yesterday. There is no further dispute on the matter," he said. He added that the discussions had been held in an amiable way and that there were no further penalties to pay over the contract, which was cancelled because of Russia's role in the Ukraine conflict.

About 10 countries, including Egypt, are interested in buying two French helicopter carriers whose planned sale to Russia has been cancelled due to the Ukraine crisis, a source familiar with the situation said. A second source, a French diplomatic source, said that other countries interested include Brazil, Singapore, Saudi Arabia and Canada, which could be the most suitable candidate for the ships because they were designed for cold waters. France, whose navy already operates three of the Mistral helicopter carrier warships, has no use for the two ships and will have to pay Russia nearly 1.2 billion euros ($1.3 billion) for cancelling the contract. The first source also said that Egypt is negotiating the possible exercise of its option to buy two Gowind corvettes.

France-Corsica ferry operator SNCM has suspended payments to creditors and will file for court protection on Tuesday, the firm said in a statement late on Monday. Majority-owned by public transport firm Transdev, which is owned by water firm Veolia and French state bank CDC, SNCM said its management would now focus on finding a buyer for the firm. The court protection procedure will effectively mean the end of loss-making SNCM, which is unable to repay 440 million euros ($550 million) of illegal state aid as ordered by European Union competition authorities. Shipping companies could buy some of its ferries and take over part of its 1,900-strong staff to continue the key Marseille-Corsica lines, but other routes are expected to be discontinued.

French utility GDF Suez aims to double its power generation capacity from renewable energy in Europe between 2015 and 2025 and will focus in particular on marine energies, the company said on Tuesday. GDF Suez, with Spain's Iberdrola and Italy's Enel , is one of the industry leaders in renewable energy investment and has made Europe's energy transition the key plank of its European investment strategy. In 2009 it had aimed to boost its renewables capacity by 50 percent by 2015 - a target it says it will achieve - but now it wants to accelerate its renewables investment drive. The gas and power group currently operates 17.8 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity worldwide, or 15 percent of its total, of which 7.8 GW is in Europe and 10 GW is outside the region.

The European Commission has approved the takeover of troubled France-Corsica ferry operator SNCM by Corsican entrepreneur Patrick Rocca, according to a letter seen by Reuters on Tuesday. In the letter dated Nov. 27 to French junior transport minister Alain Vidalies, European Commission antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said a takeover by Rocca would guarantee the required "economic discontinuity" between SNCM's old and new shareholders and clear the way for the Commission to withdraw its 2013 order that SNCM repay 440 million euros worth of illegal state aid. The ruling clears the way for SNCM majority shareholder Transdev, jointly owned by water and waste group Veolia and French state bank CDC, to sell SNCM.